situation (n.)

In LINGUISTICS, this term is generally used to refer to the EXTRALINGUISTIC setting in which an UTTERANCE takes place – referring to such notions as number of participants, level of FORMALITY, nature of the ongoing activities, and so on. Linguistics emphasizes the need to study LANGUAGE in its situation (or CONTEXT, situational context or context of situation), for a full statement of MEANING to be obtained. SOCIOLINGUISTICS is primarily concerned to correlate systematic variations in language with variations in social situation; and the term ‘situation’ may be used in a restricted sense to refer to the socially distinctive characteristics of the setting in which language is used. The situational meaning of an utterance, in this sense, would be equivalent to its sociolinguistic interpretation, e.g. religious, political, informal ‘situations’.