ABSTRACT
This chapter is the first of two to offer a sociocultural perspective on reading group discourse. While Chapter 2 took a broadly cognitive perspective, focusing on how textual features can facilitate particular interpretations and give rise to certain ways of talking about a literary text, the following two chapters develop a sociocultural account of talk in reading groups. Discussing the possibility of sociocultural approaches to literacy, Gee (2000) stresses the need for researchers to be aware of the contextual and situated nature of discourse; he argues that reading should be seen in terms of ‘many different’ practices (2000: 204). Central to a sociocultural perspective on reading group discourse is an emphasis on context: on literary reading and talk about books, as situated or contextualised activities. A related emphasis is on specificity and differentiation: a focus on how these readers, in this time and place, construct particular interpretations of a literary text. This is not to deny areas of interpretative commonality between readers such as those discussed in Chapter 2, but researchers taking a sociocultural stance would be likely to consider these in relation to social/cultural similarities between readers—the common experiences and values they bring with them to their reading—rather than emphasising the fact that they are all reading ‘the same text’. Analyses of reading group discourse illustrate the ways in which interpretations may also vary across different readers or for the same readers on different occasions. A third linked emphasis is on processes of interpretation: the intricate detail through which literary readings are constructed between readers sequentially and over time, and how such joint literary activity is embedded in concomitant social and interpersonal activity.
