This document discusses how context influences language use. It identifies six key contextual factors: setting, participants, activity, channel, code, and subject matter. It then provides examples of how each factor can shape language, such as institutional settings influencing formality or the number of participants affecting unison speech. The document also notes that when people from different backgrounds interact, their language may converge or diverge depending on rapport. Overall context, including the situation, individuals involved, communication medium, and task, significantly impacts communication.

3. How we know where someone is:
the contextual issue
• Setting: The time and place in which a
communicative act occurs, such as in church,
during a meeting, at a distance or upon
leave-taking.
• Participants: The number of people who take
part in an interation, and the relationships
between them, such as the addressee(s) and
bystander(s).

4. How we know where someone is:
the contextual issue
• Activity: The type of activity in which a
participant is engaged, such as cross-
examining, debating, or having a
conversation.
• Channel: they influence the medium chosen
for the communication (e.g. speaking,
writing, singing, whistling, singing drumming)
and the way it is used.

5. How we know where someone is:
the contextual issue
• Code: They influence the formal systems of
communication shared by the participant, such
as spoken English, written Russian, American
Sign Language, or some combination of these.
• Message form: They influence the structural
patterns that identify the communication, both
small-scale (the choice of specific sounds,
words, or grammatical constructions) and large-
scale (the choice of specific genres).

6. How we know where someone is:
the contextual issue
• Subject matter: They influence the content
of the communication, both what is said
explicitly and what is implied.

7. How setting influences language
• The particular time and place in which people
interact will exercise its influence on the kind
of communication that may occur – or
whether communication is permitted at all.
In institutionalized settings, such as a church
or a court of law, the effect on language use
is clear enough.

8. How participants influence language.
• The simple opposition of message sender and
message receive needs considerable
refinement if we are classify communicative
events satisfactorily. Normally a single person
acts as sender, or addressor; but we have to
allow for unison speech, as in the case of
liturgical responses in church or other rituals,
group teaching, and speeches by players in a
theatrical presentation.

9. How we accommodate.
• When two people with different social
backgrounds meet, there is a tendency for
their speech to alter, so that they become
more alike (if the speakers are in rapport) or
less alike (if they are not). The process is
known as accommodation – convergent in
the first case, divergent in the second.

10. How activity influences language.
• The kind of activity in which we will also
directly influences the way we communicate.
At one level, our activities reflect the social
status we have and the roles we perform. But
status and role are very general notions,
within which it is possible to recognize a
much more specific notion of activity type.