Cultural and Text Variables in Processing Personal Experiences While Reading Literature

Abstract

The present study investigated the influence of reader and text variables on personal resonance while reading literature. As the reader variable, the distance between readers' cultural background and the thematic content of the text was studied. A Hungarian short story dealing with themes that are central to the cultural and historical past of that country was presented to Hungarian (culturally proximate) and Danish (culturally distant) readers. As the text style variable, narrative point of view (POV) was manipulated by changing some inside POV passages to outside POV. The findings indicate that cultural proximity did result in the generation of a larger proportion of personally experienced, contextually rich, and vividly remembered events. The occasional use of inside, psychological POV in the story enhanced this effect in the Hungarian (culturally proximate) group, but not in the Danish group. However, the phenomenal quality of remindings elicited locally by reading the inside POV text passages differed from those of the same passages written from the outside POV, irrespective of readers' cultural background. This suggests that compositional text devices, as narrative POV, may have universal effects on literary reading.