Reading readers: An examination of the aesthetic reading events of four experienced readers of narrative fiction reading self-selected novels.

Abstract

This investigation focused on (1) transactions between the readers and the novels they had chosen, (2) the readers' purposes and processes, (3) and the contexts, experiential and socio-cultural, that influence these readers in their construction of meaning. The questions guiding this study included: (1) how do participants make meaning while reading narrative fiction, (2) in what ways do blueprint texts of narrative fiction influence meaning making, (3) in what ways do personal experiences influence meaning making, and (4) in what ways do socio-cultural issues influence meaning making.

In this study, experienced readers of narrative fiction are examined as they read for primarily aesthetic purposes (e.g., for pleasure). This study investigated how four experienced readers read and created meaning with self-selected novels. Think-aloud protocols of participants reading selections from novels were the primary data source; ethnographic and stimulated recall interviews with participating readers supplemented the concurrent protocol data.

In sum, this study offers an authentic and thorough examination of the act of reading novels. This study concludes with a discussion of implications/suggestions for future research.

Data from this study suggest that readers made meaning primarily by investing themselves in the reading event, incorporating their own experiences and their cultural luggage into the milieu of the reading transactions studied. The role of blueprint texts was more a point of departure for connecting to other texts as well as a somewhat amorphous sketch providing grounding for the reader. Reading and talking about experiences evoked through reading transactions served to mediate these readers thinking about their own lives. Reading for these readers served as a mediator in their social lives, a facilitator to their maintenance of valued relationships.

In short, these readers had networks, formal or informal systems of friends, relatives or colleagues with whom they spoke about their transactions. Readers in this study mediated their places in their worlds through their reading. These four readers sustained their participation in worlds larger than the one they know as their own realities; that is, through their reading and transactions of meaning, these readers maintained their freedom and were empowered.