понедельник, 29 апреля 2013 г.

Taking Things Out of Context

Taking something out of context” is a great phrase and it’s a bit of a “high level” phrase. The “context” in which you say something is the situation in which you say it.  Context is things like where, when, to whom, what were the other factors going on when you said it. When you take what someone said “out of context“, you are just saying a part of the story, usually to make the person look bad.  It doesn’t give the full story.

For example, if I said, “I am from Canada.  I love Canada in the summer time but I don’t like the cold winters.  I’ve been travelling around the world for the last few years and I’ve been really having a great time.  Sometimes I even wonder if I want to go back to Canada at all.  In reality, however, my family and friends are living there and I do want to see them when I am finished travelling.” Someone who didn’t hear me say that whole story could tell someone that I said, “Sometimes I even wonder if I want to go back to Canada at all.”  While it is totally true that I said that, if you tell someone ONLY that part, then it gives them the wrong feeling of the story.  That would be totally taking what I said out of context.  It makes it sound like I don’t want to go back to Canada.  That would be untrue.  The real point was that I was having a great time travelling. Unfortunately, our newspapers and TV stations in every country do this all the time.  We show the good stuff in our own country and show bad stuff in the other parts of the world.  We mislead people by taking things out of context and showing only part of the story.

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