Part of
Experiencing Fictional WorldsEdited by Benedict Neurohr and Lizzie Stewart-Shaw
[Linguistic Approaches to Literature 32] 2019
► pp. 199–218
Edited by Benedict Neurohr and Lizzie Stewart-Shaw
[Linguistic Approaches to Literature 32] 2019
► pp. 199–218
Chapter 11Sharing fiction
A text-world approach to storytime
In this chapter, I explore the pre-adult reading experience and assess what pre-school literary interaction can tell us about later adult literary cognition and the subjective experience of reading fiction. The cognitive-linguistic framework Text World Theory is applied to storytime discourse in order to examine the complexities of early reading practices. Throughout this chapter, I advocate an empirical approach to the examination of the pre-school reading experience and the discussion centres on data collected from real readers: specifically, reader dyads made up of a pre-school child aged between two and four years old and a parent, who regularly read a picture-book story together at home. The analysis presented in this chapter focuses on the storytime discourse of one of my adult–child pair participants, and looks specifically at the role of “interactive interpretation” and pictures on the pre-schooler’s literary experience. Overall, I argue that participants work together during storytime to negotiate meaning and assimilate their independent text-worlds for a coherent literary experience.
Keywords: Text World Theory, pre-school reading, picture-books, ontology, ethnography
Article outline
- 11.1Introduction
- 11.1.1Pre-school reading practices
- 11.1.2An empirical approach
- 11.2Sharing fiction: The storytime discourse-world
- 11.2.1Real readers: William, Rosie and Matthew
- 11.2.2Interactive interpretation: Guiding talk and text-worlds
- 11.2.3An example: Understanding crying monsters
- 11.3Pictures: Direct perception and access to text-worlds
- 11.4Conclusion: A shared, interactive negotiation
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Notes -
References
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