In this paper we propose a method for identifying the semantic context of segments of text within a larger document. Our method is based on an extension ofChomsky’s x-bar theory. We adapt the xbar concept of headedness to a coarser granularity of text, such as paragraphs. Using this method, which we call P-bar, we map a set of vocabulary domains to a unique semantic context.Using a rule-based errordriven algorithm, we show that this approach has significant context identification skill within a Rayleigh-Ritz like approximation framework.