Context introduction to contextual analysis
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This document outlines key questions to consider when performing a contextual analysis of a text. A contextual analysis examines a text within its historical, cultural, and textual context. It combines formal textual analysis with investigating the social, political, economic, and intellectual conditions when the text was created. The document lists seven questions to guide analyzing what the text reveals about itself and its intended audience, the author's intentions and reasons for writing, what occasion prompted the text, if it calls readers to action or reflection, and non-textual circumstances influencing the text. The goal is to fully situate a work within its original context.
Context introduction to contextual analysis
- 1. How to create a contextual analysis for texts
- 2. Introduction : Contextual Analysis A contextual analysis helps us to assess text within the context of its historical and cultural setting, and its textuality (the qualities that characterize the text as a text.) It combines features of formal analysis with features of “cultural archaeology, ” ( the systematic study of social, political, economic, philosophical, religious, and aesthetic conditions that were in place at the time and place when the text was created.) This means “situating” the text within the milieu of its times and assessing the roles of author, readers and “commentators” on the text.
- 3. key questions 1. What does the text reveal about itself as a text? Describe (or characterize) the language ( the words, or vocabulary) and the rhetoric (how the words are arranged in order to achieve some purpose). These are the primary components of style.
- 4. key questions 2. What does the text tell us about its apparent intended audience(s)? What sort of reader does the author envision? (this is demonstrated by the text’s language and rhetoric) What sort of qualifications does the text appear to require of its intended reader(s)? How can we tell? What sort of readers appear to be excluded from the text’s intended audiences? How can we tell? Is there, perhaps, more than one intended audience?
- 5. key questions 3. What seems to have been the author’s intention? Why did the author write this text? And why did the author write this text in this particular way? Any text is the result of deliberate decisions by the author… So we need to consider: -what the author said -what the author did not say and -how the author said it
- 6. key questions 4. What is the occasion for this text? Is it written in response to: some particular, specific contemporary incident or event? some more “general” observation by the author about human affairs and/or experiences? some definable set of cultural circumstances?
- 7. key questions 5. Is the text intended as some sort of call to– or for– action? If so, by whom? And why? And also if so, what action(s) does the author want the reader(s) to take?
- 8. key questions 6. Is the text intended as some sort of call to – or for – reflection or consideration rather than direct action? If so, what does the author seem to wish the reader to think about and to conclude or decide? Why does the author wish the readers to do this? What is to be gained, and by whom?
- 9. key questions 7. Are we able to identify any non-textual circumstances that affected the creation and reception of the text? Such circumstances include historical or political events, economic factors, cultural practices, and intellectual or aesthetic issues, as well as the particular circumstances of the author's own life.
- 10. Most important *Make sure your audience knows why this is important, not only to you, but to other people.* Adapted from http://english.unl.edu