Davidson - A theory of reading

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 "Consequently, in our society theories accounting forreading activity also abound. Educational psychologists proclaim metacognitive theories, professors ofEnglish literature discuss reader-response theories, and elementary school teachers say, "I just do whatworks," which is, in itself, a theory of sorts.

Very cool:
"Theories of reading, whatever their bases, encompass, in some form, both a theory of language and a theory of representation, coupled with a theory of interpretation. A theory of language discusses thenature of language and thought and the relationship of these two elements to each other, positions themvis-a-vis the individual and the collective, and provides the basis from which connections can be drawnto ideas about text, reader, and author.

A theory of language discusses thenature of language and thought and the relationship of these two elements to each other, positions themvis-a-vis the individual and the collective, and provides the basis from which connections can be drawnto ideas about text, reader, and author.

A theory of representation provides a discussion of thecharacteristics of texts and textual features, how they came to be represented in particular fashions, andthe role of the author in this process.

Lastly, a theory of interpretation provides a rationale for theprocess, or mechanisms, by which meaning emerges for the reader from the text, readers respond totexts, and critics analyze texts.

I will compare Bakhtin's theory of reading to current reader-response theories and drawconclusions about the ways Bakhtin's thinking might direct us to solutions for the current theoreticaldilemmas we face in conceptualizing reading.
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"The purpose of "Discourse in the Novel" is to establish a comprehensive theory of the novel that buildsfrom socially grounded views of language. Bakhtin bases these views on dynamic dialogic principles thatlink subject and object, product and process, form and content, rather than arbitrarily dividing them.

"As he states in his introduction, the purpose of the essay is double hinged. First, he is concerned withestablishing a theory of the novel that will contrast with contemporary trends in literary criticism, ormodem stylistics as he terms them. Second, and inseparable from that goal, is a presentation of histheory of discourse, beginning with its social genesis and tracing the ways that discourse is representedin the novel and interpreted by the reader.

1. Modern stylistics - move from "individual voice" to acknowledging the many inputs that created language in the first place.

 "In the process, he demonstrates how critics, overly focused on the individual technicalaspects of form, forgot the social roots of the written work. He proposes to change this, presenting anew definition of the novel and its stylistic parts.The novel as a whole is a phenomenon multiform in style and variform in speech andvoice. In it the investigator is confronted with several heterogeneous stylistic unities,often located in different linguistic levels and subject to different stylistic controls. (p.261)These different stylistic voices include the author speaking directly, the different voices of everydayspeech, the informal discourse of writing as it occurs in daily life, formal forms of written discourse, andthe unique style the author lends to each character. This cacophony of voices, termed heteroglossia byBakhtin, is artistically organized within the novel by the author, so that the effect is both heterogeneous and unified.

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"Bakhtin, in contrast, insists upon new ways of conceptualizing the novel, ways that celebrateits unique abilities to absorb and present the richness and diversity of spoken and written language thatpermeate our culture on every level and in every encounter. The novel, as such, is a model of the waysthat language exists within our culture as a bounded but permeable form.
Dynamic! centripetal/ centrifugal
"Always emergent, the novelis caught between centripetal or unifying forces on the one hand and centrifugal or divisive forces onthe other hand--forces that squeeze it together, giving it shape, and forces that pull it apart.

"Bakhtin identifies these currents of thought that shape language as ideological, meaning they are historical, political, and cultural in nature. These contending forces "intersect in the utterance" (p. 272).Thus, as he does in 'The Problem with Speech Genres," Bakhtin demonstrates how the utterance is the meeting ground for the individual and the genre, the social forces of language as they exist in history and culture.The authentic environment of an utterance, the environment in which it lives and takesshape, is dialogized heteroglossia, anonymous and social as language, butsimultaneously concrete, filled with specific content and accented as an individualutterance, (p. 272)

move to linguistics - always - dynamics and relationships.

Bakhtin proclaims the complex and active ways from which weconstruct meaning from the word and its object.The word, directed toward its object, enters a dialogically agitated and tension-filledenvironment of alien words, value judgments and accents, weaves in and out of complex interrelationships, j and all this may crucially shape discourse, may leave a trace in all its semantic layers, may complicate its expression and influence its entire stylistic profile.(p. 276) Dialogism, the posing of one voice against another, and the tensions, resolutions, and reformations of language and ideas under these conditions are the mechanisms Bakhtin proposes as central to representation and to interpretation.
These are also highlysubjective acts, as participants work back and forth across the various conceptual horizons, orapperceptive backgrounds present.
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" Moreover, dialogism, because it exists in the very relationship between word and object, therefore exists in language and literature at every level, permeating every feature of expression. Again, as Bakhtin proclaims in "The Problem of Speech Genres," the dialogic relationship of the word to the object is situated in time and space. It looks backward and forward; to where it came from and to whom it will be addressed.

