Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences

Department of English
Course: Pragmatics
Professor: Asst. Prof. Mateusz-Milan Stanojevi
Assignment 1
Dajana Novak

Text, Context, and Culture in Literary Studies

The article Text, Context, and Culture in Literary Studies by Oyunn Hestetun (1993) will
be used in this discussion. The author focuses on the issues of disagreement in literary
scholarship, indicating what can be described as a conflict between textualizing and
contextualizing approaches to the study of literature (Hestetun 1993: 27). He proposes a third
way which is successful also in constructing the relationship between culture and text, examples
of which can be found in various forms of cultural studies, Marxist criticism and feminist studies.
This discussion will use those examples proposed in Hetetuns article (1993) and look at them
through the perspective on context given by Mona Baker in her article Contextualization in
translator- and interpreter-mediated events (2006).
Firstly, to get a better understanding of the topic of this discussion, it would be helpful to
talk about different types of context according to Baker (2006), and how it correlates to the
context in the literary studies. Both pragmatics and discourse analysis study the meaning of
words in context, analyzing the parts of meaning that can be explained by knowledge of the
physical and social world, and the socio-psychological factors such as communication, as well as
the knowledge of the time and place in which the words are uttered or written (Stilwell Peccei
1999; Yule 1996). Joan Cutting (Pragmatics and Discourse. A Recourse Book for Students. 2nd

edition. London and New York: Routledge. 2008) divides context into three categories to be
observed: the situational context or what speaker know about what they can see around them, the
background knowledge context or what the speakers know about each other and the world and
the last category is the co-textual content or what they know about what they have been saying
(Cutting 2008: 5). Baker (2006) also has three groups or rather pairs of context and explains the
difference between them. She begins with the cognition-driven approach which states that
context is a psychological construct, a subset of the hearers assumptions about the world
(Sperber and Wilson, in Baker 2006: 323). Basically, the point of this approach is that the users
assumptions about what is in the world affect the interpretation of an utterance. Another group is
the social/interactive approach which defines context as a series of pre-existing entities and
relations in the real world (Baker 2006: 323). Baker claims that we respond not to the context as
it is in the world, but to what we perceive as other participants intentions as well as the
assumptions about the world (Baker 2006: 323). Another distinction Baker makes is between
static and dynamic models of context. The static model implies that components and entities are
often treated as static phenomena that exist in a fairly stable environment which the analyst can
simply document and use to generate an analysis of events and behavior. Contrary to that, the
speaker in dynamic context includes and follows the perspective of the participants and finds
ways of establishing what they see as relevant by paying attention to those features that they
seem to attend to. Finally, Baker distinguishes neutral and power-sensitive definition of context.
Context is either a neutral field or framework in which we play out our social roles is the neutral
definition. The power-sensitive definition on the other hand claims that the cultural or political
outlook of the participants influences the conversational event.
When it comes to the literary studies, Hestetun (1993) claims that there is a conflict
between textualizing and contextualizing approaches to the study of literature. Text is an
inscription of culture, and hence it cannot be separated nor isolated while interpreting or
translating for example. To support this claim, Baker also states that context is and always has
been the key anthropological concept (Baker 2006). To come back to the conflict which Hestetun
(1993) points out, textualizing approach tends to focus on text and intertextuality, analyzing the
aesthetic quality of literature. On the other hand, contextualizing theories are including historical
or social dimensions of texts or issues such as race, gender, ethnicity and class in relation to
cultural production. Contextualizing theory overlaps with Bakers points on contextualizing

translation where she states that the way people construct contexts for the same phenomenon
differs because of the differences in roles, interests, purposes and power of those who do the
contextualizing. In his article, Hestetun (1993) uses the examples of Frederic Jamesons Marxist
hermeneutic, Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubars (The Madwoman in the Attic) feminist criticism
and also mentions Henry Nash Smiths Virgin Land and his symbols and myths. The latter can
be used as an example for connection to Bakers cognition-driven and social/interactive
approach. To elaborate on this, Smiths symbols and myths is an expression of the shared
assumptions of the 19th century American culture which again supports the claim that texts can
and should be seen as cultural products. Another example which can be used to illustrate Bakers
dynamic view of context is feminist criticism based on Gilbert and Gubars study The
Madwoman in the Attic. Through analysis of imagery and themes in 19 th century women writers
texts they were trying to establish a distinctly female tradition in literature. Also, they were trying
to reconstruct the coded messages of a womens subculture. This directly corresponds to shift and
develop found in the dynamic view of context because the speaker pays attention to the dynamic
nature of every aspect of the interpreting event. To put it differently, dynamic view suggests that
the context changes depending on how the speaker chooses to interpret a text. In this particular
case, Gilbert and Gubar decided to take a womans point of view and looked for the elements
which expressed it. However, that same text could also be interpreted though male perspective,
intentionally ignoring all the feminist elements in the text. Thus, the environment changes the
context of a text, depending on the interpreter.
Another example found to connect Bakers power sensitive view of context and
Hestetuns take on interpreting Smiths symbols and myths is precisely seeing texts as cultural
products. Baker explains that power sensitive view is the ability to define a context in a particular
way or to initiate a set of contextualizing moves in a particular direction can be constructed as a
political act in the light of other possible definitions or moves that could have been made.
Furthermore, the dominant party generally dictates the terms of contextualization, even when the
marginalized participant decides to contest the context as it were; they ultimately do so largely
within the terms set by the dominant party, according to Baker (2006). On the other hand, in
cultural studies it is possible to see a concern that a discourse privileging only heterogeneity and
difference may be counter-effective, risking reinforcing marginalization from mainstream culture
rather than furthering the desired inclusion in a common culture (Hestetun 1993). One example

from todays world could be the Black Lives Matter movement in the United States which started
in 2013 due to unjust killing of many people of black ethnicity by Caucasians. This movement
has a pretty great impact, and its founders and main activist promote peaceful protest, however
they do not end that way were often. However, due to the fact that they are a cultural minority,
the media isnt focused on them, but rather the context in which they are presented is very often a
negative one. Dominant party of course doesnt want to admit that America has a problem with
the number of minority killings and racism in general, thus the context of presenting such news
corresponds.
To conclude, when it comes to literary studies, interpretation should involve an analysis of
the cultural assumptions of the historical moment when the text was produced. In other words,
context plays the crucial role while interpreting a literary text because it determines how the
interpreter will understand particular elements. Despite that, there is a possibility of more than
one context; hence a text can have more than one meaning. What is important is to always
include context in form of cultural, social and historical background while dealing with the
interpretation of literary texts.

Bibliography

Baker, Mona. 2006. Contextualization in Translator- and Interpreter-mediated Events. Journal

of Pragmatics 38: 321-327.
Cutting, Joan. 2008. Pragmatics and Discourse. A Resource Book for Students. 2nd edition.
London and New York: Routledge.
Hestetun, Oyunn. 1993. Text, Context, and Culture in Literary Studies. American Studies in
Scandinavia, Vol. 25: 27-36.