Readers Construct Research Articles

Voices in the park, voices in the classroom: Readers responding to postmodern picture books

As the publication of picture books that contain meta‐fictive or postmodern elements increases, research concerning how intermediate grade readers respond and construct meaning in transaction with these texts is important. This study explores readers’ responses and discussions focusing on the picture book Voices in the Park by Anthony Browne. Utilizing discussion transcripts and response journal entries, this article focuses on how readers deal with the non‐linear aspects of the picture book, the interplay between written text and illustrations, and how these readers construct symbolic connections to their own world and experiences.

Methods and Evidence in Psychonarratology and the Theory of the Narrator: Reply to Diengott

Methods and Evidence in Psychonarratology and the Theory of the Narrator:Reply to Diengott Peter Dixon (bio) and Marisa Bortolussi (bio) We welcome this opportunity to reply to Nilli Diengott's review of our book, Psychonarratology: Foundations for the Empirical Study of Literary Response. While she has identified a number of regrettable misstatements in the book and has raised a number of interesting arguments concerning our hypotheses about readers' representations, it also appears that there are a number of aspects of our methodology and conceptual analysis that may not have been understood. We hope that the present reply will promote a better understanding of our approach in order to foster productive debate. Although Diengott's review concentrates on our treatment of the narrator, according to our analysis of her comments, there are really three levels of concerns. First and most importantly, there are issues pertaining to methodology, primarily having to do with the distinction between textual features and reader constructions and how these concepts manifest themselves in empirical research. Second, there are objections to our hypotheses concerning the reader's representation and processing of the narrator. These are crucial concerns since our analysis of the narrator is fundamental to the theoretical developments throughout the book. Finally, there are questions concerning the analysis of "transparency" and its relationship to identification. In what follows, we discuss each of these concerns in turn. We then comment on a few other, more miscellaneous points raised in the review. [End Page 317] Methodology Perhaps the single most fundamental element in our approach to the empirical study of literary response is the distinction between that which is in the text (features) and that which is in the reader's head (constructions). Features are characterizations of the text that, at least in principle, could be objectively defined and that would be true of a given text regardless of who analyzes the text and the context in which that analysis occurs. Constructions, on the other hand, are subjective and may vary with the reader, her knowledge and experience, and her current goals and circumstances. This distinction is crucial because it allows one to match method to question. Features are a matter of definition and, as a consequence, are more or less useful, well-defined or not so well-defined, precise or imprecise, and so on. One can take poor features (e.g., those that are imprecise or poorly defined) and hone them via argument, analysis, and elaboration. However, they cannot be dismissed as incorrect; they are merely a matter of definition, after all, and any number of features may be defined even if they are not particularly helpful. In contrast, reader constructions are potentially in the mind of the reader, and it is a matter of empirical evidence as to whether and under what circumstances they occur. Various kinds of evidence might be marshaled for a reader construction, and such evidence might be strong or weak or more or less convincing. However, ultimately the status of a reader construction is likely to rest on the results of carefully designed studies rather than on logical argument. As an example of this distinction, consider the narratological concept of the implied author. As defined by Gerald Prince, paraphrasing Wayne Booth, the implied author is "the author's second self, mask, or persona as reconstructed from the text" (000). The problem with this definition (and, in our view, with many other narratological concepts) is that it is not clear whether the implied author should be thought of as a textual feature or as a reader construction. A word such as "reconstructed" would seem to allow for subjective inference processes on the part of the reader, implying that the term corresponds to a reader construction; however, it is also possible to envision that a logical, externally validated analysis of the text could be used to identify aspects of the implied author. For example, Iser understood the implied author in interactive terms, so that it emerged on the basis of the interaction of the text and the reader. However, Iser was never concerned with the real reader, and his conception was idealized in the sense that it attempted to provide an account for the...

How does verb aspect constrain event representations?