"Dialogism  sets up a new field of possibilities for the speaker or listener in each encounter. Seeking tounderstand, he or she mentally evaluates, sifts, compares, and settles the possibilities. Listening,speaking, understanding, as Bakhtin describes them, can never be passive acts.

"role of genres. "Literary language ...is itselfstratified and heteroglot in its aspect as an expressive system ... This stratification is accomplished firstof all by the specific organisms called genre" (p. 288). This stratification is both within genres andacross genres. It comes about in many ways, for instance, the differences among social classes,geographic regions, and professional groups stratify language.
From Bakthin:
 Thus at any given moment of its historical existence, language is heteroglot from topto bottom: it represents the co-existence of socio-ideological contradictions betweenthe present and the past, between differing epochs of the past, between differentsocio-ideological groups in the present, between tendencies, schools, circles and soforth, all given a bodily form. These "languages" of heteroglossia intersect each otherin a variety of ways forming new socially typifying "languages." (p. 291)
 stratification of language - lamination of language?

novel :
"Authors have many ways of introducing these countering linguistic voices, for instance, shifting from thecommon language to other kinds of language more or less distant, parodying the language of variousprofessions, or masking one language within another. This leads to a form Bakhtin labels a hybridconstruction:
an utterance that belongs, by its grammatical (syntactic) and compositional markers,to a single speaker, but that actually contains mixed within it two utterances, twospeech manners, two styles, two "languages," two semantic and axiological beliefsystems. (p. 304)Bakhtin discusses three major
ways novelists can create these forms: through manipulating the role ofthe author, the characters, and genres in the text.

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what the author of a novel does to capture this complexity

"According to Bakhtin, the novel developed historically along two distinct lines. The Sophistic line operates from a unitary perspective of language. Sophistic novels are highly stylized or conventionalizedand monologistic in character. Examples of this line are the novel of gallantry and the Baroque novel.The other line, exemplified by what we know as the modern novel, builds from dialogic principles of language and literature. It is here that the principles of heteroglossia blossom.


Very important!
"To Bakhtin, it would be useless to develop theories of reading without referenceto our assumptions about language. Theories about the artifacts of language, literacy, must be considered in historical perspective.
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"Canonization is the centripetal force, drawing us toward a unitary and fixed readingof the work. Re-accentuation, is the centrifugal force, causing us to recreate the meaning of the workin terms of our age and selves.

The problem with Speech Genres - focus on the utterance:
 "
 I. Statement of the Problem and Definition of Speech GenresBakhtin makes three critical points in the opening paragraph of this essay:
1. Language permeates all aspects of human activity, and is realized in the formof individual concrete utterances (oral and written) by participants in thevarious areas of human activity. does it?

2. Utterances are distinguished by the unification of "thematic content, style, andcompositional structure" and "the specific nature of the particular sphere ofcommunication" (p. 60).

3.93. "Each sphere in which language is used develops its own relatively stable typesof these utterances. These we may call speech genres" (p. 60). speech genres

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"Utterances and their types, that is, speech genres, are the drive belts from the historyof society to the history of language. There is not a single new phenomenon (phonetic,lexical, or grammatical) that can enter the system of language without having traversed the long and complicated path of generic-stylistic testing and modification. (p. 65)

Utterance - Bakhtin sees the social has been left out - what he adds to the conversation
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Very cool:
"1. Speakers establish utterance boundaries when they shift roles from speaker to listener. Utteranceboundaries, therefore, depend upon the activity or judgment of the speakers, unlike sentenceboundaries that depend upon linguistically established grammatical rules. An utterance might bea grunt, a word, a phrase, a sentence, several sentences, or more. Where it starts and where itstops depends upon where and when the speaker's speech turn shifts or dissolves--that point is theboundary of the utterance.

2. Boundaries have an inside and an outside. Speakers and listeners recognize the boundaries ofutterances because they recognize the unfolding of the speech plan of the other--its subject, edges,and completeness.

