DISCOURSE AND THE RECEPTION OF 
LITERATURE: PROBLEMATISING 
'READER RESPONSE' 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Daniel Alington 
 
 
 
 
Submited for the degre of 
Doctor of Philosophy 
 
 
English Studies 
University of Stirling 
2008 
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For Beata. 
And for our litle Jamie. 
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Acknowledgements, part I 
Family first. Dear Beata: it would be impossible to acknowledge everything you?ve done 
to contribute. Thank you ? I love you ? and I know you?ve had to put up with more than 
you should have for the sake of this peculiar document. Dear Jamie: I owe you apologies 
you won?t understand ? but I can promise you?l se a lot more of your daddy from now 
on. I?m so proud of you, litle love. Dear Aneta: you did so much for the thre of us 
when we truly needed it. I won?t forget that, cousin. 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
  
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Acknowledgements, part I 
Supervisors second. Dear Bethan Benwel and Ruth Evans: I know how lucky I am to 
have had two such great supervisors. Thank you for caring about me and my research, 
for treating me like an equal, and for good advice. It?s been a real pleasure. 
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Acknowledgements, part II 
Funder third. Dear AHRC: you paid my bils for thirten months, and I?m truly grateful. 
As a mater of fact, you?re paying four fifths of my salary even now. Thank you, thank 
you, thank you ? for not leting any of us starve for the sake of my academic ambitions. 
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Acknowledgements, part IV 
And now for the rest. Great thanks are due to al the staf and students at Stirling who 
alowed me to record their clases, and especialy to those who permited me to record 
them ore than once: even though constraints of time and space have prevented me 
from quoting from many of the recordings here, I hope to have the opportunity to use 
them in future publications. Thanks are also due to the London Gay Reading Group, 
who permited me to record two of their metings for the Discourse of Reading Groups 
project, to Joan Swann, pricipal investigator on that project, and to Fred Philips, Rodger 
McEwan, and Oron Joffe for top-clas technical support at the University of Stirling. 
Further thanks are due to the editors and peer reviewers at Social Semiotics and Poetics 
Today, who helped to shape two chapters of this disertation (not to mention other 
editors and peer reviewers whose influence was les direct). Thanks to those who have 
helped me to atend to things that I might otherwise have neglected: in particular, James 
Procter for the pres clippings that were the first of my Satanic Verses data, Mark Nixon 
for introducing me to historical theory, Peter McDonald for the hint about publishing 
and performatives, and Elspeth for persuading me that Legolas really is in love with 
Aragorn (at least in the films). Thanks too to my contemporaries on the English Studies 
PhD programe at Stirling for showing me the ropes and keeping me sane. And thanks 
to al those who have helped me with the practicalities of research ? above al, the 
undervalued frontline staf of the Bodleian Library, of the National Library of Scotland, 
of the British Library, and (most undervalued of al) of the Stirling University Library. 
I wish I could thank you al in person. 
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Acknowledgements, adendum 
Now that I am about to graduate, I can thank Lynne Pearce and Stephen Penn for an 
inspiring viva voce examination. 
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Contents 
Acknowledgements, part I............................................................3 
Acknowledgements, part I...........................................................4 
Acknowledgements, part II..........................................................5 
Acknowledgements, part IV..........................................................6 
Contents...........................................................................8 
Abstract..........................................................................10 
A note on the transcriptions.........................................................12 
1. Introduction: the problematics of this study.........................................15 
1.1 The questions.................................................................18 
1.2 ?Literature?...................................................................19 
1.3 ?Reading?....................................................................30 
1.3.1 Criticism, interpretation, and the study of literature..............................30 
1.3.2 ?Reader response?, and literary reception study.................................49 
1.3.3 Media reception study and the sociology of cultural consumption..................56 
1.4 ?Discourse analysis?..........................................................102 
1.5 Discursive aproaches to reader and reception study...............................13 
1.6 The world outside discourse and the problem of metatheoretical regres...............124 
1.7 The data cited in this study.....................................................130 
1.8 Introduction to the ?primary texts?...............................................134 
1.9 A guide to this study..........................................................148 
2. Spech acts, intentions, and uncomunicativenes: 
a theory of literature and of how literature is used.....................................151 
2.1 Introduction.................................................................151 
2.2 Comunicative circuits........................................................153 
2.3 Comunication and signification................................................156 
2.3.1 Comunication: spech act theory..........................................157 
2.3.2 Comunication: intentionalism.............................................159 
2.3.3 Signification: the functioning of the mark.....................................162 
2.4. Literary intentions...........................................................169 
2.4.1 Locutionary intention.....................................................169 
2.4.2 Ilocutionary intention.....................................................173 
2.4.3 Perlocutionary intention...................................................190 
2.5. Literary spech acts..........................................................193 
2.5.1 Spech act theories of literature, and literary theories of spech acts...............193 
2.5.2 Literary works and spech-like actions.......................................207 
2.6. Analysis: The reception of The Satanic Verses as a comunication from its author......208 
2.7. Concluding note.............................................................27 
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3. Sexual exegesis and the disasociation of ideas: 
representing the intimate textual encounter...........................................28 
3.1 Introduction.................................................................28 
3.2 Slash, The Lord of the Rings, and A/L............................................230 
3.3 A discursive rereading of reader response........................................238 
3.4 Fan interpretations of cult media texts...........................................257 
3.5 Analysis: ?How come most people don?t se it??....................................261 
3.6 Concluding note..............................................................276 
4. Teling stories about readers: a naratology of reading...............................281 
4.1 Introduction.................................................................281 
4.2 Audience research: memory....................................................284 
4.3 Audience research: acounting.................................................28 
4.4 Narative sense-making and dialectic reasoning...................................301 
4.5 Reader history: re-examining two clasic studies...................................314 
4.6 Analysis: Responding to Rushdie in Bradford and London...........................317 
4.7 Concluding note..............................................................329 
5. Conclusion: is that al there is?....................................................30 
5.1 The problem of iner experience................................................30 
5.2 The limitations of this study, and what those limits leave us..........................32 
6. Bibliography...................................................................35 
 
Note: This disertation contains previously published material (particularly in Chapter 3, se Alington 
207a) and material that is forthcoming elsewhere (particularly in Chapter 2 ? se Alington 208 ? and 
Chapter 4 ? se Alington 2010). 
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Abstract 
In my earlier work, ?First steps towards a rhetorical hermeneutics of literary 
interpretation? (2006), I argued that academic reading takes the form of an argument 
betwen readers. Four serious weakneses in that acount are its elision of the distinction 
betwen reading and discourse on reading, its inatention to non-academic reading, its 
exclusive focus on ?interpretation? as if this constituted the whole of reading or of 
discourse on reading, and its failure to theorise the object of literary reading, ie. the work 
of literature. The current work aims to addres al of these problems, together with those 
created by certain other approaches to literary reading, with the overal objective of 
clearing the ground for more empirical studies. It exemplifies its points with examples 
drawn primarily from non-academic public discourse on literature (newspapers, 
magazines, and the internet), though also from other sources (such as reading groups and 
undergraduate literature seminars). It takes a particular (though not an exclusive) interest 
in two specific instances of non-academic reception: the widespread reception of Salman 
Rushdie?s novel The Satanic Verses as an atack on Islam, and the minority reception of 
Peter Jackson?s film trilogy The Lord of the Rings as a narative of homosexual desire. 
The first chapter of this disertation criticaly surveys the fields of reception study and 
discourse analysis, and in particular the crossover betwen them. It finds more 
productive engagement with the textuality of response in media reception study than in 
literary reception study. It argues that the application of discourse analysis to reception 
data serves to problematise, rather than to facilitate, reception study, but it also 
emphasises the problematic nature of discourse analysis itself. 
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Each of the thre subsequent chapters considers a diferent complex of problems. The 
first is the literary work, and its relation to its producers and its consumers: Chapter 2 
takes the form of a discourse upon the notions of ?speech act? and ?authorial intention? in 
relation to literature, caries out an analysis of early public responses to The Satanic 
Verses, and puts in a word for non-readers by way of a conclusion. The second is the 
private experience of reading, and its paradoxical status as an object of public 
representation: Chapter 3 analyses representations of private responses to The Lord of 
The Rings film trilogy, and concludes with the argument that, though these 
representations cannot be identical with private responses, they are cannot be extricated 
from them, either. The third is the impossibility of distinguishing rhetoric from cognition 
in the teling of stories about reading: Chapter 4 argues that, though anecdotal or 
autobiographical acounts of reading cannot be taken at face value, they can be taken 
both as atempts to persuade and as atempts to understand; it concludes with an analysis 
of a magazine article that tels a number of stories about reading The Satanic Verses ? 
amongst other things. Each of these chapters focuses on non-academic reading as 
represented in writen text, but broadens this focus through consideration of examples 
drawn from spoken discourse on reading (including in the liminal academic space of the 
undergraduate clasroom). 
The last chapter mulls over the relationship betwen reading and discourse of reading, 
and hesitates over whether to wrap or tear this disertation?s arguments up. 
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A note on the transcriptions 
In this disertation, four samples of digitaly-recorded spoken data are cited. Those in 
Chapters 1, 3, and 4 were recorded in undergraduate clases taking place within the 
Department of English Studies at the University of Stirling in Spring 2006 as part of my 
research for this disertation. That in Chapter 2 was recorded in December 2007 at the 
Halfway I Heaven pub in central London as part of the AHRC-funded Discourse of 
Reading Groups project at the Open University, for which I am full-time Research 
Asociate. I was present throughout the later recording but, for the former thre, I left 
the room after seting up the equipment, and returned only while students were leaving 
or had already left. Informed consent was obtained from al participants, and care has 
been taken that none of them shal be identifiable. 
In order to respect the orality of this data, it has been transcribed verbatim, with a 
minimum of punctuation. Capital leters are used only for proper nouns and the first 
person nominative pronoun, and the full stop is used to signify a pause of any duration 
up to thre seconds. Underlining indicates emphasis, parentheses enclose descriptive 
comments (including timings of longer pauses), square brackets are used to indicate the 
beginnings of overlap betwen diferent speakers? utterances, and equals signs are used 
in two diferent ways: where they occur at the end of a line spoken by one speaker and at 
the beginning of one spoken by another, they indicate that there was no perceptible 
pause betwen the two turns, and where they occur at the end and beginning of two lines 
spoken by the same speaker, they indicate that this speaker did not break off speaking 
even if the layout of the page would otherwise suggest this (this is often necesary where 
overlap occurs). Al speakers are identified with the leter S followed by a number, 
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except in clasroom situations, where the tutor is identified with the leter T. Where it 
was impossible to identify the speaker, the leter S alone was used. Thus: 
T okay . so the kind of [personal reactions you= 
S                       [(laughs nervously) 
T =might have to the play might sort of influence the 
kind of . reading into it you?re going to do= 
S4 =yeah 
This system reflects a somewhat simplified adaptation (perhaps a corruption) of standard 
transcription practices among conversation analysts. I have deviated from the 
conventions of conversation analysis most blatantly in using question marks as they are 
normaly used in writen English, ie. to indicate that a question sems to be intended by 
the speaker: in conversation analysis, the question mark is used not to indicate a 
question but to indicate rising intonation. Although rising intonation is often hearable as 
a question, this is not invariably the case, and a question may be signaled in other ways 
(including by the use of faling intonation). My use of this punctuation mark in the 
transcriptions is therefore semantic rather than prosodic, and relies upon my own 
interpretative abilities as a speaker of English in much the same way that conversation 
analysts would typicaly rely on their interpretative abilities in deciding whether to treat 
the sound [Iz] as the present tense singular form of the verb to be (writen: ?is?) or as the 
masculine third person singular possesive adjective (writen: ?his? or ? ?is?). In a study 
of (for example) the hearability of utterances as questions (or, for that mater, of that of 
the sound [Iz] as verb or as possesive adjective), this would be unaceptable. In the 
current study, however, I fel that it usefully displays the sense of utterances to the 
reader. 
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My use of quotation marks is also potentialy controversial, because these are certainly 
not a feature of spoken English and they are generaly not used in conversation analysis. 
As with the question mark, I have relied upon my own interpretative abilities to place 
them, and in doing so to help my readers understand the sense of what is transcribed. 
Greg Myers (1999) finds that, though speakers frequently do speak in such as way as to 
expres viewpoints other than their own, and do not necesarily indicate (even by tone 
of voice) that this is what they are doing, there were in his own corpus of recorded 
interactions ?no instances of participants raising such shifts as an isue, [or] responding 
as if the speaker was speaking in his or her own voice.? (377) In other words, it is 
usualy clear to participants in the original context that a speaker is speaking from 
someone else?s perspective. However, since (as Myers notes) confusion on this mater is 
easy once utterances are taken out of context, I have (unlike Myers) taken the decision to 
mark out such instances as they would be marked in narative prose. 
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1. Introduction: the problematics of this study 
the most important and insidious legacy of the New Criticism is the widespread 
and unquestioning aceptance of the notion that the critic?s job is to interpret 
literary works. Fulfilment of the interpretive task has come to be the touchstone 
by which other kinds of critical writing are judged, and reviewers inevitably ask 
of any work of literary theory, linguistic analysis, or historical scholarship, 
whether it actualy asists us in our understanding of particular works. 
Culler 2001(1981):5-6 
Two decades on, the above author considered that litle had changed: ?critics?, he 
laments in his preface to a new edition of the same work, ?are more interested in 
interpreting novels than in trying to spel out how we go about understanding them as 
we read.? (Culler 2001:xvii) To take the point further, it sems clear that, where literary 
critics do try ?to spel out how we go about understanding? literary works, this is often 
simply in order to support their own interpretations of those works, on the asumptions 
firstly that ?validity in interpretation is guaranted by the establishment of norms or 
principles for explicating texts? and secondly that ?such rules are best derived from an 
acount of how interpretation works in general.? (Mailoux 1989:5) The problem is not 
limited to those working on Culler?s side of the institutional divide betwen ?English 
Language? and ?English Literature?: in their review of discourse analytic approaches to 
literature, for example, Simpson and Hal set out high hopes for the field before 
admiting, with evident regret, that ?[t]he publications reviewed here are 
characteristicaly conservative, tending to focus more on text explication and 
interpretation than on social and institutional explanations and implications.? (2002:136-
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137) It would sem that a sort of post-New Critical malaise has long since set in across 
English Studies.
1
 
Perhaps a litle anecdotal evidence might be permited. As a Masters student, I 
experienced tremendous institutional resistance to the idea that a critic?s job might be 
anything other than ?to interpret literary works?: an asignment that atempted to falsify 
a theory about how naratives are interpreted was directly criticised for undermining the 
                                                
1
 In this disertation, I use the term ?post-New Critical? to refer both to the New Criticism and to 
those forms of criticism that have folowed it in making close, interpretative comentary on literary 
works their central research procedure and the goal of their pedagogy. The precise extent to which 
criticism of this type became and has remained dominant in literary studies is debatable, and in any 
case may be asumed to vary from sub-discipline to sub-discipline. The relevance of my critique to a 
?cultural studies? aproach in which works of literature are discused in relation to represive or 
subversive ideologies circulating in society (se Subsection 1.3.3) might be contested, for example; 
however, the distinctivenes of this aproach from the New Criticism in this regard may be les than 
is sometimes imagined. For example, Gren (203:70) argues that ?[e]ven those critical modes that 
in efect work to deny or undermine an important New Critical axiom realy only do so by afirming 
an underlying premise held in comon.. the consortium of critics contributing to the rise of cultural 
studies (Marxists, New Historicists, al those who investigate representations of gender and 
sexuality) learned to use the strategy of close reading ? even extending it to the analysis of 
nonliterary ?texts? ? in their own antipathetic scrutiny of canonical works of literature.? Thus, as 
Culer (201a:xvi) observes, even where ?[s]tudents learn to interpret literary works for what they 
show us about the condition of women, for instance, or about the dialectic of subversion and 
containment in which works of art participate?, this does not change the fact that ?[i]nterpretation is 
stil the primary task?. On the other hand, I would sugest that the New Criticism and its 
interpretative preocupations may have had a comparatively weak influence on clasical and 
medieval studies, where works of poetry and drama rub shoulders with those of science and 
medicine, and textual and linguistic scholarship are al but inescapable (se Subsection 1.3.1 on the 
historicaly contingent dichotomy betwen scholarship and interpretative criticism). 
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interpretation that it showed the theory to predict (Gren and Carter [2005:unpaginated, 
emphasis added]: ?[t]he critique.. is convincing, but this has the unfortunate afect [sic] 
of caling into question the analysis itself [ie. the interpretation]?), and an atempt to 
write a disertation analysing the reception of Heart of Darknes was rendered 
ridiculous by my being forced to incorporate into it a novel interpretation of that work.
2
 
