Reviewed by Angela Tan, University of California, Los Angeles

In Discourse and context, Teun van Dijk argues that it is the perception and definition of communicative situations by the discourse participants that shapes the trajectory of the discourse, rather than the social situation itself. He proposes a sociocognitive approach to discourse and introduces the theoretical concept of context models, in which contexts are mental models of everyday experiences. Throughout the book, the author exemplifies his case using the debate on Iraq in the British House of Commons in 2003.

Ch. 1 gives an overview of the various definitions of context, from linguistics to discourse studies to sociology and psychology. The author proposes a multidisciplinary outlook for the definition of context, in which these fields are interlinked rather than estranged. This chapter also underlines the linguistic, sociolinguistic, and cognitive aspects of context.

Ch. 2 discusses the contribution of systemic functional linguistics (SFL) to the study of contexts as well as its shortcomings, such as the dearth of interest in cognition and a narrow social theory of language. By providing a history of the study of contexts from SFL, this chapter also discusses how the early works of SFL by Bronislaw Malinowski, JR Firth, and Michael Halliday are chiefly concerned with the context of culture. However, since the context of culture is usually described as the general context for language as a system, it is an abstract and analytical category that disregards the importance of the members’ perspective. This chapter concludes with a look at how later SFL linguists, like James Martin and Michael Gregory, attempt to address these pitfalls as well as a summary of the author’s critique of the SFL approach.

Ch. 3 is the theoretical center of the book and introduces the notion of context models. Context models apply specifically to verbal communication: they organize how interlocutors adapt their talk to the ongoing communicative situation. An introduction to the (paradoxical) concept of mental models is provided: while mental models are subjective (e.g. contingent on each participant’s personal history, opinions, and emotions), they are also subjected to objective constraints (e.g. the perception of physical properties). Mental models can be seen as general everyday knowledge that governs everyday life, and yet they are also dynamic and ever-changing with experience. This chapter posits that all talk is subject to the properties of the context model. It also introduces the K-device, which determines the expression (or lack thereof) of knowledge in the discourse. Its input is the present knowledge of the speaker, and it calculates how much knowledge is already shared by the participants, taking into account members’ categories and spatial-temporality.

Ch. 4 explores the social and cultural constraints on the formation, acquisition, and deployment of context models and how social situation, context, and discourse are related. This chapter also discusses the notions of variation, register, style, and genre including perspectives from the microapproaches of grammar and meaning to the superstructures of talk-in-interaction and argumentation. Ch. 5 concludes the author’s argument and summarizes his claims.

Discourse and context is not only a comprehensive resource for scholars from various fields who are interested in the study of discourse and contexts, it also provides a refreshing perspective to the examination of context in relation to discourse. Written in a clear and accessible style, its extensive bibliography will also be extremely helpful to students and researchers.