Spoken quotation and the oracy of literary study
Submitted by:
John Gordon
Abstract:
Abstract
Context and aims
This paper explores quotation use in L1 literary study during discussion of novels in junior and senior classrooms in the UK. It finds theories of quotation do not account for functions of spoken quotation in pedagogy, proposing it be understood differently from written quotation. Teachers of literature often guide students to written literary criticism, where quotations are central, without recognising the distinctive behaviour of spoken quotation relative to written quotations. The distinction is important: if better understood, it has potential to inform more effective literary pedagogy to bridge reading and writing. Oral use of quotations, an oracy distinctive to literary study, mediates the process and is fundamental to its success.
Aims:
i) articulate differing characteristics of spoken and written quotation according to their modality;
ii) demonstrate spoken quotation in action in transcript data;
iii) apply an adapted form of Conversation Analysis that recognises the study text as a seminal voice in literary classroom discourse;
iv) identify the distinctive behaviour of spoken quotation in pedagogical exposition and student response;
v) consider how literary pedagogy can be refined once the distinctiveness of spoken quotation is understood;
vi) propose a distinctive oracy of literary study with spoken quotation use at its heart.
Data
Data derives from fieldwork in four UK schools (two primary, two secondary). In each teachers shared and discussed novels with classes over a series of lessons; the researcher recorded three to six hours of teaching over four consecutive weeks, observing classes at least weekly across November and December 2016.
Methods
Bakhtin’s concepts of speech genre, utterance and heteroglossia inform a methodological innovation adapting Conversation Analysis to interpret transcripts drawn from two schools. The amended approach, called Quotation in Talk in Exposition (QuoTE) analysis, recognises the voice of the study text embedded in participants’ utterances. Isolating them in the transcript affords close analysis of the behaviour of quoted details, as their modality is transformed in the shift from page to speech.
Results
Spoken quotation is identified as the seminal resource in teachers’ third-turn exposition, realising pedagogical metanarration in literary teaching. It is key to the quality of students’ reading experience and competence in literary analysis. In transcript data, students’ use of spoken quotation displays apparently intuitive patterning and strategy, though opportunities to exploit this are often undeveloped by teachers. The meaning-potential of spoken quotation differs from written quotation, being highly situated and contingent. Arguments and positions held by speakers about study texts may be expressed in the spoken quotation alone, understood by participants as they interpret their intonation and function in the wider exchange.
Discussion
Heteroglot switching around spoken quotation constitutes a core resource in literary pedagogy, reflecting and arising from heteroglossia’s salience in the literary form of the novel. Teachers use spoken quotation as a device for pedagogical metanarration, foregrounding important phenomenon in the diegetic world of the story, dramatizing characters, demonstrating structural features of text and cueing students’ analytic orientation to it. How students respond to this is less clear, particularly how they might develop responses beyond the engagement these functions promote.