- Email: [email protected]
Talking about literature in an institutional context. An empirical approach
157
Poetics 20 (1991) 157-172 North-Holland
Talking about literature in an institutional context. An empirical approach Els Andringa *
In a process of literary socialization, children and young people learn to deal with literature in accordance with certain institutional constraints. In this article some empirical proof is given for the assumption that patterns of communication, which are characteristic of eductional settings in general, shape the structure of ‘literary knowledge’ and affect the strategies of handling literary texts. Analysis of two fragments from transcripts of classes on literature shows how processes of literary understanding get lost behind the surface structure of the stereotypical interaction between teacher and pupils, and how a confusing and deceptive picture of ‘literary knowledge’ comes to existence. Some evidence of negative effects of such teaching patterns on literary comprehension outside the school is given in the last section of this article.
1. The role of communication
about literature in dealing with literature
Dealing with literature involves globally three dimensions: It has a cognitive dimension, containing the aspects of coding and decoding linguistic and textual signs on the basis of different kinds of knowledge. It has an emotional dimension, containing the aspects of individual engagement, identification, affective response, and evaluation. It has a social dimension, containing the influences of social constraints on what conventionally is expected of literature, how literature should be dealt with and how it is discussed. These three dimensions continuously interact in the processes of literary production, reception, distribution and mediation. People’s dealing with literature is learnt in social settings by ways of communication about literature. During the process of literary socialization, which starts at a very early age, children not only learn to read and to understand stories, but they also get acquainted with means of expressing reactions to, and talking and reading about literature (see, for example, Pellegrini and Galda 1990). Further modes of participation in literary discourse are handed down during education at school, at home, and via the media. It is a process of learning, which continues throughout many years. * Author’s address: E. Andringa, Rijksuniversiteit Muntstraat 4, 3512 EV Utrecht, The Netherlands.
0304422X/91/$03.50
Utrecht,
8 1991 - Elsevier Science Publishers
Algemene
Literatuurwetenschap,
B.V. All rights reserved
158
E. Andringo
/ Talking ubour literature in an instinmonal
context
The way we learn to handle concepts and expressions in communication about literature is likely to regulate the way we look upon literature and the selections we make during processing and understanding; it might even become part of literary understanding. We have not only to do with the reception of literature and the effects literature is supposed to produce, but also with our own modelling reception and with the effects of our conventional modes of speaking and writing. Some connections between literary discourse and literary reception or experience have already been brought to light in theoretical and empirical studies, as the following examples may show. (a) Current ideas, concepts, and patterns of discourse trigger the modes of perception and guide the perspective on what is perceived and represented. In the literary system, a variety of views on how literature should be dealt with professionally has passed with the ages, all developing their own concepts and language apparatus. Structuralism, hermeneutics, psychoanalysis. new criticism, feminist criticism, deconstruction etc. have all coloured and shaped discourse, penetrating gradually from specialist into non-specialist language. Schemata of argumentation or categorization form rather stable scaffoldings for description and interpretation of literary phenomena. Jiirgen Link, for example, shows how the convention of placing Goethe and Schiller in a structure of bipolar unity served as an anchor-point for locating the historical position of earlier and later authors. This convention dominated the construction of German literary history for a long time, making it nearly impossible to look upon it from another angle (Link 1983). A current example is the development of modern feminist literary theory, which renders us sensitive to the lack or underrepresentation of female perspectives in a good deal of fiction, and writings about fiction, hardly noticed in previous days. Developments and new movements partly bring their own concepts, but they also use existing vocabulary in different meanings and adapt concepts from other disciplines. As a consequence, the meanings constantly shift along with changes in literary movements and theoretical developments (see for a description of this phenomenon Slawinsky 1975; Livingston 1988 discusses these and other phenomena from the angle of the status of theory formation in the literary realm). (b) Traditionally, a fusion between the object of discourse and discourse itself has seemed to be desirable in writings about literature. An empirical investigation into the language of literary scholars by Fricke (1977), for example, has shown that it contains far more literary phenomena such as metaphors and comparisons than other scientific language. Especially in traditional interpretations, critics try to adapt the language to the object. Approximation to literary qualities was and is obviously regarded as a quality of speaking and writing about literature. This convention, of course, is still
E. Andringa
/
Talking about literature in an institutional
context
159
another reason for the vagueness and arbitrariness of concepts pointed out in (a). (c) Participating in communication itself may become a dominant aim. The aim of text understanding and attempts to mediate the result to others is then replaced by the social sense of joining in with the stream of discourse, connecting one’s speech to the normative patterns of communication thereby respecting prevailing expectations. This effect increases in institutional settings, where participants are expected to produce spoken or written discourse in certain professional or educational roles (see, for instance, Wirrer 1982). Recently, Wieler (1989) has pointed out the danger of shifting away from the literary works themselves and from more personal or creative modes of understanding towards the production of institutionally accepted discourse. The main questions to be dealt with in this article are: (1) How does communication about literature take place, what kinds of patterns do occur, and is it possible to find and describe conventional structures that are characteristic of literary discourse? (2) Is it possible to find out in which respects patterns of literary mediation shape reception processes, literary experience, emotional response? What I intend to show here in the first place, is how certain well-known interactive patterns in educational settings organize the mediation and structure of literary knowledge. After this, I will give an example in which the effects of such a knowledge acquisition pattern become manifest in reception activity.
2. Teaching and learning to deal with literature 2. I. Material and procedure The material to be analysed consists of two small fragments from lessons about literature at school. The lessons were recorded and transcribed. The transcripts are analysed on two levels: the level of communicative activity and the level of mental activity related to the objects of communication. For the analysis of the communicative structure, a category system of speech acts was developed; for the analysis of mental operations a category system of text processing activities was used. The Speech Act System was inspired by and makes use of classifications and analyses developed in speech act theory (Ballmer and Brennenstuhl 1981, Labov and Fanshel 1977), but it was adapted to and specified in accordance with the material. Generally speaking, two groups of activities occurred most frequently: (i) Activities which are clearly interactive in the sense that they build a sequence of action and reaction in the speakers’ turns as in, for example, question-answer or
160
E. Andringa
/ Talking about literarure in an institutional
context
statement-objection patterns. (ii) Activities not directly evoked by the other speaker, which are, however, oriented toward the listener in order to convince or to make something clear. Such activities are, for example, explanations, descriptions or summaries. The Processing System uses classifications of text understanding and reception activities, which are developed in text processing models. However, they are more differentiated than the classification systems mostly applied to qualitative material, because they are not used for quantification, as is usual in a good deal of research employing thinking-out-loud procedures (see for an overview of the systems Andringa 1990). Both systems were not developed to be exhaustive in a theoretical sense, but to be useful analytical tools in explorative, qualitative analysis. Examples of classification will be given in the following analysis. 2.2. The first example The first example is a fragment from a transcript of classroom discourse on literature: the teacher [Tl and 10th grade highschool students [S] are debating a short story. The fragment is translated from German (from: Grzesik 1988 ‘).
[ . . . 1. Martin has just mentioned the fuble. You got to know the fable some time ago. What kind of idea do you have of a fable? 2. Sl: Well, firstly there are mostly animals in it, and secondly there’s normally a kind of moral 3. T: Hm, right. Martin [S2]? 4. S2: Character traits are transferred to animals. 5. T: Hm. Gerd [S3]? 1.
T:
[A short discussion about the animals occurring in the story under treatment and the kind of animals and their stereotypical character traits in fables takes place] 6. T:
Good. Perhaps we will find We have to be careful with kinds of texts, other genres, think of any? Martin [S2] 7. S2: I was just thinking of the Jesus used it too 8. T: Aha. Hm. Burkhard [S4] 9. 5%: Also fairytales, perhaps 10. T: Yes. Andrea [S5] 11. S5: Satire, perhaps?
out more, when we come to discuss some details. the notion of the fable here. Do you know other which you may compare with the fable? Can you Gkichnis [‘similarity’], it’s used by philosophers,
’ The transcription of the presented fragment is taken from Gtzesik’s book and translated into English. The transcription is idealized in the sense that no pauses, hesitations, intonation and the like are indicated. This means that it was not possible to make use of this kind of additional information, which sometimes is very useful (see the second example).
E. Andringa
12. T:
13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18.
s3: T: Sl: T: Sl: T:
/ Talking about literature in an institutional
context
161
Satire, yeah. but I believe that we lose sight of a certain, a certain kind of text. Ehm, the Gleichnis I’d like to take up again. There’s still another kind of text, which is rather similar to the fable and the Gleichnis. Gerd [S3]? Sagas? No, that’s not what I mean. Lyric Yes, lyric It also uses images. Well, I don’t think we’ve used this concept very much: the parable. There’s, for example, the most famous parable in German language, the parable of the ring from Lessing’s “Nathan der Weise”. And Kafka has written a lot of parables. Does somebody know the difference between Gleichnis and parable?
