Frictions - A study of the importance of obstacles and resistance in conversations about literature
Submitted by:
Margrethe Sonneland
Abstract:
This study is part of a multiple case study of literature work in lower secondary school, where three classes are invited to talk about texts – presented as meaningful food for thought issues – as disciplinary problems. The study in its entirety includes four attempts – four cases – where the goal is to gain knowledge about what happens when students are invited to find out of demanding literary texts on their own. The first study found that the students appreciated working with disciplinary problems on their own – that both the task and the text had appeal and created affinity spaces and thus student engagement. The second study found, through a description of intensity and analysis of students' discursive valuation mechanisms, variations in students’ engagement. In this study it is investigated, based on the same text encounters, what it is with these texts that seem to engage students. The goal is to gain knowledge of the texts significance for student’s engagement in conversations about literature in lower secondary school, within the framework of open, inviting instructions.
In the study, 8A talks about «Brønnen» (Jacobsen, 2001), 9B talks about «Foran loven» (Kafka, 2000), 9D talks about «Løp for livet» (Jacobsen, 2001) and 9A talks about «Små ting» (Carver, 2004). «Brønnen» changes perspective, alternates between different time periods and omits much of the story that binds the events together. The same features are found in the text «Løp for livet». «Foran loven » offers massive openness and unpredictability, thus making a number of interpretations possible. The text «Små ting» can be regarded as a dark grown-up drama, where the outcome and cause of the dispute has several possible interpretations.
These conversations are seen as discursive universes – as wholes – where the texts are participants. From this perspective where the texts are considered participants in the conversations, it is examined how the students’ utterances are relating to the texts’. The close reading of the conversations is based on dialogical discourse analysis (Skaftun, 2009), with particular interest to which intentionality the voices represents (Bakhtin, 1984). The analysis show that when the students’ engagement is expressed, the texts function as centrifugal forces and the students’ narrative desire (Brooks, 1984; Miller, 1998) is activated. Findings indicate that literary texts that activate readers' narrative desire create potent spaces for hermeneutic negotiation. The didactic implications of the findings are that texts that resist simple interpretations and solutions, generate a new textual space that gives the students valuable experience with hermeneutic friction.
Literature
Bakhtin, M. (1984). Problems of Dostoevsky’s Poetics. (C. Emerson, Ed.). Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Brooks, P. (1984). Reading For The Plot. Design and Intention in Narrative. London: Harvard University Press.
Carver, R. (2004). Små ting. In Hvem har ligget i denne sengen? Oslo: Gyldendal Norsk Forlag AS.
Jacobsen, R. (2001). Fugler og soldater: noveller. Oslo: Cappelen.
Kafka, F. (2000). Foran loven. In Prosessen. Oslo: Gyldendal Norsk Forlag AS.
Miller, J. H. (1998). Reading Narrative. The University of Oklahoma Press, Norman.
Skaftun, A. (2009). Litteraturens nytteverdi. Fagbokforlaget.