Quotes About Context

Interpretation is not necessarily a separate step from observation, for often, as you carefully observe the text, at that very moment you begin to see what it means. Thus, interpretation flows out of observation.

one must acknowledge that local understandings of external realities are fashioned from local cultural materials, and that, knowing little or nothing of the latter, one's ability to make appropriate sense of "what is" and "what occurs" in another's environment is bound to be deficient.

Though Olsen's (1999) descriptive study of Norwegian EFL learners focused primarily on cross-linguistic influences on learner errors, one interesting conclusion was that external factors such as teaching confusing pairs such as sea and see, by and buy, want and won't, or lose and loose at the same time actually causes errors. Olsen recommends that each word be taught in its own context at different times.

If we were to look closely at an individual human being, we would immediately notice that it is a unique hologram unto itself; self-contained, self generating, and self-knowledgeable. Yet if we were to remove this being from its planetary context, we would quickly realize that the human form is not unlike a mandala or symbolic poem, for within its form and flow lives comprehensive information about various physical, social, psychological, and evolutionary contexts within which it was created.

To see the past from the vantage point of the present is to be able to judge the effect of the past on the present.

In other words, the biblical writers were speaking to those who shared a rich cultural context, which shaped the way they communicated. I grew up in Detroit and share a rich cultural context with other Detroiters. When I say words like lions, tigers, and wings, I don't have to specify that I mean the professional football, baseball, and hockey teams. Fellow Detroiters get it because we share a rich cultural context.

If I say to some kids roughhousing in church, "Don't kill anyone," they know what concern I am addressing. They know I'm exaggerating for emphasis and not speaking in general terms—that I'm not, for example, commenting on the morality of military service. Stripped of the rich context we share, the mere words, "Don't kill anyone" could easily be understood to mean don't kill anyone, anytime, ever.

Memorizing information is valuable but only if you're able to make some sense of the information and put it into a useful context. Isn't it much better if we can attach something tangible to that information?

Fruitful discourse in science or theology requires us to believe that within the contexts of normal discourse there are some true statements.

Regards," "Best wishes," "All the best" are more personal than the others and less formal, but not appropriate if you don't know your reader. And there isn't anything wrong with simply

For the word "full" when used in connection with the fulness of the Spirit, the word "controlled" is used, for that is what the word means in such a context. For instance, "Jesus being full of the Holy Ghost" (Luke 4:1, A.V.) becomes "Jesus, in the control of the Holy Spirit." The word "master,

Simplicity only makes sense in context. If I'm writing a parser with a team that understands parser generators, then using a parser generator is simple. If the team doesn't know anything about parsing and the language is simple, a recursive descent parser is simpler.

This is the process embodied in tragedy, where the agent's action involves a corresponding passion, and from the sufferance of the passion there arises an understanding of the act, an understanding that transcends the act. The act, in being an assertion, has called forth a counter-assertion in the elements that compose its context. And when the agent is enabled to see in terms of this counter-assertion, he has transcended the state that characterized him at the start.

Broadly speaking, the new moral history employed in this book is concerned with the nature of causation and agency in the course of human events. It attempts to explain behavior in given historical contexts by showing the relationship between principles and practice in the day-to-day actions and interactions of men and women in a social context.

Neither the life of an individual nor the history of a society can be understood without understanding both.

You must know one thing above all: a succession of words does not have only one meaning. But men strive to assign only a single meaning to the sequence of words, in order to have an unambiguous language.

For that matter, does a thing or a fact ever mean anything in and of itself? We can only be sure that it is always the human being who interprets, that is, gives meaning to a fact. And that is the gist of the matter for psychology.

Interpretation in any given case depends as always on individual circumstances and must be modified accordingly.

What you see and what you hear depends a great deal on where you are standing. It also depends on what sort of person you are.

Thoreau's new economics was developed in an industrial age, but his basic insights apply just as well to our current digital context.

belief in what he called "context": the theory that every man's actions are to a very decisive extent influenced by his early experiences, and that no man's behavior can be analyzed or affected without knowledge of those experiences.

The same outer object may suggest either of many realities formerly associated with it—for in the vicissitudes of our outer experience we are constantly liable to meet the same thing in the midst of differing companions. William James, The Principles of Psychology

If it's inappropriate to write about, if there's nothing funny about it, then it's not funny.

No es lo mismo estar dormido que estar durmiendo, de la misma manera que no es lo mismo estar jodido que estar jodiendo. -- En respuesta al senador y mosén Lluis María Xirinacs que le recriminaba estar dormido en su escaño del senado. --