why does context influence the way we understand text
Context effect Context effects can have a wide range of impacts in daily life. In reading difficult handwriting context effects are used to determine what letters make up a word.[9] This helps us analyze potentially ambiguous messages and decipher them correctly. It can also affect our perception of unknown sounds based on the noise in the environment.[10] For example, we may fill in a word we cannot make out in a sentence based on the other words we could understand. Context can prime our attitudes and beliefs about certain topics based on current environmental factors and our previous experiences with them.[11]
Laura Bohannan "Shakespeare in the Bush" is often anthologized because of its subject matter and unique perspective. Bohannan, while living in a small village in Nigeria, attempts to tell the story of Hamlet to a group of villagers. The cultural and language barriers between the two parties result in an entirely different telling of this most famous of English plays, with her audience left puzzling over Westerners' inability to understand their own literature. Thus, the essay is often used by students of anthropology, linguistics, and literary theory as a means of understanding how perspective affects perception and expectation.