kontekstskiftet

Kontekstskiftet is a term used in linguistics and discourse analysis to describe how the interpretation of utterances, texts, or signs changes when they are moved from one context to another. The concept emphasizes that meaning is not fixed but depends on situational, textual, and social factors of interpretation.

Origin and usage: The term comes from Norwegian and Swedish linguistic usage, where kontext means context and skiftet means the shift or change. It is used to analyze how audiences reconstruct meaning as messages pass between settings such as formal meetings, informal conversations, media, or different cultural frames.

Conceptual scope: Kontekstskiftet covers shifts in reference, presupposition, implicature, and discourse alignment caused by changes in context. Researchers distinguish situational context (who is speaking, where, when), textual context (co-text, preceding sentences), and genre or institutional context (norms, expectations). The concept is related to but not identical with general context-dependence in semantics, and it interacts with deictic shifting and frame semantics.

Examples: A policy brief read aloud to policymakers may emphasize compliance and risk management, whereas the same text circulated in a non-technical forum could be perceived as opaque and authoritative; pronouns such as "we" can shift in scope depending on the audience. Translations also involve kontekstskiftet, as translators choose expressions that fit the target culture's frames.

Applications: In translation studies, education, and media analysis, kontekstskiftet is used to diagnose misinterpretations and to design texts that preserve intended meaning across contexts.

See also: pragmatics, context, deixis, frame semantics, discourse analysis, translation studies.