contextualist

English

Etymology

From contextual +‎ -ist.

Adjective

contextualist (not comparable)

  1. Of, pertaining to, or supporting contextualism

Noun

contextualist (plural contextualists)

  1. A proponent of contextualism, or the importance of context.
    • 2007 April 29, Christopher Gray, “A Man Who Minds His P’s and Q’s”, in New York Times‎[1]:
      He is more of a contextualist, believing that “letters are fluid, that they change with time and circumstance — the entire word is more important than a single letter, and its form can fluctuate.”
    • 2023, Julita Slipkauskaitė, Ockham and Paris Ockhamists: Towards a New Approach to the Study of Late Medieval Philosophy, Vilnius University:
      Secondly, some contextualists have previously stated that by constantly trying to draw links between the Medieval thought and contemporary philosophy, historiographers evoke apologetism rather than develop the field in its own right.
  2. (pragmatics) One who believes that scalar implicatures arise from contextual inference, not from a default association with a word.
    Antonym: defaultist
    A contextualist believes that the phrase "some eels are fish" is primarily interpreted as "some, and perhaps all, eels are fish", and the pragmatic interpretation "some, but not all, eels are fish" only appears when demanded by the context.
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