3. The speech plan is in large part recognizable because utterances exist in stable generic forms,otherwise known as speech genres. When one speaks, one has access to a range of these stableforms. The speaker selects speech genres based upon the nature of the conversation--where, when,and with whom it is being held--the content of the discussion, and the range of individual knowledgeabout genres, as well as the speaker's subjective concerns. The idea of stable generic formsdirecting our discussions may conjure frightening pictures of rigidity or conformity, but Bakhtin goesto great lengths to dispel this notion, emphasizing the diversity of speech genres depending uponsuch factors as the situation in which they take place, the social position of the speakers, andvarious interpersonal factors.

4. Bakhtin weaves together these various elements--the meaning of utterance, its relationship tospeakers, the idea of the speech plan, and the concept of speech genres--to claim the following:

We learn to cast our speech in generic forms and, when hearing other's speech, weguess its genre from the very first words; we predict a certain length ... and a certain compositional structure; we foresee the end; that is, from the very beginning we have a sense of the speech whole, which is only later differentiated during the speech process. If speech genres did not exist and we had not mastered them, if we had tooriginate them during the speech process and construct each utterance at will for thefirst time, speech communication would be almost impossible. (p. 79)

 "Bakhtin has now established a base from which to consider utterances in relationship to each other--their historical, expressive, and reflexive qualities. "Any utterance is a link in the chain of speech communion" (p. 84), he states, meaning that utterances are situated in time and space, and time and space exist for us as specific social and historical milieus.

VALUE in utterance
"Every utterance represents our subjective emotional evaluation of the content of the utterance. "There can be no such thing as an absolutely neutral utterance" (p. 84). We express our subjectivity through the numerous selections we make as we produce the utterance, drawing on our knowledge of speech genres. Utterances have value, and we make our selections based upon values we have assigned them through our experiences with words and genre."

also cultures linked to certain values..mutually reflective in speech!
From B - " Any concrete utterance is a link in the chain of speech communication of a particular* sphere. The very boundaries of the utterance are determined by a change of speechsubjects. Utterances are not indifferent to one another, and are not self-sufficient; theyare aware of and mutually reflect one another. These mutual reflections determinetheir character. Each utterance is filled with echoes and reverberations of other
11utterances to which it is related by the communality of the sphere of speech communication. (p. 91)

can also build forward
Theory of reading:

"For Bakthin, a theory of reading would necissarily be rooted in a theor of language as a social phenomenon that permeates all human society. Bakthin viewed language as inherently diverse, or heterglossic, structured by socially normative forms and yet simultaneously generative and open."
(language is ideologic -- embedded in a particular place - so is value laden)

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"Language and literacy, in Bakhtin's model, are in continuous motion through the process of dialogization. Dialogization, the ongoing struggle and tension between unifying (centripetal) and disunifying (centrifugal) linguistic forces, permeates every aspect of language, right down to the very word. Utterances are semi-bounded forms of a word or words, where social genre and the individual come together momentarily in a concrete articulation, coalescing as they are concurrently pulled invarious directions by the diverse social languages and individual values embedded within them."

dynamic -- depends on what the speakers/ listeners emphasize

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" The reader brings unique and socially conformed knowledge and skills to the work of deciphering the text. Just as the text is dialogized on all levels, the reader enters into a dialogic relationship with thelanguage of the text--the images of social language and the individual values of the characters.

 Moreover, the text is not an artifact that remains outside the reader, the contact zone between reader and text is rich and generative of meaning, and, in the interactive process of making meaning that occurs in that zone, the reader comes to internalize in some varying proportion the meanings and values of the text. These then become part of the reader's next presentations, and in that way reshape the meaning of the text. (Push?)

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reader response
1. meaning in text
2. meaning in those reading text
(is this in larger, bounded continuity - nature?)

Rosenblatt - reader response theory

" Deweybelieved that inquiry, the sustained investigation of a problematic question, was at the heart of theprocess of knowing. In this process of knowing or inquiry, subject and object exist in a transactive,dynamic relationship that evolves over time. The sum of this transaction is experience, and it is theincreasing enlargement of experience that Dewey sees as the goal of education.

practice with knowledge!

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Where transactional theory and dialogismmight differ is in the ways they perceive the subject and object in transaction. Dewey would see themin tighter linkage, perhaps, than would Bakhtin, who presents them as bound, but in a taut, suspendedstate, moving toward each other as they are pulled apart.
Rosenblatt:
The meaning is not to be found in the text, per se, she offers. Rather, the meaning emerges fromthe reading. The text is a stimulus:the text serves as a blueprint... the text regulates ... the "text" may be thought of asthe printed signs in their capacity to serve as symbols. (Rosenblatt, 1978, p. 11-12)The poem is the emergence of this meaning, that is, the transactive experience itself. "The poem, then,must be thought of as an event in time" (Rosenblatt, 1978, p. 12).

