Blurb:

‘Wherefore context? The ontogenesis of meaning exchange’ (2001), the
concluding chapter in this first section on Language in the context of life
in society was first presented at the International Conference on Discourse
Analysis at the University of Macau in October 1997. Unapologetically,
Hasan begins by acknowledging that the paper ‘offers neither any technicalities
that can be readily borrowed and quickly applied to the analysis
of another text of one’s choosing, nor does it make an appeal to our moral
sense of responsibility.’ Hoping instead to ‘enhance our understanding of
the place of context in the system and process of language’, she puts forward
a way of conceptualizing the category of context which rests on the
principle that society, semiosis and the brain form ‘a trinity no one member
of which can exist without the other two.’