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ScotlandEnglishQuick questions
Critical Approaches
Quick questions on Reading texts in context: SQA Advanced Higher English literary, social, historical and cultural context
6short Q&A pairs drawn directly from our worked dot-point answer. For full context and worked exam questions, read the parent dot-point page.
What is know the four kinds of context?Show answer
Literary context places a text in a tradition: the movement it belongs to, the genre conventions it inherits or breaks. Social context concerns the structures of class, gender and power that shape its world. Historical context is the events and conditions of its time. Cultural context is the beliefs, values and language varieties it assumes or questions.
What is tie every contextual point to a passage?Show answer
The discipline that keeps context useful is to tie every contextual point to a specific passage. Do not offer a paragraph of historical background and hope it counts; instead, bring in the context at the moment it sharpens a reading, analyse the passage it illuminates, and move on. Context works in service of analysis, sentence by sentence, not as a standalone section.
What is let the cultural context include Scotland?Show answer
For many texts studied in Scottish centres, cultural context includes the Scots language and Scottish literary tradition. A text that uses Scots, or that belongs to a Scottish movement, may be read more fully through that cultural lens: how language variety carries identity, how a tradition shapes a writer's choices. As with all context, the point is to deepen the reading of the text, not to deliver a history of the tradition.
What is q1?Show answer
Name the four kinds of context. [2 marks]
What is q2?Show answer
What is the test for whether a contextual point earns its place? [2 marks]
What is q3?Show answer
Why does a slab of detached background earn nothing? [1 mark]
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