Topic Summaries

Inferring meaning from context

• Outside of exam conditions, it’s a good idea to annotate any words you’ve never seen before or that you don’t know the meaning of (so that you can boost your vocabulary!).
• In exam conditions, you could simply ignore these and choose other quotes as evidence, but just to make sure you haven’t misunderstood the text, it’s good to check these words using the surrounding context now that you have a grasp on the overall ideas and the focus of the questions.
• For example, consider the following lines from the previous extract of The Great Gatsby, and suppose you didn’t know the meaning of the highlighted words. You could still infer their meaning from the context of the passage, as shown in these ‘train of thought’ annotations.

Finding evidence and implications

Inferences are conclusions drawn from information in the text, even if it’s not directly stated. You’ll need to interpret implicit meaning and read between the lines.

• Explicit evidence: things clearly stated in the text (e.g. what clothes is Tom wearing?)
• Implicit evidence: things that the text hints at or subtly suggests through the author’s choice of words and use of techniques (e.g. what emotions does the narrator feel towards Tom?)

You should also distinguish between the different levels of likely ideas or interpretations.

• Strong implicature: something that is heavily implied or very obvious in the text. An example of strong implicature from the passage above would be that Tom is a wealthy and egotistical character as there is lots of explicit and implicit evidence to support this. Therefore, this would be a strong point to make in a body paragraph as we could easily justify this idea and back it up with quotes and techniques.
• Weak implicature: something that is an unlikely interpretation based on evidence. An example of weak implicature would be that the narrator has a crush on Tom. You could try to argue this based on the narrator’s fixation with Tom’s body or by cherry-picking examples like his description of Tom’s “gruff” voice, but ultimately this isn’t clearly supported by the evidence. This interpretation isn’t incorrect, but it is weak, so you should opt for something stronger instead.

You can also annotate any combination of the following:

• Key words and phrases
• Language techniques
• Tonal shifts
• Repetition of words or recurring ideas
• Sentence lengths
• Contrasts
• Tone and mood
• Intended effect on the reader
• Writer’s purpose