We investigated the relative contribution of perfective and imperfective aspectual cues on situation models. In Experiment 1, participants were more likely to choose pictures showing completed events than pictures showing ongoing events when they had read perfective sentences, but chose either picture after reading imperfective sentences. In Experiment 2, only one picture was presented and participants were faster to respond to completed pictures than to ongoing pictures when they had read perfective sentences, but showed no latency differences after reading the imperfective sentences. In Experiment 3, participants were faster to read perfective sentences after having seen completed pictures rather than intermediate pictures, but there was no difference for imperfective sentences. The consistent pattern of results demonstrates that readers construct mental representations of completed events when the perfective aspect is used to describe an event. The lack of effect on imperfective sentences and pictures suggests that each reader represents an in-progress event at varying stages of completion.

Exploring individual processes of knowledge construction with hypertext

This empirical study reports on cognitive activities when hypertext readers construct interpretations, appreciate multiple perspectives and become able to manipulate the knowledge-construction process itself. A variety of methods of data collection for exploring the cognitive activities of students were produced. Quantitative results show that, in general, all students profit from their learning activities. A more detailed analysis reveals that lowprior-knowledge students benefited more from working with the hypertext program than those with high prior knowledge. From qualitative data analysis, three typical hypertext reading patterns were discovered: (1) systematic reading, (2) systematic versus explorative reading, and (3) exploration due to individual preferences. Also, it was found that, on the basis of their hypertext reading behaviour, the students could be divided into two groups, which are called self-regulated and cue-dependent learners. It seems that information presentation with hypertext appears to be the most beneficial to self-regulated readers who are to a higher degree capable of using metacognitive skills and possess, at the same time, a lesser degree of test anxiety. It is the self-regulated learner who profits most from a hypertext program.

Talking into literacy

In this article Roy Corden explores the view that the meaning of text is something readers construct by talking their way into. He illustrates some of the potential of appropriate, focused and well managed collaborative learning situations where children use their spoken language to develop literary skills and their awareness of language.

Reading cultures: the construction of readers in the twentieth century

Reading cultures: the construction of readers in the twentieth century

Conceptual blending, narrative discourse, and rhetoric

This study addresses the concerns of the linguist interested in understanding complex referential relationships that develop over extended stretches of discourse, the interests of the rhetorician interested in understanding how human beings use language for purposes of establishing and maintaining individual and group identity, and the concerns of the literary critic interested in understanding the role narrative structure place and guiding readers through complex textual artifacts. I address these concerns I can talk being a three-part analysis of a passage from Art Spiegelman's Maus II: A Survivor's Tale using Fauconnier's and Turner's Conceptual Blending model. As an extension of Fauconnrier's (1994) Mental Spaces Grammar, conceptual blending is a general cognitive instrument capable of performing a variety of discourse functions - from event integration, conceptual change, and metaphor project to humor, literary invention, and the transfer of emotions and attitudes. Discourse participants construct mental spaces for the purpose of local understanding and action. One kind of mental space is a blended space, which develops rich conceptual structure of its own from two or more input spaces and a generic space. My aim is to show that conceptual blending provides a plausible account of how readers construct meaning in narrative discourse.

The Portrayal of Older People in Award-winning Literature for Children

This study extended previous research on picture books receiving the prestigious Caldecott Medal by examining illustrations for the portrayal of older adult characters. Comparison of the 1972–1983 and 1984–1995 groups of Caldecott winners revealed significant changes in the depiction of older people in the more recent group of award books. Recent books portray them in a more positive manner. In addition, only two significant gender differences in a field of 36 possibilities were found over the entire 23-year period of Caldecott award-winners. Implications are drawn regarding the important role picture books play in the construction of young readers' positive attitudes toward old age and older people.

Anne Bradstreet's “personal” protestant poetics

Bradstreet's adaptation in her works of a well-known and highly politicized Protestant aesthetics based on ut pictura poesis, most commonly identified in the visual arts, accounts for her treatment of historical subjects in her supposedly “public” elegies and poems and of her domestic life in the “personal” poems and prose works. In all of these works, but especially in her later posthumously published ones, her depiction of herself as a writing woman, her “simple” poetics, and her persistent focus on the transient aspects of human existence suggest an ideologically chosen enclosure in a domestic economy subsequent generations refine and redefine as a “woman's place.” But, Bradstreet's negation of self and subject, the negation of self as subject, is instead the referent for interpretation, for another reader's construction of a text to be read

