Lakhasly

Firth's theory of meaning hinges on the notion of context.He refuses to accept that words and nces can have meanings in and by themselves and firmly believes that "the complete meaning of a word is always contextual, and no study of meaning apart from a complete ontext can be taken seriously". 2 2 Firth was deeply influence by Malinowski's ethnographic studies of language, context and culture. This relationship between language and clements of the situation was systematic for Firth. Eirth is noted for drawing attention to the context-dependent nature of meaning with his notion of "context of situation.

Firth's theory of meaning hinges on the notion of context. Although he consistently refers to semantics, Firth's sole concern is, in fact, pragmatics. He refuses to accept that words and nces can have meanings in and by themselves and firmly believes that "the complete meaning of a word is always contextual, and no study of meaning apart from a complete ontext can be taken seriously". 2 2 Firth was deeply influence by Malinowski's ethnographic studies of language, context and culture. This relationship between language and clements of the situation was systematic for Firth. Eirth is noted for drawing attention to the context-dependent nature of meaning with his notion of "context of situation. The theory of the "context of the situation" became central to his approach to linguistics, For Firth, language was not to be studied as a mental system Rather, in the spirit of positivism and behaviorism, he argued that language represents a set of events which speakers uttered-an action one learned in doing things. He believed that whatever anyone said must be understood in the context of the situation. Thus, beside linguistic factors, factors like the status and personal historv of the speaker, as well as the social character of the situation, must also be taken into account. Firth described the "typical" context of situation as the occasions where we use ready-made, socially-prescribed phrases such as "How do you do?"