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One way that texts can differ is in their context – the time and place that they were written in. A text with the same purpose and subject, aimed at the same audience, will be very different if it was written in the 19th century versus today.

The time a text was written can affect:

• the vocabulary used
• attitudes towards gender and race
• the technology available/mentioned
• who the audience is

The audience might be different because of who has power or money at the time, or even who was likely to be reading. In the 19th century although school was made compulsory and more people could read, only middle and upper class people had the time or money to read for pleasure.

What was happening in history or society at the time can also affect what is written. For example, a text written about voting in the early 20th century would probably mention the suffragette movement, campaigning for women to have the vote. One written in the early 21st century might talk about the idea of 16 year olds getting the vote.

Example

The following texts are extracts from two book reviews, one from 1847, and one from 2014.

An attempt to give novelty and interest to fiction, by resorting to those singular ‘characters’ that used to exist everywhere, but especially in retired and remote places. The success is not equal to the abilities of the writer; chiefly because the incidents are too coarse and disagreeable to be attractive, the very best being improbable, with a moral taint about them, and the villainy not leading to results sufficient to justify the elaborate pains taken in depicting it. The execution, however, is good: grant the writer all that is requisite as regards matter, and the delineation is forcible and truthful.

Review of Wuthering Heights in The Spectator, 1847

Hornby nicely recreates a certain version of 1960s London – a world in which aspiring actresses work behind the cosmetics counter at Derry & Toms, live in Earls Court bedsits hoarding sixpences for the gas fire, and undertake voice-improvement programmes in which they hone their “best Jean Metcalfe voice”. As the decade develops, the novel traces the emergence of a more fluid new class system of celebrity. Real people, such as Keith Relf from the Yardbirds and Harold Wilson’s political secretary Marcia Williams, have walk-on parts, as if Sophie Straw and the rest are one step away from being real themselves.

Review of Funny Girl by Joe Moran, 2014

Analysis

• Both texts are aimed at educated audiences – they use a high level of vocabulary, although the language in the extract from 1847 is more formal; this was usual with all written publications at the time.
• The review of Wuthering Heights comments on the ‘moral taint’ in the book. Morality was a big concern of the Victorian era. Social ideas were far stricter, and society was far more male-orientated. In contrast, there is no sense of that in the modern text.
• While the 1847 review is clearly judging the book, and its ‘success’, the modern review is more descriptive, telling us about the content of Funny Girl. The judgement is more of a suggestion than an instruction of what to think – such as the placement of the word ‘nicely’ at the beginning of the extract.
• While the 1847 review talks about ‘the writer’, the 2014 review calls Hornby by name. This is also true of the characters. This suggests that 19th century book reviews were more formal.