Chances are something you've said or done has been taken out of context, leaving you without your intended meaning. All communication, all human interaction happens within context, more often multiple contexts, and yet most people don't understand what context is and how it impacts meaning.
Meaning is imperative when determining non-verbal signals. If we don't understand the contexts where expressions happen, we won't arrive at that elusive goal of communication, shared meaning, a valid conclusion of the interpretation of non-verbal signals coupled with verbal understanding. There are five contexts I'll be addressing that relate to this interpretation; physical, social, cultural, temporal and psychological.
These contexts compose a larger communication picture and are vital to understand and acknowledge. In fact, I'll go so far to say that when engaged in threat assessment, ignoring context is dangerous. Here's why:
Physical
This is where communication happens and often dictates complementary contexts. If you're a teacher, for example, your classroom is the physical context wherein you reach, or try to reach shared meaning. Your office, the faculty lounge, the restroom, the administrator's office are all physical contexts that dictate communicative behavior psychologically, socially and culturally.
Most of us work within physical contexts that have become too familiar. Daily exposure to our physical contexts numbs awareness, dumbs us down through familiarity. As a result we lose awareness of closest exits, lines of sight through windows and around walls and door frames, or moveable barriers that can help secure an area. Raising awareness of the physical context is simply taking note, listening for the unfamiliar voice, realizing a new obstruction or the removal of some furniture. Manipulate someone's physical context and you're apt to create a bit of an accident, simply because we're not paying attention out of familiarity.
More than brick and mortar, the physical context induces some mores as a result of the social and cultural contexts. We may behave differently in a chapel than we do at a grocery store. When the behavior loses continuity with the physical context it becomes more noticeable. When the role of a person within a physical context is incongruent, the context becomes vulnerable.
When I visited my daughter's school to meet with her counselor I found myself down a hallway going against the current of students rushing out after the final bell. I was out of context, an adult male in a middle school hallway, and I went unnoticed.
Social
Within the physical context we communicate based on established social contexts made up of relationships and expectations, or role and rules. The social context in a classroom establishes the relationship between the teacher and student and implies and warrants rules of communicative behavior within these roles. At a school these roles and rules are challenged daily by the resistance of authority, nonconformity, acting out.
I teach at a very conservative college in Southern Utah where I once had a student who decided to challenge the social and cultural contexts of his peers. On Halloween he showed up to class with red contact lenses in his eyes and a black t-shirt with two large white words, "Jesus Sucks." The social rift was palpable. He'd broken the rules socially to the point where I was concerned for his physical safety.
While I'm one to encourage individualism, such a dramatic social departure warrants scrutiny. It's sending some loud messages that require attention. It's important to emphasize the departure aspect of this; social behavior inconsistent with an established baseline behavior of the individual makes the social context critical to understand in threat assessment.
Cultural
Scholars have grouped social and cultural contexts together. I believe they're better understood separated, though they are more often mutually inclusive. While societal rules, or laws, stem from a need for order and justice, cultural mores are based on values. Family, country, security, wealth, sacrifice, education, work; cultural values are found in the individual, in relationships and in expectations. Counter-cultural values are easy to identify in hindsight, like racism, violence, sexism, any -ism for that matter, but are only identifiable when their contrast to cultural norms becomes manifest. By then, for too many victims, it's too late.
Again, I'm one to advocate individuality. I'm certainly not calling for marginalizing anyone who may not share widely held social and cultural mores and values. It's when one's cultural context becomes abruptly truncated where others need to notice, be aware, be willing to engage, ask questions, and assess.
Temporal
Most afternoons are tough. We're on the downside of the day, most our energy expended at this point. This is temporal. There are morning people and night owls. Pick your favorite season. The passage of time establishes a unique linear context where we communicate better or worse. Temporal habits such as eating, sleeping, showing up at work establish a pattern of behavior, some of these patterns are individual and others, like class schedules, are social.
Departures from established temporal contexts warrant attention. Absences, tardies, after hours, any shift away from established temporal baselines is out of its context.
Psychological
All the afore-mentioned contexts arrive at some level of meaning along with emotion making up psychological context. This is where we can become empowered or debilitated. It's within this context where we find meaning, connection, love, fear, contempt, sadness, surprise, anger, pity, compassion.
If a subordinate is talking with a superior (social) about the subordinate's quality of work (cultural) in the superior's office (physical) on a Friday afternoon (temporal), chances are the subordinate is in a psychological context of fear.
It's within this context where decisions are made, where we fly or we fight, where we hesitate or engage.
Noise
Every communication context has noise, an interference in the transmission of messages. Like context, it's important to recognize the kind noise you may be experiencing in threat assessment.
Physical Noise
Unless you're in an anechoic chamber, you're experiencing physical noise. From traffic to your building's HVAC system, there's noise all around you. White noise is that constant background that can lull the attentive into the same numbness as familiarity with one's physical context. Physical noise can interrupt the communicative process by making messages difficult to hear or inaudible.
Semantic Noise
This is a noise of meaning. Esoteric terms like "esoteric" can cause semantic noise if we don't know the meaning of the term. Speaking a language other than the accepted language of the social and cultural context or using a vernacular apart from accepted meaning creates semantic noise.
Psychological Noise
This is the voice or voices inside your head. It can be a noise of awareness or of emotion. It can be the noise of psychopathy and narcissism. It's here where we carry on a conversation apart from the one in which our mouths are engaged. Psychological noise can work to our advantage, kind of a sub-routine of critical analysis while the rest of our senses gather data as we engage another person in conversation. It's a skill and it takes practice. The trick here is managing our psychological noise, our thought processes, in being able to assess more objectively. We can do this by recognizing certain barriers and perceptual influences that come into play while we're engaged in threat assessment.