Readers Writers and Text

This area introduces students to the nature of language and literature and its study. The investigation undertaken involves close attention to the details of texts in a variety of types and literary forms so that students learn about the choices made by creators and the ways in which meaning is communicated through words, image, and sound. At the same time, study will focus on the role receivers play in generating meaning as students move from personal response to understanding and interpretation influenced by the classroom community. Students will learn to understand the creativity of language, the relationship between language and thought and the aesthetic nature of literature. Students will see that texts are powerful means to express individual thoughts and feelings, and that their own perspectives as experienced users of language are integral to the effect and success of a communicative act.

Study in this area should be structured to allow students to become more confident in their ability to recognize key textual and rhetorical features and how they create or affect meaning. Non-literary texts and literary works can be chosen that lend themselves to close reading and give students a sense of stylistic, rhetorical and literary elements across a variety of text types and literary forms. The aim is not to enumerate or define various features and study will move beyond the identification of elements or the consideration of individual effects to see the complex constructed nature of texts. While conducting detailed study, learning activities can be structured to introduce students to the ways in which linguistic and literary professionals attend to communicative acts and their concerns. Student writing and response can involve moving between personal and academic response or between the creative and the expository.

1. Why and how do we study language and literature?

2. How are we affected by texts in various ways?

3. In what ways is meaning constructed, negotiated, expressed and interpreted?

4. How does language use vary amongst text types and amongst literary forms?

5. How does the structure or style of a text affect meaning?

6. How do texts offer insights and challenges?

Links to TOK in this area revolve around the question of what kind of knowledge can be constructed from a text, how that knowledge is constructed and the extent to which the meaning of a text can be considered to be fixed. Examples of links to TOK include:

• What do we learn about through the study of a literary text? How is this different from what we learn through the study of a non-literary text?

• In what ways is the kind of knowledge we gain from the study of language and literature different from the kind we gain through the study of other disciplines? Can the study of language and of literature be considered scientific?

• How much of the knowledge we construct through reading a text is determined by authorial intention, by the reader’s cultural assumptions and by the purpose valued for a text in a community of readers?

• Are some interpretations of a text better than others? How are multiple interpretations best negotiated?

• In what ways do interpretive strategies vary when reading a literary work and when reading a non-literary text?