Cotext

Erika Lombart, Catholic University of Louvain, Belgium
erika.lombart@uclouvain.be

The term cotext does not always appear as a standalone entry in general dictionaries, but its meaning is closely related to commonly accepted definitions of context. These typically include: (1) ‘the situation in which something happens and that helps you to understand it,’ and (2) ‘the words that come just before and after a word, phrase or statement and help you to understand its meaning.’ Although there is no consensus on its definition, cotext refers to the linguistic part of the context that plays an essential role in interpreting statements. The field of linguistics known as pragmatics studies the interaction between language and the context in which it is used.

There are two types of cotext. The strict cotext consists of the other elements of the proposition and is used to resolve syntactic ambiguities. This is particularly important for determining the grammatical relationships between words, as it can clarify issues such as subject-verb agreement, reference, and word sense disambiguation. Collocations, which refer to the frequent use of two or more words together, are studied within this field. The interphrasal cotext comprises the other utterances produced in the conversation and plays a crucial role in interpreting intentions. For example, the sentence ‘I didn't say she stole the money’ can be interpreted in different ways depending on which part is emphasised, a distinction that can only be understood through co(n)text. Understanding intentions is the cornerstone of interpreting any utterance, as Grice points out. Grice's theory of implicature emphasises that speakers often convey more than is explicitly stated, and that the co(n)text is crucial for inferring these additional meanings.

Keywords: collocation, intentions, discourse analysis

Related Entries: Context, Discourse (1), Discourse (2)

References:
Col, G. (1997). Co-texte et référence à l’à-venir. Analyses compratives de deux marqueurs polysémiques: Will et be + -ing. In Guimier (Éd.), Co-texte et Calcul du sens (Presses universitaires de Caen, p. 197‑214).
Dispy, M. (2011). Pour étayer l'apprentissage de l'implicite. Presses universitaires de Namur.