David Peplow

Over the last two decades, reading groups have become increasingly popular, whether this is online, through the mass media, or in face-to-face contexts. In light of this explosion of popularity, this ethnographic study focuses on several reading groups based across a variety of settings: public libraries, public houses and in readers' homes. Reading groups are found to be highly ritualized and potentially competitive places in which matters of identity and taste are often at stake. The groups studies are conceptualized as communities of practice, and the literary interpretations and evaluations offered within each group are shown to a product of shared norms established by this group.

A Study of Reading Groups

Talk About Books

Joan Swann

Paola Trimarco

Sara Whiteley

Of interest in their own terms as a significant cultural practice, reading groups also provide a window on the everyday interpretation of literary texts. While reading is often considered a solitary process, reading groups constitute a form of social reading, where interpretations are produced and displayed in discourse. The Discourse of Reading Groups is a study of such joint conceptual activity, and how this is necessarily embedded in interpersonal activity and the production of reader identities. Uniquely in this context it draws on, and seeks to integrate, ideas from both cognitive and social linguistics. The book will be of interest to scholars in literacy studies as well as cultural and literary studies, the history of reading, applied linguistics and sociolinguistics, digital technologies and educational research.

Integrating Cognitive and Sociocultural Perspectives

The Discourse of Reading Groups

Alice Bell

Alison Gibbons

Sam Browse

Style and Reader Response: Minds, media, methods profiles the diversity of theoretical and methodological approaches in reception-oriented research in stylistics. Collectively, the chapters investigate how real readers, players, audiences, and viewers respond to, experience, and interpret texts. Contributions to the book investigate discourse types such as contemporary literature, poetry, political speeches, digital fiction, art exhibitions, and online news discourse. The volume also exemplifies the variety of empirical approaches in reception research, with contributors drawing on a range of methods including discussion groups, interviews, questionnaires, and think-aloud protocols with data analysed from both online and offline sources. Style and Reader Response makes an important contribution to an emerging paradigm within stylistics in which verifiable insights from readers are used to generate new models and new understandings of texts across media, with each essay demonstrating the centrality of empirical research for theoretical, methodological, and/or analytical advancements within and beyond stylistics.

Minds, media, methods

Style and Reader Response

David Peplow

Books

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