[The discussion
continues
comparing
and defining
the Gleichnis
and the fable]
In this fragment we can observe a classical pattern of classroom discourse as was established and described in a range of discourse studies (Edwards and Furlong 1978, Mehan 1985, Ehlich and Rehbein 1986 *): The teacher asking questions to which he himself knows the answers, evaluating the replies in the light of what he aims at and of what a better answer might be. The passage contains two strings of this pattern, in which one question leads to multiplication of the three-part-sequence Q(uestion)-R(eply)-E(valuation) in the turns l-6 and 6-18. The second string is divided into two sub-sequences, because the teacher tries to ‘reset’ the course of the replies. When the pupils still do not guess the information wanted by the teacher in the string IIB, he finally supplies it himself, concluding the string with a series of statements. Thereby the teacher fixes on a certain piece of information, without explaining, however, why some of the pupils’ replies are disregarded. As to the object of communication, we see how a process of knowledge activation is initiated by the teacher and how this knowledge is modelled in the order and manner of activation. In the first string, the knowledge domain of genre concepts is triggered by the invitation to retrieve the schema of the fable. This is followed by the procedure of defining this concept schema by means of feature attribution. After the pupils have summed up a range of features - no conclusion is given by the teacher - the teacher initiates the next string by the question about related concepts. Here, the procedure of organizing a larger knowledge domain by comparing related concepts one to another takes place or, presumably, should take place. Table 1 gives a more detailed representation of what is going on. The structure of the interactive procedures is represented in the left column, the
’ Ehlichand Rehbein(1986) analyse several patterns in educational discourse. They place such patterns in the context of larger discourse unities. One of the patterns consists of teachers’ questions and the kind of response these elicit. The authors work out different types and functions of teachers’ questions within the institutional context.
E. Andringa
162
/ Talking about lirerarure in an institutional context
Table 1 Two-level analysis of the transcript. SPEECH/INTERACTIVE
ACTIV1-l-l
MENTAL
ACTIVITY
[activation knowledge domain of genres] Activation genre schema gl
1. T takes up topic S2 Refers to shared knowledge schema: orientation Question [in order to reactivate/test schema] 1 1 Initiates activity of genre description
l
[Activates genre schema] Retrieves features genre: a. content feature b. functional feature
2. Sl Reply (I)
3. T evaluates reply Selects S2 to take next turn [Activates genre schema] Retrieves feature genre: c. relationship genre-reality
4. s2 Reply (2) ]...I 6. T Evaluation/closing Conclusion/statement
sequence of problem
Bridges back to text: no direct classification possible Reactivates related genre Question [in order to open schemata within the domain larger knowledge domain] of genre knowledge 1 1 Initiates activity of genre comparison
7. S2 Reply (1)
[Activates genre domain] Association genre g2 Feature: d. domains of application + associated name
8. T Evaluation Selects S4 9. S4 Reply (2)
Association genre g3 [basis of comparison: feature?]
10. T Minimal response Selects s5 11. SS Reply (3)
r
-
12. T [impl. neg. evaluation] ‘Reset’ by taking up 7 Statement [in order to narrow question down]
Association genre g4 [basis of comparison: feature?]
163
E. .4ndringa / Talking about literature in an mriturional context Table 1 (continued)
1III r
Association genre g5 [basis of comparison: feature?]
13. S3 Reply (4)
[...I
18. T [impl. neg. evaluation] Association genre g7 + associated knowledge: authors’ names
Reply Statements
.I
L +__-__ III
Question [referring back to 7 (g2) and l-6 (gl)]
example,
Specification common feature: (d) domain of application
1 1 Initiates activity of comparing two genres on the basis of feature of application domain
mental activity related to the object of discussion in the right column. Discrimination of the communicative activities is mainly based on the tumtaking pattern and on communicative signals such as particles. The mental activities are reconstructed from the word and sentence meanings. Certain mental processes such as the building of communicative intentions or the activation of knowledge are not expressed in verbal form; they have to be inferred from the course of the action-reaction patterns; they are placed in square brackets. Comparing the columns we can find out something about the way conventional literary knowledge is transmitted in the given setting. The two columns seem to converge at the beginnings of the strings, where the teacher activates a new series of mental activities by initiating a new interactive sequence. Referring to knowledge already supposed to be present, the teacher states in the first string (l-6) a specific genre concept, immediately continuing with a question to characterize this concept. In the replies (2 and 4) the pupils raise (a) a content feature (animals as actors), (b) a functional feature (moral), and (c) the characteristic of a certain relationship between fiction and reality, namely the transfer of character traits. Finally, the teacher closes the sequence by relating the concept label to the short story under treatment, but, simultaneously, he leaves open this topic by anticipating that it will be taken up again. Immediately after this, he drops the text under treatment and continues the topic of genre concepts, putting forward the next question. However, not only is a conclusion with respect to the genre of the short story lacking, but also a conclusion about the attempts to characterize the genre of the fable. The first Q-R-E-string remains dissociated from the context for the time being, and it is performed independently as if it has a sense in itself. As a consequence, no basis is provided for replies to the next question.
164
E. Andringa
/ Taalking about literature in an institutional
context
The second string again seems to remain unconnected with what has preceded: the replies given by the students are merely trial and error attempts to guess what the teacher wants to hear. The repeated particle ‘perhaps’ marks their uncertainty and their not-knowing what exactly to look for. As no basis for the comparison of the different genre concepts has been given, any text feature may lead to any related concept: length, for example (short prose) may select the response of fairy tale or saga, mode of narration (oral tradition) may select the saga, style (use of images) selects lyric, etc. In this way the question-reply pattern again appears to elicit a kind of arbitrary reproduction of genre labels. The underlying structure of concepts, related one to another by certain feature clusters, which the teacher probably has in mind, is not explicated and the relationship of different genre concepts is not motivated. At the moment the teacher terminates the Q-R-string by supplying the answer himself, he still does not give the basis for comparison, but provides some associated knowledge: a representative example indicated by a title and a representative author. However, most remarkable is that he takes up the genres gl and g2 (fable and Gleichnis), leaving out g7 (parable), the one he introduced himself immediately before. As far as this fragment goes, we may feel the teacher’s intention to structure the realm of genre concepts as a part of conventional literary knowledge on the basis of the following ingredients: genre concepts corresponding to clusters of text features (thematical, structural, functional, contextual etc.), concept labels, associated knowledge, and the mental activities of characterization and comparison. The students are partly acquainted with the ingredients, but they don’t have the required organizational structure in mind. As the feature which the teacher might think of as the basis for comparison has not been given at the end of the first sequence, the trial and error pattern in the second string is continued in spite of the ‘reset’ attempt. The students look for some feature that may serve as a basis for comparison or they simply try out the labels that come to mind. This second Q-R-E-string too, comes to lead an independent life, because it hasn’t anything to do with the original context, and the connection with the previous string has got lost as well. Grzesik comes to similar conclusions in his analysis of the fragment. In his book, a stage model of the acquisition of concepts is developed. His analytical aim is to show how different stages of knowing and handling concepts occur in educational settings. He signals in this example the failure of applying the conceptual knowledge to the text under treatment, and points at the reproduction of pieces of knowledge coming to lead a life of their own. In summary, the teacher’s questions suggest exact and correct answers representing a coherent and neatly arranged part of knowledge. The pupils’ replies, however, show the confusing complexity of the domain of genre knowledge. In continuing the Q-R-E-pattern, the link to the original context gets lost, the first question is followed by a conclusion only formally, however,
E. Andringa
/
Talking about literature in an institutional context
165
not in content, and many knowledge particles are not dealt with at all. The teacher seems to get caught in the interactive pattern of Q-R-E, thereby losing the thread of the concept structure he seemed to aim at. A discrepancy between discourse form and its content becomes visible: the traditional teaching pattern comes to dominate the content, it suggests a clear knowledge structure, whereas the result seems rather to be a fragmentary reproduction of knowledge particles. The second example may illustrate that this state of affairs is not exceptional in teaching literature. 2.3. The second example The second fragment has been translated from Dutch. 11th Grade secondary school pupils read a short story by a young Dutch authoress. The lesson is structured from the beginning by questions which the pupils had to prepare at home. The questions are based upon procedures of structural analysis. The fragment starts just after the time-structure of the story has been dealt with. The next question addresses the structure of space. The fragment is transcribed from a videotape; 3 some visual information is added in the transcript. Short pauses are marked by two or three dots.