And in more recent years, I have not hesitated to give high marks to undergraduate 
esays that present coherent thematic interpretations of literary works, whatever my 
theoretical misgivings have been, and ? human, al too bloody human ? I have 
sometimes found myself teaching semiotics as if it were a tool for close reading. 
In this disertation, however, I have neither made nor been encouraged to make any such 
compromises. The questions I wrestle with (I do not venture to say ?answer?) are, from 
the point of view of interpretative criticism, quite pointlesly theoretical: very litle here 
?actualy asists us in our understanding of particular works? (at least given a post-New 
Critical understanding of what is constituted by a ?work?; se Subsection 1.3.1). From 
another point of view, however, these questions are entirely practical: from the point of 
view, that is, of wishing to investigate the practices in and by which literature is used 
(including the practices of literary interpretation). These practices are a quite enormous 
topic, of which I have in fact covered very litle. However, my principal aim has been to 
lay sufficient groundwork for future studies to be able to cover rather more. Those 
studies are what I came to the University of Stirling to begin. That they have scarcely 
begun testifies to my failure to anticipate the scale of the groundwork they would 
                                                
2
 As Culer (201[1981]:103) states with gentle irony in his comentary on Rifatere (1978): ?it is 
dificult to treat the eforts of previous readers simultaneously as the phenomena one wishes to explain 
and as the erors one is atempting to surpas?. 
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require. But it may also, I hope, testify to my commitment to geting a job done as wel 
as can be. 
Just over a year and a half ago, I published a paper entitled ?First steps towards a 
rhetorical psychology of literary interpretation? (Alington 2006). Now I know that it 
was barely even a gesture towards a first step, that interpretation was only a smal part of 
the subject mater, that the word ?literary? was an acident waiting to happen, and that 
no psychology, by itself, was ever going to be enough. This disertation atempts to 
correct some of that; and the current chapter atempts to introduce the background to that 
atempt. This is done largely by surveying some of the problems dealt with and raised by 
existing theoretical works, although ? given the scope ? a ful literature review is 
impossible. 
1.1 The questions 
I set out with the aim to study reading as a social practice, subject to ?social or 
institutional determinants of what?s available to read, what is ?worth reading?, and how 
to read it? (Long 1992:193). What I have done in practice is to folow hunches as far as 
they wil go, leting empirical and theoretical interests bled into one another. The 
remainder of this chapter atempts to reconstruct the field that I have sen myself as 
contributing to, picking out the problems and the promises to which I have tried to 
respond. The research questions I started out with ? the ones on my application form ? 
are long gone. The questions I have tried to answer are the ones that have come to 
trouble me; they are dispersed throughout Sections 1.2 to 1.9. 
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1.2 ?Literature? 
This disertation does not fal into the field of ?literacy studies? (eg. Barton 1994). It 
is not, in other words, a study of the incorporation of writen text into the social 
practices of everyday life: not an investigation of whatever uses of whatever 
writings. It is more limited than that, though it is hard to say precisely what the 
limitation consists in. It investigates (some of) the uses to which people put writen 
texts of a particular kind ? with the proviso that these writen texts are constituted as 
a kind by their being put to particular uses. Nor is this a study in (textual) cultural 
consumption (eg. Bukodi 2007), since it has (from its outset) been 
disproportionately focussed on those forms of consumption that involve the 
production of discourse, and on the representation of consumption in discourse. And 
although such discourse is ? controversialy, although perhaps necesarily ? of 
special importance to the history of reading,
3
 this is not a study in that field either, 
since its focus is (se comments above) far narower than ?reading?. 
                                                
3
 Cf. Halsey (208:127): ?Publishers? records, to take a single example, tel us that John Muray 
published 2,00 copies of the first edition of Jane Austen?s Ema in 1814, and advertised them at a 
price of 21s. Sales records tel us that of those 2,00 copies, 1,248 copies had ben sold in 9 months, 
1,437 after 4 years, and the rest were remaindered. This is interesting and important information. But 
these numbers do not tel us with any degre of acuracy whether any of the 1,437 boks were read 
by the people who bought them, or whether they sat, pages uncut, on a shelf in a gentleman?s library 
for 10 years, or were pased on to someone else unread, or were sold to a circulating library, where 
they might have ben read by anything betwen 1 and 50 readers, or sank when the ship on which 
they were being transported abroad went down in a storm, or were scribled on by children loking 
for paper on which to draw. Sales figures certainly do not tel us what readers actualy thought of the 
boks they read ? for that we ned to turn to the kinds of evidence the RED [Reading Experience 
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Thanks in large part to its dialogue with the history of reading, this disertation has a 
close relationship with the field that subsumes that sub-field, best known either as ?book 
history? or as ?the history of the book?. Acordingly, I adopt the distinction betwen 
?work? and ?text? used by textual scholars to distinguish a writen composition, such as 
The Satanic Verses, from a specific realisation of that composition, such as the 1988 
British hardback edition of The Satanic Verses. This is problematic both in that readers ? 
even academic readers ? do not commonly make this distinction (as Paul Eggert writes, 
?[t]he text that the editor constructs.. may represent the work ? it may be the work ? for 
the bulk of its actual and potential readership? [1991:64]), and in that many literary 
scholars use the word ?text? to refer to something else, ie. the sequence of linguistic 
signs that they suppose to constitute the work. Nonetheles, I believe that the distinction 
is esential for study of the reception of the kind of texts about which I have been 
talking, and which (throughout the remainder of this section) I shal fail to define: a 
study of the reading of printed ephemera could make no use of such a distinction; a 
study of the reading of (what I can hardly avoid caling) literature surely demands it. 
So: literature. What is it? We would sem to need an answer, for otherwise we wil find 
it hard to justify our atending to certain acts of reading and not to others. And yet there 
is no answer, nor even the hope of one: as Peter McDonald (2006) shows, the debate 
over the nature of literature is now betwen diferent antiesentialist positions, and not 
betwen esentialism and anti-esentialism. And so I must manufacture an answer, one 
with which to make do for the time being. Others have done so: a historical study of the 
supposed referent of the word ?literature? (as used today) in the period before that word 
came to be so used defined its subject as ?those texts valued more for their mode of 
                                                                                                                                    
Database] project colects, which aims to fil in precisely the gaps left by available ?hard? evidence.? 
Note that this database may be searched online: htp:/ww.open.ac.uk/Arts/RED/ 
  21/379   
expresion than their expository content? (Tery 1997:89); similarly, Derek Atridge 
defines as literary those texts where ?the author?s creative labour? is not primarily 
?centred on the manipulation of ideas, the construction of arguments, the representation 
of existing entities in a new light, or the imagination of hitherto nonexistent entities?, 
since ?such labour is combined with, and is in a certain sense always subject to, the 
selection and arangement of words.? (2004:107) These definitions would both appear to 
draw on the second part of the Oxford English Dictionary?s definition for ?literary?, 
sense 3b: ?Pertaining to books and writen compositions; also, in a narower sense, 
pertaining to, or having the characteristics of that kind of writen composition which has 
value on acount of its qualities of form.? (1992 edition) They wil not do for me, 
however, since they presuppose literary formalism, and adopting them would therefore 
prevent me from studying readers who read works ?for the story? (se Radway 
1987[1984]:189-190) ? not to mention excluding the bulk of what is (for my atempted 
justifications are post-hoc) already Chapter 3.
4
 I am going to use the word ?literature? in 
two senses, neither of which corresponds to the above. 
                                                
4
 It should also be noted that ? in the absence of evidence that al the works suposed to be 
encompased by the category of ?literature? so defined could, in their time and place of origin, have 
ben understod as having ben writen in relation to an identical category to be evaluated on 
identical terms ? the aplication of these definitions could be argued to be anachronistic. Such 
anachronism is not necesarily a problem, provided that it is recognised that what is at stake is not 
the nature of the works in question but the textual practices of comunities, including comunities 
beyond the originary context of the categorised works (se Subsection 1.3.1). In twenty-first century 
Britain and North America, for example, it would hardly be controversial to sugest that the works 
of Geofrey Chaucer are ?valued more for their mode of expresion than their expository content?, 
and editions of them can thus quite hapily be read and published as works of what we now cal 
literature. In early modern England, however, they sem, as Wigins (207) argues, to have ben 
read and valued as ?repositories? of sententiae and practical advice, and thus to have ben asigned to 
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The first sense is entirely too simple to be taken seriously, but entirely too useful to be 
avoided, and it is the sense I wil most frequently employ. In this sense, just as ?poem? is 
the superordinate term for ?sonnet?, ?sestina?, ?vilanele?, etc, ?literature? is the 
superordinate term for verse, fiction, and drama. As anything but a working definition, 
this is clearly unsatisfactory, both for what it excludes and for what it glosses over. As 
for what it excludes, Earl Miner (1990:40) reminds us that ?[p]rose narative literature 
need not be fictional?, particularly in ?a culture prizing literary fact above fiction? (such 
as China):
5
 and yet it cannot be stretched to include nonfictional narative prose without 
including much that is (to my knowledge) nowhere in the world considered literature, 
such as news reporting. A similar case is that of beles-letres, works of which would 
ordinarily be described as works of literature, but must be excluded here: verse is 
distinguished from prose by being writen out in verses, but beletristic prose apears to 
                                                                                                                                    
a rather diferent (and perhaps equaly anachronistic) category, wherein expository content was not 
subordinated to mode of expresion. Where ?the author?s creative labour? is taken to be ?centred? wil 
depend on the category to which the work taken to be the object of that labour is understod to 
belong: thus, the presumptive centre of Chaucer?s labour wil apear to shift as we move betwen the 
two aforementioned post-Chaucerian contexts. We can study each of these categories, together with 
the acts of evaluation that produce and presupose it, as part of a specific complex of practices that 
does not rely for its historical interest on similarity with the (potentialy very diferent) complex 
through whose practices the work?s first texts were writen. Se Chapter 2 for further discusion of 
these isues. 
5
 Chinese literature, and Chinese ideas about literature, are, of course, beyond the scope of this 
disertation, which investigates the reading of English-language literature through English-language 
discourse on literature. 
  23/379   
be distinguished from other kinds of prose by being literary,
6
 so that to make literature 
the superordinate term for verse, fiction, drama, and beles-letres would beg the 
question. As for what the definition glosses over, ED Hirsch (1978) points out that even 
if ?poems, stories, and plays.. were the only works which we hapened to cal 
literature.. the[se] genres themselves merge into hybrid forms which cause just as many 
problems as the great big enre which we cal literature? (29) and, moreover, ?some 
ancients, who stresed imitation or fictionality as the important defining trait of poetry, 
did not conceive of lyric poems as belonging among the recognised genres.? (30) 
The second sense is harder to state succinctly, but that is because it is drawn from 
ordinary language usage rather than convenience. It includes only some fiction, only 
some verse, and only some drama. For example, some of the spoken examples we wil 
be looking at are excerpted from the large body of data I acumulated while recording 
?literature? seminars and tutorials in the Department of English Studies at the University 
of Stirling. In al of these recordings, one can hear works of verse, fiction, and drama 
being used, but works of what I can only cal non-literary verse, fiction, and drama were 
conspicuous by their (official) absence. If I had caried out my fieldwork in a diferent 
semester, I would have been able to record seminars in the ?Pulp Fiction? module: but, 
despite the name, this would have meant listening in on sesions devoted to discussion 
of such hardly disrespected ? and, in their first editions, respectably hardbacked ? works 
as Ian Fleming?s Casino Royale and Helen Fielding?s Bridget Jones?s Diary, which 
might best be described as borderline literary. It is a long way from there to Lin Carter?s 
                                                
6
 The Oxford Esential Dictionary of Foreign Terms in English defines beles-letres as ?[s]tudies or 
writings of a purely literary character, especialy esays, criticism, etc.? (199 edition, emphasis 
removed) 
  24/379   
Thongor in the City of Magicians and Julia Justis?s The Untamed Heires ? or, for that 
mater, to Hollywood movies like Peter Jackson?s Lord of the Rings trilogy. In the sense 
discussed in the previous paragraph, al these are works of literature (if film can be 
counted a species of drama, which I think it should), but, in the sense discussed in this 
paragraph, they are not. 
This sense does not only exclude much of what the first sense includes; it also includes 
much which that sense excludes. Exploring the ordinary usage of the word ?literature?, 
ED Hirsch (1978) observes that, though ?the most obvious.. criterion we use is that of 
genre? (29), it is sometimes the case that ?literature is anything writen by a great literary 
figure? (30), and sometimes that ?any text in any genre may be included in literature if it 
exhibits some excelence of form or style? (ibid.). Moreover, the Platonic dialogues are 
usualy considered literary not because of their style but ?because they are imitations? 
(ibid.), and the Bible is often considered to be literature, but not for consistent reasons: 
some consider it to be such on the (aesthetic) grounds of ?the stylistic magnificence of 
the Authorised Version?, others on the (generic) grounds that it contains ?poems and 
stories?, and others on the (efectual) grounds of its ?bringing the whole soul of man into 
activity.? (31) Hirsch?s own argument is in fact that it has been a mistake to define 
?literature? as we have tended to since the Victorian period, ie. in solely aesthetic terms, 
?subsum[ing] literature under art? (33), and that departments of literature ought to cast 
their curricular nets far more widely than Atridge, etc would permit. 
While the first sense of ?literature?, above, is a convenience on my part, the second is an 
important and contested category in the real world: Ken Gelder (2004) argues, for 
example, that popular fiction and what he cals ?Literature? (with a capital L; this 
  25/379   
corresponds to literature in my second sense) are subsets of ?literature? (with a smal l, a 
category he defines none too clearly) that are not only mutualy exclusive, but defined 
by their diferences from one another. Gelder has most succes in defining the two 
subsets ostensively, listing large numbers of authors whose work would intuitively be 
considered to belong to one or the other: for example, Henry James, James Joyce, and 
Toni Morrison for Literature, but Robert Louis Stevenson, Agatha Christie, and John 
Grisham for popular fiction. Although some works of Literature sel very wel, and 
many works of popular fiction sel very badly, it is clear enough that the former trio 
write for an elite readership and are thus positioned in Piere Bourdieu?s (1993:115-131) 
?sub-field of restricted production?, and the later for a mas readership and are thus 
positioned in Bourdieu?s ?sub-field of large-scale production?. Gelder?s problems of 
definition are simpler than ours, since he discusses only fiction, and yet his dichotomous 
schema has flaws that his own findings serve to highlight. For example, science fiction 
has greater intelectual ambitions and closer links to academia (Gelder 2004:94-96) than 
most of the other seven genres that, for Gelder, comprise popular fiction (42), and 
moreover ? once media tie-ins like the Star Wars novels are discounted ? its readership 
is surely smal enough (68-69) for science fiction writers to be considered to operate in a 
field of restricted production. This does not, of course, make science fiction Literature ? 
but it is not clear what it does make it. Gelder?s distinction at first sems more nuanced 
than Thomas Roberts?s (1990) distinction betwen a ?literary bookscape? and a 
?paperback bookscape?, since literary works are quickly reisued in paperback and ? as 
the above comments on Fleming and Fielding make clear ? much ?popular? fiction first 
appears in hardback. However, in practice it may be les so, since Roberts distinguishes 
betwen truly popular nonliterary fiction ? writen by multimilion-seling authors like 
  26/379   
John Grisham ? and ?junk fiction?, Roberts?s true love, which is neither literary (in my 
second sense) nor particularly popular. 
This tripartite distinction can be sen to be very important to many readers of literature 
(in both my first and my second senses),
7
 but perhaps especialy in academic contexts. 
To ilustrate this point, I wil reverse the patern of the following chapters, by placing 
this chapter?s sole engagement with ?data? so near to its beginning. These data comprise 
a recording from a second year undergraduate clas. 
During a discussion of Coleridge?s ?Frost at Midnight?, the tutor asks ?how is the moon 
traditionaly thought of?? and ?what sex is the moon?? The first response, from several 
students simultaneously, is ?man in the moon?, with somebody else chipping in an 
utterance of which the only audible words are ?the cow?: a reference to the popular 
nursery rhyme is clear. The tutor acknowledges this contribution (?yes there is a man in 
the moon?) but preses for something more: 
T but what about th- th- the tr= 
                                                
