Development
Today the term is also used outside theological research, when it is needed to examine a text for its sociologically relevant aspects. For example: the Sitz im Leben of a counting rhyme like "eeny, meeny, miny, moe..." is a group of children deciding among themselves who will play in a game; when the children chant the song, we know that they are choosing who will play, but if we are unaware of this context, the rhyme appears merely to be nonsense about tigers.
In linguistics the Sitz im Leben is determined by the text pragmatics.
Read more about this topic: Sitz Im Leben
Famous quotes containing the word development:
“Such condition of suspended judgment indeed, in its more genial development and under felicitous culture, is but the expectation, the receptivity, of the faithful scholar, determined not to foreclose what is still a question—the “philosophic temper,” in short, for which a survival of query will be still the salt of truth, even in the most absolutely ascertained knowledge.”
—Walter Pater (1839–1894)