Contextualism is an emphasis on the importance and indivisibility of observing the sign process in the light of the context or contexts in which the process takes place.
Of course, the context can be constructed in a broader or narrower way. For example, the immediate circumstances in which a novel is written may be taken as the context of a novel, or it may be assumed that such a context is a significant part of literary history. The contextual approach is different from and often opposed to, the formalist approach.
Formalists emphasize the autonomy and self-sufficiency of the sign process (text, discourse, etc.), in fact taking it out of context.
