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Context: the personal, social, cultural and historical spaces in which texts are

produced and read. An understanding of context in literature centres on the

relationships between writer, reader, text and context.

Intertextuality: signifies the relationship among texts whether in terms of allusion,

quotation, generic affiliation, and reader-made connections between one text and oneor more readers.

Ideology: a set of underlying assumptions about society, its structure, social practice,

and people’s place and function. Texts articulate the assumptions and ideas which

inform social practice and hence also the representation of different groups or ideas.

Genre: fluid and dynamic, changing over time. A genre is an abstract generalisation

about a wide variety of concrete examples and no text replicates the characteristics of

a genre exactly, as many texts blend and borrow from a number of genres.

Language: a social practice that generates meanings, and the meaning of words is

contingent on the context of which they are used. It is influenced by society and

culture, and produces representations of reality. Meanings of words may change over

time or from one culture to another, and as the context changes, multiple meanings

are possible at any one time.

Cultural identity: is the identity of a group or culture, or of an individual as far as one

is influenced by one's belonging to a group or culture. Cultural identity refers to the

influence that a culture has on an individual's identity. It also refers to the traditions,

customs, and practices that affect a person.

Reader positioning: The notion of reader positioning is metaphorical, describing the

positioning as the shaping of a reader's point of view or perspective. Reader

positioning describes how readers' thoughts and feelings may be shaped by the

author’s values and attitudes brought about in their text, and context of the author,

the text, and the reader themselves.

Dominant reading: the reading that seems to be, for the majority of people in asociety, the natural or normal way to interpret a text. In a society where there are

strongly competing discourses, the definition of what is a dominant reading depends

on the ideology of the person making the decision.

Resistant reading: way of reading or making meaning from a text that challenges or

questions the assumptions underlying the text. Resistant readings employ a discourse

different from the dominant discourse.

 Alternate reading: those that are less common but are deemed acceptable becausethey do not challenge the dominant reading.

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