THE IMPORTANCE OF CONTEXT OF SITUATION IN DECIDING THE MEANING OF AN UTTERANCE

Abstract

Using language, especially verbal language, is considered to be an activity that cannot be separated from day-by-day human life. The fact that the verbal language is the main means of communication makes it usually considered as something simple. Everybody can use the language. However, using the language to transfer the intended meaning of the speaker is not as easy as it seems. Using the language is not just producing utterance and understanding the meaning of each word; producing utterance is not just a matter of selecting lexicon and then putting them in accordance with the grammar of that particular language. Perfect grammatical language is not a guarantee that the hearer can really understand what is meant by the speaker. There are other things that must be known by the hearer to understand the meaning of the speaker’s utterance and those things are grouped in what so-called context of situation. According to Holmes (2001) context of situation, namely participants, setting, topic, goal, is important to decide the meaning of an utterance. This is in accordance with the idea of Yule (1996) concerning how important the context of a situation is in determining the speaker’s meaning. The purpose of this article is to show how changing the context of situation will change the meaning of an utterance. The data was taken from the students of the English department. They were given utterances and they had to decide the meaning from more than one context. The analysis in determining the meaning of each utterance was done descriptively by stating the utterance and then stating the context of situation so that how the meaning is obtained is clear. By doing this, it can be proven that the changing of the context of situation can change the meaning of an utterance.