Context and Specificity

Context refers to the relationship between part and whole so that part acquires a greater degree of specificity in the interpretation, or meaning, that is different that when part is examined as an isolated entity.

Specificity is a property of the scope of meaning, of what was understood by the reader, on what was read, of what is carried by the symbols, the letters, the words, etc. For example, the expression “brown fox” is less specific than “the small brown fox jumped over the tree”. One expression is more specific than another when it captures more details.

These properties are useful when examining human understanding of texts and documents. A simplistic examination may indicate that meaning and understanding are some objective characteristics of text and documents. After all, grammar provides a solid foundation to the combination of words to accommodate a variety of meanings.

The understanding of those meanings would have to occur at some standardized level that by necessity would be the lowest level in a universe of multiple levels of understanding and meanings.

Understanding or meaning is derived from the text itself and from how much the reader is able to relate to the content. These relationships form a space, which build context to text. Placing a text in a context is contextualization.

Text and context, once together, form information. This is what is extracted from the expression, or text. Ideally, the writer, or constructor of the expression, has captured some meaning in an expression. If the reader captures the same meaning, and at the same level of specificity intended by the creator, it is said that there has been an accurate interpretation, thus accurate communication has taken place. Accurate contextualization and the placement of the text at the original level of specificity must occur for the correct interpretation and understanding of the text to take place.

Variability in the application of contextualization and specificity levels by individuals explain the differences in reading understanding and in meaning construction among different individuals.