7
 Petruci apears to deny this, although the publishing and reading dystopia he describes is far from 
my experience of the world of boks: ?publishing.. has falen back on ofering the public products of 
a Trivialiteratur and clasics with paralel translations, journalistic ?instant boks? of the worst 
sort, boks for hobyists, philosophical or linguistic esays, colections of jokes, volumes of poetry, 
mysteries, science fiction, boks on politics, histories of customs or of sex, and lightweight 
romances. Al these have ben published indistinguishably. Neither the publisher?s imprint nor the 
way the work is marketed nor the price discriminates among them, or brings any sort of order to the 
mas of texts that are produced every day.. Because the institutions (the schols in particular) that 
have always maintained and difused both the traditional canon for reading and traditional values 
have lost their forward motion and their capacity to influence people.. the reader to begins to lose 
al criteria of selection? (199[195]:356, emphasis aded). 
  27/379   
S =* * 
T how is the moon . equally popularly s- . I think the 
man in the moon . has to be . accepted this . this is 
interesting . because you say . the moon is also 
associated with romance= 
S1 =it?s meant to be . female . cuz if you . think of . 
ehm . like . you know the song . ?Memory? . it?s like 
. the moon . ?has the moon lost her memory . if she 
smiles alone?? sort of thing 
T yeah . [you were thinking of the Eliot [poem= 
S1        [ehm                            [m-hm 
T =too . w- w- . another case where the image [the= 
?                                             [(sniffs) 
T =moon uh . doesn?t hold any grudges it just stands in 
the doorway like a prostitute waiting 
What is interesting here is that though the tutor apparently hears S1?s contribution as (ie. 
he sems to respond to it as) a quotation from TS Eliot?s ?Rhapsody on a Windy Night?, 
it is meant (and quite clearly signaled) as a quotation from Andrew Lloyd Webber and 
Trevor Nunn?s bowdlerised popular reworking: Eliot?s line is the declarative ?The moon 
has lost her memory?, and he writes not that the moon is smiling, but simply that ?She is 
alone? (Eliot 1974[1917]:l.52, 56, emphasis added) ? and, in any case, the student 
  28/379   
directly refers to ?the song ?Memory??.
8
 Did the tutor physicaly fail to hear the 
student?s words? He could be regarded as gently
9
 correcting a faux pas: you may have 
spoken only of the Lloyd Webber and Nunn song, but ?you were thinking of the Eliot 
poem too?. At any rate, though the tutor asks for and gets something from popular 
culture, what ends up being discussed is again literature: verse that is literary in the 
sense that Lloyd Webber and Nunn?s verse is not. Why did he ask for something 
popular, then? The following provides a clue (and a serendipitously clear one, when one 
knows that the ?art? the writer refers to as ?comparably ?popular?? is none other than the 
musical, Cats, from which ?Memory? is the best-known song): 
although it has long been considered respectable in academic circles to take 
seriously as wel as to enjoy popular ?Folk? art, proletariat [sic] art, and non-
bourgeois art-forms such as jaz, folk songs, and soul music, comparably 
?popular?, commercialy succesful, bourgeois, middle-clas, middle-brow art of 
the kind atracting audiences of twenty-five milion people in fiften diferent 
countries has traditionaly been ignored if not deplored in certain intelectual 
circles, or dismisively put down.. as the kind of thing that ?other people like?. 
                                                
8
 Incidentaly, the simile the tutor draws is not explicit in the poem, though it is strongly sugested 
by paralels in the verses which introduce the woman and the mon: first, ?Half-past one, / The 
stret-lamp sputered, / The stret-lamp mutered, / The stret-lamp said, ?Regard that woman / Who 
hesitates toward you in the light of the dor / Which opens on her like a grin..? (l.14-18), then, 
?Half-past thre, / The lamp sputered, / The lamp mutered in the dark. / The lamp humed: 
?Regard the mon..? (l.46-50) Moreover, the mon ?winks a feble eye? (l.52) and the corner of the 
woman?s eye ?[t]wists like a croked pin? (l.2). That the woman is a prostitute is again sugested 
but not explicit. 
9
 His tone is inded gentle. 
  29/379   
Hawkins 1990:xiv-xv 
In other words, verse that is literary ? such as ?Rhapsody on a Windy Night? ? contrasts 
not only with verse that is unliterary ? the lyrics to ?Knock on Wood?, let us say ? but 
with verse that is (at least in academic circles) embarrassingly unliterary ? such as the 
lyrics to ?Memory? ? ie. the sort of verse that a stereotypical bourgeois philistine (se 
discussion of Bourdieu [1984{1979}] in Subsection 1.3.3) might prefer to both 
?Rhapsody on a Windy Night? and the lyrics to ?Knock on Wood?. And the same must 
go for other forms, as the above comments about science fiction would suggest. 
Consider these examples: 
(a) A senior academic colleague with whom I am not wel acquainted finds me 
watching The Cabinet of Dr Caligari. 
(b) The aforementioned colleague finds me watching Dandy Dust. 
(c) The aforementioned coleague finds me watching The Lord of the Rings: The 
Two Towers. 
In situation (a), I could be confident of having come across as a person of taste: The 
Cabinet of Dr Caligari is an aclaimed filmic artwork with an important place in the 
canon. Situation (b) could be awkward, since reactions to ultra-low-budget queer cinema 
are somewhat variable, but my intelectual credentials at least would be uncompromised. 
This, however, would clearly not be the case in situation (c), unles I swiftly moved to 
explain that I am writing a chapter on the film?s reception and that no, ha ha, of course I 
don?t realy think it?s any good. 
  30/379   
1.3 ?Reading? 
1.3.1 Criticism, interpretation, and the study of literature 
Before going on to specify what it is that I hope to study, I should first discus certain 
related topics that I shal not be studying. This is important, not only for purposes of 
clarification, but also because, as we shal se, a consideration of these topics and the 
ways in which they have been treated in the literature wil help us to explore many of the 
key concepts for our investigation. 
I shal begin with something that I would like to cal (with a nod to Wimsat and 
Beardsley [1946], from whom we shal be hearing more in Chapter 2) the ?interpretative 
falacy?. This is the asumption that, when one reads, an ?interpretation? of the text being 
read forms in one?s mind. This asumption is often implicit and sometimes explicit in 
literary-critical rhetoric; the fiction of an unarticulated interpretation is a useful critical 
fiction (since it enables the critic to present his or her textual commentary as the 
explanation of a naturaly-occurring phenomenon; se below), but it is a dangerous 
asumption in the study of reading and reception because it can lead us (a) to equate 
reading with interpreting, and (b) to search for the ?meaning? which each work has for 
each reader. This equation and this search are highly appropriate when we are dealing 
with situations in which one reads by producing interpretative commentary,
10
 for 
example, post-New Critical literary study, and, for this reason, the ?interpretative 
                                                
10
 And with regard to which there is no falacy in asuming the production of an interpretation: an 
interpretation that wil, in any case, be constituted by the critical comentary that is materialy 
produced, and which does not therefore ned to be asumed in quite the same way as when we are 
dealing with forms of reading that do not involve the production of interpretative comentary. That 
said, it is stil posible to comit a version of this falacy by asuming the interpretation to precede 
the comentary. As we shal se in this subsection, several thinkers do precisely that. 
  31/379   
falacy? might also be termed the falacy of the litle critic in the brain: it involves the 
asumption that all readers read like a particular kind of literary critic, whether they 
know it or not, and possibly on a subconscious level. We shal se examples of this later, 
but first we must satisfy ourselves that reading and interpreting are not, generaly 
speaking, the same thing.
1
 
The Oxford English Dictionary gives the primary meaning of ?to interpret? (with 
examples dating back to the Old English period) as: 
To expound the meaning of (something abstruse or mysterious); to render 
(words, writings, an author, etc.) clear or explicit; to elucidate; to explain. 
Formerly, also, To translate (now only contextualy, as included in the general 
sense). 
Oxford English Dictionary 1989, sense 1a 
The additional meaning, ?To make out the meaning of, explain to oneself? (sense 2a), is 
more recent, with examples dated no further back than the late 18th century. Moreover, 
it is clearly derived from ? and even a special case of ? the earlier uses: one privately 
explains to oneself, rather than publicly explaining to an audience. The idea that for a 
                                                
1
 It is important to emphasise what I am not arguing at this point. I am not, for example, claiming 
that interpretation itself (?the oldest song we sing in literary and cultural studies? [McGan 205:4]) 
is somehow falacious. Inded, this disertation is centraly concerned with interpretation: even 
though it argues that reading is not intrinsicaly interpretative, a great deal of its text is taken up with 
discusing ? and practising ? interpretation; Chapter 2 in particular atempts to distinguish diferent 
kinds of interpretation, and to clear a litle space for my own interpretative practice.The 
interpretative falacy may be comited in discourse on interpretation and reading; discourse on 
interpretation and reading may ocur in the course of interpretative discourse. 
  32/379   
reader to understand any text ? even an obvious, mundane, clear, and explicit text in 
languages the reader understands ? requires him or her to interpret it is a new one, and 
one that I find hard to make sense of, unles one asumes, as some cognitive theorists 
sem to, that al languages are foreign to the brain, which must therefore translate every 
text and utterance it encounters into its own, private, ?language of thought?. 
Since I do not make this asumption, I wil use the word ?interpretation? as Steven 
Mailoux does when he states that interpretations are ?atempts to convince others of the 
truth of explications and explanations? (1989:15). Interpretation may be a proces of 
discovery in cases where the interpreter seks the explanation that wil be most 
convincing and defensible. Unles we are to use it metaphoricaly, the referent of the 
word ?interpretation? must, under this definition, be a spoken utterance or writen text, or 
? at a stretch ? an imagined sequence of words; where there is no such utterance, text, or 
sequence to refer to, I shal avoid the term ?interpretation?. This usage wil sem 
intuitive to media reception researchers (se Subsection 1.3.3), who have come to the 
realisation that much textual usage is meaningles (Hermes 1995), and that to ask 
consumers about the meaning of texts may in many cases be to oblige them to engage in 
an (interpretative) intelectual activity to which they may (at least with regard to those 
particular texts) be entirely unacustomed. As Alan McKe puts it, 
Just because people say when you ask them that this is what they think about a 
particular text, it doesn?t mean that this is what it means to them in their 
everyday lives?. the very proces of teling somebody what you think about 
something isn?t the same thing as thinking about it in your everyday life. 
..an audience member might never actualy have thought about, or actively made 
  33/379   
sense of, a text before they?re asked about it. 
2003:84 
Such a usage may, however, sem rather les intuitive to many literary critics, who, ?[a]s 
inheritors of the romantic notion of seing works of literature as autonomous, and of 
hermeneutic traditions of drawing out precise meanings from critical reading of texts.. 
may be at risk of expecting more than can ever reasonably be demanded? from the study 
of real readers (St Clair 2004:401): to put it another way, they ?are in the busines of 
meaning production and interpretation? but may not necesarily realise that ?the majority 
of media users are not? (Hermes 1995:16). Particularly in the more conservative 
branches of literary criticism, such as stylistics, the ilusion remains that there is always 
an interpretation, that it forms naturaly in the mind, and that analysis (the stylistician?s 
word for criticism) serves to provide a causal explanation for it. As one of the most 
prominent representatives of that field puts it, ?[s]tylistic analysis involves examining 
carefuly the linguistic structure of a text and showing the role which that linguistic 
structure plays in helping a reader to arive at an interpretation of that text? (Short 
1993:8); the same falacy is implicit in the folowing manifesto from another stylistician: 
interpretative and evaluative criticism is an esentialy humanistic discipline. Its 
insights are intuitive and personal. It is writen to share experiences of reading 
which it considers valuable, and to enhance apreciation. It should not be writen 
to make points about the relationship betwen signifiers and signified. On the 
other hand, a theoretical discipline is posible, based on a theoretical literary 
pragmatics that seks to describe and explain poetic efects. This theoretical 
  34/379   
discipline requires that the other humanistic discipline thrive, because theory 
necesarily needs to work with, describe, and explain the readings that criticism 
produces. 
Pilkington 1991:49 
Here, interpretation (together with evaluation) is identified with ?intuitive and personal? 
and therefore irational or pre-rational ?experiences? that the idiot-savant non-stylistic 
critic (who replaces the former statement?s ambiguous ?a reader?) can only ?share?, but 
the stylistician can subsequently ?explain?. The conservatism of this position can be sen 
from the fact that it replicates, without acknowledgement and in only very slightly 
modified form, that of IA Richards, the ?distinct but related disciplines? being merely the 
two halves of what Richards (1960[1924]:23) terms a ?ful critical statement?, and the 
major diference being that Richards did not confuse experiences with interpretations. 
These thinkers fail to recognise that, far from being an intuitive and pre-rational mental 
proces, literary interpretation is, like other forms of interpretation, a rational 
engagement with a field of knowledge: 
in this profesion, you earn the right to say something because it has not been 
said by anyone else, or because it is a reversal of what is usualy said, or because, 
while it has been said, its implications have not yet ben speled out. You do not 
offer something as the report of a comunion betwen the individual critical 
sensibility and a work or its author; and, if you did, if your articles were al 
writen as if they were titled ?What I think about Middlemarch? or ?The Waste 
Land and me?, they would not be given a hearing.. Instead, they would be 
  35/379   
dismised as being a waste of a coleague?s time, or as beside the point, or as 
uninformed, or simply as unprofesional. 
Fish 1989:164-165 
A variant of the interpretative falacy can be found in the writings of ED Hirsch 
(philosophicaly sophisticated though they are): 
This distinction betwen the meaning of an interpretation and the construction of 
meaning to which the interpretation refers is one of the most venerable in 
hermeneutic theory. Ernesti caled it the distinction betwen the art of 
understanding and the art of explaining ? the subtilitas inteligendi and the 
subtilitas explicandi.. 
It is obvious that understanding is prior to and diferent from interpretation. 
1967:129 
As Hirsch elaborates, 
Atempting to eface this distinction results only in logical embarasment before 
the simplest questions, such as, ?What does the explicator understand before he 
makes his explication?? Gadamer?s dificulty in coping with this basic question is 
quite aparent when he comes to describe the proces of interpretation. He 
cannot say that the interpreter understands the original sense of the text, since 
that would be to disregard the historicity of understanding. He cannot say, on the 
other hand, that the interpreter understands his own subsequent explication, since 
that would be patently absurd. 
  36/379   
253 
However, this only causes embarasment if one asumes that explication (ie. 
interpretation, in the sense employed in this disertation) can only be the expresion of a 
previously formed understanding (ie. interpretation, in the sense employed by Short). I 
would sugest that ?understanding? and ?misunderstanding? are, rather, qualities that are 
atributed on the basis of an explication?s persuasivenes. The explication may be 
preceded by an ?aha!? experience, but that is not understanding. The ?aha!? experience in 
understanding a mathematical rule is explained here by Meredith Wiliams, folowing 
Witgenstein (1968[1953]); I would sugest that the same analysis can be aplied to 
other forms of understanding: 
In the ?aha!? experience, the exclamation itself is not a report on an inner state of 
mind. It is rather expresive of confidence that one can go on in a certain way. 
Whether or not one realy understands depends solely upon whether, in fact, one 
can go on in the corect way. 
Wiliams 1999:212 
Feling that one understands, or does not understand, a literary work amounts to 
confidence, or lack of confidence, in one?s ability to use it, for example by explicating it. 
If a problem arises ? for example, if a hitherto overlooked textual detail is brought to light 
in the course (or aftermath) of one?s explication, and it is not obvious that the same 
explication can be extended to encompas it, or if a previously unsuspected ambiguity is 
  37/379   
perceived ? one may have to conclude that one did not understand the text after al.
12
 In 
principle, this may always hapen, even though, in practice, it does not. Eric Livingston 
ses something like this at the very heart of literary-critical practice: 
The reading of some particular text appears, at first, opaque and fragmented, or 
clouded by the commentary that has surrounded its reading. A possible inner 
coherence of a way of reading the text is sen, and the text begins to unfold to its 
reading, becoming the embodiment of clarity... 
Producing such demonstrations and seing such demonstrations performed 
sustain the members of the discipline in their work. Each critical article offers 
itself as containing such a demonstration ? whether it is about a specific text, the 
use of imagery in a particular period, or a feature of the critical literature. 
1995:18 
To be satisfied with my explication of a text is to acept me as having understood it. At 
least within the enterprise of post-New Critical literary studies, one is said to be able to 
understand those texts that one is deemed to be able to explicate satisfactorily. This 
aplies even to myself: if I cannot provide an explication that satisfies myself, then I 
cannot acept myself as having understood. Of course, there is no criterion by which 
                                                
