Variation in the contextuality of language: an empirical measure

The concept of formality/contextuality is proposed as the most important dimension of variation between linguistic expressions. Formal communication conveys information explicitly, through the linguistic expression itself, whereas contextual communication conveys information implicitly, through the context of the expression. An empirical measure of formality, the F-score, is proposed, based on the frequencies of different word classes. Nouns, adjectives, articles and prepositions are more frequent in formal styles; pronouns, adverbs, verbs and interjections are more frequent in contextual styles. This measure adequately distinguishes different genres of language production using data for Dutch, French, Italian, and English. Factor analyses applied to data in 7 different languages produce a similar factor as the most important one. Both the data and the theoretical model suggest that contextuality decreases when unambiguous understanding becomes more important or more difficult to achieve, when the separation in space, time or background between the interlocutors increases, and when the speaker is male, introverted and/or academically educated.