1. T: 2. T: 3. Sl: 4. T:
Paul will tackle the question of space.. [interruption by telephone] Paul, space, which kinds of space play a role? It’s winter, and that’s stressed.. simply because it’s bare.. winter it is, well, winter is bare.. and generally speaking, winter is always associated with.. .
well, uhm, bare.. 6. class: death death, well, summer and spring is life, autumn is dying off, and winter.. 7. T: there’s still another space, which plays a role.. 8. s2: the house the house, excellent, which house? 9. T: where the curtains are closed, [inaud.] symbol.. 10. s2: 11. T: and that’s placed opposite the house, that means the empty house, and that’s opposite the house with those friends, who are having fun there, the notorious aprts-ski.. 12. class: soft chuckle 13. T: (beaming) isn’t it?. . . okay, next we’ll deal with fiction-non-fiction. Floris (looks around), where are you? 5. Sl:
’ 1 am grateful to Will van Peer and Fred Marsehall. who allowed me to make use of the videotapes they made of a series of literature lessons at different schools. Because this material was accessible in the raw form, it was possible to profit from some non-verbal indications, and to include information about hesitations, pauses etc.
166
E. Andringa / Talking about literature in an instirutional contexl
14. s3: 15. T: 16. S3: 17. T:
it’s a fictional story of course it is, but, I mean, can you say something more? (mutters, partly inaudibly) winterlandscape, small train.. yes, so there you have the winter landscape, there you have the small train.. well, d’you think these are fictional? 18. S3: (mutters, inaudibly) 19. T: yeah, but it’s logical that you,.. that I-character, what is she called? Vonne 20. s3: 21. T: and the authoress of the story? yeah, but you (inaudibly) [laughs] 22. s3: 23. T: [laughs] yeah, but doesn’t it have an autobiographical trait? perhaps, but there are surely other stories where the main character has the 24. S3: same name 25. T: Neoer theless, [leaning forward, gesticulates] neuer theless, it resembles a kind of anecdote, a story that she has experienced in reality, isn’t it? 26. S3: (mutters something inaudibly) 27. T: So there are, so there are,.. does it, actually, belong to the literary techniques? 28. S4: (inaudibly) 29. T: yes [unstressed] pupils write something down hence, there is one thing which is typical of, which is a literary trick, a 30. T: literary technique, that an author may use to construct a story.. . you won’t find it, for example, in a newspaper, and you would find it in a Margriet [Dutch women’s magazine] story only rarely. What is literary in this story? What makes it a literary story? shifting perspectives 31. s5: Excellent, shifting perspectives, very well, and I don’t mean this in a literary 32. T: evaluating sense, not in the sense of well made or something like that, but it is a typically literary technique to constantly shift the perspective, which you will only encounter in stories, in novels, but seldom or never anywhere else.. The next question follows: explanation of the title
Some situational constraints become rather manifest in this fragment: the teacher announces at the beginning of the lesson that they are under time pressure. In addition, the pupils don’t seem to have prepared their homework too well. This may account for the high speed, the sudden topic shifts, and the teacher’s dominant role. We can observe, for example, how a shift is made from the fictionality question to the genre question between the turns 18 and 25. Under the teacher’s strong guidance (I will not analyze his strategies in detail), a deviation from fictionality is stated. The teacher suggests an autobiographical feature, neglects the pupil’s objection (24) and puts forward, nearly by force, the genre notion of an anecdote. Striking, however, is the way he continues this topic in 27: he seems to refer back by ‘it’ to what has been said before; it remains, however, unclear what exactly he refers to: the suggestion of autobiographical narration? the use of a genre type? He suddenly switches
E. Andringa
/ Talking about literature in an institutional context
167
from the topic of fictionality to the topic of literariness and, although he seems to continue the first topic, stresses quite another point. The break is visible in turn 27: the first sentence is not finished, the second topic is suddenly introduced by a question. The teacher seems to be occupied by his new idea so strongly that he hardly notices the soft reply in 28 - he reacts with an unstressed ‘yes’ - and continues explaining his question. The previous topic of fictionality and genre has been dropped as quickly as it had been raised. Again we can observe how literary knowledge is transmitted in an apparent structure suggested by the interactive pattern. Again, and to a very extreme extent, it remains an unstructured quantity of scattered knowledge particles. It is, of course, not possible to base general conclusions about teaching literature on two small examples. Nevertheless, these examples are representative in some respects. Though they differ in style of teaching, they both show the constraints of the conventional teaching situation and some consequences for the specific knowledge to be mediated and applied. Although the analysis was critical in the sense that certain deficiencies are brought to light, it was not the intention to show that these fragments are proofs of failing teachers. They illustrate rather some fundamental problems in speaking about and in mediating literature. That this might affect the processes of text reception is what I want to show in the next example.
3. Effects of ‘literary learning’: Some evidence Not only is a domain of ‘factual’ knowledge handed down or filled in within the context of dealing with and talking about a story, but also knowledge of how to act upon a story-like text is passed on. The factual knowledge is directly linked up with the knowledge of how to use it in a literary setting (here: the teaching-and-learning-literature-setting). The strategies of genre-classification, the process of comparing different genre-concepts, and the process of comparing features of related concepts are implied in the pattern of transmission. The questions govern the way the pupils look at the text and spur them on to perform the required mental activities. In building up a taxonomy of text features, they are trained to deal with such questions. Do such activities really imply an act of understanding, do they really make sense? Or are they just a way of carrying on discourse conventions? The following fragment may shed some light upon the effects of the patterns shown in the other examples. The example comes from material collected by the method of Free Thinking Aloud. In this method subjects are asked to read a text, passage by passage, and after every passage to say aloud everything that comes to mind. The resulting protocols are a blend of retrospection, introspection, real ‘ thinking-aloud’ and re-thinking. The interviewer is allowed to give minimal response, to ask for explanation, and to challenge the subject slightly. After the
E. Andringa / Talking about literature in an institutional context
168
subject has read the whole text, a semi-structured interview on the whole text takes place, which should develop like a real discussion and should be as spontaneous as possible. This example is from a Free Thinking Aloud-protocol of Barbara, a highschool-student aged 18. The fragment has been translated from German. 4
B: That’s very peculiar (1). . _ I: Mm? (2) B: I don’t have .., well, it does not fit at all (3) in some way, well, I thought, the same happens again, like in a fairy tale the same always happens (4a). . . I: Hm? (5) B: that he doesn’t succeed either and returns home (4b), but [l SC],look, the story has to come to an end now (5a), because he has given up the girl to him (Sb), well, I actually don’t know why I should go on reading (6a) ._ for the story must be finished (6b). . . , only, there are some more pages (7). . . I: It doesn’t fit your idea of a fairy tale? (8) B: Yeah (9), however, I know from the introduction that it can’t be a real fairy tale (lo), . . . that’s odd (11) the next text passage: B: [laughs] (12) [2 SC]Now I don’t know at all, what I should do (13) because (14a), well, this I don’t understand at all (15), because, ehm, I thought that the story was finished (14b) and what’s coming now, I don’t know what comes now (16a), for, she’s dead, he’s alone, and the other doesn’t want to come back (16b) .., anyway, the whole case has broken up (17)..
At
B reads the last passage and then re-reads the beginning of the story B: Yes, now I know what he intended with the story (18a), it’s a whole (18b), it’s, well, I know what he means with the ending, why it’s this way, like in a fairy tale (18c),
it’s, only, it claims to be true (19X and it just doesn’t end like a fairy tale (20a), which can’t be realistic (20b). The protocol was segmented according to speech units marked by semanticsyntactic structures, pauses and connectors. We have to bear in mind that this protocol is distinct from the previous examples. The communicative setting and the communicative aim are different. Accordingly, the interviewer has another role than a teacher, his questions are no teacher’s questions, and the informant’s response is not meant to be evaluated in the light of being a right or wrong answer. This point was even explicitly stressed in the instruction to the subjects. Hence, the speech activity is less oriented toward interaction, the ’ Barbara
read an unknown short story by the famous German author Friedrich Schiller. The story appeared to have some archaic features not only in style, but also in content (moral impact, roles of male and female characters), that disturbed most readers. Nearly all of them experienced a kind of break with their expectations as to the plot development.
E. Andringa Table 2 Two-level
analysis
of Barbara’s
INTERACTIVE/SPEECH B gives evaluating statement (1)
/ Talking about literature in an institutional
context
protocol.
