This paper outlines the historical and theoretical development of the concept context of situation in Systemic Functional Linguistics.It briefly discusses early references to the term “context” and then describes how the conceptualization of the relation between “context of situation” and language evolved from that of a somewhat deterministic relation to that of a metaredundant dialectic one.Some key terms discussed in this paper are “relevance,” “register,” “instance,” “instantiation,” “realization,” and “system.” The paper ends with a brief discussion of recent work in developing contextualization networks with a specific focus on the contextual parameter of Field. This paper outlines the historical and theoretical development of the concept context of situation in Systemic Functional Linguistics. Onebout early early references to the term “” context “and then describes how the conceptualization of the relation between ” context of situation “and language evolved from that of a certain deterministic relation to that of a metaredundant dialectic one. Key key terms discussed in this paper are ”relevance, “ ”register, “ ”instance, “ ”instantiation, “ ”realization, “ and ”system. " The paper ends with a brief discussion of recent work in developing contextual networks with a specific focus on the contextual parameter of Field.