who is associated with contextual perspective
social/organizational/cultural context. It sees words as symbols interpreted in context. Mead (1934) and Blumer (1972) stressed communication as symbolic interaction that created meaning and one’s sense of both self and society. Discourse analysis is an extension and elaboration of the contextual perspective.
This chapter looks at three approaches to the study of context—activity theory, situated action. models, and the distributed cognition approach—to see what tools each offers to help manage the study of. context. In particular we look at the unit of analysis proposed by each approach, the categories offered to.