Q. What is context?

Discuss ‘Situational Context’, Background Knowledge Context and

Co-textual Context of the image given below. Word limit: 500 words.

Deadline by Saturday 24th December, 2022.

Email your assignment to nazah.farhat@bracu.ac.bd

Everything we see, hear and do has a context. It plays a crucial role in making us understand

ideas and situations. All our internal processes—including our thoughts, words, sights, and

sounds—are reactions to the environment around us. The context in which those stimuli are

presented to us significantly shapes our evaluation of them. Context has the power to change our

views of a particular event. To determine a context, we ask ourselves four questions. The first

question we ask is with whom we are conversing. Second, when does the conversation occur? It

refers to the timing of the conversation. Third, where is the conversation occurring? It refers to

the location of the event. Fourth, what is the subject of our discussion? These four elements

establish the context for action. Context can be divided into three categories: situational context,

background knowledge context, and co-textual context.

A situational context is the physical surroundings that individuals see. The image provided

depicts a fair exam. By looking at the physical environment of the picture, we can see an

examiner instructing all of the animals shown in the image to climb a tree. The animals shown in

the image include an elephant, crow, goldfish, monkey, seal, and penguin. Moreover, all of this

occurs in a forest. So, what do all these elements of the physical environment represent? To

discover, let's apply our background knowledge. Background knowledge is of two types. The

cultural context is one of these. We live in a society and each of us has a unique lifestyle. Culture

relates to our way of life, whereas cultural background knowledge is what we acquire from our

culture. The other type of knowledge is interpersonal. This refers to exchanging information

while having a conversation. With this in mind, we can infer that the scenario depicts a setting

similar to a test. Moving on to the co-textual context refers to the linguistic surroundings. With

the help of all three types of context, I can conclude that the picture refers to our educational
system. To clarify, we can find “ Fair exam” and “same exam " from the co-textual context.” All

people are endowed with certain skills of their own. But our educational system trains us to be

evaluated on a narrow set of criteria. Let's pretend that one student is very skillful in drawing and

math but his other academic subjects skill is not that strong. On the other hand, another student is

very skillful in all academic subjects but can not draw. In this case, the student who is really

skillful in the drawing will be overlooked due to his low performance in his academic subjects.

In comparison, the other student who can not draw but is really good in academic subjects will

be highly praised for his performance. This is one of the remarkable problems of our educational

system. Albert Einstein said, “A fish can not be judged by its ability to climb a tree!” But our

education system continuously judges students based on their academic results, like judging fish

by its ability to climb a tree. To make a fair evaluation, everyone should be judged based on their

unique abilities.