Context is a concept that is much too easy to take for granted.
Say I was to ask you what you get when you multiply 6 by 9. Thinking back to those grade school times tables that you may or may not have dusted off and used since then, you could respond with 54. Not only do you have to recognize this as the written expression of a multiplication problem, but you also need to:
- process the flickering combinations of lights as containing images of letters
- recognize that those letters are composing English language words, and extract the meaning based on internal knowledge of the definitions of 'multiply', 'get', 'by', '6', etc.
- rationalize that, based on cultural and historical precedence, as well as lack of any indication otherwise in the surrounding text, I am most likely expecting a result in base 10
- notice that, by the use of "Say I was to," that this was a hypothetical and you are not actually obligated to answer me
All of these are, to varying degrees, highly dependent on context: both on there being one and on the ability to properly recognize one.
Any information you come into contact with must be processed with a context in mind. Your eyes are highly developed photon collection and classification agents, whose rods and cones send a myriad complex signals to your brain, which then proceeds to make sense of them. That, along with the fine motor skills provided by a steady, experienced pair of human hands and some form of inscribing agreed-upon symbols from an alphabet, suggests that a system of directly codifying information to be transmitted visually—written language—has potential.1 This is all fine and good for society, but it requires you to be able to decode such a written language, as well as be able to tell apart meaningful from meaningless symbols. Hence, the need for context.
As was elegantly put by Douglas Hofstadter in the eternally-relevant GEB2, one can make distinct three types of message: the inner, the outer, and the frame message. To quote the text:
To understand the frame message is to recognize the need for a decoding-mechanism.
To understand the outer message is to build, or know how to build, the correct decoding message mechanism for the inner message.
To understand the inner message is to have extracted the meaning intended by the sender.
This is to say, the frame message is the way of showing that there is a message to be found in an organization of symbols; the outer message is the way that the message's creator conveys the mechanism from which to derive meaning from the organization of symbols; and then the inner message is the actual meaning to be gleaned from the symbols. This last one is the one that we are most familiar with, and what we most often assume is all there is to meaning.
The frame and outer messages are, in slightly differing ways, the conceptualizations of the ideas behind context. Often, if the message appears similar to the expression of a language you know in the same medium, then it is worth a shot to try to decode it as that language to see if anything comes out of it. At minimum, however, the structure may appear to be script- or message-like, whether or not it shares the same alphabet as the language of the medium you know, or if you don't know any, then at least that there seems to be some sort of content to be found. This can be manipulated by the structural aspects of the message, but ultimately relies on the ability of the reader to predict and utilise context effectively. (One can also argue that the inner message relies on certain references which may or may not require contextual setting, but for the sake of simplicity the actual content of the message is arbitrary and irrelevant.)
From this perspective, context is the bigger picture within which some information might be placed. The ability to predict and apply a context to a message is a very important skill, because there are often many things that require one's focus or attention, intermittently, and being able to call upon only relevant knowledge to properly operate is at least marginally useful.
This definition of context may not be too concise, but hopefully it contextualizes context a little bit for you.
1 A similar rationalization using the ears as paired with vocal chords and a sound-propagating medium such as air leads to verbal language. Anything with a consistently applicable and recreatable system of production and (mostly) unambiguous method of decoding can be such a language base. (Braille and touch-reading is another example.) The poor olfactory sense is, in this regard, unfortunately peerless and, therefore, languageless. (Or is it?)
2 Page 166 in the 20th anniversary edition. (s.v. The Location of Meaning, 'Three Layers of Any Message')
[IN12#21]