ACITVITV
PROCESSING ACIlVlTV emotive reaction (1)
B explains [I] (3-4a/b) statement (3) explanation + metastatement (4a/b)
[identifies genre] reconstructs reaction [l] (3-4a/b) expectation genre structure is not fulfilled (4a/b)
B gives concluding statement (5a) + explanation (5b) metastatement + argument (6a/b) counterargument (7)
infers the story has ended (5a) from narrative pattern (5b)
I refers back to topic + request for explanation B affirms inference I (9) counterargument (10) + metastatement (10) gives evaluating statement (11)
direct observation + hypothetical falsification [5] (7) [infers B has used genre schema] (8) [relates story to genre schema] [bridges to earlier part of the story] + infers contradiction (10) emotive reaction (11) emotive
metastatement of notunderstanding (13-16a) + explanation (14a/b)
metastatement of understanding (18a/b) +counterarg. (19) + counterarg. (20a) + counterarg. (20b)
169
reaction
(12)
expectation [4] is not fulfilled (14b) summarizing reconstruction story ending (16b) generalizing conclusion (17) comparison genre [affirm] (18b) [repetition] contradictions from 4 and 10 (19/20a/b)
pattern of speech is mainly selfinduced and selfregulated; it is less dependent on initiations and confirmations. We encounter a range of activities different from the earlier examples, both on the level of speech and on the level of mental activity. The activities are represented in table 2. In spite of its monologic form, this fragment, however, appears to contain a dialogical structure that shows some similarity to interactive discourse. The following pattern recurs in the left column: statements or metastatements are
170 Table 3 Argument
E. Andringa / Talking about lilerarure in on institutional conrext
structure
in Barbara’s
protocol.
(meta)statement --) [why (do you/I think so)?] --) explanation: because, /or.. . --1 evaluation counter-argument: how,ecer, but [conclusion: rhus. there/ore.. .]
Example: it does not fit expected fairytale peculiar (I), odd (11) story comes to an end
___
followed by an explanation, arguing the origin or cause of this (meta)statement. The explanation has the appearance of an answer to an implicit why- or why-do-you/I-think-so-question. The internal dialogue-structure is marked still more clearly by the counterarguments frequently following an explanation. It looks as if Barbara herself raises objections to her statements. Although this pattern occurs several times in a complete or incomplete form, it is not followed by the kind of conclusion normally expected in an argument. Formally, the sequence has the structure indicated in table 3. In the right column of table 2 we clearly recognize activities found in the previous examples. The basis of the whole process is once again the act of genre-classification: Barbara has associated the story with a fairy tale, and tries to find evidence for this assumption. However, the course of the story hardly matches the concept of a fairy tale. This seems to be the most important source of the understanding difficulties, which lead to emotive reactions of surprise and confusion. The paradox we can observe here is that the subject performs an act of classification and maintains the result, in sp‘ite of the fact that attempts to find corresponding features are not successful, and in spite of the fact that it apparently does not lead to better textual understanding. Comparing both columns we can again observe how a certain discourse pattern rules, perhaps even constitutes, the way of dealing with the text. It looks as if the Question-Reply pattern is transformed into a self-induced argument pattern circling round the questions: What kind of text is this, why, or why not? This informant is so strongly fixated on this pattern that it seems to be impossible in the given situation to leave the framework of the genre concept and to deal with the story in another way. The pattern of genre classification has become a kind of automatism in a schoolish Q-R-E form. It seems to have achieved a kind of sense-in-itself without contributing to text comprehension. Barbara’s response exactly reflects the kind of scattered knowledge as was observed in the classroom discourse fragments. Stereotypical knowledge reproduction patterns and question-answer patterns occur without seeming to make sense in connection with the text to be processed.
E. Andringa
/ Talking about literature in an institutional context
171
The discourse pattern even seems to replace the feeling of ‘ text sense’, because Barbara ends her commentary with the statement that she now ‘knows what he means, why it’s this way, like in a fairy tale’. In this way, routine patterns of dealing with a text may have a negative effect on understanding, as they seem to inhibit other, more fruitful strategies of text processing. From a short interview about reading interests and habits, it emerged that Barbara was not very fond of reading and that she preferred doing other things, It is not improbable that to people who don’t develop a private reading world, institutional literary knowledge remains a rather isolated domain. However, a classmate (Theodora), who was an enthusiastic reader, employed the same genre knowledge in dealing with the same story as Barbara: [Th. has already used the notion ‘fairy tale’ as being self-evident before] Th: Ah, oh, now I’m disappointed.. because, well, fairy tales shouldn’t end like that [. . .] because, actually, it’s a story, that arouses many expectations, we expect, after the first things have happened, we expect an interesting, an exciting action, and then, nothing happens.. generally speaking, when we read a story, there’s. or in a drama, there’s a certain schema that comes to a climax, and then somebody dies or becomes happy or.., but here, one thinks that something will happen and nothing comes [ . . . ] I don’t think the story is good, because, when you look upon it as a fairy tale, it should please children, and this would be absolutely disappointing..
The schema of the genre doesn’t disturb the process of understanding as dramatically as it did in the previous example. However, a certain rigidity in dealing with the story occurs. Here, the comparison to the schema - explicitly referred to as ‘schema’! - leads to a negative evaluation. Remarkable is again that the story the subjects were confronted with was no fairy tale; the narrator even introduced it as an anecdote. Such examples seem to confirm our assumption that a conflict may arise from the way pieces of literary knowledge are taught and the shifting, oscillating nature of this knowledge. Under the constraints of genera1 institutional patterns, concepts are approached in the same way as, for instance, categorial knowledge in biology or chemistry. They are treated as if they can be judged in the light of true-false decisions. What seems to be lacking is insight into the conventional nature of this kind of knowledge, into the possibility of deviations, innovations, the non-relevance of certain categories, borderlinecases, the play with readers’ expectations and the like. Even if we consider this to be a certain stage in the process of literary learning - in conceptual learning the knowledge of ‘prototypes’ mostly precedes the recognition of deviating cases (see Weinert and Waldmann 1988) - we might ask whether the effects of traditional mediation patterns in the case of literature don’t have narrowing effects contrary to the nature of literature.
172
E. Andringa
/ Talking about lilerarure in an institutional
context
References Andringa, Els. 1990. Verbal data on literary understanding. A proposal for protocol analysis on two levels. Poetics 19, 231-257. Ballmer, Th. and W. Brennenstuhl, 1981. Speech act classification. A study in the lexical analysis of English speech activity verbs. Berlin, Heidelberg. New York: Springer Verlag. Edwards. A.D. and V.J. Furlong, 1978. The language of teaching. Meaning in classroom interaction. London: Heinemann. Ehlich, Konrad and Jochen Rehbein, 1986. Muster und Institution. Untersuchungen zur schulischen Kommunikation. Tubingen: Gunter Narr Verlag. Fricke, Harald, 1977. Die Sprache der Literatunvissenschaft. Textanalytische und philosophische Untersuchungen. Miinchen: Beck Verlag. Grzesik, Jlirgen, 1988. Begriffe lemen und lehren. Psychologische Grundlagen: Operative Lerntheorie, Unterrichtsmethoden: Typische Phasen. Unterrichtspraxis: Kommentierte Unterrichtsprotokolle. Stuttgart: Klett. Labov. W. and D. Fanshel, 1977. Therapeutic discourse: Psychotherapy as conversation. New York: Academic press. Link, Jllrgen, 1983. Die myth&he Konvergenz Goethe-Schiller als diskurskonstitutives Prinzip deutscher Literaturgeschichtsschreibung im 19. Jahrhundert. In: B. Cerquiglini and H.U. Gumbrecht (eds.). Der Diskurs der Literatur-und Sprachhistotie. Wissenschaftsgeschichte als Innovationsvorgabe, 225-242. Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp. Livingston, Paisley, 1988. Literary knowledge. Humanistic inquiry and the philosophy of science. Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press. Pellegrini. A.D. and Lee Galda. 1990. The joint construction of stories by preschool children and an experimenter. In: B.K. B&ton and A.D. Pellegrini (eds.), Narrative thought and narrative language, 113-130. Hillsdale NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Mehan, Hugh, 1985. The structure of classroom discourse. In: T.A. van Dijk (ed.), Handbook of discourse analysis, Vol.3: Discourse and dialogue. 119-131. London: Academic Press. Slawinsky, J., 1975. Probleme der literaturwissenschaftlichen Terminologie. In: J. Slawinsky, Literatur als System und Prozess. Mlinchen: Nymphenburger Verlag. Weinert, Franz E. and Michael R. Waldmann, 1988. Wissensentwicklung und Wissenserwerb. In: Heinz Mandl and Hans Spada (eds.), Wissenspsychologie, 161-199. Mlnchen, Weinheim: Psychologie Verlags Union. Wieler, Petra, 1989. Sprachliches Handeln im Literaturunterricht als didaktisches Problem. Bern, Frankfurt a.M., New York, Paris: Lang. Wirrer, Jan, 1982. Learning to follow the fiction convention. Poetics 11. 371-391.