Husband Hunting: Characterization and Narrative Art in the Gospel of John

AbstractDirect approaches to the characterization of Jesus in the Gospel of John produce E. Käsemann's glorified Lord. If one looks at Jesus through the eyes of two of the female characters, the Samaritan woman and Mary of Bethany, one encounters a potential lover or mate, a man capable of being loved and loving in return. By employing a mimetic theory of characterization and approaching the character of Jesus indirectly through the secondary characters, the reader constructs a "round" person. This reading of Jesus' character is supported by the exploration of these women's motives for their actions. In both cases, έρωζ, the desire to have and to keep that which is good or beautiful for one's own, compels them to act. In the first case, the result is comedy; in the second case, pathos. In either case, Jesus' response to their words and acts provides them with sufficient motivation to proceed with their overtures of love.

The Reader, the text, the Context: An Exploration of a Choreographed Response to Literature

Much current theory about response to literature stresses the reader's active role in constructing meaning, with reader, text, and context affecting the responses of individual readers (Beach, 1993). Response to literature, like most classroom interaction, tends to take a linguistic form. In a supportive classroom environment, however, a range of response media can potentially mediate students' transactions with literature. The present exploratory study used stimulated recall to elicit a retrospective account from two alternative school students who choreographed a dance to depict their understanding of the relationship between the two central characters in a short story. In their account they indicate that in composing their text they (a) initiated their interpretation by empathizing with the characters, (b) represented the characters' relationship through spatial images and configurations, and (c) used the psychological tool of dance to both represent and develop their thinking about the story. Their thought and activity were further mediated by the social context of learning, including the communication genres of the classroom, their own interaction, their teacher's intervention, and the stimulated recall interview itself. Their account illustrates the way in which reader, text, and context participate in a complex transaction when readers construct meaning for literature. Their experience also illustrates the ways in which the values of an instructional setting influence the extent to which learners may take advantage of the psychological tools available to them for growth.

The Construction of Situation Models in Narrative Comprehension: An Event-Indexing Model

In this article, we propose and test a model of how readers construct representations of the situations described in simple narratives the event-indexing model According to the event-indexing model, events are the focal points of situations conveyed in narratives and are connected in memory along five dimensions time, space, protagonist, causality, and intentionality The results of a verb-clustering task provide strong support for the event-indexing model

Holistic evaluation of literacy development: Framing the process

Abstract Educators working out of a whole language perspective have become increasingly frustrated with an evaluation technology that is incompatible with their beliefs about teaching and learning. Many of these people have embarked on a search for alternative and, especially, more holistic means of evaluating student progress. In this article the author proposes a framework for holistic evaluation of literacy development that is based on principles derived from whole language theory. These are that evaluation should be (a) longitudinal, (b) contextual, and (c) collaborative. The author argues that evaluation should be longitudinal because literacy learning occurs over an extended period of time and is a result of the child's individual and unique interactions with the world of print. The author proposes that evaluation should be contextual because of the functional nature of literacy use and the role that context plays in the reader's construction of meanings. The author believes that evaluation should b...

Do readers construct spatial representations in naturalistic story comprehension?

This study investigated whether spatial situation models are constructed in naturalistic story comprehension. The experiment featured a relatively complex, naturalistic text. When college students were given a normal reading instruction, they processed spatial information relatively fast and were relatively poor in verifying spatial inferences, compared to subjects given a spatial reading instruction. Additional analyses showed that the possession of a relatively strong spatial representation does not influence the processing and representation of subsequent spatial information under a normal reading instruction. Therefore, during normal reading, readers are not very much engaged in constructing, maintaining, and updating a spatial situation model.

