Recontextualisation is a process that extracts text, signs or meaning from its original context (decontextualisation) and reuses it in another context. Since the meaning of texts, signs and content is dependent on its context, recontextualisation implies a change of meaning and redefinition. The linguist Per Linell defines recontextualisation as: ''the dynamic transfer-and-transformation of something from one discourse/text-in-context ... to another.'' Scholars have theorized a number of theoretical conceptions of recontextualisation, each highlighting different aspects of the reusing of texts, signs, and meaning from its original context. More importantly, recontextualisation has been studied within the field of linguistics and inter-disciplinary

Levels and dimensions

Bauman and Briggs and the "political economy of texts"

Bauman and Briggs argue that recontextualisation (and contextualisation) are informed by "the political economy of texts". Recontextualisation and recentering is culturally and socially situated, therefore it is bound in socially produced norms and structures including, but not limited to, power differentials. Bauman and Briggs claim that recontextualisation of texts includes a varying amount of control that depends on access, legitimacy, competency, and value. Access, legitimacy, competency and value are all culturally situated social constructions that vary among contexts. Therefore, the manner in which each of these elements is embodied through the act of recontextualisation can, and will, vary.

Per Linell's three levels

Per Linell distinguishes recontextualisation at three different levels:

Basil Bernstein's three fields

Though recontextualisation is often used within linguistics, it also has interdisciplinary applications. Basil Bernstein uses recontextualisation to study the state and pedagogical discourse, the construction of educational knowledge. His concept of the pedagogic device consists of three fields: the fields of production, recontextualisation and reproduction.

Precontextualization

Rhetorical scholar John Oddo argues that recontextualisation has a future-oriented counterpoint, which he dubs "precontextualisation". According to Oddo, precontextualisation is a form of anticipatory intertextuality wherein "a text introduces and predicts elements of a symbolic event that is yet to unfold."

Literature