12
 Explication is here used as an example because of its particular relevance to post-New Critical 
literary criticism. I would, however, sugest that the situation is broadly similar with regard to other 
uses of text. For example, if I atempt to use an instruction leaflet not by explicating but by carying 
out its instructions in the course of (let us say) seting up a household apliance, and I find myself 
either unable to do so, or (in seming to do so) encountering unexpected dificulties, then one of the 
posibilities I wil have to consider is that I have not understod that particular text. (Another such 
posibility is, of course, that the text is in some way unfit for the use to which I have put it.) 
  38/379   
satisfactory explications can be distinguished from unsatisfactory ones, but that is not 
the point: it is not that the explications are satisfactory in themselves, but that they have 
satisfied a particular audience. That no unanswerable objections have ben raised today 
is no guarante that this wil stil be the case tomorrow (though equaly, there is no 
guarante that the objection that is unanswerable tomorrow wil stil be so the day after). 
This makes interpretation and understanding an esentialy interpersonal (rather than 
intra-mental) mater, in literary studies no les than elsewhere: as one social psychologist 
has argued, ?perhaps it takes multiple perspectives in order to have concepts and 
conceptual problems, to propose that an explanation is wrong or neds justification or 
testing, even to provide a basis for such a notion as ?explanation?.? (Edwards 1997:33) 
Without the posibility that one?s explication (in Edwards?s terms, explanation) of a text 
may be objected to, the activity of searching the text for details to suport (in Edwards?s 
terms, be used in justification of) it would have no meaning. Worse, with no-one to 
explain to, there could be no explication at al, and without the posibility of an 
explication?s being objected to, the notion of understanding would be meaningles. 
Understanding is diferent to (is something else than) explaining or interpreting, but it is 
in no sense prior to it. Interpretation as we know it is posible ? and, inded, conceivable 
? only because there is more than one potential interpreter. This line of thought is 
developed further in Chapter 3. 
If reading does not necesarily involve interpretation, it may nonetheles involve other 
proceses. This is often forgotten in post-New Critical literary studies, in which ?reading 
has been conceptualised as an act(ivity) of interpretation, and interpretation as mode of 
cognitive intelectual application? (Pearce 1997:7); such forgeting is arguably the result 
  39/379   
of the institutional privileging of that genre of writing known as ?the reading? at the levels 
of both research and pedagogy. Sugesting that ?readings? are the stock-in-trade of 
?American criticism?, Robert Scholes (1974:151) defines a ?reading? as ?a reduction of the 
text to a particular meaning that may be drawn out of it?, and notes that these are usualy 
about twenty pages long, ?whether the work being considered is a poem of twenty lines 
or a novel of two hundred pages?;
13
 with regard to pedagogy, Robert Hodge (1990:51) 
writes as follows: 
The clasroom practice organised around literature in [New Critical] practice 
semed to emphasise reading over writing, but what was actualy involved was a 
specific reading regime constantly monitored by a writing regime, which 
operated to banish uncontrolled intentions and afects.. The plenitude of 
semiosic syntagms specified or alowed by.. various genres is thus anchored, in 
the conditions of the clasroom, to the overiding meanings constituted by the 
teacher?s response (?good work?, ?65%?). 
Alternative approaches are suggested by, amongst others, Lynne Pearce (1997), who 
conceives reading in terms of (often biterly unhappy) love afairs with characters, 
works, authors, etc (se Section 1.3.2), and Barbara Hernstein Smith, who constructs a 
brief history of Shakespeare?s sonnets that centres not on meaning and interpretation but 
on value and evaluation. The Quarto edition may have been suppresed, she writes, but 
                                                
13
 Cf. Lodge (1984[196]:35): ?Paraphrase, in the sense of sumary, is as indispensible to the novel-critic 
as close analysis is to the critic of lyric poetry.. [C]lose analysis is itself a disguised form of paraphrase, 
difering from the paraphrase of conventional novel-criticism only in that it tends towards expansion 
rather than compresion.? Lodge does not directly link this state of afairs to the conventional qualities of 
?the reading? as a genre of academic writing. 
  40/379   
Thirty years later, [the sonnets] were found at least worth the pirating and 
republishing. Thereafter.. we can begin to trace the fortunes of the sonnets in the 
hands of the literary establishment ? the editors and anthologists, the critics and 
scholars, the profesors and students of Eng. Lit., down to our own time and this 
very moment ? and, with les asurance, their fortunes in the hands of those 
myriad inarticulate nonprofesionals for whom, during more than 350 years, the 
sonnets have figured in some way: the ?reading public?, those who, for whatever 
reasons, have treasured or dismised them, bought them as gifts for friends, read 
them aloud to lovers, quoted them in leters, or tossed them out when cleaning up 
the atic. 
1988:3 
This shows how much more there must be to a study of literary works in use than a 
study of how they have been interpreted. Readers (academic and otherwise) do more 
than interpret texts: they also buy them, throw them away, etc. Implicit in these acts ? 
only some of which involve interpretation ? are evaluations. I suspect that there are 
many theorists who would stil suppose interpretation to be fundamental ? who would, 
for example, suppose that an evaluation is always contingent upon an interpretation ? 
that one throws away an edition of the sonnets if one evaluates them negatively, for 
example, and that one evaluates them negatively if one dislikes the meanings that, in 
them, one discerns.
14
 But this is mistaken. It projects upon every reader the self-image of 
the interpretative critic ? perhaps the purest expresion of the ?interpretative falacy?. 
Janice Radway?s (1987[1984]:19-45) analysis of ?category publishing? in general and 
                                                
14
 Alternatively: that, from them, one constructs. Se Chapter 3 of the curent study. 
  41/379   
the paperback romance in particular ? a sterling example of book historical research (se 
below) that has tended to be sidelined in the reception of Radway?s investigation as a 
clasic of afirmative cultural studies (se Section 1.3.3) ? reveals the folly of this 
approach. As Radway argues, 
Because literary critics tend to move imediately from textual interpretation to 
sociological explanation, they conclude easily that changes in textual features or 
generic popularity must be the simple and direct result of ideological shifts in the 
surrounding culture. Thus, because she detects a more overtly misogynist 
mesage at the heart of the genre, Ann Douglas can argue, in her widely quoted 
article ?Soft-Porn Culture? [1980], that the coincidence of the romance?s 
increasing popularity with the rise of the women?s movement must point to a 
new and developing backlash against feminism. Because that new mesage is 
there in the text, she reasons, those who repetitively buy romances must 
experience a more insistent need to receive it again and again. 
Although this kind of argument sems logical enough, it rests on a series of 
tenuous asumptions about the equivalence of critics and readers, and ignores the 
basic facts about the changing nature of book production and distribution in 
contemporary America. Douglas?s explanatory strategy asumes that purchasing 
decisions are a function only of the content of a given text and the needs of 
readers. In fact, they are deeply afected by a book?s appearance and availability 
as wel as by potential readers? awarenes and expectations. Book buying, then, 
cannot be reduced to a simple interaction betwen a book and a reader. It is an 
event that is afected and at least partialy controlled by the material nature of 
  42/379   
book publishing as a socialy organised technology of production and 
distribution. 
Radway 1987(1984):19 
To understand evaluation requires perhaps an aesthetic and certainly a sociological 
frame of reference (se Subsection 1.3.3). Interpretation remains important, but to 
interpret texts is only one of many ways of using them. We wil often (though by no 
means always) find a need to speak of interpretation when we try to discuss situations 
where people talk and write about literary works (se Footnote 10). This is the case 
when we study twentieth century literary criticism, as Jonathan Culler (1975) and Eric 
Livingston (1995) do: both these scholars describe the procedures by which criticism 
operates, and both their acounts centre around descriptions (and programes of 
proposed description) of interpretative practice, since both understand criticism in the 
terms established by the New Critics. Culler and Livingston?s acounts of ?literary 
competence? and the reading practices of the ?critical community? might therefore be 
considered to be ahistorical, in that they elevate literary interpretation to something like 
a universal principle (whether or not they choose to practise it themselves). In order to 
overcome this, we wil need studies of the literary-critical ideas entertained in various 
periods (eg. Habib [2005], or the nine-volume Cambridge History of Literary Criticism), 
but we may have stil greater need of studies that show the socio-temporal development 
of literary-critical practice. 
Tery Eagleton first discusses the emergence of the Leavisite periodical Scrutiny as a 
historical moment in Literary theory (1976), later extending this acount both forwards 
and backwards in The function of criticism (1984). He shows that what we know today 
as literary criticism grew out of 18th century coffe house discussion, first in the pages 
  43/379   
of the Tatler and the Spectator, later taking an ?explicitly, unabashedly political? form in 
journals such as the Edinburgh Review and the Quarterly Review, which ?tended to 
select for review only those works on which they could loosely peg lengthy ideological 
pieces? (1984:38). By the Victorian period, a crisis emerges: as Eagleton describes it, a 
problem ?which has never ceased to dog the English critical institution, and is indeed 
quite unresolved even today?: that ?either criticism strives to justify itself at the bar of 
public opinion by maintaining a general humanistic responsibility for the culture as a 
whole, the amateurism of which wil prove increasingly incapacitating as bourgeois 
society develops; or it converts itself into a species of technological expertise, thereby 
establishing its profesional legitimacy at the cost of renouncing any wider social 
relevance.? (56-57) Under Eagleton?s analysis, Scrutiny denied the contradiction 
betwen the two aims with the claim that ?the more rigorously criticism interogated the 
literary object, the more richly it yielded up that sensuous concretenes and vital 
enactment of value which were of general human relevance? (83): a ?strategy? that 
became the foundation of every major critical movement until the 1960s, being taken up 
in particular by IA Richards, Northrop Frye, and the New Critics ? each of whom 
repeated this gesture in some way, but each of whom ?tipped that balance? towards the 
technocratic (85). 
In Defining literary criticism (2005), Carol Atherton charges Eagleton with having 
focused on rhetoric about criticism rather than actual critical practice. Atherton?s longer 
and more historicaly rigorous study reveals a far greater diversity of critical practices 
than Eagleton discusses. For example, she shows that, in the late 19th century, the 
newly-founded universities examined students solely on their factual knowledge of 
literary works and their authors, for example asking them ?to give an outline of any one 
of the Canterbury Tales or to ?quote any pasage? from ?Christabel?? (2005:31) ? 
  44/379   
something that Eagleton ignores. Oxbridge English courses, which began stil later in the 
19th century, were initialy focused on the philological study of Old and Middle English, 
only later coming to what Eagleton supposes them to have begun with, ie. the teaching 
of English literature on the model of the Clasics. Moreover, this post-philological 
strategy was acomplished in two very diferent ways: on the one hand, Oxford?s 
Honour School of English Language and Literature came to teach a curiculum in which 
?what students were expected to develop was.. a concrete body of knowledge about a 
pre-defined literary tradition? (46-47),
15
 while, on the other, the first examinations for 
Cambridge?s English Tripos ?demand[ed] reasoned argument and a certain amount of 
playful lateral thinking.? (49) A further complexity unnoticed by Eagleton arose outside 
the higher educational system: ninetenth century profesors such as AC Bradley ?drew 
on certain aspects of literary scholarship in order to claim.. [profesional] authority? in 
their published criticism, while seking, in that same criticism ?to distance themselves 
from the methods it [scholarship] employed and the types of knowledge it prioritised, 
foregrounding a personal sympathy that offered itself as the only route to a ?true? 
understanding? (87), whilst modernist critics of the early twentieth century, such as 
Virginia Woolf, produced entirely ?unacademic? criticism, ?elevat[ing] judgement over 
knowledge, with the capacity to judge.. securing the critic?s authority.? (99) It is 
important to recognise, however, that underlying al this is the same dialectic of 
technocratic profesionalism (ie. scholarship) and humanist amateurism (ie. criticism ? 
except in those uses where ?criticism? means ?scholarship?, as in ?textual criticism?, 
?lower criticism?, and ?higher criticism?) that Eagleton discerns: and that, much like 
Eagleton, Atherton ses this dialectic continuing throughout twentieth century debates 
                                                
15
 For example, a student aparently failed his BLit examination in 1915 ?partly on the grounds of 
his overestimation of the works of Aphra Behn? (Atherton 205:46). 
  45/379   
on the nature and purpose of literary criticism and literary education. Atherton ses this 
in terms of a conflict betwen legitimacy and distinctivenes: historicist approaches, for 
example, tend to privilege historical, rather than specificaly literary, knowledge,
16
 she 
argues, while the humanist-amateur approach appears not to ?fulfil the esential criteria 
for disciplinary status: it possese[s] neither a methodology nor a clearly defined body of 
knowledge, and [is] unable to demonstrate any kind of social utility.? (41) 
I would argue that the New Criticism (as typified by Brooks [1968{1947}]) and the 
forms of criticism which have followed on from it (as described by Livingston [1995] 
and defended by Fish [1995]) do actualy manage to create a methodology and a body of 
knowledge that are specific to themselves (respectively, the minute examination of the 
wording of literary works and the ever-growing corpora of interpretations resulting from 
past examination of those same works), and that this is why they have been so 
institutionaly succesful, stering betwen both poles as they do. Nonetheles, they 
sem to have been unable to imagine any convincing form of social utility for 
themselves (se Fish 1995), and thus remain vulnerable to criticism from outside. I must 
confes to great sympathy for Jerome McGann?s alternative critical project, which 
positions itself in this debate by employing principles of textual scholarship (this the 
methodology) to construct a history of textuality (ie. a specificaly literary form of 
historical knowledge) and (this the social justification) to instil an awarenes of ?the 
pastnes of the past? (McGann 1985:64); it sems unlikely that such a form of literary 
study wil ever become widespread, however, since the methodology requires skils that 
                                                
16
 This is not, of course, a problem specific to historicism. Psychoanalytic criticism privileges 
knowledge of psychoanalytic theories, stylistics privileges knowledge of linguistics, cognitive 
poetics privileges knowledge of cognitive psychology, etc. In each case, whatever legitimacy literary 
study acquires is esentialy borowed. 
  46/379   
are rarely taught even at postgraduate level and the social utility that is proposed ? 
efectively, that of ?defin[ing] the limits and special functions of.. curent ideological 
practices? through exposure to ?culturaly alienated products? (158) ? is unlikely to 
atract much custom in the post-Thatcherite, post-Reaganite educational marketplace. 
Yet another alternative, proposed by Peter McDonald, is to study literary works ?not to 
interpret their meaning but to reconstruct their predicament? (1997:113), where this 
involves ?consider[ing] the entire production cycle from manuscript to book? (118) in 
context of the ?field of cultural production? (Bourdieu 1993) as it existed in the time and 
place of those works? publication: this conception of literary study is very close to 
McGann?s, with the diference that its emphasis is les towards bibliography and more 
towards the history of symbolic production, since ?the primary task? is not to trace the 
work?s transmision history but ?to reconstruct the field? that gives it significance 
(McDonald 1997:113). This relates closely to the applications for speech act theory and 
the idea of intention which I propose in Chapter 2, and indeed (se Footnote 4 and 
concluding note to Chapter 4) to my overal approach to reception. Nonetheles, it is an 
extreme minority position in the study of modern literature, and I am aware of no-one 
else working in that field who has advocated it.
17
 
