Text and Context

Text, in its broader sense, includes oral, print, visual, and multimedia forms. A text can be a photograph, a movie, or a story told by your grandfather. Basically, a text can be any creation that gives information to the audience. Anyone who makes one of these texts may be referred to as a text creator.

Context includes any element in a situation that influences the way we interpret text and create text. The context of an idea or event is the general situation that relates to it, and which helps it to be understood. For example, the time frame or setting of a text creation can greatly affect the understanding for the audience. Look below at the television photographs. Can you see how each photograph is set in a very different time frame, and how the text created around each would be quite different because of this? If there were characters watching these televisions, how might their lives differ from one another during the two different eras? Would the characters have different clothing and hairstyles? Might their furniture all look different? What types of eye glasses might characters wear in each photograph? Would both parents work outside of the home, and if so, what types of jobs might they have? The context, including the setting, surrounding a text affects both the content within the text and our reaction to that content. You will learn more about context as the course progresses.