WHITELEY, Sara and PEPLOW, David (2020). Interpreting real and fictional worlds in interaction: A socio-cognitive approach to reading group talk. Text & Talk.
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Peplow-InterpretingRealFictional(VoR).pdf - Published Version
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Peplow-InterpretingRealFictional(VoR).pdf - Published Version
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Abstract
This paper analyses how representations of real life and fictional worlds are combined and
differentiated in the talk produced in literary reading groups. We adopt a socio-cognitive
approach to reading group interaction, which combines discourse analysis and Text World
Theory to examine the social and cognitive processes enacted in examples of such talk. Text
World Theory is a cognitive linguistic discourse analysis framework which examines the
mental spaces (“worlds”) cued by language-in-use and the ontological relations between
those worlds. This combined framework is applied to four extracts of reading group talk and
facilitates the discussion of the structural, referential and representational aspects of the
interaction. Our analysis considers the insights which reading group talk provides into the
complex relationships between text and talk. We argue that ontological shifting in reading
group talk performs various functions, such as claiming expertise, doing humour and play,
and mitigating face-threatening disagreement. Talking about texts allows people these
options for shifting between representations of real life and fictional worlds and this may go
some way towards accounting for the popularity of such groups in contemporary culture.
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