Page - 223 - in Über Bücher reden - Literaturrezeption in Lesegemeinschaften

© 2021 V&R unipress, Brill Deutschland GmbH ISBN Print: 9783847113232 – ISBN E-Lib: 9783737013239 As James Procter and others have suggested, “the doing of reading can be understood as a distinctive set of practices that are carried out individually, collectively and discursively.”15While focus groups are always a contrived sit- uation, they are, Iwould contend, a helpful tool for research into reading as a collectiveenterprise. Inparticular, the interactiveanddialogicprocessesof focus group talk enable us as researchers to observe16, inMyers’words, “howpartic- ipantsorienttotopicsandmanagedisagreement.”17Inotherwords,focusgroups offerone forumwithinwhichwecansee readers ‘doreading’ together,whether that isbydiscussingtheir interpretationsofaparticularbook,orbydebatingthe value of reading events. By enabling people to co-construct descriptions and analyses inrelationtoeachother,wealsowitnessaperformanceof readingasa socially situatedandsharedpractice.Asresearchers,DeNelandIwerealsopart of the process: we were within the group dynamic and involved in the ‘per- formance’ that ispartof anyverbal articulation inanalwaysmediated research situation.Our taskwas tobeanattentive audience, to listen for the stories that people tell, and for the stories within the stories that readers tell researchers. Thinkingaboutthestorieswehearandthestoriesthatwetellaboutourresearch, bringsme toanother research storyandadatasetof readers’ stories. ReadingLives:Buildingasamethod for reader research Building the web-based app Reading Lives was a method of over-coming a problemof interpretationaswell as ameansof extendingan investigation into thevaluethatadultreadersascribetoreading.Theproblemof interpretationwas my challenge. As part of the Beyond the Book project, we had run an online questionnaireandhadcollectedover3,000 responses tooneofouropen-ended questions:“Whatrolehasreadingplayed inyour life? (Writeupto250words).” Ourintentionwastocategorisetheseresponsessothatwecouldanalysethemas partofourquantitativedata.However, Irebelledagainst thismethod:theideaof assigningone categoryor theme to each response violatedmynotionof anar- rativeresponseasacomplexexpressionofareader’s reflectionontheir reading life. My literary studies training framedmy understanding of the responses. WhenI lookedat them, Ididnot seedata; I sawnarratives.Tohercredit,DeNel 15 Benwell et al. 2012,p. 53. 16 We have also adapted the Story Circlesmethod toworkwith readers. Story Circles retain aspectsof thesocialprocessofreaders ‘doingreading’ togetherbutthemethoddecentresthe researchersfrommeaning-makingwhileattemptingtoencourageawiderrangeofresponses toandabout readingexperiences, seeFuller/RehbergSedo2019a. 17 Myers1998cited inRoulston2006, p. 523. “It’snotonmymap!”: A JourneyThroughMethods in theCompanyofReaders 223 Open-Access-Publikation im Sinne der CC-Lizenz BY 4.0