Poetics 20 (1991) 157-172 North-Holland
Talking about literature in an institutional context. An empirical approach Els Andringa *
In a process of literary socialization, children and young people learn to deal with literature in accordance with certain institutional constraints. In this article some empirical proof is given for the assumption that patterns of communication, which are characteristic of eductional settings in general, shape the structure of ‘literary knowledge’ and affect the strategies of handling literary texts. Analysis of two fragments from transcripts of classes on literature shows how processes of literary understanding get lost behind the surface structure of the stereotypical interaction between teacher and pupils, and how a confusing and deceptive picture of ‘literary knowledge’ comes to existence. Some evidence of negative effects of such teaching patterns on literary comprehension outside the school is given in the last section of this article.
1. The role of communication
about literature in dealing with literature
Dealing with literature involves globally three dimensions: It has a cognitive dimension, containing the aspects of coding and decoding linguistic and textual signs on the basis of different kinds of knowledge. It has an emotional dimension, containing the aspects of individual engagement, identification, affective response, and evaluation. It has a social dimension, containing the influences of social constraints on what conventionally is expected of literature, how literature should be dealt with and how it is discussed. These three dimensions continuously interact in the processes of literary production, reception, distribution and mediation. People’s dealing with literature is learnt in social settings by ways of communication about literature. During the process of literary socialization, which starts at a very early age, children not only learn to read and to understand stories, but they also get acquainted with means of expressing reactions to, and talking and reading about literature (see, for example, Pellegrini and Galda 1990). Further modes of participation in literary discourse are handed down during education at school, at home, and via the media. It is a process of learning, which continues throughout many years. * Author’s address: E. Andringa, Rijksuniversiteit Muntstraat 4, 3512 EV Utrecht, The Netherlands.
0304422X/91/$03.50
Utrecht,
8 1991 - Elsevier Science Publishers
Algemene
Literatuurwetenschap,
B.V. All rights reserved
158
E. Andringo
/ Talking ubour literature in an instinmonal
context
The way we learn to handle concepts and expressions in communication about literature is likely to regulate the way we look upon literature and the selections we make during processing and understanding; it might even become part of literary understanding. We have not only to do with the reception of literature and the effects literature is supposed to produce, but also with our own modelling reception and with the effects of our conventional modes of speaking and writing. Some connections between literary discourse and literary reception or experience have already been brought to light in theoretical and empirical studies, as the following examples may show. (a) Current ideas, concepts, and patterns of discourse trigger the modes of perception and guide the perspective on what is perceived and represented. In the literary system, a variety of views on how literature should be dealt with professionally has passed with the ages, all developing their own concepts and language apparatus. Structuralism, hermeneutics, psychoanalysis. new criticism, feminist criticism, deconstruction etc. have all coloured and shaped discourse, penetrating gradually from specialist into non-specialist language. Schemata of argumentation or categorization form rather stable scaffoldings for description and interpretation of literary phenomena. Jiirgen Link, for example, shows how the convention of placing Goethe and Schiller in a structure of bipolar unity served as an anchor-point for locating the historical position of earlier and later authors. This convention dominated the construction of German literary history for a long time, making it nearly impossible to look upon it from another angle (Link 1983). A current example is the development of modern feminist literary theory, which renders us sensitive to the lack or underrepresentation of female perspectives in a good deal of fiction, and writings about fiction, hardly noticed in previous days. Developments and new movements partly bring their own concepts, but they also use existing vocabulary in different meanings and adapt concepts from other disciplines. As a consequence, the meanings constantly shift along with changes in literary movements and theoretical developments (see for a description of this phenomenon Slawinsky 1975; Livingston 1988 discusses these and other phenomena from the angle of the status of theory formation in the literary realm). (b) Traditionally, a fusion between the object of discourse and discourse itself has seemed to be desirable in writings about literature. An empirical investigation into the language of literary scholars by Fricke (1977), for example, has shown that it contains far more literary phenomena such as metaphors and comparisons than other scientific language. Especially in traditional interpretations, critics try to adapt the language to the object. Approximation to literary qualities was and is obviously regarded as a quality of speaking and writing about literature. This convention, of course, is still
E. Andringa
/
Talking about literature in an institutional
context
159
another reason for the vagueness and arbitrariness of concepts pointed out in (a). (c) Participating in communication itself may become a dominant aim. The aim of text understanding and attempts to mediate the result to others is then replaced by the social sense of joining in with the stream of discourse, connecting one’s speech to the normative patterns of communication thereby respecting prevailing expectations. This effect increases in institutional settings, where participants are expected to produce spoken or written discourse in certain professional or educational roles (see, for instance, Wirrer 1982). Recently, Wieler (1989) has pointed out the danger of shifting away from the literary works themselves and from more personal or creative modes of understanding towards the production of institutionally accepted discourse. The main questions to be dealt with in this article are: (1) How does communication about literature take place, what kinds of patterns do occur, and is it possible to find and describe conventional structures that are characteristic of literary discourse? (2) Is it possible to find out in which respects patterns of literary mediation shape reception processes, literary experience, emotional response? What I intend to show here in the first place, is how certain well-known interactive patterns in educational settings organize the mediation and structure of literary knowledge. After this, I will give an example in which the effects of such a knowledge acquisition pattern become manifest in reception activity.
2. Teaching and learning to deal with literature 2. I. Material and procedure The material to be analysed consists of two small fragments from lessons about literature at school. The lessons were recorded and transcribed. The transcripts are analysed on two levels: the level of communicative activity and the level of mental activity related to the objects of communication. For the analysis of the communicative structure, a category system of speech acts was developed; for the analysis of mental operations a category system of text processing activities was used. The Speech Act System was inspired by and makes use of classifications and analyses developed in speech act theory (Ballmer and Brennenstuhl 1981, Labov and Fanshel 1977), but it was adapted to and specified in accordance with the material. Generally speaking, two groups of activities occurred most frequently: (i) Activities which are clearly interactive in the sense that they build a sequence of action and reaction in the speakers’ turns as in, for example, question-answer or
160
E. Andringa
/ Talking about literarure in an institutional
context
statement-objection patterns. (ii) Activities not directly evoked by the other speaker, which are, however, oriented toward the listener in order to convince or to make something clear. Such activities are, for example, explanations, descriptions or summaries. The Processing System uses classifications of text understanding and reception activities, which are developed in text processing models. However, they are more differentiated than the classification systems mostly applied to qualitative material, because they are not used for quantification, as is usual in a good deal of research employing thinking-out-loud procedures (see for an overview of the systems Andringa 1990). Both systems were not developed to be exhaustive in a theoretical sense, but to be useful analytical tools in explorative, qualitative analysis. Examples of classification will be given in the following analysis. 2.2. The first example The first example is a fragment from a transcript of classroom discourse on literature: the teacher [Tl and 10th grade highschool students [S] are debating a short story. The fragment is translated from German (from: Grzesik 1988 ‘).
[ . . . 1. Martin has just mentioned the fuble. You got to know the fable some time ago. What kind of idea do you have of a fable? 2. Sl: Well, firstly there are mostly animals in it, and secondly there’s normally a kind of moral 3. T: Hm, right. Martin [S2]? 4. S2: Character traits are transferred to animals. 5. T: Hm. Gerd [S3]? 1.
T:
[A short discussion about the animals occurring in the story under treatment and the kind of animals and their stereotypical character traits in fables takes place] 6. T:
Good. Perhaps we will find We have to be careful with kinds of texts, other genres, think of any? Martin [S2] 7. S2: I was just thinking of the Jesus used it too 8. T: Aha. Hm. Burkhard [S4] 9. 5%: Also fairytales, perhaps 10. T: Yes. Andrea [S5] 11. S5: Satire, perhaps?
out more, when we come to discuss some details. the notion of the fable here. Do you know other which you may compare with the fable? Can you Gkichnis [‘similarity’], it’s used by philosophers,
’ The transcription of the presented fragment is taken from Gtzesik’s book and translated into English. The transcription is idealized in the sense that no pauses, hesitations, intonation and the like are indicated. This means that it was not possible to make use of this kind of additional information, which sometimes is very useful (see the second example).
E. Andringa
12. T:
13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18.
s3: T: Sl: T: Sl: T:
/ Talking about literature in an institutional
context
161
Satire, yeah. but I believe that we lose sight of a certain, a certain kind of text. Ehm, the Gleichnis I’d like to take up again. There’s still another kind of text, which is rather similar to the fable and the Gleichnis. Gerd [S3]? Sagas? No, that’s not what I mean. Lyric Yes, lyric It also uses images. Well, I don’t think we’ve used this concept very much: the parable. There’s, for example, the most famous parable in German language, the parable of the ring from Lessing’s “Nathan der Weise”. And Kafka has written a lot of parables. Does somebody know the difference between Gleichnis and parable?
