The past decade has seen a fundamental rethinking of the concept of
context. Rather than functioning solely as a constraint on linguistic
performance, context is now analyzed as a product of language use.
Language and context are seen as interactively defined phenomena. The
essays in this collection, written by many of the leading figures in the
social sciences, critically reexamine the concept of context from a
variety of different angles and propose new ways of thinking about it
with reference to specific human activities such as face-to-face
interaction, radio talk, medical diagnosis, political encounters and
socialization practices. The editors have provided introductions to each
essay as well as a general overview of the issues under debate.