What is context and why is it useful?

What is context and why is it useful?

1. Context is information about setting discourse events (text/utterance) is produced and received.

   • Audience
     • Who its aimed at or who receives it?
     • Do the text receiver and text producer know each other?
       • Are they in the same place?
       • At the same time?
       • At the same time?
     • Is the audience a participant or a passive subject?
     • Is there more than one person in the audience?
     • Is it a mass audience/discourse community?(lots of people of similar type e.g. teenagers)
     • Is it multi-audience?(e.g.parents and children)
     • Is the audience the intended audience?
   • Mode
     • Written texts: were they written to be read or to be spoken? Were they planned? Edited
     • Spoken texts: are they spontaneous or pre-planned? Were they written first?
     • Electronic communication: how formal is it? Do the producers and receiver know each other?
   • Genre
     • What it is or what text type that shared with similar features with other texts of same types
     • What are the feature or what conventions of text type? ( short sentences, use of rhetoric, layout conventions , specific beginnings and endings)
     • Is it typical of this genre?
     • Does it blend more than one genre?
   • Purpose
     • Is there more than one purpose?
     • Do different purposes apply to different audiences?

2. It is sometimes also useful to consider who the writer/producer is when it was written or where