The Discourse of Reading Groups

This research explores the discourse of reading groups (including book clubs and book groups): people who meet regularly to discuss and evaluate literary texts. Reading groups are an important source of everyday judgements about literature. While we know a great deal about professional readings and debates - in the form of published reviews and literary criticism - much less attention is paid to how ordinary readers engage with literary texts. Yet reading plays an important part in many people's lives. And reading is not simply a private matter: people have always discussed their reading, and the contemporary surge in the popularity of reading groups has provided new sites for critical literary debate.

Reading groups have become something of a cultural phenomenon in the UK and other countries, affecting book sales and marketing, and individuals' reading choices. A recent estimate puts the number of groups at around 50,000 in the UK and 500,000 in the US, not counting the increasing number of groups who interact online. Groups may discuss popular fiction, but they also read established canonical literature and, more usually, contemporary fiction seen as high quality (e.g. books that are shortlisted for literary prizes, that are the subject of published reviews and included in university syllabuses). However, while their reading choices relate to academic conceptions of literary quality, the available evidence suggests that reading groups do not try to emulate academic discussion, but rather relate books to their own lives and concerns: reading may thus become 'a tool for living'. It is the nature of such everyday literary judgements, how they are constructed, and how they contribute to the negotiation of reader identities that forms the subject of this research.

Reading groups have aroused strong media interest, and have themselves received a boost from media initiatives such as Oprah Winfrey's book club (launched with the slogan that this would 'get America reading again') and, in the UK, the Richard and Judy book club, the Mail on Sunday's You magazine reading group, BBC Radio 4's Book Club discussion programme and numerous web sites. Reading groups have, however, been relatively neglected in academic research, and studies that exist tend to be based on surveys, interviews and some observation but without a focus on the analysis of reading group discourse. The proposed research addresses this issue: it will provide an analysis of discussion across a range of reading groups, focusing on the kinds of interpretations and evaluations groups produce of contemporary fiction and other literary texts; how such interpretations are constructed in discussion between participants; how participants negotiate particular reader identities; and how such everyday critical judgements compare with the judgements of literary professionals, such as critics and academics. The study forms part of a recent influential strand of research on everyday literary activity, and it is intended to contribute to literary theory that takes account of ordinary readers.

The methodology is innovative in this context, combining qualitative and quantitative analysis. This includes a close, qualitative interactional analysis, focusing on the construction of locally-produced meanings, and supported by qualitative analysis software; and quantitative corpus linguistic analysis that will allow us to compare aspects of reading group discourse with a large reference corpus of spoken English.

The study will reflect the diversity of contemporary reading groups, including female, male and mixed groups; face-to-face and online groups; and groups that meet in people's houses; in bookshops or libraries; in institutional contexts such as workplaces or schools.

The results of the study will be disseminated to academic audiences (in conference papers and journal articles) as well as more popular audiences (in newspapers, magazines and reading group websites).