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An Ideological Model of Reading |
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Kathleen McCormick, Gary Waller and Linda Flower diagram the reader's encounter with a text in their textbook, Reading Texts: Reading, Responding, Writing (Lexington, Mass: Heath, 1987). They diagram the reader interacting with a text, not as a flow chart showing schemata and feedback mechanisms, but as a dynamic "Interface" between two similarly constructed entities--you and the text. You notice that their diagram (below) is symetrical and gives identical elements to both contributers to the meaning making process--the reader and the text. (The Author is implied, though not present here in the way the "addresser" is in the Jacobson model or the "sender" is in the Shannon/Weaver model.) This seems more accurate in some ways, for it is in the nature of communicating through texts that the author need not be present for the text to be read. Only you and the text are "in the room" so to speak. So this diagram seems more focused on the reader's activity of making meaning with texts. The Reader's Half McCormick, Waller and Flower speak of both the reader and the text bringing similar things to the situation. If we focus on the top half of the diagram first, we can see they break down the Reader's contribution to elements that flow from what they term Ideology. They define ideology as "the shared though very diverse beliefs, assumptions, habits, and practices of a particular society" (15). These are like what Chandler calls schemata. The Active Reader. <http://www.aber.ac.uk/media/Modules/ED10510/active.html > Remember, he discusses schemata in terms of cultural frames, gender and knowledge. McCormick, Waller and Flower make
the point that these shared things are not entirely conscious. So does
Chandler. They write: |
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While we may understand that, we are less likely to comfortably see these as driving our acts of interpretation. ( John Lyle, another literature teacher on the Web, also offers an explanation of Ideology for his literature students which may be useful to you now. Ideology: A Brief Guide <http://www.brocku.ca/english/jlye/ideology.html>) One crucial difference between schemata and ideology would seem to be deas of power and control that are more directly described by theories of ideology. General ideologies can conflict. We cannot assume that ideology is unified or consistent. Some ideologies might be said to explicitly dominate while others are merely tolerated or even ignored. In fact one ideology of a society may be the belief that conflict in primary matters such as how children should be reared or how couples should live together is natural and to be expected. Some societies (our own) believe that for every orthodox behavior (Orthodox positions are ones that match the dominant general ideologies), there will arise heterodoxical positions that oppose it, and therefore, that it is even "natural" for entire age groups or sectors, such as teens or minorities to "rebel," generally. Americans also seem to possess the ideology that the individual person selects among ideologies or can even remain apart from them and be always essentially "different."
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Literary Ideology According to these authors, one sector of the general ideology is the culture's literary ideology: this is "the particular assumptions and practices each society has in relation to literature" (18). They believe that societies differ in the way they think about and practice literature. In a series of questions they ask us to consider:
McCormick, Waller and Flowers stress that these are not simply matters of individual opinions or taste. Societies answer these questions differently. They are obviously not the only questions one could ask either. If you were to research the literary ideology of your community, how would you go about it? You might look to see if the schools taught literature and what literature they taught and to whom. You might look at the libraries, assuming there were libraries in your community. (That itself is an indicator of literary ideology.) What sorts of books would they contain and which ones were most used? You might look at buying habits at newstands and bookstores. What sorts of reading and writing practices are valued and how? Is everyone expected to write literature or only a few? It is part of the literary ideology to view some works as literature while other works are not; to view some literature as high art while the rest is not; to rank types of literature as more literary than others. For some, poetry still ranks supreme over fiction and drama. What does your community believe is true and valuable about literature? That is its literary ideology. The fact that literature classes, reading groups, web sites, bookstores exist at all says something about our literary ideology as a national community. But all of this so far has involved generalizations about groups or communities. Reader's Repertoire The word repertoire, on the other hand, is used to indicate how ideology is focused and refracted through individuals. Like looking through a kalidoscope, as you turn it, the same bits of glass form different patterns, the aura of color changes. Each person is a rainbow of these ideologies, both general and literary. No two people have exactly the same look, though many of us are remarkably similar. This is the way in which individuality enters this model. We acquire our idiosyncratic mix of common ideologies through all those environmental, parental, social, educational experiences and lessons which shape and educate us. What have we learned in general and specifically about literature? What do we bring to the learning from past experiences and assumptions? These are the many arrows in the diagram which move from us toward the text in our reading efforts. These are the "schamata" we are prepared to employ. For example, everything you have ever read before is part of your literary repertoire. So is everything you learned in school about literature. If you have read fifty novels, then you will read the fifty first one differently from the person who has read only one novel. If, perhaps, you are married and believe strongly in the marriage bond as a sacred union, you are no doubt not alone in this belief and it will be part of your general ideological repertoire as you read literature that contains images of marriage. But that may make you different from most others in the course. Remember, General and Literary Ideologies are characterisitics of large groups. When any individual holds and expresses them, they are called General or Literary Repertoires. Even though an Ideology may be common, the persons in a group may not share it; they may have different ideological repertoires. Our reading repertoire is made up of our participation in both general and literary ideologies as well as our own experiences and our reflections on them. This is why different people read the same text in different ways. It is also why our successive readings of the same text differ. As we grow and change so do our repertoires. But the weight of the "general" in us is also why we tend to converge in the way we see meaning in texts. The Text's Half Texts emerge from the general and literary ideologies of their cultures and the individual repertoires of their authors. As writers write they too deploy the general and literary ideologies of their time through the general and literary repertoires they uniquely realize. Obviously, since they and the texts they create are as different from us as the people we know, separated often from us not only by culture but by time, we cannot expect the reader's and writer's ideologies, repertoires (or schemata) to overlap exactly. Thus the arrows sent toward one another in the above diagram often miss each other. No wonder we don't "get" everything we read! A very strange text in a forgotten language may not only be unreadable, but unrecognizable as a text at all. In the history of text we need only think of the Rosetta stone and how it taught us to read Egyptian hieroglyphs, or the tremendous struggle to decipher the Mayan hieroglyphs to see the efforts needed to bring a culture's literary repertoire into our world. What should be the implications of this for us and our reading strategies? We should not try to be active readers: we should recognize that we always are already. We want
One goal of this website is to suggest a process for reading literature that encourages you to become more aware of how you construct meanings. |
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This journal activity asks you to respond to the idea that responses to literature are influenced by ideology. Listen to this 6 minute report from National Public Radio to hear various comments on what is taught in High School Literature and to whom. Listen for the various ideologies in action. What are your perceptions of what beliefs or values (general ideologies) shaped what your high school teachers assigned you to read. If this is not appropriate, imagine any situation where an adult or supervisor attempted to shape your reading habits or experiences. What ideologies were operating? Ideology of Banning books After investigating these websites, write a journal entry on what books (or anything else) should ever be banned and under what circumstances. This question will get you to reflect on what ideologies might be at work in your own mind.
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Shaping
Ideologies: High School Literature