This paper focuses on the essential role of context in the interpretation of any linguistic unit. The author briefly revises the issue of context in theories such as that of Firth (1935), Bransford and Johnson's (1972), Fillmore's theory of 'frames' (Fillmore 1977, 1985), or Sperber and Wilson's (1986) Relevance Theory, among others, claming that all these approaches (mistakenly) consider context 'a posteriori'. As opposed to that, Cognitive Linguistics observes language in use, and thus according to the author, no clear-cut division between pragmatics and semantics can be stated. Likewise, this paper offers a case study of the word 'black' in a specific context with the aim of providing evidence of the role of context as a primordial factor in meaning construction. (Alba Luzondo, Ruiz de Mendoza Group)