In this paper the idea is presented that human communication is carrie
d through messages that are the result of the integration of a set of
communicative acts, some of which are, in a traditional view, contextu
al phenomena with respect to a main (linguistic) communication act. A
formalization of the notion of communicative situation is attempted, w
hich eliminates the distinction between context and main communication
acts. The ideas presented in this paper come from a re-thinking of a
prototype implemented in 1989 for the ESPRIT Project 527, CFID whose m
ain features are presented in Section 4.