Conceptualizing context in message-production research

Most current theories of message production treat context as an indeterminant, catch-all category for everything that is left unspecified by the theory. We propose that context can be conceptualized in terms of perceived empirical regularities in social reality (i.e., social densities) and the configurations of interpersonal goals that follow from them (i.e., goal structures). An illustration from recent research is provided.