[The discussion
continues
comparing
and defining
the Gleichnis
and the fable]
In this fragment we can observe a classical pattern of classroom discourse as was established and described in a range of discourse studies (Edwards and Furlong 1978, Mehan 1985, Ehlich and Rehbein 1986 *): The teacher asking questions to which he himself knows the answers, evaluating the replies in the light of what he aims at and of what a better answer might be. The passage contains two strings of this pattern, in which one question leads to multiplication of the three-part-sequence Q(uestion)-R(eply)-E(valuation) in the turns l-6 and 6-18. The second string is divided into two sub-sequences, because the teacher tries to ‘reset’ the course of the replies. When the pupils still do not guess the information wanted by the teacher in the string IIB, he finally supplies it himself, concluding the string with a series of statements. Thereby the teacher fixes on a certain piece of information, without explaining, however, why some of the pupils’ replies are disregarded. As to the object of communication, we see how a process of knowledge activation is initiated by the teacher and how this knowledge is modelled in the order and manner of activation. In the first string, the knowledge domain of genre concepts is triggered by the invitation to retrieve the schema of the fable. This is followed by the procedure of defining this concept schema by means of feature attribution. After the pupils have summed up a range of features - no conclusion is given by the teacher - the teacher initiates the next string by the question about related concepts. Here, the procedure of organizing a larger knowledge domain by comparing related concepts one to another takes place or, presumably, should take place. Table 1 gives a more detailed representation of what is going on. The structure of the interactive procedures is represented in the left column, the
’ Ehlichand Rehbein(1986) analyse several patterns in educational discourse. They place such patterns in the context of larger discourse unities. One of the patterns consists of teachers’ questions and the kind of response these elicit. The authors work out different types and functions of teachers’ questions within the institutional context.
E. Andringa
162
/ Talking about lirerarure in an institutional context
Table 1 Two-level analysis of the transcript. SPEECH/INTERACTIVE
ACTIV1-l-l
MENTAL
ACTIVITY
[activation knowledge domain of genres] Activation genre schema gl
1. T takes up topic S2 Refers to shared knowledge schema: orientation Question [in order to reactivate/test schema] 1 1 Initiates activity of genre description
l
[Activates genre schema] Retrieves features genre: a. content feature b. functional feature
2. Sl Reply (I)
3. T evaluates reply Selects S2 to take next turn [Activates genre schema] Retrieves feature genre: c. relationship genre-reality
4. s2 Reply (2) ]...I 6. T Evaluation/closing Conclusion/statement
sequence of problem
Bridges back to text: no direct classification possible Reactivates related genre Question [in order to open schemata within the domain larger knowledge domain] of genre knowledge 1 1 Initiates activity of genre comparison
7. S2 Reply (1)
[Activates genre domain] Association genre g2 Feature: d. domains of application + associated name
8. T Evaluation Selects S4 9. S4 Reply (2)
Association genre g3 [basis of comparison: feature?]
10. T Minimal response Selects s5 11. SS Reply (3)
r
-
12. T [impl. neg. evaluation] ‘Reset’ by taking up 7 Statement [in order to narrow question down]
Association genre g4 [basis of comparison: feature?]
163
E. .4ndringa / Talking about literature in an mriturional context Table 1 (continued)
1III r
Association genre g5 [basis of comparison: feature?]
13. S3 Reply (4)
[...I
18. T [impl. neg. evaluation] Association genre g7 + associated knowledge: authors’ names
Reply Statements
.I
L +__-__ III
Question [referring back to 7 (g2) and l-6 (gl)]
example,
Specification common feature: (d) domain of application
1 1 Initiates activity of comparing two genres on the basis of feature of application domain
mental activity related to the object of discussion in the right column. Discrimination of the communicative activities is mainly based on the tumtaking pattern and on communicative signals such as particles. The mental activities are reconstructed from the word and sentence meanings. Certain mental processes such as the building of communicative intentions or the activation of knowledge are not expressed in verbal form; they have to be inferred from the course of the action-reaction patterns; they are placed in square brackets. Comparing the columns we can find out something about the way conventional literary knowledge is transmitted in the given setting. The two columns seem to converge at the beginnings of the strings, where the teacher activates a new series of mental activities by initiating a new interactive sequence. Referring to knowledge already supposed to be present, the teacher states in the first string (l-6) a specific genre concept, immediately continuing with a question to characterize this concept. In the replies (2 and 4) the pupils raise (a) a content feature (animals as actors), (b) a functional feature (moral), and (c) the characteristic of a certain relationship between fiction and reality, namely the transfer of character traits. Finally, the teacher closes the sequence by relating the concept label to the short story under treatment, but, simultaneously, he leaves open this topic by anticipating that it will be taken up again. Immediately after this, he drops the text under treatment and continues the topic of genre concepts, putting forward the next question. However, not only is a conclusion with respect to the genre of the short story lacking, but also a conclusion about the attempts to characterize the genre of the fable. The first Q-R-E-string remains dissociated from the context for the time being, and it is performed independently as if it has a sense in itself. As a consequence, no basis is provided for replies to the next question.
164
E. Andringa
/ Taalking about literature in an institutional
context
The second string again seems to remain unconnected with what has preceded: the replies given by the students are merely trial and error attempts to guess what the teacher wants to hear. The repeated particle ‘perhaps’ marks their uncertainty and their not-knowing what exactly to look for. As no basis for the comparison of the different genre concepts has been given, any text feature may lead to any related concept: length, for example (short prose) may select the response of fairy tale or saga, mode of narration (oral tradition) may select the saga, style (use of images) selects lyric, etc. In this way the question-reply pattern again appears to elicit a kind of arbitrary reproduction of genre labels. The underlying structure of concepts, related one to another by certain feature clusters, which the teacher probably has in mind, is not explicated and the relationship of different genre concepts is not motivated. At the moment the teacher terminates the Q-R-string by supplying the answer himself, he still does not give the basis for comparison, but provides some associated knowledge: a representative example indicated by a title and a representative author. However, most remarkable is that he takes up the genres gl and g2 (fable and Gleichnis), leaving out g7 (parable), the one he introduced himself immediately before. As far as this fragment goes, we may feel the teacher’s intention to structure the realm of genre concepts as a part of conventional literary knowledge on the basis of the following ingredients: genre concepts corresponding to clusters of text features (thematical, structural, functional, contextual etc.), concept labels, associated knowledge, and the mental activities of characterization and comparison. The students are partly acquainted with the ingredients, but they don’t have the required organizational structure in mind. As the feature which the teacher might think of as the basis for comparison has not been given at the end of the first sequence, the trial and error pattern in the second string is continued in spite of the ‘reset’ attempt. The students look for some feature that may serve as a basis for comparison or they simply try out the labels that come to mind. This second Q-R-E-string too, comes to lead an independent life, because it hasn’t anything to do with the original context, and the connection with the previous string has got lost as well. Grzesik comes to similar conclusions in his analysis of the fragment. In his book, a stage model of the acquisition of concepts is developed. His analytical aim is to show how different stages of knowing and handling concepts occur in educational settings. He signals in this example the failure of applying the conceptual knowledge to the text under treatment, and points at the reproduction of pieces of knowledge coming to lead a life of their own. In summary, the teacher’s questions suggest exact and correct answers representing a coherent and neatly arranged part of knowledge. The pupils’ replies, however, show the confusing complexity of the domain of genre knowledge. In continuing the Q-R-E-pattern, the link to the original context gets lost, the first question is followed by a conclusion only formally, however,
E. Andringa
/
Talking about literature in an institutional context
165
not in content, and many knowledge particles are not dealt with at all. The teacher seems to get caught in the interactive pattern of Q-R-E, thereby losing the thread of the concept structure he seemed to aim at. A discrepancy between discourse form and its content becomes visible: the traditional teaching pattern comes to dominate the content, it suggests a clear knowledge structure, whereas the result seems rather to be a fragmentary reproduction of knowledge particles. The second example may illustrate that this state of affairs is not exceptional in teaching literature. 2.3. The second example The second fragment has been translated from Dutch. 11th Grade secondary school pupils read a short story by a young Dutch authoress. The lesson is structured from the beginning by questions which the pupils had to prepare at home. The questions are based upon procedures of structural analysis. The fragment starts just after the time-structure of the story has been dealt with. The next question addresses the structure of space. The fragment is transcribed from a videotape; 3 some visual information is added in the transcript. Short pauses are marked by two or three dots.
