Literary theory across genre chains: intertextual traces in reading/writing/talking literary theory in the high school classroom

Abstract

ABSTRACT What resources do students draw on to produce literary theory in the contemporary high school English classroom? This interactional sociolinguistic study traces the production and distribution of Lexical, Structural, and Thematic resources across genre chains in reading, writing, and discussing literary theory during an intensive 3-week short story unit. Drawing from the Bakhtinian concepts intertextuality and heteroglossia, this study shows how students’ engagement with literary theory has impacted the transformation of specific contested resources across genre chains. It concludes by posing some critical questions of literature pedagogy from the standpoint of Bakhtin’s notion of dialogic “events”.