                                                
17
 In the sociology of literature (to take thre pertinent examples cited here: Bourdieu 196[192], 
Fowler 200, Gelder 204; se Sections 1.2, 1.7 ,and 1.8 of this study), in the history of the bok 
(se Subsection 1.3.2 and Chapters 2 and 4), and in clasical and medieval studies (se Fotnote 1), it 
is a rather les extraordinary position. Studies of particular relevance include Jackson?s (207) study 
of the strugles by which Wiliam Wordsworth and his suporters consolidated his posthumous 
position as the pre-eminent poet of his time and Bel?s study of ?the way in which, within a single 
writer?s oeuvre, certain texts (and even fragments of text) are over time given priority over others 
(aparent in the language of the ?seminal?, the ?major? and the ?minor?, the ?best? and ?worst?, the 
?representative work?)? (200:15). 
  47/379   
A more widespread move has been the turn to ?theory? as a body of knowledge specific 
to literary studies, though this has notoriously resulted, as Atherton notes, in ?a level of 
specialisation that could only be comprehended by a smal circle of readers? (2005:154). 
That this should be perceived as a problem ay sem strange (incomprehensibility to 
outsiders is the condition of much academic discourse today, especialy in the sciences) 
until we recognise the persistence ? as an ideal if not in practice ? of ?the Arnoldian 
concept of the critic as mediating betwen the text and the educated general public? 
(ibid.): though there is nothing inherently controversial about a paper in the field of 
information science that would, for the majority of internet surfers, sem both 
impenetrable and irelevant, to many people, there sems something outrageous about a 
paper on Hamlet that would not be understood and found interesting by a typical 
member of the Royal Shakespeare Company?s audience. Such later-day Arnoldianism 
is displayed, for example, in James Wood?s (2004) review of volume 12 of the Oxford 
English Literary History: an anti-academic rant that bemoans the supposed demise of 
non-academic criticism whilst ignoring the fact that it is itself a token of that type and 
yet has, despite this, been given no leser a platform than the London Review of Books in 
which to vent its splen. 
This would sem an opportune moment to position this disertation in relation to the 
above debates: its central preoccupation is literary reception (more of which below) and 
the principles by which histories of literary commentary may be constructed. Whether 
such histories may be considered a specificaly literary form of knowledge is likely to 
prove controversial; I am indful of the warning I received as a Masters student whilst 
trying to write a smaler disertation that did much the same thing: the profesor to 
whom I appealed for arbitration betwen myself and my supervisor refused to 
acknowledge my intertextual analysis of four interpretations of Heart of Darknes (se 
  48/379   
Alington 2006) as constituting an engagement with ?the evidential base? or as sufficient 
for anything but a ?pure philosophy Masters? (Stockwel 2005: unpaginated). Such a 
view is les unreasonable than it might at first sem, given the asumptions under which 
literary study usualy proceds: although literary knowledge (in the post-New Critical 
sense discused above) is constituted by the total body of interpretative commentary, it is 
the literary works commented upon (and not the comentaries themselves) that are 
considered to be (a) the objects of this knowledge, and (b) the evidence to be appealed to 
in constructing such knowledge: as I have writen elsewhere, ?[i]f to read Heart of 
Darknes is to play a game, then the meaning of Heart of Darknes is the stake for 
which one plays, and it is only be refering to its text that one may make a move.? 
(2006:133) Such asumptions mean that the knowledge asembled by post-New Critical 
literary study cannot be critiqued from within, since anything that is not an interpretation 
of a literary work and founded on the linguistic structure of a text of that work conceived 
as the primary ?evidential base? wil be regarded as extraneous to that knowledge, and 
indeed irelevant to the discipline as a whole: one may, of course, contest particular 
interpretations or ways of interpreting, but this is only to add to or at most to revise the 
structure of knowledge erected by the New Criticism. Most perniciously, this thinking 
has come to influence theoretical discourse within literary studies to such an extent that 
one often finds that discussion of theory is regarded as ?preliminary to the real work of 
interpreting texts? and ? ?theory? is asumed to mean ?method?? (Culler 
2001[1981]:246). 
Thankfully for this disertation, the notion of ?reception study? exists, although it 
remains marginal to literary studies. If the reception of a work is to be regarded as an 
aspect of the history of that work ? and particularly if, as I argue in Chapter 2, the work 
  49/379   
is to be regarded as a function of its own history
18
 ? then it is possible for reception 
study to construct literary knowledge; moreover, this knowledge can aspire to transcend 
mere amateurism through the application of a rigorous critical methodology. It is 
therefore time to consider what ?reception study? means. 
1.3.2 ?Reader response?, and literary reception study 
Over the last four decades, notions of ?reader response theory?, ?reader response 
criticism?, and ?reception aesthetics? have appeared ? and remained ? on the margins of 
literary-critical practice. They involve looking at the literary work from the point of 
view of an (imaginary) reader, and possibly arguing that the experiences this reader has 
whilst reading the work are the meaning of the work. These ideas are primarily known to 
us from Stanley Fish (1971), Wolfgang Iser (1978), and Hans Robert Jauss (1982), al of 
whom focus on the aesthetics of literature, although there is a political variant of reader 
response criticism, perhaps the best example being Judith Feterley?s The resisting 
reader (1978). In the most extreme version of reader response theory, laid out in Stanley 
Fish?s controversial Is there a text in this class? (1980), the reader does not merely 
respond to but creates the text that is read, and is not merely the locus but the origin of 
literary meaning. This notorious view, which is re-examined in Chapter 3, is wel-known 
but not widely acepted, and has been atacked as ?false consciousnes? from a feminist 
point of view (Pearce 1997:42).
19
 Other versions of reader response theory, including 
                                                
18
 That is, not as an arangement of language items which came into being at a specific point in time 
and which now exists atemporaly, but as the organising principle of an ongoing sequence of acts in 
which publishing and interpreting (among others) are no les important than the initial acts of 
composition. 
19
 On her past reading of the works of John Clare under Fishian asumptions, Pearce states: ?Because I 
thought it was I, the reader, who had made these voices audible.. both their gender and mine were 
  50/379   
Iser?s, Jauss?s, and Feterley?s, emphasise the power of the text while focusing atention 
on the reader?s interaction with it; their non-engagement with empirical readers means, 
however, that the specifics of this interaction remain speculative: the empirical readers 
about whom we can learn most from their works are the reader response theorists 
themselves. Indeed, Charlene Avalone (2008) shows that Feterley exemplifies (rather 
than describes) a centuries-old tradition of women?s writing, in which canonical literary 
works are criticised for their damaging efect on women. The reader invoked in reader 
response criticism can thus be thought of as an explanatory device: the notional being by 
definition able to realise (or prone to realising) each of the meanings and efects that a 
critic atributes to a work without the help of the critic or his/her explication. This 
?reader? is perhaps the miror image of an equaly notional ?author? (cf. Fish 1980:161), 
and (as discussed in Chapter 2 of the current study), this imaginary pair are often 
discussed as though engaged in communication with one another. 
Two more recent theories with a responding reader at their heart have been proposed by 
Lynne Pearce (1997) and Derek Atridge (2004). Pearce?s theory, which has already 
been mentioned (above; se also Chapters 2, 3, and 4), adapts the narative of romance 
from Roland Barthes?s A lover?s discourse (1978[1977]) to acount for the experience of 
the reader, who is sen to be powerles before the unresponding work that he or she has 
falen in love with, and therefore largely condemned to jealousy, frustration, anxiety, 
and fear of disappointment. Atridge?s rests on a complex network of terms of which 
thre ? inventivenes, singularity, and alterity ? refer to the experience of the reader in 
encountering a work which may not ?be wholly comprehended within the norms of the 
culture? (2004:64) but which, in its othernesnes, leads to further invention: for 
example, ?[t]he reduplication of Celtic intertwined animals as motifs for modern interior 
                                                                                                                                    
irelevant.? (197:43) 
  51/379   
decoration does not involve an inventive relation to the original works of art?, but 
?[w]hen Japan was opened to the West.. Manet, Degas, and Whistler were among those 
who responded inventively to the visual alterity of Japanese prints? (53).
20
 Both Pearce 
and Atridge?s theories difer from clasical reader response theory in that they are only 
incidentaly concerned with ?meaning? and in that they undermine the premise of reader 
response criticism, ie. that it is possible to analyse a work by describing the responses to 
it of ?a? or ?the? reader. Atridge ses the creation of a writen response to a literary work 
as a situation in which ?the reader atempts to answer to the work?s shaping of language 
by a new shaping of his own? (2004:93), ie. as the production of a new ork rather than 
a report on (or prediction of) an encounter with an old one. In a move disturbing for al 
forms of literary criticism, including reader response criticism, Pearce ses writing as 
?the (only?) means through which the reader/lover can efectively deal with the 
frustration of his or her own silence/inactivity? by ?turning the tables on the one that has 
had us in its thral? (1997:156), and therefore not as rational analysis but as a mere 
coping strategy. 
Contrary to what is commonly asumed (eg. by Childs 1999:2), a notion of the reader?s 
response has been at the implicit heart of twentieth-century criticism: as McGann 
(1985:111-114) argues, the mainstream of twentieth-century literary studies broke with 
eightenth- and ninetenth-century philological traditions by grounding itself instead in 
                                                
20
 This example, together with others Atridge uses, gives me cause to wonder whether what makes the 
works Atridge discuses apear singular might not be (at least in part) their alienation from a context in 
which they could have ben read as non-singular. For example, the singularity of encounters with the sort 
of (canonical) literary works that Atridge primarily focuses on may be contributed to by what Roberts 
(190:215) cals the ?segmentation? of ?the literary bokscape.. into major texts? that are both 
?surounded by comentary? and cut of from the (frequently vanished) genres that ?produced? them. 
  52/379   
a Kantian aesthetics in which poems and other artworks were conceived as ?integral 
phenomena whose finality was exhausted in the individual?s experience of the work.? 
(McGann 1985:113) It is thus the concept of the responding reader that implicitly 
creates the ?text? as the object for both formalist and structuralist criticism, and this is 
indeed explicit in the work of such founding figures as IA Richards (1960[1924]) and 
Roland Barthes (1997[1967]). In other words, while appearing to overturn the 
asumption that ?[t]he function of criticism is to iluminate the operations of those 
linguistic structures which we now like to cal ?texts?? (McGann 1985:114), reader 
response criticism ay be argued to re-asert the principle that legitimates such analysis. 
Indeed, following on from my comments about the reader as explanatory device, I 
would argue that reader response criticism is, in practice, a way of conducting formal 
and structural analyses of texts of works: reader response critics ?work from the text 
itself rather than from information about responses? (Culler 2001[1981]:62), when it is 
surely clear that ?we cannot, without circularity, recover the range of actual responses to 
the reading of printed texts without information from outside the texts.? (St Clair 2004:4) 
The recovery of actual responses (rather than the postulation of imaginary responses, as 
in reader response criticism) is undertaken in literary reception study, the loosely 
organised efort to understand the ways in which works are taken up and made use of by 
real readers, and the history of reading, which is usualy conceived to be a subset of the 
history of the book but (I would suggest) blurs into reception study to create a single 
(nameles) interdisciplinary field; another way of looking at it would be to say that book 
history has both redefined the scope of literary reception study (so that it can now 
encompas the reception of all writen and printed mater, regardles of whether it is in 
any sense ?literary?) and provided it with a range of methodologies. Contributions to this 
field ? whatever we are to name it ? take many forms. One of the most important for 
  53/379   
literary and cultural studies has been the study of how specific works, or text types, were 
received in specific cultural and historical contexts. A good example of this would be 
Lawrence Levine?s study of Shakespeare in 19th century America (1988). Reception, in 
this sense, would include the production of editions and translations of the works in 
question, the circulation of the aforementioned, their appearance in collections, their 
reviewing in the pres, their mention in diaries and leters, and their referencing in 
subsequently published works. Descriptive bibliography provides a useful tool here, as 
copies of a text may be examined for physical evidence of how they were read, used, 
and understood ? as in Owen Gingerich?s (2002) meticulous tracking down and 
examining of every extant copy of the first two editions of Copernicus?s De 
Revolutionibus. Another important form is the study of how reception works more 
generaly in those same contexts: rather than asking how some particular work was 
received, it asks which works were read and how, as in Kate Flint?s (1993) study of 
female readers and Jonathan Rose?s (2002[2001]) study of readers from the British 
working clases, or asks which texts of which works were read by which groups and in 
what numbers, as in Wiliam St Clair?s (2004) economic history of the British book 
trade; Heather Jackson?s (2005) study of handwriten notes in a staggering 1800 
volumes published betwen 1790 and 1830 shows just how much may be learnt in this 
regard from material evidence alone. Yet another form takes the reading of a single 
historical individual for its object, whether through examination of his or her book 
collection, where this can be reconstructed or is stil in existence (eg. Atar 2004), or 
through analysis of his or her diaries (eg. Colclough 2000).
21
 Some studies look at 
                                                
21
 Where the readers in question are also the authors of works, this form of study sits very 
comfortably within enduring pre-New Critical traditions of scholarship, since it amounts to a form of 
source study (a vital component in what the ninetenth century knew as ?higher criticism?). Robert 
  54/379   
reading within the wider context of manuscript culture or print culture, as in Roger 
Chartier?s (1994[1992]) study of how authors, scholars, and librarians organised the 
expanding world of leters in the Late Medieval and Early Modern periods. Work caried 
out in al areas of this interdisciplinary field explicitly or implicitly makes clear the 
dificulty (perhaps the absurdity) of trying to study readers apart from other actors in the 
world of books, and thus subverts the notion of ?reception? (which is not, in any case, 
central to the majority of the studies cited here) ? a problem that I make some atempt to 
addres in Chapter 2 of the current study.
2
 
Is this field then a figment of my own imagination? Perhaps it is best sen 
(synchronicaly) as a ?fuzzy category? or (diachronicaly) as a converging set of research 
traditions that may yet (indeed, that is to a great extent the point of this disertation) 
converge with others. Whether it shal in time become more or les marginal to literary 
studies is impossible to know: it certainly cannot be contained by that discipline as 
currently constituted. However, I would suggest that the mainstream of literary studies 
very much needs to take acount of it, particularly given the recent partial ascendancy of 
?cultural studies? as an approach to literature (se Footnote 1). Al the kinds of work 
                                                                                                                                    
