In systemic functional linguistics, context is modelled as the level above semantics:
the stratum that language realises. It comprises the variables of field, tenor, and mode, which together describe how language is aligned with a particular type of situation.
Field construes what’s going on; tenor construes who’s involved and how; mode construes how the communication unfolds.
If reality itself is dialogic — organised through the same grammar of readiness and construal that language re-enacts — then context cannot simply be the environment around meaning.
It is the cosmic alignment of readiness itself, through which phenomena emerge as patterned construals.
1. Field: The Inclination of Experience
Field corresponds to the inclination of potential toward a mode of construal.
It is the aspect of readiness that specifies what kind of happening can occur — not in terms of content but in terms of ontological inclination.
Every domain of experience, from gravity to thought, is a particular field of readiness: a patterned probability of relation inclined toward a certain kind of actualisation.
Language realises this when we construe different kinds of processes — material, mental, relational, verbal — each the semantic trace of a deeper ontic inclination.
Field is thus the way the universe leans into being.
2. Tenor: The Relational Gradient of Readiness
Tenor describes not what happens but who inclines toward whom.
It is the grammar of relational stance: whether the participants are aligned symmetrically or asymmetrically, proximally or distally, affectively or impersonally.
At the cosmic level, tenor captures the gradient of readiness between potential participants in a relation — how the system positions its inclinations relative to one another.
From the quantum to the social, every relation expresses a tenor configuration: a topology of readiness across the relational field.
Language realises this through mood and modality — the very systems that first revealed readiness to us as inclination and ability.
3. Mode: The Reflexive Texture of Inclination
Mode describes how the dialogue unfolds: whether it is spoken or written, dense or sparse, immediate or mediated.
Ontologically, mode expresses the reflexive texture of the system’s own readiness — how its inclinations cohere across time and scale.
When the cosmos inclines toward tighter coupling, mode becomes immediate, as in resonance or synchrony.
When it inclines toward distributed coherence, mode becomes mediated — as in symbolic communication, where readiness must travel through layers of construal.
Mode, then, is the phasing of readiness — the universe’s way of modulating its own coherence.
Context as the Universe’s Grammar of Readiness
In this model, context is not external to meaning but the cosmic infrastructure of inclination itself.
Field, tenor, and mode are not parameters imposed by situation types; they are the relational gradients through which readiness differentiates into knowable experience.
Language, as the reflexive articulation of reality, inherits this structure and mirrors it.
Each register of language re-enacts a context type because each register is a subpotential variety — a particular alignment of readiness drawn from the cosmic grammar.
Thus, context is not what surrounds meaning; it is what becomes meaning when readiness inclines toward construal.
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