4g. Reading culture

Early discussions of the new media from the perspective of literary theory devote much time to a consideration of how reader and writer roles are modified in fragmentary, multilinear writing spaces. Such discussions frequently propose that engaging with networked texts requires more active participation by the reader. Some of these same discussions conclude that technology is destined to improve the experience of literary reading. For example, noting the roots of electronic literature in computerized text adventure games (also called interactive fiction or IF), Bolter highlights the game-like quality of textual spaces where reader-players fashion their own paths through documents (2001, p. 126 ff). Bolter also argues that electronic texts are like scripts or musical scores that readers must enact, or perform (p. 173). Douglas, following a similar line of thought, calls on the metaphor of dance to describe electronic fiction: "a work of hypertext fiction can act as a blueprint for a series of potential interactions . . . a dance choreographed by an absent author . . .” (2000, p. 23).

Of course, according to certain schools of thought, readers have always been active "players" because they necessarily reconstruct texts within their own worldviews. They do this by reading themselves into narratives, drawing inferences in order to fill in temporal, spatial or causal gaps, and so on (Rosenblatt, 1938/1968; Iser, 1978). And yet, clearly hypermedia extends such processes in important ways. Readers of IF, for example, must do more than reconstruct a narrative that exists in a predetermined order: they must engage in an activity of construction and reconstruction, both determining sequence and filling perceived gaps in meaning. The result, according to Landow, is "an active, even intrusive reader" who feels a sense of agency because hypertext has infringed "upon the power of the writer, removing some of it and granting that portion to the reader" (1997, p. 90). This scenario leads Landow (1994, p. 14) and others (e.g., Rosenberg, 1994) to coin a new term for the act of engaging with electronic texts: "wreading."

This neologism of course recalls earlier metaphors promoting the idea of reading as an act of writing. Barthes’ notion of lisible and scriptable texts tends in this direction (Barthes, 1974), as does the Derridean doctrine of écriture (Derrida, 1976). But although Derrida sees the notion of reading as a form of writing and rewriting (for example, he does so in "Plato's Pharmacy"), he also cautions that such assertions are wanting in and of themselves, for it is important to take the discussion a step further and to consider exactly what kind of writing reading is (Derrida, 1981).

In spite of such calls for more careful attendance to the nature of reading-writing relations, the subject has been largely overlooked by hypermedia theorists, who often promote metaphors suggesting the conflation of the two processes, but who fail to examine whether or how those metaphors play out in practice. Questions regarding the interdependencies of reading and writing, what sort of cognitive processes each demands, and how the two might effectively be combined to promote learning have long been a subject of study among literacy researchers. Fitzgerald and Shanahan (2000) provide a useful overview of such research, detailing the traditional separation of reading and writing in North American school curricula, movements toward a more integrated literacy curriculum, and approaches to the reading-writing relationship from various perspectives. They focus particularly on research examining shared knowledge and cognitive processes between reading and writing. The results of this research are anything but definitive. Studies dating back 75 years in which students’ reading and writing abilities are compared, for example, have demonstrated only moderate correlations between the two processes: contrary to popular wisdom, good readers are not always good writers, and vice versa (Stotsky, 1983). Fitzgerald and Shanahan (2000) also point to studies of various groups, including individuals with brain injuries, which reinforce the separability of the two processes. Particularly interesting in this regard are documented instances of individuals who suffer partial aphasia following strokes or other brain injuries. Such individuals may be able to be able to write, but not to read their own writing, or to speak, but not to understand speech, and so on. Neuroscience delineates a range of highly specific language disorders (aphasias), each of which is tied to injuries to or lesions in distinct areas of the brain (Ganong, 2003).

What is clear in all of this is that reading and writing, while related, are cognitively and experientially separable. Metaphors conflating the two fail to consider the complexities of both processes, the phenomenological and cognitive differences between the two, whether one or the other process might be better for facilitating acquisition of particular forms of knowledge, how the two may support each other in knowledge acquisition, and so on. Computer-based environments for reading and writing offer an interesting venue in which to consider anew the question of reading-writing relations.

According to Thérien (1985), there are at least five distinct processes active every time we read a text:

These five processes can be said to define three tasks: manipulation (the material dimension of the reading process), comprehension, and interpretation. In other words, to read a text is to be able to progress through it, which implies both manual and neuro-physiological aspects. In a post-typographic era, we must consider how each of these tasks changes and how the interrelations between them change as well. What does it mean to manipulate an e-book? What new strategies must be developed now that the basic element of reading, the page, is not present? Can manipulation be transposed without any problems from one context (book culture) to another (screen culture or e-book culture)?

The second task, comprehension, implies the semiotic dimension of the reading process. To read a text is to understand what is written, which implies linguistic, cognitive and affective aspects. E-books and hypermedia help produce new forms of texts, requiring new strategies of comprehension.

The third task, interpretation, refers to the symbolic dimension of the reading process. To read is to establish a relation between the text being read and other texts that explain, illustrate, complete, or expand what is being read. If interpretation is the minimal relation established between two texts by a reader, the second text facilitating understanding of the first, then a networked reading environment would presumably help bring about interpretation. And yet, this is not the case, as several early studies of readers working in hypertext environments demonstrated (e.g., Kim & Hirtle, 1995; Foss, 1989; Rouet & Levonen, 1996). The possible problem here is one of over-interpretation: when a reader makes connections that are not based on a complete or complex knowledge of the text being read, that connection may confound rather than facilitate interpretation. If the text is not "read"–if it has not been the object of an act of appropriation–then its interpretation may quite easily be uote non fondé” – that is, superficial, divergent instead of convergent (Eco, 1992).

The three tasks involved in reading–interpretation, comprehension, and manipulation–are logically implied: interpretation logically implies comprehension, which logically implies manipulation. This recalls C. S. Peirce's notion of prescission: to have a 3, you need a 2, and to have a 2, you need a 1. 1 can stand by itself, but 2 needs, just to exist, a 1, and so on. This is to say that that we cannot have complex forms of interpretation if we do not have adequate forms of comprehension, which themselves require satisfactory forms of manipulation.

What is at stake now, with e-books, is mastering basic forms of manipulation. We still do not know how to read, manipulate, and work with e-books. To establish a reading culture of e-books, we must find ways to help establish robust forms of manipulation, which is the first step in facilitating strategies of comprehension and enabling interpretations to be put in motion.

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