Summary of Vipond and Hunt (1984), Point-driven understanding: Pragmatic and cognitive dimensions of literary reading
Point-driven reading
- reading with the expectation that the text will enable the construction of a valid, pragmatic point - an essential component of a type of reading commonly thought of as 'literary'
- the construction of the point is a function of the text, the reader's cultural expectations and the reader's generic expectations
- the chances of readers being able to construct points successfully are increased if they impute motives to authors (i.e. if they imagine authors as beings who intend to make points)
- the point will generally be the result of negotiation between reader and text (not what the author intended) - this negotiation is possible because of the distinction between 'text' as marks-on-a-page and 'text' as a virtual, reconstructed text that is the result of a transaction between reader and page.
Story-driven reading
- emphasize plot, character and event, neglect the 'discourse' by which these are presented
- based on distinction between 'story' and 'discourse' (Chatman, 1978)
- a story-driven reader would not anticipate that the narrative will invite the construction of a point
- Vipond and Hunt note that 'point-driven' and 'information-driven' is not another way of phrasing Rosenblatt's (1978) 'aesthetic' and 'efferent' reading; aesthetic reading, or reading that is concerned with 'lived-through experience' can include point-driven reading and story-driven reading.
Information-driven reading
- appropriate in learning-from-text situations where content is relevant
- Occurs in contextually-isolated situations, when the reader's task is to learn or remember the material, or when the text is fragmentary or inane
- Vipond and Hunt suggest that the conditions that lead to information-driven reading hold true in laboratory experiments on reading, so theories that result from such experiments are essentially accounts of information acquisition.
Strategies used during Point-driven reading
- Coherence strategies
- Establishing coherence is a general comprehension strategy, but used differently in different types of reading
- the point-driven reader is trying to construct a GLOBAL SPEECH ACT and attempting to establish coherence over the text as a whole; if new or apparently irrelevant topics emerged, such a reader would tend to hold off closure, waiting for the chance to integrate elements into the single coherent structure being assembled
- In contrast, story- or information-driven readers process discourse in units smaller than the entire text and tend to seek closure, rejecting disparate and seemingly unrelated text elements
- Narrative surface strategies
- NARRATIVE SURFACE refers to the discourse aspects of narrative (e.g. diction, tone, point of view, style)
- Nonstandard elements tend to be noticed and explained as purposeful and deliberate contrivances
- Transactional strategies
- Readers who adopt point-driven reading see the text as an artifact - they recognize the existence of an intentional being behind it, and that the actions and beliefs of characters cannot be taken at face value; instead, they must be interpreted in the light of the fact that they are mere creations of an intentional being
- In contrast, those who adopt information- or story-driven reading see texts as natural phenomenon - they do not relate the actions and beliefs of characters to an implied author's possible 'point'