Toward a neuro-cognitive interpretation of ‘context’

This paper undertakes to begin to perform the overdue task of de-objectivizing the key pragmatic notion of ‘context’. This notion will be re-interpreted in terms of mental models, which correspond to that portion of ‘reality’ that is relevant for information processing. For this purpose, a variety of examples of the role of ‘context’ in pragmatics will be re-interpreted in terms of notions and findings of neuro-cognitive psychology.