There is a growing consensus in our field that reading should be thought of as a constructive rather than as a receptive process: that "meaning" does not exist in a text but in readers and the representations they build.
It is complemented by work in rhetoric which argues that reading is also a discourse act. That is, when readers construct meaning, they do so in the context of a discourse situation, which includes the writer of the original text, other readers, the rhetorical context for reading, and the history of the discourse.
We would like to help extend this constructive, rhetorical view of reading, which we share with others in the field, by raising two questions.
The first is, how does this constructive process play itself out in the actual, thinking process of reading? One of the ways readers tried to make meaning of the text was a strategy we called "rhetorical reading," an active attempt at constructing a rhetorical context for the text as a way of making sense of it And the second is, are all readers really aware of or in control of the discourse act which current theories describe? In the study we describe below, we looked at readers trying to understand a complex college-level text and observed a process that was constructive in a quite literal sense of the term.
Some of the recent work on reading and cognition gives us a good starting point for our discussion since it helps describe what makes the reading process so complex and helps explain how people can construct vastly different interpretations of the same text.
lest the "constructive" metaphor makes this process sound tidy, rational, and fully conscious, we should emphasize that it may in fact be rapid, unexamined, and even inexpressible. The private mental representation that a reader constructs has many facets: it is likely to include a representation of propositional or content information, a representation of the structure-either conventional or unique-of that information, and a representation of how the parts of the text function. In addition, the reader's representation may include beliefs about the subject matter, about the author and his or her credibility, and about the reader's own intentions in reading. In short, readers construct meaning by building multifaceted, interwoven representations of knowledge.
Jessica deLeon
ReplyDeleteKaren Perez
There is a growing consensus in our field that reading should be thought of as a constructive rather than as a receptive process: that "meaning" does not exist in a text but in readers and the representations they build.
It is complemented by work in rhetoric which argues that reading is also a discourse act.
That is, when readers construct meaning, they do so in the context of a discourse situation, which includes the writer of the original text, other readers, the rhetorical context for reading, and the history of the discourse.
We would like to help extend this constructive, rhetorical view of reading, which we share with others in the field, by raising two questions.
The first is, how does this constructive process play itself out in the actual, thinking process of reading?
One of the ways readers tried to make meaning of the text was a strategy we called "rhetorical reading," an active attempt at constructing a rhetorical context for the text as a way of making sense of it
And the second is, are all readers really aware of or in control of the discourse act which current theories describe?
In the study we describe below, we looked at readers trying to understand a complex college-level text and observed a process that was constructive in a quite literal sense of the term.
Some of the recent work on reading and cognition gives us a good starting point for our discussion since it helps describe what makes the reading process so complex and helps explain how people can construct vastly different interpretations of the same text.
lest the "constructive" metaphor makes this process sound tidy, rational, and fully conscious, we should emphasize that it may in fact be rapid, unexamined, and even inexpressible.
The private mental representation that a reader constructs has many facets: it is likely to include a representation of propositional or content information, a representation of the structure-either conventional or unique-of that information, and a representation of how the parts of the text function.
In addition, the reader's representation may include beliefs about the subject matter, about the author and his or her credibility, and about the reader's own intentions in reading.
In short, readers construct meaning by building multifaceted, interwoven representations of knowledge.