With the development of science and technology, more and more words appear to express new concepts, but not every concept has its own word. Therefore, many common words are used to express some new concepts, then a common word has its special meaning due to the place where it is used, namely contextual meaning. As for context, it is the environment that the word is used; what is more, it often determines the exact meaning of words. As an English language learner, one should not only understand the words, but also make use of them flexibly. In this paper, the author divides context into four parts: figures of speech, culture, technical area and humor. Since metonymy, metaphor and allusion are main parts of figures of speech, so the author analyzed them in detail, while the effects of culture on the contextual meaning consists of the effects of idioms on it and the effects of culture of different nations on it. What is more, detailed introduction is obtained for adopting for adopting of many examples. The analysis on contextual meaning of English words is able to provide a clue for understanding the meaning of English words used in some special context rightly as well as to avoid embarrassment caused by interpreting a word literally.
Abstract ..........................................................I
Key Words......................................................... I
摘 要 ............................................................II
关键词 ............................................................II
Introduction ......................................................1
I. Contextual Meaning and Figures of Speech .......................3
A. Metonymy .......................................................3
B. Metaphor........................................................4
C. Allusion........................................................5
II. Contextual Meaning and Culture ................................6
A. Idioms .........................................................7
B. Culture of Different Nations................................... 8
III. Contextual Meaning and Technical Area.........................9
IV. Contextual Meaning and Humor ..................................10
Conclusion ........................................................12
Acknowledgements ..................................................15
Bibliography ......................................................16
