The Romanian Contribution in Extending the Meaning of the Concept Context and of Its International Success
The Romanian Contribution in Extending the Meaning of the Concept Context and of Its International Success

Summary/Abstract: The author presents a brief historical excursus of the meaning of the concept and term context, aiming at demonstrating her contribution, already from the end of the decade 1940, in the extension of its meaning. She underlined as the new bases of the act of communication the inclusion, in its schema, of the essential component, the context, and a first systematisation of a theory ("dynamic-contextual"), which was based on this concept in all its hypostases (from the primary ones, "the explicit context" - verbal and nonverbal), to the extended ones (the implicit context, including partners coordinates, physical situation, sociohistorical context etc.), up to the total context. The emitters organize the expression in keeping with these contexts, and the receivers “interpret” the messages by referring to them. The first ample text presenting these ideas was a doctoral thesis (which was not allowed by the political regime to be sustained on June 29th 1949), then in an ample article, 1954-1956, and only with a big delay, in 1959, in a book, Limbaj si context, warmly recommended by Roman Jakobson to be published at Mouton (Langage et contexte, 1961), which enjoyed a large diffusion, also due to the great linguist. In all these works, the inclusion of context in the Schema of Communication, and the reversibility of the relation, which is the dialogue, were entirely the contribution of the present author, anterior to what R. Jakobson published afterwards; and the great linguist also confessed his inspiration in a dedication which is published now for the first time (*University of Bucharest, considered the pioneer of psycholinguistics, Honorary President of the International Society of Applied Psycholinguistics, Editor-in-chief of International Journal of psycholinguistics, author of over 500 articles and essays, 50 books, some “edited by”, about 20 in other languages than Romanian; the author is included in more than 30 "Who's who" etc.).

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