ABSTRACT
The introduction reviews and debates the key terms of this collection: language, text and context. It traces the ways in which each of these terms was treated traditionally as relatively static, clearly delineated phenomena to more recent conceptualisations of language, text and context as dynamic, constructive and intersubjective entities. Within stylistics and its related literary and linguistic subfields, all three terms are now understood to be highly complex and multi-faceted. Looking across a range of disciplines that inform stylistics and are drawn on within this book (linguistic anthropology, cognitive linguistics, conversation analysis, corpus linguistics and social semiotics), the chapter outlines the various ways in which language, texts and contexts can be connected and the methods that can be used for their study. The Introduction provides an overview of the structure of the book, which moves from text-centred explorations of language, text and context through to more sociocultural concerns.
