The phrase "a field of reference" is correct and usable in written English.
It can be used when discussing a specific context or area of knowledge that provides a basis for understanding or interpreting information.
Example: "In the study of linguistics, a field of reference is essential for analyzing language use in different cultures."
Alternatives: "a context of understanding" or "a frame of reference".
Yet economists, schooled more in mathematics than in history, often have too narrow a field of reference to know much about deflation, and instead interpret temporary spikes in consumer prices as a return to the inflationary norm of the west's recent past.
Using the notions of schema and realm allows Goodman's analysis to include the claim that typically metaphors bring about rearrangements in a field of reference, which affect several labels at once.
Indeed, a symbol system, say, the English language, actually consists of a symbol scheme (not to be confused with the above-mentioned notion of a label "schema")—i.e., of a collection of symbols, or "characters," with rules to combine them into new, compound characters associated to a field of reference.
Covering songs made famous by Dolly Parton, Marlene Dietrich and Iggy Pop, among others, the band established a field of references as open as its playing was narrow.
HO: I know when I was reading Thinking Recursively right away in the first chapter you bring in the art of Mondrian and also quote My Buckets Got a Hole in It, so you're bringing a wide range, a field of references to explain things.
Grounded in the gritty stuff of primary documents, Flaubert: A Life possesses a giddily wide-ranging field of reference.
An exhibition, he declares, is "a project that will be located in a dialectical field of references and artistic practices".
The U.S. state of Alabama's flag is officially "a crimson cross of St. Andrew on a field of white", however the reference is used only to describe the shape without using the vexillological term saltire.
Hence, pictures are grouped together with such things as diagrams, ungraduated instruments of measurement, and maps with those symbols, that is, for which, in simpler words, any difference may make a difference: any difference in a mark may correspond to a different character, and any difference in the character may stand for a different correlation to the field of reference.
The scheme is governed by syntactical rules determining how to form and combine characters the system by semantic rules determining how the range of symbols in the scheme refer to their field of reference.
Indeed, the spatial distribution of the primary field always varies around a central one called here the primary field of reference.