"Drawing upon Dewey, she emphasizes that interpretation is not an immediate occurrence--a "now youhave it now you don't" experience--rather, understanding is many layered. The reader moves back andforth, selecting, synthesizing, and rearranging. Tension, conflicts, or questions are inherent in thisprocess, but it is that inquiry into what is problematic that drives the process of knowing. This is closeto Bakhtin's position when he declares that literary style is based in diversity not unity.

"After reading Rosenblatt, I have the feeling I would not have wanted to seat her next to Bakhtinat a dinner party."

15Where I see a surprising congruence between their perspectives is in Rosenblatt's classification of aesthetic (explore work and oneself)/efferent (take away) reading and Bakhtin's attempt to define poetic (unitary) versus prose (dialogic)language. In taking this position, I think Bakhtin may have been building on hermeneutic perspectivesthat differentiate scientific from humanistic discourse, but, regardless, he is as ineffective in his attemptas she is in hers. Both arguments remain as tools to get the reader to see, rather than theories that can convince.
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Stanley Fish
Interpretive communities

move from new criticism (meaning in the text) to interpretive communities:
"Gradually, however,he abandoned that position to become an advocate for the concept of interpretive communities--stable discourse communities where shared norms about reading, writing, and the ways of constituting theproperties of both reign. In such a community, texts are seen as interpretations, emerging from the reading. Criticism itself is a product of interpretation, rather than the creator of such."
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"A particularly interesting contrast between Fish and Bakhtin arises in comparing Fish's idea ofinterpretive community to Bakhtin's conceptions of genre. Fish norms the population; Bakhtin normsthe texts. Fish places his attention on the definition of the group, and then from the group grows thesocially normed discourses. This is a kind of clone theory that leaves one wondering how languagechanges, how borrowing occurs, and what adaptations can be made. Bakhtin, on the other hand, seesindividuals and groups as both active and interactive, which means they create texts that fit genres andwork across genres, and each work they create is dialogized down to the very word. In other words,genres and social languages do exist but they are as ephemeral as interpretive communities themselves.

Swales  - discourse community

Unlike Fish or Bakhtin, however, he elects to emphasize the dichotomies that exist amongdiscourse communities that communicate primarily by oral means (sociolinguistic groupings) versus thosethat do so by written (socio-rhetorical groupings) means. The former he labels centripetal--"they tendto absorb people into that general fabric," and the latter, he labels centrifugal--"they tend to separatepeople into occupational or specialty-interest groups" (Swales, 1990, p. 24). The terms centripetal andcentrifugal sound definitely Bakhtinian, but the argument reads like Walter Ong's description of thegreat divide between orality and literacy (Ong, 1982).

Swales proposes six criteria for discourse communities.
1. A discourse community has a broadly agreed set of common public goals,
2. ... mechanisms of intercommunication among its members,
3. ... uses its participatory mechanisms primarily to provide information and feedback,
4. ... utilizes and hence possesses one or more genres in the communicative furtherance ofits aims,
5. ... has acquired some specific lexis,
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6. ...has a threshold level of members with a suitable degree of relevant content anddiscoursal expertise. (Swales, 1990, pp. 25-27)

varyin the number of discourse communities they belong to and hence in the number ofgenres they command.To deny the instrumental employment of discourse conventions is to threaten onecommon type of apprenticeship and to cast a hegemonical shadow over internationaleducation. (Swales, 1990, p. 30)In these passages, Swales produces echoes of Bakhtin's discussions of intertextuality and the ways thatwritten and speech forms overlap and combine through heteroglossia, character zones, and the othertechniques he considers.

Pratt
 issues of Dewey's "free marketplace" - "imagined community"

 Pratt calls for a linguistics of contact, one that will make the border/boundaries/places of contact wheredifferences arise the center of our thinking about language development.Imagine, then, a linguistics that decentered community, that placed at its centre theoperation of language across lines of social differentiation, a linguistics that focused onmodes and zones of contact between dominant and dominated groups, betweenpersons of different and multiple identities, speakers of different languages, thatfocused on how such speakers constitute each other relationally and in difference, howthey enact differences in language. (Pratt, 1987, p. 60) - linguistics of contact

Full circle!