DeMot?s (1984) thorough catalogue of boks owned and read by John Steinbeck, for example, is 
clearly conceived as a contribution to scholarship on Steinbeck?s works: se in particular his acount 
of East of Eden?s debts to certain of these boks (xxi-xlii). 
2
 A further point to make is that, in practice, implicit distinctions are sometimes drawn betwen 
?reception study?, whose object is often presumed public, and ?reader study?, whose object is often 
presumed private. Thus, in a monograph with the word ?reception? in the title, Anika Bautz (207a) 
surveys predominantly public writen statements about certain novels (eg. reviews of them), while in 
a paper with the word ?readers? in the title, the same author excerpts from that work her short survey 
of private writen statements (eg. informal coments in leters) about some of the same novels 
(Bautz 207b). 
  55/379   
mentioned in the previous paragraph share a potential to threaten the sacred cows of 
literary studies, and ? while specific studies (a case in point being Rose?s [2002{2001}]) 
may have been writen in defence of those cows ? they can lead us to ask very searching 
questions about what has come to be considered literary history, and in particular about 
that (ever retrospectively imposed) structure, the canon. St Clair puts the chalenge very 
forcefully in a public lecture: 
When we read a book or esay caled, say, ?The Age of Wordsworth?, should we 
not be concerned that, in his lifetime, most of Wordsworth?s books were 
produced in editions of about 500 to 1,000 copies of which many were 
remaindered or wasted several years after publication? Could that amount of 
reading have shaped the minds of ten to fiften milion people? Especialy when 
Wordsworth was, on the whole, reinforcing ideas that were mainstream in the 
culture of his day? How do we deal with the fact that over two milion copies of 
Scott?s verse and prose romances had been sold in Britain alone by the middle of 
the ninetenth century, maybe a milion more than al other authors put together? 
And that Scott was regarded by the best critics as the equal of Homer, a great 
teacher and model, not a predecesor of Jefrey Archer or airport pulp fiction? 
2005:4-5 
This invocation of airport pulp fiction should perhaps remind us of the cognate 
discipline of media studies, which (like the history of the book) studies (amongst other 
things) texts that the New Criticism would dismis as worthles and ephemeral: texts 
that (like those of the works of Scott) frequently achieve circulations vastly exceding 
those of works of canonical ?great literature? (such as those of Wordsworth), at least in 
their own day. Like the research traditions at which I have gestured with such 
  56/379   
unsatisfactory names as ?literary reception study? and ?the history of reading?, media 
reception studies would sem to offer the possibility of an enagagement with texts that 
owes nothing to the New Criticism. It also provides methodologies that have yet to make 
a significant impact on literary reception study or the history of reading: the ?discursive? 
approaches to reception study which I discuss in Section 1.5 and which directly inform 
the current study have largely grown out of media reception studies, addresing 
dificulties which (as we shal se in Chapter 4 in particular) have been noted by 
historians of reading but have yet (I would suggest) to be systematically addresed by 
them: in her above-mentioned study of women readers, for example, Flint usefully 
makes the point that ?[a]utobiography  involves self-fashioning through selectivity and 
arangement? (1993:187-188), but makes no reference to the developments in social 
psychology which might have helped her to theorise this ?self-fashioning? (se Section 
1.4). Media reception study also benefits from a disciplinary closenes to the sociology 
of cultural consumption, although the relationship betwen the two has not been 
exploited as fully as it might have been. We shal now turn to a consideration of both 
these fields. 
1.3.3 Media reception study and the sociology of cultural 
consumption 
Being ?efectively the audience research arm of modern cultural studies? (McQuail 
2005:404), media reception study has litle connection with film studies, a discipline 
which largely developed from literary study and takes scant interest in reception: what is 
sometimes known as ?Scren theory?, ie. the body of structuralist, Althuserian-Marxist, 
and Lacanian-psychoanalytic critique that was particularly asociated with the journal 
Scren in the 1970s and typified by Laura Mulvey?s esay, ?Visual pleasure and 
  57/379   
narative cinema? (1975), is centred around a notion of the spectator as implied by the 
cinematic text: a spectator no more ?real? than the ?reader? of reader response criticism.
23
 
As Lapsley and Westlake (1988:12) put it, ?[t]he idea that the subject is constituted by 
the text.. was the emergent orthodoxy in this period of film studies?; it was, moreover, 
an orthodoxy that long remained in force: Philip Corrigan?s argument that the history of 
cinema should be aproached ?from the point of view of the audiences? (1983:24) had so 
litle influence that, seven years later, Robert Alen (1990:347) could stil complain of 
the near-universal asumptions ?that film history was to be studied as a succesion of 
texts? and that ?film history rested upon the interpretation of a body of texts?: 
asumptions that he notes were held in comon by proponents of Structuralism, the 
New Criticism, and what he dryly cals ?Lacthuserianism?. The question of how much 
things have changed in film studies today is a vexed one. Martin Barker (2004) 
describes the ?move in recent years away from a primarily text-interpretative approach 
to films? as ?far from complete?, and Jackie Stacey observes that increasing interest in 
                                                
23
 The studies colected in Staiger (200) are largely writen against this position, but remain 
methodologicaly comited to an esentialy post-New Critical aproach, as when Staiger tries to 
acount for the fact that at least one reviewer enjoyed the sexist ten comedy Feris Bueler?s Day 
Of despite being both female and an adult: Staiger?s solution is to ?perceive her [the reviewer] as 
perceiving the text as a critique of authority? (120): a reading of the film that Staiger herself has to 
provide, since the reviewer unacountably neglected to. (It should be noted that Staiger?s later work, 
for example the excelent survey Media reception studies (205), leaves behind the confines of 
Scren theory to take stock of a vast interdisciplinary range of aproaches to real and hypothetical 
readers and viewers.) Se Mores (193:12-27) for a critique of Scren theory from a cultural studies 
perspective. Barker (205:354, 358-359) argues that Scren theory?s psychoanalytic abstractions of 
?interpelation?, etc, simply recycle ideas of audience vulnerability that date back to the moral panics 
of the mid-19th century. Se also discusion of Horkheimer and Adorno (202[194]) below. 
  58/379   
?the politics of location? has simply resulted in ? ?other? categories [being] added into the 
textual analysis.? (1994:34) 
By contrast, there is a great deal of empirical work on television audiences: inded, 
? ?[a]udience studies? within cultural studies are almost exclusively studies of television 
audiences? (Turner 1990:131). Although film studies is founded on textual analysis, and 
tends to aproach the audience via the analysed text, cultural studies has (despite the 
influx of post-New Critical methodologies in the 1980s and 1990s ? se below) ben 
more strongly influenced by media research traditions dating back to such studies as the 
Payne Fund reports of the 1930s, which aimed to discover the (frequently presumed 
pernicious) efects of the mas media on their audiences (se Jarvis [1991] for a history), 
and the work of Bureau of Aplied Social Research, which studied the efect of 
broadcasting campaigns on audience decision making under the direction of Paul 
Lazarsfeld. Although some studies from the mid-twentieth century describe fairly 
spectacular instances of media efects (eg. Cantril, Gaudet, and Herzog 1940; Merton, 
Fiske, and Curtis 1946), these were not found to be the norm: as one survey puts it, 
?rather than finding that mas media directly afected audiences, the academic mas 
comunications theory found more and more interventions and complications.? (Staiger 
2005:44)
24
 Although it has since been argued that the media?s apparent lack of influence 
                                                
24
 Compare Bilig?s (1985[196]:95-102) survey of mas comunications research folowing World 
War Two. Early estimations of the posibility of scientific principles for infalibly efective film and 
radio propaganda eventualy fel by the wayside, as sucesive studies found no clear principles by 
which to predict the persuasivenes of mas media mesages: ?The more acurately psychologists 
sumarise the evidence, the les likely they are to ofer the sort of confidently clear guidance which 
the inheritor of the television station [ie. a would-be propagandist] might wish for.? (102) 
  59/379   
was as an artefact of an excesive focus on the viewer as isolated individual and on 
?short-term changes in atitudes following exposure to a single programe or series of 
programes? (Haloran 1970a:18, 1970b:30), this resulted in something of a crisis for 
audience researchers.
25
 In response, Elihu Katz proposed what has since been dubbed the 
?Uses and Gratifications? approach, in which the key question is not ?What do the media 
do to people?? but ?What do people do with the media?? (1959:2, emphasis removed) 
This programe of research involved making and testing hypotheses about the functions 
(eg. group interaction or solitary fantasy) for which particular types of people 
(categorised acording to psychological tests) were likely to use given media texts. It was 
criticised for its psychological rather than sociological categorisation of audiences and for 
its asumption of audience activity even with regard to such a supremely pasive 
activity as television viewing (Morley 1999a[1980]:127; Morley 1992:80; Severin and 
Tankard 1992:275-276), and it was widely considered discredited by the mid-1980s, 
since it had ?failed to provide much succesful prediction or causal explanation of media 
choice and use? (McQuail 2005:426). 
By that point, however, a distinctly ?critical? alternative (ie. one largely shorn of the 
depoliticisation indulged in throughout the mainstream of media studies; se Ang 
[1991{1989}] for a ful discussion) was being proposed: the cultural studies theorist 
                                                
25
 In a paper arguing that Lazarsfeld was more aware of the limitations of this paradigm than has 
generaly ben suposed, Katz (1987:S34-S35) pertinently asks ?How did it hapen that, of al 
things, persuasion was chosen as the focus for a programe of research on broadcasting? Why not 
information, or, beter, entertainment?.. And if it had to be persuasion, why limit it to the short run? 
Critical theorists ? no les interested in persuasion, but in the long run ? would blame the 
administrative orientation. The object, they would say, was to help sel products or votes.? 
  60/379   
Stuart Hal had formulated the ?encoding/decoding? model of media production and 
consumption (1980[1974]), in which media producers are suposed to ?encode? 
ideological mesages into their products: products from which media consumers are 
suposed to ?decode? mesages in a ?dominant?, ?negotiated?, or ?opositional? 
manner, depending on their relationship to the power structures of society. If the 
consumers? decoding corresponds to the producers? encoding, then the result has 
been ?perfectly transparent comunication?, the producers? ideal ? but instead, the 
producers typicaly have to ?confront.. systematicaly distorted comunication? 
(135). Encoding/decoding not only represented a renewed awarenes of power 
relations in the production and consumption of media products, but a welcome 
intrusion of theoretical nuance into a field that, it has been argued, has, in its 
positivism and its enthusiasm for quantitative methodologies, ?consistently 
mistaken rigour for understanding? (Morley 1992:174);
26
 in both these respects, it 
played a key role in making posible many of the studies that have informed this 
disertation. It can to some extent be viewed as an atempt to combine Horkheimer 
and Adorno?s (2002[1944]) view of the mas media as a hegemonic, quasi-
propagandist system with the recognition that mas media texts and their audiences 
are no mere efects of a historical dialectic, and with the ambition to subject these 
entities to empirical study; as such, it is also an invaluable contribution to critical 
theory. 
                                                
26
 I wil be ignoring quantitative television audience research from this point onwards, since it ofers 
comparitively litle on which this study can draw. 
  61/379   
As a model of media use, however, it is a highly problematic. For example, Hal?s 
claim that ?the viewer who listens to a debate on the need to limit wages but ?reads? 
every mention of the ?national interest? as ?clas interest?.. is operating with what 
we must cal an oppositional code? (1980:138) arguably reduces critical thinking to 
something like the use of a bilingual dictionary, and raises the question of whether 
Hal?s approach confuses ?perfectly transparent comunication? with perfectly 
efective persuasion.
27
 The encoding/decoding model has been extensively criticised 
on the theoretical level (se Staiger 2005:83 for an overview), but its theoretical 
details may be les important to the history of audience study than the fact that it 
represents ?a shift from a technical to a semiotic aproach to mesages? and thus a 
move ?away from a behaviouristic stimulus-response model to an interpretive 
framework, where al efects depend on an interpretation of media mesages? 
(Alasuutari 1999:3). It should also be recognised as a serious atempt to deal with a 
                                                
27
 Katz?s (1987) observations on ?persuasion? versus ?information? and ?entertainment? remain 
pertinent, se Fotnote 25: the arguable equation of ?comunication? and ?persuasion? can perhaps 
be atributed to Hal?s ?critical? stance. That said, Katz?s claim that ?[o]nly politicians and 
advertisers, and some academics, think that broadcasting is about persuasion? (1987:S34) is clearly 
exagerated and may be culturaly specific, as his own research with Tamar Liebes sugests: Liebes 
and Katz found that Rusian-Jewish Israeli viewers of Dalas were particularly likely ?not only to 
ascribe intent to the producers but to ascribe manipulative intent, in the sense that the producers are 
teling us something they want us to believe but do not necesarily believe themselves.? 
(191[1989]:210; se below for further discusion of this study). Horkheimer and Adorno are 
comparatively uninterested in any strictly persuasive efects of mas media texts, whose ideological 
orientation they regard as trivial (202[194]:108): ?The social power revered by the spectators 
manifests itself more efectively in the technicaly enforced ubiquity of stereotypes than in the stale 
ideologies which the ephemeral contents have to endorse.? 
  62/379   
posible intractable theoretical problem, ie. the danger of ?sliding straight from the 
notion of a text as having a determinate meaning (which would necesarily impose 
itself in the same way on al members of the audience) to an equaly absurd, and 
oposite position, in which it is asumed that the text is completely ?open? to the 
reader and is merely the site upon which the reader constructs meaning.? (Morley 
1991[1989]:18)
28
 But it sems clear to me that to convincingly chalenge these two 
                                                
28
 Much of my own work (se Alington 206, and Chapters 2 and 3 of the curent study) atempts to 
deal with this same problem, ie. to find a framework for conceptualising texts as (with regard to their 
writers and readers) neither fuly determinate in meaning nor infinitely polysemic. As I se it, one of 
the central problems here is the dificulty of discusing limitations on readerly agency without 
acording agency to the text being read (which I would consider no les absurd than the two 
positions Morley so dubs). It should be noted that an alternative path is taken by certain linguistic 
analysts influenced by or claiming to practise ?cognitive science?: conceptualising reading as a 
mater of active text procesing, they asume that such procesing wil take place along determinate 
pathways that may be discovered through experiment (eg. van Per, Hakemulder, and Zyngier 207), 
elicitation (eg. Stockwel 200), or speculation (eg. Turner 192), and thus treat texts as efectively 
determinate in meaning and/or efect (since, once one knows how this procesing proceds in 
general, one can predict how each individual text wil be procesed in practice; se Alington 
[206:125-126] for discusion). For example, Fowler?s (191) claim that meaning and behavioural 
efects result from the reading of texts through ?the constructive, if unconscious, co-operation of the 
reader? (40-41) functions as a theoretical fix permiting the asumption of sociocultural relevance for 
his politicaly engaged analyses of the determinate meanings of newspaper articles in spite of his 
theoretical claim that ?being a reader is an active, creative practice.? (43) The notion that this ?active, 
creative practice? is engaged in unconciously and coperatively semingly permits Fowler to asume 
that it is also engaged in predictably, such that a text?s ?efects? can be deduced from its linguistic 
structure ? as in his statement that ?by constantly articulating a link betwen a type of expresion and 
a category of referent, discourse makes these socialy constructed categories sem to be natural 
comon sense? [105]). My greatest quarel with this cognitive aproach is that it engages with the 
  63/379   
?absurd? positions, we ned a workable theoretical model of how texts are used by 
writers, readers, and others in practice, and I would question whether the ?code? 
metaphor can be an adequate basis for such a model (as wil become aparent in 
Chapter 2, I find Robert Darnton?s [1990] ?life cycle? metaphor a more productive 
starting point), even though some audiences do discuss books, television 
programes, and films as if they were in code, consciously atempting to 
unscramble their ?secret? mesages (a point developed in Chapter 3). 
Martin Barker (2006) argues that the adoption of the encoding/decoding model ?made 
audience researchers begin again from scratch? (128), but that these new beginnings 
have amounted to litle due to an unfortunate retreat from the ?tougher forms of 
research? (139) practised under the Uses and Gratifications approach: research, that is, 
that atempts to test, rather than simply ilustrate, claims. An example of such ?begin 
again from scratch? thinking can be sen in Alasuutari?s division of reception research 
into thre phases or generations, of which the first proceds under the asumptions of 
encoding/decoding (1999; se Morley [1999b] for a critique). However, David Morley?s 
Nationwide Audience project (Morley 1999a[1980]) was explicitly intended to test the 
model. In this research, excerpts from the BC curent afairs series, Nationwide, were 
shown to groups of people in public locations where they already came together as 
groups (eg. in their places of study). These groups were then asked interpretative 
                                                                                                                                    
imense range of real-world reading practices only by constituting ? in disguised fashion ? a smal 
part of that range, whether by staging an artificial reading practice (as in the experimental mode; se 
Section 1.5 for further discusion), by indulging in explication de texte (as in the speculative mode; 
se Alington [205]), or by sliding betwen the two (as in the elicitational mode, at least in the 
example cited above). 
  64/379   
questions about the presentation and content of the programes.
29
 The groups were 
clasified by ethnicity and ocupation, and the televisual text was analysed by the 
researcher in order that audience responses could be clasified as dominant, negotiated, or 
opositional decodings in relation to mesages believed to have ben encoded in it. The 
results showed great similarities within and great diferences betwen groups, but did not 
appear to show any clear corelation betwen social clas and decoding, and so many 
scholars have asumed, with Shaun Moores, that ?the most significant conclusion to be 
drawn from the research is that viewers? decodings of a TV current afairs text cannot be 
reduced in any simple way to their socio-economic location.? (1993:21) However, 
Sujeong Kim (2004) shows that Morley under-interpreted his findings: once gender, 
ethnicity, and social clas are controlled for as separate variables, Kim?s statistical re-
                                                