1. T: 2. T: 3. Sl: 4. T:
Paul will tackle the question of space.. [interruption by telephone] Paul, space, which kinds of space play a role? It’s winter, and that’s stressed.. simply because it’s bare.. winter it is, well, winter is bare.. and generally speaking, winter is always associated with.. .
well, uhm, bare.. 6. class: death death, well, summer and spring is life, autumn is dying off, and winter.. 7. T: there’s still another space, which plays a role.. 8. s2: the house the house, excellent, which house? 9. T: where the curtains are closed, [inaud.] symbol.. 10. s2: 11. T: and that’s placed opposite the house, that means the empty house, and that’s opposite the house with those friends, who are having fun there, the notorious aprts-ski.. 12. class: soft chuckle 13. T: (beaming) isn’t it?. . . okay, next we’ll deal with fiction-non-fiction. Floris (looks around), where are you? 5. Sl:
’ 1 am grateful to Will van Peer and Fred Marsehall. who allowed me to make use of the videotapes they made of a series of literature lessons at different schools. Because this material was accessible in the raw form, it was possible to profit from some non-verbal indications, and to include information about hesitations, pauses etc.
166
E. Andringa / Talking about literature in an instirutional contexl
14. s3: 15. T: 16. S3: 17. T:
it’s a fictional story of course it is, but, I mean, can you say something more? (mutters, partly inaudibly) winterlandscape, small train.. yes, so there you have the winter landscape, there you have the small train.. well, d’you think these are fictional? 18. S3: (mutters, inaudibly) 19. T: yeah, but it’s logical that you,.. that I-character, what is she called? Vonne 20. s3: 21. T: and the authoress of the story? yeah, but you (inaudibly) [laughs] 22. s3: 23. T: [laughs] yeah, but doesn’t it have an autobiographical trait? perhaps, but there are surely other stories where the main character has the 24. S3: same name 25. T: Neoer theless, [leaning forward, gesticulates] neuer theless, it resembles a kind of anecdote, a story that she has experienced in reality, isn’t it? 26. S3: (mutters something inaudibly) 27. T: So there are, so there are,.. does it, actually, belong to the literary techniques? 28. S4: (inaudibly) 29. T: yes [unstressed] pupils write something down hence, there is one thing which is typical of, which is a literary trick, a 30. T: literary technique, that an author may use to construct a story.. . you won’t find it, for example, in a newspaper, and you would find it in a Margriet [Dutch women’s magazine] story only rarely. What is literary in this story? What makes it a literary story? shifting perspectives 31. s5: Excellent, shifting perspectives, very well, and I don’t mean this in a literary 32. T: evaluating sense, not in the sense of well made or something like that, but it is a typically literary technique to constantly shift the perspective, which you will only encounter in stories, in novels, but seldom or never anywhere else.. The next question follows: explanation of the title
Some situational constraints become rather manifest in this fragment: the teacher announces at the beginning of the lesson that they are under time pressure. In addition, the pupils don’t seem to have prepared their homework too well. This may account for the high speed, the sudden topic shifts, and the teacher’s dominant role. We can observe, for example, how a shift is made from the fictionality question to the genre question between the turns 18 and 25. Under the teacher’s strong guidance (I will not analyze his strategies in detail), a deviation from fictionality is stated. The teacher suggests an autobiographical feature, neglects the pupil’s objection (24) and puts forward, nearly by force, the genre notion of an anecdote. Striking, however, is the way he continues this topic in 27: he seems to refer back by ‘it’ to what has been said before; it remains, however, unclear what exactly he refers to: the suggestion of autobiographical narration? the use of a genre type? He suddenly switches
E. Andringa
/ Talking about literature in an institutional context
167
from the topic of fictionality to the topic of literariness and, although he seems to continue the first topic, stresses quite another point. The break is visible in turn 27: the first sentence is not finished, the second topic is suddenly introduced by a question. The teacher seems to be occupied by his new idea so strongly that he hardly notices the soft reply in 28 - he reacts with an unstressed ‘yes’ - and continues explaining his question. The previous topic of fictionality and genre has been dropped as quickly as it had been raised. Again we can observe how literary knowledge is transmitted in an apparent structure suggested by the interactive pattern. Again, and to a very extreme extent, it remains an unstructured quantity of scattered knowledge particles. It is, of course, not possible to base general conclusions about teaching literature on two small examples. Nevertheless, these examples are representative in some respects. Though they differ in style of teaching, they both show the constraints of the conventional teaching situation and some consequences for the specific knowledge to be mediated and applied. Although the analysis was critical in the sense that certain deficiencies are brought to light, it was not the intention to show that these fragments are proofs of failing teachers. They illustrate rather some fundamental problems in speaking about and in mediating literature. That this might affect the processes of text reception is what I want to show in the next example.
3. Effects of ‘literary learning’: Some evidence Not only is a domain of ‘factual’ knowledge handed down or filled in within the context of dealing with and talking about a story, but also knowledge of how to act upon a story-like text is passed on. The factual knowledge is directly linked up with the knowledge of how to use it in a literary setting (here: the teaching-and-learning-literature-setting). The strategies of genre-classification, the process of comparing different genre-concepts, and the process of comparing features of related concepts are implied in the pattern of transmission. The questions govern the way the pupils look at the text and spur them on to perform the required mental activities. In building up a taxonomy of text features, they are trained to deal with such questions. Do such activities really imply an act of understanding, do they really make sense? Or are they just a way of carrying on discourse conventions? The following fragment may shed some light upon the effects of the patterns shown in the other examples. The example comes from material collected by the method of Free Thinking Aloud. In this method subjects are asked to read a text, passage by passage, and after every passage to say aloud everything that comes to mind. The resulting protocols are a blend of retrospection, introspection, real ‘ thinking-aloud’ and re-thinking. The interviewer is allowed to give minimal response, to ask for explanation, and to challenge the subject slightly. After the
E. Andringa / Talking about literature in an institutional context
168
subject has read the whole text, a semi-structured interview on the whole text takes place, which should develop like a real discussion and should be as spontaneous as possible. This example is from a Free Thinking Aloud-protocol of Barbara, a highschool-student aged 18. The fragment has been translated from German. 4
B: That’s very peculiar (1). . _ I: Mm? (2) B: I don’t have .., well, it does not fit at all (3) in some way, well, I thought, the same happens again, like in a fairy tale the same always happens (4a). . . I: Hm? (5) B: that he doesn’t succeed either and returns home (4b), but [l SC],look, the story has to come to an end now (5a), because he has given up the girl to him (Sb), well, I actually don’t know why I should go on reading (6a) ._ for the story must be finished (6b). . . , only, there are some more pages (7). . . I: It doesn’t fit your idea of a fairy tale? (8) B: Yeah (9), however, I know from the introduction that it can’t be a real fairy tale (lo), . . . that’s odd (11) the next text passage: B: [laughs] (12) [2 SC]Now I don’t know at all, what I should do (13) because (14a), well, this I don’t understand at all (15), because, ehm, I thought that the story was finished (14b) and what’s coming now, I don’t know what comes now (16a), for, she’s dead, he’s alone, and the other doesn’t want to come back (16b) .., anyway, the whole case has broken up (17)..
At
B reads the last passage and then re-reads the beginning of the story B: Yes, now I know what he intended with the story (18a), it’s a whole (18b), it’s, well, I know what he means with the ending, why it’s this way, like in a fairy tale (18c),
it’s, only, it claims to be true (19X and it just doesn’t end like a fairy tale (20a), which can’t be realistic (20b). The protocol was segmented according to speech units marked by semanticsyntactic structures, pauses and connectors. We have to bear in mind that this protocol is distinct from the previous examples. The communicative setting and the communicative aim are different. Accordingly, the interviewer has another role than a teacher, his questions are no teacher’s questions, and the informant’s response is not meant to be evaluated in the light of being a right or wrong answer. This point was even explicitly stressed in the instruction to the subjects. Hence, the speech activity is less oriented toward interaction, the ’ Barbara
read an unknown short story by the famous German author Friedrich Schiller. The story appeared to have some archaic features not only in style, but also in content (moral impact, roles of male and female characters), that disturbed most readers. Nearly all of them experienced a kind of break with their expectations as to the plot development.
E. Andringa Table 2 Two-level
analysis
of Barbara’s
INTERACTIVE/SPEECH B gives evaluating statement (1)
/ Talking about literature in an institutional
context
protocol.
