ABSTRACT
This chapter will focus on the way texts differ in their contexts, particularly in how publicly or privately they work.
Thinking about publicity and privacy is important because these aspects are strongly connected with how texts address their audiences. An email you write to an individual friend is likely to adopt a very different style from the one you circulate to a largely unknown group of work colleagues. A good textual analysis will pick out what some of those stylistic differences are; an excellent analysis will link those differences with some speculation on why such differences occur. How writers imagine their texts will be read and heard – by whom, in what setting, over what timescale – will strongly shape how those writers use language in the first place.
