Being 'in a field' is not rigidly bounded but it is hardly imaginary. It doesn't matter where a good point comes from but where a point comes from has a huge im

Being 'in a field' is not rigidly bounded but it is hardly imaginary. It doesn't matter where a good point comes from but where a point comes from has a huge impact as to whether a point is good. Being in a field means you are familiar with the content and style of discourse. You speak the language, even if the language is always English. You know how to communicate ideas within group norms. That is useful because it aids shared meaning making in any form of communication. If I stood up as an educator at a ACM conference and started talking about 'normalizing to C+' there is serious potential for misunderstanding that I'm talking about grading whereas y'all might think I'm talking about programming languages. We make meaning of information in context as human beings, some of that context is local (e.g., the rest of what I'm reading) some of it is regional (dialectic, people who ask me at restaurants in my area 'do you want a coke' and then clarify what kind because coke is a euphemism for soda not Coca Cola)...some of it is even broader. The key thing is not all of it is shared, and context is key to inferring or constructing shared meaning.