This paper argues that context is an important factor to be considered in linguistic analysis. Context is defined as the aggregate of linguistic, situational, social and cultural variables that surround linguistic units such as texts, discourses, utterances, words, morphemes, phonemes, sounds, and distinctive features. A "textual context" is the set of suitable defined linguistic units that co-occur with a given linguistic unit within a given text. In addition, the following contexts may be discerned: situational, social, cultural, pragmatic, and the psychological. Contextual features must be distinguished as being stylistically significant or non-significant. Another fundamental distinction must be made between language and context. Language teachers have increasingly become aware of the importance of stylistic contexts, so that the acquisition of stylistic appropriateness in a range of contexts is included among the objectives of language teaching. (AM)