The present paper is an attempt to construct a theoretical model of the context of social action based on a reinterpretation
of the sociological theory of social fields as developed by Pierre Bourdieu. Using his notions of different types of capital
and other tools, a multidimensional model of context is presented in which dimensions are defined as fields affected by (and
affecting) a given social action. Focus in the paper is on discursive behaviour, but following the assumptions of linguistic
pragmatics, discourse is considered here just as a specific form of broadly defined social action. Thus an attempt is made
at linking studies on context from linguistics with those from sociology. Social action is theorized, as in Bourdieu’s models,
as a process of conversion of different types of capital. The strategic use of particular types of capital is considered as
another dimension of contextualization of social action.
Keywords sociology - discourse analysis - pragmatics - social field - social capital cultural capital - contextualization - social stratification - Bourdieu - Bakhtin