Language and Literature Vol.18(3)(2009)，普通讀者與社會專號的文章導讀。
Content
閱讀研究計劃
Reading Experience Database, Halsey (2009)
根據歷史資料，重建19th民眾的閱讀風格，
放聲閱讀 Reading aloud of text
文學閱讀道德性的重要 the importance of morality for literary reading.
尋求情感上，甚至實質上的回應 search for emotion and even physical response.
狄更斯(Dickens)小說中令現代人尷尬的催淚情節，對他同時代人而言，是最高的價值所在。 The tear-jerking of certain episodes of Dickens, which so embarrasses the modern reader, were his highest value for contemporaries.
詩人汀尼生(Tennyson)的詩作在當代受到相對的貶抑，原因之一可能是因為我們再也不會對著朋友或他人大聲讀詩。 one reason for current comparative neglect of Tennyson may be that we no longer read poetry aloud to groups of friends and relatives (my own examples).
今日的讀者更能接受帶點不可靠的、有道德負擔的描述口吻；而非以一貫之自信的道德發言。 Readers today are more likely to be comfortable with slippery narrators unsure of their moral bearings than confident unnuanced moral pronouncements, for example concerning the superiority of one culture to another (England and France in Halsey’s example, McEwan today).
Beyond the Book: Lang(2009)
透過焦點團體，研究閱讀 Levy’s Small Island[小島](2004)中的種族與人權概念。Lang 重點放在讀者在閱讀中，帶了什麼東西到書裡面來，以及他們對於複雜人性與社會議題的回應。
有許多文學作品閱讀的價值，並不只是為了「愉悅性」，而是在於幫助我們進入困難的議題，以及必要的：做面子。 Literature reading is valued by many for just such engagement with difficult issues, even where, as here, this is not in any obvious sense ‘pleasurable’, and necessitates, again, sensitive facework. (p.332)
Devolving Diasporas, Benwell
在實際上，讀者會彼此商議與發展他們的閱讀。 … language readers actually use to negotiate and develop their readings with each other.
提出對「形塑認同(identities-in-formation)」與「社會態度湧現(emergent social attitude)」的檢驗與解釋。 Evaluations and interpretations are shown as identities-in-formation and emergent social ‘attitudes’.
文學閱讀團體，如何透過談話進行閱讀的社會建構。 showing literature reading as socially constituted, particularly through talk.
「評估行為」在閱讀團體中是重要的，但被成員彼此謹慎地侷限著。評估行為也是文本語言到真實語言的關鍵轉移機制。 Evaluation is important for their reading groups, but is carefully hedged and modalized by reader-speakers, and is shown at critical junctures to lead to explicit attention to and appeals to the actual language of the text being read as a displacement device (‘negative politeness’).
團體中的友誼維持，比起否定某一小說更重要。 Disagreement over a novel is usually subordinated to friendship maintenance work in these groups.
要「機靈地」閱讀文學作品，需要更多的對談，而不只是孤立一人獨自地進行眼球閱讀運動。 has argued wittily for literature reading as having more to do with talk than with the saccadic eyes of asocial and disembodied minds processing print in cloistered rooms. (p.332)
讀者是為了某人或某個目的而閱讀，並且他們並不只是在真空中「讀」而已；閱讀中不存在純粹的「反映」文本，而是在脈絡中「計算」。 Readers read for someone and for some purpose, they do not just ‘read’ in a vacuum; there are no innocent ‘responses’ to reading, there are ‘accounts’, according to Benwell, performances in context (see also Hall, 1999)(p.332).
Benwell, B. (2005). ‘Lucky this is anonymous.’Ethnographies of reception in men’s magazines: a ‘textual culture’approach. Discourse & Society, 16(2), 147-172.
Benwell, B. (2009). ‘A pathetic and racist and awful character’: ethnomethodological approaches to the reception of diasporic fiction. Language and Literature, 18(3), 300-315.