29
 As Morley himself notes, ?this strategy had the disadvantage that I was not talking to people about 
television in the context in which they normaly watch it? (1986:40): a criticism that has often ben 
repeated. Nonetheles, it should be observed that he was talking to people in a context in which they 
do normaly talk. In other words, the research situation may not have ben quite as artificial as has 
ben suposed. When, in the course of the same auto-critique, Morley goes on to speculate about 
what might hapen if we were to folow one of his respondents home ?and lok at how he might 
react to another Nationwide programe, this time in his home context? (42), he might be argued to 
comit the falacy of suposing the period of viewing (in contrast to the period of response) to be 
the authentic moment of reception: for example, he elsewhere writes of his later work as 
?prioritis[ing] the understanding of the proces of television viewing (the activity itself) over the 
understanding of particular responses to particular types of programe material (the level at which 
the Nationwide audience study is pitched).? (192:134) On the other hand, I consider his argument 
that ?viewing television is done quite diferently in the home as oposed to in public places? 
(192:13) to cary weight regardles of how one conceives the relationship betwen viewing and 
responding 
  65/379   
analysis of the same data sugests that ?audience?s social positions.. structure their 
understandings and evaluations of television programes in quite consistent directions 
and paterns.? (103) Had this been recognised at the time, the subsequent development 
of cultural studies might have ben diferent, since claims of audience autonomy (se 
below) would have semed les plausible. At any rate, coments such as Moores?s 
would have ben sen to be exagerated, if they had ben made at al. 
From the point of view of this study, the central flaw of The ?Nationwide? audience was 
not methodological, but theoretical: involving something very like the model of media 
consumption that had preceded Uses and Gratifications, the study was conceived as an 
atempt to ?get at? something that had hapened to the audience members as a result of 
their exposure to a mesage (albeit with their clas-determined interpretative 
competencies presumed to be a variable; se Chapter 3 and Footnote 28 of the current 
study). This in turn is underpinned by the theory that literature and the media involve 
the comunication of mesages betwen producers and consumers: 
most studies of television discourse remain grounded in the notion that a news 
broadcast is a social interaction in which some sort of mesage is sent ? 
?constituted? would be a word more consistent with present usage ? from the 
television set and received on the other end ? here the prefered word might be 
?interpreted?. That is, studies of television discourse sem stil quite securely 
rooted in the notion that it is a social interaction betwen the producers of mas 
comunication and the consumers. 
Much can be said to suport the sender-receiver view, of course, but.. this view 
  66/379   
of mediated discourse may wel disguise other significant aspects of the social 
interactions going on in the same situations. 
Scolon 1998:17 
Chapter 2 of this disertation extends Scolon?s aproach by trying to understand 
literary discourse without invoking the ?sender-receiver view?; Chapter 3 shows the 
importance of this view as a sort of folk-theory invoked for rhetorical purposes in 
reader-reader (or viewer-viewer) interactions. Thus, I would prefer to se The 
?Nationwide? audience as an experiment to se what social interactions various groups 
would enter into once exposed to a single media text in a (relatively constant) artificial 
situation and once prompted by a researcher who (through asking questions) entered into 
interaction with them, than to se it as an experiment to find out about the private 
mental proceses ordinarily applied to media discourse by the members of those groups 
individualy and in private. That diferent interactions were entered into by groups in 
ways that can be sen to have ben determined by clas, race, and gender is potentialy 
very significant inded, even if it does not necesarily tel us much about their practices 
of media consumption outside the experimental situation, and I would consequently se 
The ?Nationwide? audience as one of the most important audience studies to have ben 
conducted. Had it been interpreted and evaluated thus at the time, it might have led (for 
example) to a major research tradition investigating media-related discourse produced by 
groups in non-artificial situations. And such a tradition need not have ben tied to the 
idea that this discourse transparently represented prior mental acts of decoding: as 
Morley came to argue, ?should you wish to understand what I am doing [in watching 
television], it would probably be as wel to ask me. I may wel, of course, lie to you or 
  67/379   
otherwise misrepresent my thoughts or felings, for any number of purposes, but at least, 
through my verbal responses, you wil begin to get some aces to the kind of language, 
the criteria of distinction, and the types of categorisation through which I construct my 
(conscious) world.? (1992:181)
30
 In other words, The ?Nationwide? audience can be 
viewed as potentialy very revealing with regard to the particular competences available 
to members of diferent socioeconomic (and other) groups for talking about television 
programes. 
As things were, however, the aparent failure of The ?Nationwide? audience played a 
role in ushering in a diferent type of audience study in the early 1980s (though Liebes 
and Katz?s [1991{1989}] famous study of Dallas viewers combines characteristics from 
both; se below). Acording to Alasuutari, this ?second generation? involved a move from 
?conventional politics? to ?identity politics? and from ?public afairs programes? to 
?fictional programes?, together with a major methodological reorientation such that 
?[o]ne studies the role of the media in everyday life, not the impact.. of everyday life in 
the reception of a programe? (1999:5). On the whole, studies of this type investigated 
discourse produced by audience members in one-to-one comunication with researchers, 
and many of them analysed this discourse in what I find to be a slightly naive manner. 
Perhaps the most influential example of such a study was Dorothy Hobson?s study of 
the British soap opera Crosroads (Hobson 1982). Hobson studied both producers and 
consumers of this serial with the initial intention of observing the whole of the 
encoding/decoding proces in action (as she puts it, ?linking the understanding of the 
                                                
30
 Whether such studies would necesarily have avoided the ?interpretative falacy? discused in 
Subsection 1.3.1 is another mater. 
  68/379   
production proces of specific episodes or programes with the audience reception and 
understanding of those same episodes or programes? [107]). Rather than create 
artificial viewing situations, she sat with her research subjects while they watched 
episodes in the normal course of their television viewing practices: 
Watching television is part of the everyday life of viewers. It is not.. a separate 
activity undertaken in perfect quiet in comfortable surroundings. Nor is it done in 
a darkened room, as so many programes are shown when viewed in 
profesional setings.. Nor is it watched on a video recorder for close analysis of 
shots, camera angles, or ?mesages? in the text.. as in academic studies. At least, 
it is none of these things for women with families and husbands to look after and, 
especialy, it is not the way that they can watch television programes 
transmited in the so-caled ?tea-time? slot. 
Hobson 1982:110 
Hobson?s genuinely ethnographic aproach is salutary, and her argument is an early and 
particularly clear articulation of the thesis that reading and viewing can only be 
understood in terms of diverse reading and viewing practices, as in the above contrast 
betwen the everyday practice of watching a television programe in the midst of one?s 
household chores and the academic practice of watching it on a video recorder for close 
analysis ? a thesis that I consider to have serious consequences for many cognitive, 
experimental, and text-based aproaches to reading (se Footnote 28, and elsewhere in 
the curent subsection). In addition to observing them, Hobson also asked her research 
subjects questions about the episodes she had just watched with them, but found that 
  69/379   
they ?quickly moved the conversation to the programe in general and talked about 
other episodes through the medium of the storylines.? (107) She concludes from this that 
?the audience do not watch programes as separate or individual items, nor even as 
types of programes, but rather.. build up an understanding of themes over a much 
wider range of programes and length of time of viewing? (ibid.); while this is an 
interesting hypothesis, as an interpretation of Hobson?s data, it involves a falacy, since 
it presumes that the spech produced in answer to her questions transparently reflects a 
prior mental proces of television watching. Hobson reflects on the ?linguistic 
competence? neded to talk about programes, but considers her research subjects? 
competence in this mater only in terms of their lack of training in literary and media 
criticism; it might be argued that her research subjects were fuly (although informaly) 
trained in a diferent linguistic competence, ie. the competence to talk about soap operas 
?through the medium of the storylines? (which is what she sems to have observed in 
action in a fortuitously overheard conversation betwen four pensioners on a train from 
London to Birmingham [125]), and that, when she asked those research subjects about 
soap operas, they simply responded by puting that competence to work. If this is 
corect, then Hobson?s discovery relates not to how audiences watch soap operas, but to 
how they talk about them ? this may, of course, have consequences for the way in which 
they watch what they have talked about ? and what they are to talk about ? but this 
theoretical position needs to be carefuly considered rather than simply asumed (se 
Section 1.5 and the concluding note to Chapter 3 for discussion). 
Hobson?s work was revolutionary in its day: Horkheimer and Adorno?s 
(2002[1944]:111) generic ?housewife? to whom ?the dark of the cinema grants a refuge? 
  70/379   
(and who might perhaps also indulge in reading a ?weak-minded women?s serial? [123] 
from time to time) disapears and is replaced by a range of individuals who can speak 
for themselves. But, at times, Hobson apears to take on the role of an advocate for the 
viewers of Crosroads, to such an extent that she arguably inaugurates the populist 
tradition in cultural studies,
31
 articulating what would become its core principles, ie. that 
the mas media text is infinitely polysemic and the active creation of its consumers, and 
that its regular consumers are the people who understand it best: as Hobson puts it, 
?there is no single Crosroads, there are as many diferent Crosroads as there are 
viewers?, and ?the viewers are the critics. Or at least, the only ones who should count.? 
(136) These principles are discussed more fuly below; for now, I hope it wil suffice to 
observe that the clear dangers of aplying them in a study of (let us say) consumers of 
certain forms of pornography may sugest why it is that, in carying out audience 
research, ?critical researchers must avoid becoming traped in the semiotic worlds of our 
consultants.? (Gibson 2000:255) 
A study that was contemporary with Hobson?s, but which largely avoided this 
particular problem was Ien Ang?s Watching Dallas (1985[1982]). Ang placed an advert 
in a Dutch women?s magazine, inviting readers to write and tel her about their 
relationship to the programe: 
I like watching the TV serial Dallas, but often get odd reactions to it. Would 
anyone like to write and tel me why you like watching it to, or dislike it? I 
                                                
31
 This conection is also made by Turner (190:143). The most notorious exponent of this tradition 
is Fiske (1989a,b), discused below. 
  71/379   
should like to asimilate these reactions in my university thesis. Please write to.. 
1985(1982):10, elipsis in original 
In response to this, she received 42 leters that she quotes from in her discussion of the 
programe and its reception. Ang?s research method was therefore much more distanced 
than Hobson?s, lacking any ethnographic element. This may be thought something of a 
disadvantage, but I suspect that it helped her to maintain a critical atitude to her 
research subjects, and thus to avoid becoming ?traped? in the way described above. Ang 
refuses to ?let the leters speak for themselves?, instead treating them ?as texts, as 
discourses people produce when they want to expres or have to acount for their own 
preference for, or aversion to, a highly controversial piece of popular culture like 
Dallas.? (1985[1982]:11) This is a sophisticated aproach, and has been justly 
recognised as an important contribution to cultural studies (se, for example, Hils?s 
[2002] later use of the idea of the ?discursive mantra?, theoreticaly vital to Chapter 3 of 
the curent study). But it is not without problems, not least of which is that Ang wants 
her analysis of her respondents? leters to yield up a reading of Dallas: from them, she 
argues ?we can get to know something about what experiencing pleasure (or otherwise) 
from Dallas implies for these writers ? what textual characteristics of Dallas organise 
that experience and in which ideological context it acquires social and cultural meanings.? 
(ibid.) It would sem legitimate to derive, from analysis of a particular person?s acount 
of why he or she likes or does not like Dallas, an understanding of the meaning (for that 
person, in this interactive situation) of what it is to experience pleasure (or not) while 
watching Dalas. But to proced from this to knowledge of how the experience itself is 
  72/379   
organised by particular textual characteristics of Dalas sems a step too far, when al 
one has to go on are the texts of (a) the acount, and (b) Dallas.
32
 Ang does not realy 
discus this isue, which is why I have covered her work in the current subsection, rather 
than in Section 1.5. A second problem is raised by the folowing ? fascinating ? 
discusion of one of several leters from people claiming to enjoy Dallas ironicaly: 
The ironic viewing atitude places this viewer in a position to get the beter, in a 
sense, of Dallas, to be above it. And in this way, as a ?serious, inteligent 
feminist?, she can alow herself to experience pleasure in Dallas. She says in fact: 
?Of course Dallas is mas culture and therefore bad, but precisely because I am 
so wel aware of that, I can realy enjoy watching and poke fun at it.? 
Ang 1985[1982]:100 
Ang analyses the leters as texts, but not as texts produced in response to an advert 
and addresed to someone who had advertised herself as (a) enjoying Dallas but 
being aware of problems with this, and (b) being involved in academic research. In 
other words, she left out of her analysis the social relationship betwen herself and 
her research subjects: the above constitutes Ang?s entire analysis of the leter, 
though she is scrupulous enough to quote the leter itself far more fuly than her 
own analysis requires. I would sugest that the perceived social relationship may 
                                                