ACITVITV
PROCESSING ACIlVlTV emotive reaction (1)
B explains [I] (3-4a/b) statement (3) explanation + metastatement (4a/b)
[identifies genre] reconstructs reaction [l] (3-4a/b) expectation genre structure is not fulfilled (4a/b)
B gives concluding statement (5a) + explanation (5b) metastatement + argument (6a/b) counterargument (7)
infers the story has ended (5a) from narrative pattern (5b)
I refers back to topic + request for explanation B affirms inference I (9) counterargument (10) + metastatement (10) gives evaluating statement (11)
direct observation + hypothetical falsification [5] (7) [infers B has used genre schema] (8) [relates story to genre schema] [bridges to earlier part of the story] + infers contradiction (10) emotive reaction (11) emotive
metastatement of notunderstanding (13-16a) + explanation (14a/b)
metastatement of understanding (18a/b) +counterarg. (19) + counterarg. (20a) + counterarg. (20b)
169
reaction
(12)
expectation [4] is not fulfilled (14b) summarizing reconstruction story ending (16b) generalizing conclusion (17) comparison genre [affirm] (18b) [repetition] contradictions from 4 and 10 (19/20a/b)
pattern of speech is mainly selfinduced and selfregulated; it is less dependent on initiations and confirmations. We encounter a range of activities different from the earlier examples, both on the level of speech and on the level of mental activity. The activities are represented in table 2. In spite of its monologic form, this fragment, however, appears to contain a dialogical structure that shows some similarity to interactive discourse. The following pattern recurs in the left column: statements or metastatements are
170 Table 3 Argument
E. Andringa / Talking about lilerarure in on institutional conrext
structure
in Barbara’s
protocol.
(meta)statement --) [why (do you/I think so)?] --) explanation: because, /or.. . --1 evaluation counter-argument: how,ecer, but [conclusion: rhus. there/ore.. .]
Example: it does not fit expected fairytale peculiar (I), odd (11) story comes to an end
___
followed by an explanation, arguing the origin or cause of this (meta)statement. The explanation has the appearance of an answer to an implicit why- or why-do-you/I-think-so-question. The internal dialogue-structure is marked still more clearly by the counterarguments frequently following an explanation. It looks as if Barbara herself raises objections to her statements. Although this pattern occurs several times in a complete or incomplete form, it is not followed by the kind of conclusion normally expected in an argument. Formally, the sequence has the structure indicated in table 3. In the right column of table 2 we clearly recognize activities found in the previous examples. The basis of the whole process is once again the act of genre-classification: Barbara has associated the story with a fairy tale, and tries to find evidence for this assumption. However, the course of the story hardly matches the concept of a fairy tale. This seems to be the most important source of the understanding difficulties, which lead to emotive reactions of surprise and confusion. The paradox we can observe here is that the subject performs an act of classification and maintains the result, in sp‘ite of the fact that attempts to find corresponding features are not successful, and in spite of the fact that it apparently does not lead to better textual understanding. Comparing both columns we can again observe how a certain discourse pattern rules, perhaps even constitutes, the way of dealing with the text. It looks as if the Question-Reply pattern is transformed into a self-induced argument pattern circling round the questions: What kind of text is this, why, or why not? This informant is so strongly fixated on this pattern that it seems to be impossible in the given situation to leave the framework of the genre concept and to deal with the story in another way. The pattern of genre classification has become a kind of automatism in a schoolish Q-R-E form. It seems to have achieved a kind of sense-in-itself without contributing to text comprehension. Barbara’s response exactly reflects the kind of scattered knowledge as was observed in the classroom discourse fragments. Stereotypical knowledge reproduction patterns and question-answer patterns occur without seeming to make sense in connection with the text to be processed.
E. Andringa
/ Talking about literature in an institutional context
171
The discourse pattern even seems to replace the feeling of ‘ text sense’, because Barbara ends her commentary with the statement that she now ‘knows what he means, why it’s this way, like in a fairy tale’. In this way, routine patterns of dealing with a text may have a negative effect on understanding, as they seem to inhibit other, more fruitful strategies of text processing. From a short interview about reading interests and habits, it emerged that Barbara was not very fond of reading and that she preferred doing other things, It is not improbable that to people who don’t develop a private reading world, institutional literary knowledge remains a rather isolated domain. However, a classmate (Theodora), who was an enthusiastic reader, employed the same genre knowledge in dealing with the same story as Barbara: [Th. has already used the notion ‘fairy tale’ as being self-evident before] Th: Ah, oh, now I’m disappointed.. because, well, fairy tales shouldn’t end like that [. . .] because, actually, it’s a story, that arouses many expectations, we expect, after the first things have happened, we expect an interesting, an exciting action, and then, nothing happens.. generally speaking, when we read a story, there’s. or in a drama, there’s a certain schema that comes to a climax, and then somebody dies or becomes happy or.., but here, one thinks that something will happen and nothing comes [ . . . ] I don’t think the story is good, because, when you look upon it as a fairy tale, it should please children, and this would be absolutely disappointing..
The schema of the genre doesn’t disturb the process of understanding as dramatically as it did in the previous example. However, a certain rigidity in dealing with the story occurs. Here, the comparison to the schema - explicitly referred to as ‘schema’! - leads to a negative evaluation. Remarkable is again that the story the subjects were confronted with was no fairy tale; the narrator even introduced it as an anecdote. Such examples seem to confirm our assumption that a conflict may arise from the way pieces of literary knowledge are taught and the shifting, oscillating nature of this knowledge. Under the constraints of genera1 institutional patterns, concepts are approached in the same way as, for instance, categorial knowledge in biology or chemistry. They are treated as if they can be judged in the light of true-false decisions. What seems to be lacking is insight into the conventional nature of this kind of knowledge, into the possibility of deviations, innovations, the non-relevance of certain categories, borderlinecases, the play with readers’ expectations and the like. Even if we consider this to be a certain stage in the process of literary learning - in conceptual learning the knowledge of ‘prototypes’ mostly precedes the recognition of deviating cases (see Weinert and Waldmann 1988) - we might ask whether the effects of traditional mediation patterns in the case of literature don’t have narrowing effects contrary to the nature of literature.
172
E. Andringa
/ Talking about lilerarure in an institutional
context
References Andringa, Els. 1990. Verbal data on literary understanding. A proposal for protocol analysis on two levels. Poetics 19, 231-257. Ballmer, Th. and W. Brennenstuhl, 1981. Speech act classification. A study in the lexical analysis of English speech activity verbs. Berlin, Heidelberg. New York: Springer Verlag. Edwards. A.D. and V.J. Furlong, 1978. The language of teaching. Meaning in classroom interaction. London: Heinemann. Ehlich, Konrad and Jochen Rehbein, 1986. Muster und Institution. Untersuchungen zur schulischen Kommunikation. Tubingen: Gunter Narr Verlag. Fricke, Harald, 1977. Die Sprache der Literatunvissenschaft. Textanalytische und philosophische Untersuchungen. Miinchen: Beck Verlag. Grzesik, Jlirgen, 1988. Begriffe lemen und lehren. Psychologische Grundlagen: Operative Lerntheorie, Unterrichtsmethoden: Typische Phasen. Unterrichtspraxis: Kommentierte Unterrichtsprotokolle. Stuttgart: Klett. Labov. W. and D. Fanshel, 1977. Therapeutic discourse: Psychotherapy as conversation. New York: Academic press. Link, Jllrgen, 1983. Die myth&he Konvergenz Goethe-Schiller als diskurskonstitutives Prinzip deutscher Literaturgeschichtsschreibung im 19. Jahrhundert. In: B. Cerquiglini and H.U. Gumbrecht (eds.). Der Diskurs der Literatur-und Sprachhistotie. Wissenschaftsgeschichte als Innovationsvorgabe, 225-242. Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp. Livingston, Paisley, 1988. Literary knowledge. Humanistic inquiry and the philosophy of science. Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press. Pellegrini. A.D. and Lee Galda. 1990. The joint construction of stories by preschool children and an experimenter. In: B.K. B&ton and A.D. Pellegrini (eds.), Narrative thought and narrative language, 113-130. Hillsdale NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Mehan, Hugh, 1985. The structure of classroom discourse. In: T.A. van Dijk (ed.), Handbook of discourse analysis, Vol.3: Discourse and dialogue. 119-131. London: Academic Press. Slawinsky, J., 1975. Probleme der literaturwissenschaftlichen Terminologie. In: J. Slawinsky, Literatur als System und Prozess. Mlinchen: Nymphenburger Verlag. Weinert, Franz E. and Michael R. Waldmann, 1988. Wissensentwicklung und Wissenserwerb. In: Heinz Mandl and Hans Spada (eds.), Wissenspsychologie, 161-199. Mlnchen, Weinheim: Psychologie Verlags Union. Wieler, Petra, 1989. Sprachliches Handeln im Literaturunterricht als didaktisches Problem. Bern, Frankfurt a.M., New York, Paris: Lang. Wirrer, Jan, 1982. Learning to follow the fiction convention. Poetics 11. 371-391.