A Note on "Pierce Inverarity"

In The Crying of Lot 49, Pynchon foregrounds the polemic involving the name as either an arbitrary or a motivated signifier most overtly in the case of Oedipa Maas, whose name helps the reader construct an order for her experience. Of course, since this foregrounding occurs in a novel that casts suspicion on such constructions because they may deliberately obfuscate whatever legitimate orders may exist, there is ample cause to be leery of any thematic significance the name seems to provide. This note helps to explicate Pierce Inverarity's peculiar name through a possible source in James Joyce's Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. Joyce also overtly engages naming as both an arbitrary and a motivated act in the character of Stephen Oedalus, who, by the end of the novel, assumes the prophecy of his name to become an artificer. Joyce, therefore, not only provides a source for the name Inverarity, but also serves Pynchon studies as a literary precursor through whom to better understand Pynchon's approach to naming.

Wat beteken ‘die Bybel sê’? ’n Tipologie van leserskonstrukte

What does ‘the Bible says’ mean? A typology of reader constructs It is argued that the unity of the Bible, so important to (Reformed) theology, ethics and life, is inevitably the result of constructs on the part of reader communities. A typology of such constructs is suggested, organising of ‘the Bible’ in diverse ways, in order to facilitate discussion between systematic theologians and biblical scholars.

Rhetorical Reading Strategies and the Construction of Meaning

There is a growing consensus in our field that reading should be thought of as a constructive rather than as a receptive process: that meaning does not exist in a text but in readers and the representations they build. This constructive view of reading is being vigorously put forth, in different ways, by both literary theory and cognitive research. It is complemented by work in rhetoric which argues that reading is also a discourse act. That is, when readers construct meaning, they do so in the context of a discourse situation, which includes the writer of the original text, other readers, the rhetorical context for reading, and the history of the discourse. If reading really is this constructive, rhetorical process, it may both demand that we rethink how we teach college students to read texts and suggest useful parallels between the act of reading and the more intensively studied process of writing. However, our knowledge of how readers actually carry out this interpretive process with college-level expository texts is rather limited. And a process we can't describe may be hard to teach.

Teaching and Practicing Thinking Skills to Promote Comprehension in the Context of Group Problem Solving

Reading comprehension is conceptualized as a problem-solving activity in which the reader constructs meaning for the text while simultaneously reconstructing prior conceptions. Comprehension instruction is conceptualized as teaching students the thinking skills that foster interactions with the text. A specific instructional technique, reciprocal teaching, which is conducted as a group problemsolving activity in which the students practice the use of four strategies to promote thinking while reading, is described and illustrated.

Research Frontiers in Writing Analysis

This article describes recent advances in writing analysis. The principal theme is that text analysis of written products complements process-centered research and is needed for an integrated theory of writing. Recent paradigm shifts in writing, linguistics, and text analysis are discussed, followed by a brief review of selected empirical studies using two different approaches, sentence based and centered. The implications of these approaches for the teaching of ESL writing are examined. The past decade has witnessed a major paradigm shift in composition theory and research: The emphasis has moved from the product to the of writing. According to Hairston (1982), the product-centered, traditional paradigm stressed expository writing, made style the most important element in writing, and maintained that the writing is linear, determined by writers before they start to write. The process-centered paradigm, on the other hand, focuses on writing processes; teaches strategies for invention and discovery; considers audience, purpose, and context of writing; emphasizes recursiveness in the writing process; and distinguishes between aims and modes of discourse (e.g., expressive, expository, persuasive; and description, narration, evaluation, classification). Within this paradigm, research on texts and text analysis is developing rapidly. Hairston (1982), for example, includes research in linguistics and cognitive sciences as part of the new paradigm for teaching writing and emphasizes that theory is diverse, flexible, and still emerging. Others have articulated various synergic relationships between and product research and have called for theories of writing integrating the two views. Phelps (1985), for example, argues for a unified theory in which the overarching process is the cooperative enterprise whereby writers and readers construct meanings

The Structural Design Features of Large Texts

A framework for analyzing the structure of large expository texts is specified, based on notions from the rhetoric. Rhetoric books used to teach freshman composition classes have been surveyed for common patterns, and two separate text structures have been identified. One is the functional structure, which helps the reader construct a coherent mental representation; the other is the rhetorical structure, which organizes content. The framework specifies elements and linkages for the two structures that typically are present in the well-designed text. The usefulness of the framework is demonstrated with the analysis of a sample text, Modern Rhetoric (Brooks & Warren, 1972).