Ways of Reading Third Edition - Martin Montgomery, Alan Durant, Nigel Fabb, Tom Furniss, Sara Mills 2007

Introduction

Debates about the nature and purpose of English Studies have been commonplace since the 1960s and have led to important advances in our ways of understanding the subject. These debates have often been conducted in terms of theoretical critique and analysis; but, alongside such critique, and in the wake of it, there is an important need for materials that can help translate theoretical and analytic insights into practical methods of study, especially for students in the earlier stages of their work. Ways of Reading is designed to provide such materials.

Our perspective in Ways of Reading is one that places less emphasis on Literature as such and greater emphasis on exploring relationships between literary and other types of text. Examples in this book will be taken from the fields of journalism and advertising, film and television, as well as from the field of Literature as traditionally defined. Ways of Reading, then, explores non- literary as well as literary texts, at the same time and in relation to each other. In this respect, our use of the term ’text’ may be sometimes puzzling. For one thing, we use it not in the familiar sense of ’set text’ - one of the canon of great books. Instead we use it more abstractly to refer to the trace or record of a communicative event, an event that may be performed in words but that may equally take place in images or in a combination of words and images. Therefore, not only do examples discussed in this book come from everyday life as well as from literature, some of them also include a significant visual component.

Important changes of critical emphasis follow from broadening the range of texts that we examine. Although the texts that we use for illustration and discussion tend broadly to be playful or persuasive in character, we do not focus particularly on questions of relative value, or on issues of tradition or influence. We focus instead on what might be called the rhetorical organization of texts - or how they work to create meanings and produce recognizable effects by means of identifiable techniques, each of which can be described, analysed and studied. The ability to identify and recognize modes of patterning and rhetorical organization in text is part and parcel for us of ways of reading.

To this end, the book is composed in terms of discrete units, each of which aims at establishing a technique of analysis and interpretation that should prove useful in reading texts, whether they are literary or non-literary, verbal or visual. Each unit not only introduces a concept or technique relevant to critical reading; it is also designed to give crucial practice in its use, by culminating in a concrete activity. These activities at the end of each unit are thus as important as the exposition itself, providing simultaneously a test of the concept’s usefulness, and also scope for the reader to extend for him- or herself, in a practical fashion, competence in its application.

Although the units are devoted to discrete topics, they may also be seen as working collectively to furnish tools for use in interpretation. As such, they provide a compendium of critical and analytic strategies to enable critical reading. Critical reading, as we envisage it, examines how texts make sense, what kinds of sense they make, and why they make sense in one way rather another. This is important because - we believe - the rhetoric of texts contributes to the creation and circulation of meanings in society, to the point that we understand the world and our place within it through the texts that we make and interpret. Hence our concern in Ways of Reading to relate readings of the text to readings of the world around the reader.

The book is loosely organized into six main sections. Section 1 considers basic techniques and problem-solving, and deals with fundamental starting points for studying text. Section 2 presents a broad picture of the dimensions along which language may vary, including attention to issues of historical change, gender and social position. The units that comprise this second section thus help us to see the range of variation that provides the linguistic backdrop for the particular features and strategies of a specific text. Section 3 considers modes of textual practice, including figurative language, crucial to the production of meaning whether directly or indirectly, by metaphor and irony, or by juxtaposition and allusion. It also explores the respective roles of the author and the reader in the process of creating and constraining meaning. Section 4 focuses on the sound patterning and grammar of poetic texts, including ways in which such texts may both achieve an extra layer of patterning and break with normal patterns of linguistic construction. Section 5 is concerned broadly with aspects of narrative - what makes a story and how stories are told. Section 6 addresses the question of translation and shift between one medium and another, from prose fiction to film, and from the page to performance.

The book is thus structured in terms of certain kinds of progression - from smaller features of texts (e.g. rhyme) to larger features (e.g. story structure); from poetry to prose; or from text to performance. However, we would not wish to make too much of these kinds of progression. Instead, each unit may be seen as adding to a network of concepts; and, because each unit opens out upon others in different parts of the book, the reader will find cross-references from one unit to another. At the same time, because many of the units can work in a relatively self-standing fashion, it is possible to study or consult them individually without necessarily referring to other parts of the book. In sum, Ways of Reading can be used as a class-book; for individual study (working through it topic by topic); or for reference (by consulting the glossary, index or table of contents). In this respect we hope that the book will itself be put to use productively in different ways that nonetheless contribute to its underlying aim: to develop an awareness of reading as a broader process, where reading the word is a part of reading the world.