The Context of Conversations 2 Texts and Communities

Communicative action concerns achieving and maintaining mutual understanding among all those who are involved in a coordinated (organizational) situation. Communicative action is embedded in a social context. Current approaches in the Language/Action Perspective have focused mainly on the dynamic aspect of language, that is, on (business) conversation. In this paper, we develop a new model of context in which particular attention is given to the role of explicit context, that is, the role of texts. A text is not a (communicative) action, but it shapes the world in which communicative actions can take place. The model is illustrated by three cases: the design of a communication tool, the management of Organizational Memory, and the support of professional communities. The three cases exemplify three abstraction levels at which texts can be analyzed.