32
 Ang?s second chapter consists almost entirely of her own reading of Dalas, which concludes with 
the bathetic ?But the above is only a theoretical construction.? (83) This is folowed by a two-page 
coda in which a sequence of short quotations from leters is presented, but barely analysed, leading 
to the banal observation that ?[p]leasure is.. obviously something uncertain and precarious.? (85) It 
would sem that Ang herself has litle confidence in this aspect of her project. 
  73/379   
explain why this particular writer should want to distinguish herself from a 
stereotypical image of the watcher of Dallas (and reader of women?s magazines) by 
presenting herself as a ?serious, inteligent feminist? ? and presenting herself, 
furthermore, as atending ?evening school? and reading ?feminist books? rather than 
?Mils and Boon? (ibid.). Note also how this writer highlights her agrement with 
values she asumes (?of course?) Ang to hold, to whit, the negative evaluation of 
?mas culture?. It is in this context that I think we should read her asertions that 
she enjoys Dallas by ?poking fun at it? and that she is able to do this ?precisely 
because? she is ?so wel aware? that Dallas is ?bad?: consciously or otherwise, this 
text would sem designed to prove, to an addrese presumed to be ?above? Dallas, 
that its writer is above it, too. Thus, I would argue that this leter reveals its writer?s 
belief that experiencing pleasure from Dallas has diferent meanings depending on 
the kind of pleasure, where an ironic, a knowing pleasure may indicate a degre of 
intelectual distinction compatible with being an evening student and a reader of 
feminist books but incompatible with being a reader of Mils and Boon. Taking a 
non-ironic, an unknowing pleasure in Dallas would thus have a diferent meaning, 
being asociated with reading Mils and Boon and with being intelectualy inferior, 
academicaly unambitious, culturaly unsophisticated ? at least, this is the meaning it 
would sem to have in the context of this leter, from this writer, addresed to the 
person she asumes Ien Ang to be. This interpretative aproach is adopted by 
Jackie Stacey (1994a&b) in research that wil be discused in Section 1.5 and 
Chapter 4. It can be contrasted with Liebes and Katz?s (1991[1989]) study of 
Dallas audiences, an ambitious project which combined the methodologies of 
  74/379   
Morley (1999a[1980]), Hobson (1982), and Morley (1986) in an international range 
of setings: researchers first observed friendship or neighbouring roups of maried 
couples in Israel (both Arabs and thre diferent Jewish ethnic groups), Japan, and 
the US as they watched taped or broadcast episodes of Dallas, and then engaged 
them in discussions that were audio recorded for later analysis. Statements made by 
the participants were then divided into the ?referential? (ie. those that discuss the 
characters and events of Dallas as if they were real) and the ?critical? (ie. those that 
discuss them as constructions), further subdividing the later statements into the 
?syntactic? (ie. those concerning the generic, formulaic, and dramatic form of 
Dallas) and the ?semantic? (ie. those concerning its theme, ideology, or mesage). 
This is a very important study because it draws atention to the competences on 
which members of these various groups are able to draw (se discussion of Morley 
[1999a{1980}] and Hobson [1982], above). For example, Liebes and Katz note that 
syntactic critical statements about Dallas were most commonly made by American 
viewers, which can be asumed to result from their greater exposure to the genre of 
soap opera (se Chapter 2 of the curent study for further discussion), and that there 
are correlations betwen the occurrence of critical statements and both the ethnicity 
and the level of education of the viewers (?indeed, among the lower-educated, the 
only metalinguistic [ie. critical] statements are made by the more western groups? 
[206]). They also emphasise the importance of social identity by drawing atention 
to the tendency of Arab Israeli and Russian-Jewish Israeli viewers to ?se the 
programe as representing ? ?moral degeneracy? or ?rotten capitalism??, and by 
suggesting that, for historical reasons (including their asociation of western culture 
with colonialism and with Israel itself, ?considered [as] a present-day colonial 
power?), ?Arabs.. have more reason than others to disociate themselves from the 
  75/379   
culture of Dallas.? (209) But Liebes and Katz do not discuss the dialogic context of 
this disociation: these viewers are performing their (disociative) response to a 
cultural commodity (a) in conversation with one another, and (b) before the 
audience of an Israeli institution, as participants in an investigation that (in 
asembling them as a group) constitutes them as specificaly Arab viewers. 
This connection betwen cultural consumption and social identity cals to mind the 
sociologist Piere Bourdieu?s influential study, Distinction (1984[1979]), which 
inaugurated the most important contemporary debates in the sociological study of 
cultural consumption. Bourdieu sent questionnaires on maters of taste to over a 
thousand adults in the area in and around Paris, atempting to correlate the 
respondents? cultural preferences (eg. what kind of food they considered best to 
serve to guests) and knowledges (eg. whether they knew the stars and directors of 
recent films) with their responses to more traditional sociological questions 
regarding such topics as age, sex, educational achievement, and father?s occupation. 
Bourdieu proposed the notion of habitus to explain the correlations he found, and 
coined the term ?cultural capital? to refer to competence in the cultural codes 
asociated with the habitus of the dominant social clases: one?s habitus is the 
complex of dispositions that underlies al aspects of one?s cultural consumption, 
such that the later become signs of one?s social position. Thus, ?[t]aste clasifies, 
and it clasifies the clasifier? (Bourdieu 1984[1979]:6): one exercises distinction in 
consuming cultural products on the basis of one?s habitus, and the choices one 
makes achieve one?s own distinction as a member of a particular clas ? or, crucialy, 
clas fraction, this being Bourdieu?s way of integrating the distinct sociological 
  76/379   
concepts of class and status. Bourdieu argued that the clas that poseses the 
greatest volume of capital is divided, because the capital posesed by some of its 
members (the dominant fraction of the dominant clas, ie. the bourgeoisie) is 
predominantly economic while the capital posesed by others (the dominated 
fraction of the dominant clas, ie. the inteligentsia) is predominantly cultural. Thus, 
social position is achieved and maintained not only through the acumulation and 
expenditure of economic capital, but also through the acumulation and display of 
cultural capital, ie. through acquiring and performing taste in and knowledge of 
(elite) culture: ?whereas economic capital is expresed through consuming goods 
and activities of material scarcity, cultural capital is expresed through consuming 
via scarce aesthetic and interactional styles that are consecrated by cultural elites.? 
(Holt 1997:98). A good example of such behaviour can be sen in the Rusian 
bilionaire (or former bilionaire) Alexander Lebedev?s self-distancing from other 
Rusian bilionaires by focusing on their lack of cultural capital. Speaking to a 
British newspaper, he states: ?They don?t read books.. They don?t go to 
exhibitions. They think the only way to impres anyone is to buy a yacht.? 
(Harding 2008:29) The contrast Lebedev constructs is betwen a group who can 
demonstrate membership of the dominant clas only through vastly expensive 
material purchases, and himself, also able to demonstrate it through apreciation 
(which also entails consumption ? and, in his case, patronage) of highbrow artforms, 
and therefore in posesion of higher status. 
  77/379   
John Frow (1995) describes Bourdieu?s work as ?an overwhelming case? regarding 
?the social functions of culture? (27), but goes on to observe that Bourdieu?s 
positing of ?a single aesthetic logic? for each clas?s aesthetic codes ? formalism for 
the dominant clases, realism for the proletariat ? is ?almost explicitly 
interventionist, working to discount ?aesthetic? experience (understood as primarily 
an experience of form) and to valorise the directnes of the working clas relation to 
the world? ? when the idea ?that one clas stands in a more ?natural?, les mediated 
relation to experience than do other clases is a romantic obfuscation.? (34; this idea 
is referenced in Chapter 4 of the current study) However, this populist aspect of 
Bourdieu?s thought is clearly extraneous to his general theory of taste, outlined 
above and returned to in chapter 4. For the purposes of this study, then, a more 
significant critique may be Moores?s (1993:121) observation that ?it is quite 
posible for a single object or cultural form to circulate in diferent ?taste zones? at 
the same time?, as has been the case with the opera singer Luciano Pavaroti: those 
who ?atend expensive venues such as the English National Opera in Convent 
Garden? maintain social distance from those who ?watch ?Pavaroti in the Park? on 
Sky.? An equaly striking example is provided by Holt?s explanation of why, in his 
ethnographic study of a rural community, people with high cultural capital were 
                                                
34
 By ?progresively reorder[ing] the ocupations and the taste choices so that ocupational status 
groups with the most similar paterns of music choices are adjacent and the music genres chosen by 
the most similar paterns of ocupational status groups are adjacent? (15-156), Peterson and Simkus 
(192) arive at a hierarchy of ocupational groups ranging from ?higher cultural? profesionals 
down to farm labourers (Table 3) and a hierarchy of musical genres ranging from clasical music 
down to country music (Table 2). 
  78/379   
found to expres a liking for rap music, when Bethany Bryson?s (1996) analysis of 
the American General Social Survey would suggest that they would not: ?The 
informants in my study are white and live in an ethnicaly homogenous seting far 
removed from urban life. In this locale, rap is a cosmopolitan badge for HCs 
[informants with high cultural capital] and a foreign conundrum for LCs 
[informants with low cultural capital]. However, in urban areas where, presumably, 
many GS subjects live, rap is the lingua franca of youth culture.. In this locale, 
rap cannot be used by HCs as an exotic object to expres cosmopolitanism. Thus, 
rather than a stable cultural category, rap music is beter conceived as a multivocal 
symbolic resource.? (1997:117) One might also argue that the ?ironic? Dallas 
watcher discussed above maintained social distance from other Dallas watchers by 
writing a leter to Ien Ang and presenting her Dallas-watching as sophisticatedly 
ironic: in comon with other signals incorporated in her leter, her viewing mode 
sugests her membership of the inteligentsia.
 
Roger Chartier recognises the 
importance of such isues to the history of reading in his argument that ?[a] 
retrospective sociology that has long made the unequal distribution of objects the 
primary criterion of the cultural hierarchy must be replaced by a diferent approach 
that focuses atention on diferent and contrasting uses of the same goods, the same 
texts, and the same ideas.? (1989:171) 
Because a key element of Bourdieu?s theory is the idea that taste is primarily 
aserted through rejection ? as Bourdieu himself puts it, that ?tastes are perhaps 
first and foremost distastes? (1984[1979]:56) ? Peterson and Simkus?s (1992) 
?omnivore? thesis (se also Peterson 1992) presents a major chalenge. While their 
analysis of the US?s 1982 Survey of Public Participation in the Arts shows a strong 
  79/379   
correlation betwen status (as defined by occupational group) and prefered musical 
genre,
34
 Peterson and Simkus also find a corelation betwen high status and a taste 
for a broad range of musical genres, and therefore argue that ?elite taste is no longer 
defined as an expresed appreciation of the high art forms (and a moral disdain or 
bemused tolerance for al other aesthetic expresions)?, but ?as an appreciation of 
the aesthetics of every distinctive form along with an appreciation of the high arts.? 
(1992:169, emphasis added) This would appear to suggest that elite tastes are 
defined not by distastes but by their absence, while, for those lower down the status 
hierarchy, distaste plays a much more important role, as ?musical taste serves to 
mark not only status levels but also the status boundaries betwen groups defined by 
age, gender, race, religion, life-style, etc, at roughly the same stratum level.? (168-
169) In a fascinating survey of secondary sources, Richard Peterson (1997) provides 
a historical explanation for this, arguing that, for specific reasons, social status in 
the United States came to be marked by displays of cultural capital in the late 19th 
century,
35
 but that this has ceased to apply in America (se also Peterson and Kern 
1996). Support for this thesis is found in Bryson?s analysis of answers to questions 
pertaining to music in the US?s 1993 General Social Survey ? which she shows to 
suggest ?greater formation of taste boundaries around group identities at low levels 
of education? (1997:148) ? as wel as in the fact that ?[s]tudies made in the United 
                                                
35
 ?As etiquete lost its utility and asociational membership proved inadequate for the increasingly 
national elite, there was an opening for a criterion of status that was both dificult to acquire and 
aplicable in al situations.? (Peterson 197:81) I find this rather more convincing than the claim 
made by Levine ? on whom Peterson draws extensively ? that the gentel and nouveau-riche urge 
for ?distinctivenes? in ?life-style, maners, and cultural artefacts? (198:27) was to provide post-
hoc justification for the continuing exploitation of the working clases. 
  80/379   
States since the mid-1960s have not found as clear a patern of highbrow snobbery 
as found by Bourdieu in and around Paris? (Peterson 1997:87). 
Peterson?s ?omnivore? thesis has found wide support, but has also been questioned 
and qualified. For example, Bryson observes that ?the genres most disliked by 
tolerant people are those appreciated by people with the lowest levels of education? 
(Bryson 1996:895): this suggests that there may be few absolute omnivores, since 
distaste for genres with very low status audiences remains characteristic of 
?omnivorous? elites (Tambupolon [2008], however, notes problems in Bryson?s 
statistical analysis; se below). Douglas Holt (1997) argues that the failure to 
replicate Bourdieu?s findings in America has been due to an excesive focus on the 
fine arts (which would sem les important to American than to Parisian culture; 
Peterson observes that ?there is no good reason why reasonably stable hierarchies 
could not be found by ranking.. sports, magazines, toys, wine and alcohol, 
automobiles, hunting and fishing, gardening, food preparation, homes, and more? 
[2005:266-267]) and a failure to distinguish economic from cultural capital in social 
groups; in a similar vein, Omar Lizardo (2006) goes so far as to argue ?that there are 
no dramatic diferences in the way that Americans in diferent structural positions 
engage highbrow culture ? when clas fractions are properly operationalised 
acording to both their total and relative capital composition ? in comparison to the 
findings reported by Bourdieu.? (20) And, while studies caried out outside the 
United States have not found people of elite status to cleave exclusively to the 
forms of high culture discussed by Bourdieu, neither have they found them to be 
true omnivores. Analysing survey data from the Danish town of Aalborg, for 
example, Prieur et al observe that ?al of the most intelectualy chalenging choices 
regarding literature, newspapers, genres of arts, TV-programes, and music have 
  81/379   
their highest frequencies? (64) among social groups in possesion of high overal 
capital volume and with a cultural, rather than economic balance of capital 
composition: exactly what Bourdieu?s theory would predict. Moreover, Prieur et al 
argue that a relational view of cultural capital (ie. not ?clasical high culture? alone, 
but ?an expresion of taste in relationships with other expresions of taste? [ibid.]) 
shows the symbols of elite taste to have shifted, but the practice of discrimination to 
have remained the same: ?[s]coring high on adherence to [relatively] highbrow 
tastes goes together with the refusal of [relatively] lowbrow tastes, and vice versa?, 
a result which ?provide[s] litle support to the theses about the contemporary 
cultural elite being omnivorous or about snobbism losing ground? (2008:66). 
Carying out a national random sample survey in the UK and following it with 
focus group discussions and (for selected survey respondents) semi-structured 
interviews, Warde et al (2008) find that ?alongside a relative opennes to popular 
culture evidenced by their volume of likes, omnivores disproportionately favoured 
legitimate items? of the type ?that would earlier have confered cultural distinction 
in the sense implied by Bourdieu? (158) and, concomitantly, ?are more dismisive of 
popular culture than of other types.? (159) Furthermore, Warde et al argue that 
?[w]hen their likes and dislikes are unpacked using qualitative data, persistent forms 
of discrimination and disavowal of forms of popular culture (reality TV, fast-food, 
electronic dance music) suggest that the opennes of the omnivore is partial and 
qualified.? (164) The picture is complicated stil further by Peterson?s (2005:264) 
suggestion that ?there may be several distinct paterns of omnivorous inclusion and 
exclusion?, and Gindo Tampubolon?s (2008) observation (following highly 
sophisticated statistical analyses) that ?[h]igh status people actualy form diferent 
  82/379   
groups and they dislike diferent items? (258) and that ?strong dislikes are to be 
found across al groups of omnivores and univores.? (256) 
For al their theoretical diferences, these sociologists of cultural consumption 
would nonetheles appear to agre that taste is a means of maintaining intra-group 
cohesion and inter-group distance. That clas fractions should be the only groups to 
use taste in this way would in fact sem highly unlikely, and many other distinctions 
can be argued to be maintained through diferential consumption, whether or not 
one believes that this wil be more pronounced at particular status levels. For 
example, Peterson and Simkus (1992) find that a taste for jaz has a higher 
correlation with membership of high-status groups among white people than in the 
general population (Table 2), and suggest that ?the historicaly African-American 
musical genres operate quite diferently in marking social status for African-
Americans and for whites.? (165) Furthermore, Arab-Israeli and Russian-Jewish 
Israeli viewers in Liebes and Katz?s study were keen to distance themselves from 
the culture they asociated with Dallas by discussing it in relation to ideas of social 
degeneracy, which would sem to have les to do with their clas fraction than with 
their experience as cultural groups with a specific relation to ?the west?. As for 
gender, Peterson and Simkus argue that ?while men and women tend to make 
somewhat diferent aesthetic choices and tend to be found in diferent occupational 
status groups, women and men in the same occupational group make the same 
paterns of music choices? (1992:164-165), and Omar Lizardo (2006) argues that, 
though women have been found to engage in ?highbrow? cultural consumption to a 
greater extent than men ? a phenomenon that could be taken to refute Bourdieu?s 
explanation of taste in terms of clas fraction alone ? this can be explained within 
Bourdieu?s framework once one takes acount of the sectors in which women are 
  83/379   
employed and their diferential engagement with those sectors. Nonetheles, it is 
easy to think of both highbrow and lowbrow authors who have a greater asociation 
with readers of one gender than with those of the other (Philip Roth, Toni Morrison, 
Andy McNab, Sophie Kinsela). Chapter 4 of this disertation returns to these 
isues, and Chapter 3 discuses a social group primarily defined by the distinctive 
style in which its members consume artefacts of popular culture. 
As the sociology of cultural consumption tends to function at a very general level 
(Bryson, for example, complains that ?we do not realy know how people use taste in 
their everyday lives? [1996:897]), qualitative work such as that by Holt (1997) and 
Warde et al (2008), mentioned above, is particularly important. Work of this sort can be 
caried out by a number of means, a good example (to which we shal return in Chapter 
4) being Harper and Porter?s (1996) analysis of responses to a Mas-Observation
36
 
question that, in August 1950, asked participants ?whether they ever cried in the cinema, 
and if so, whether they were ashamed.? (152). Breaking down these responses by the 
respondent?s age, gender, and clas fraction (judged by occupation only), Harper and 
Porter find that 
only middle-clas respondents were extensively concerned with questions of 
artistic quality, with the literary origins of a film, or with the emotional impact of 
the music. Neither the men nor the women in the lower middle clas refer to art-
house films. Nor do they apear to be in the busines of using film as an index of 
their cultural status. Only middle-clas respondents were concerned with the 
artistic standing of film texts; only they considered the consonance betwen a 
                                                
36
 htp:/ww.masobs.org.uk/ 
  84/379   
film?s quality and their own cultural capital. On the other hand, the lower middle 
clas apeared to be roused by exclusively domestic isues in films ? threats to 
children, animals, or family unity. 
Harper and Porter 1996:168 
This clearly suports Bourdieu?s theory, both in terms of the cultural artefacts 
consumed and of the style of consumption. Ethnographic work has the potential to go 
stil further, by contextualising cultural consumption in the life of comunities. A 
pioneering study in that vein was caried out by Derek Wynne (1990) in his 
investigation of members of the ?emergent middle clas? (ie. people of middle clas status 
but working clas origin) on an English housing estate. Wynne found that the regular 
users of the estate?s leisure facilities used the terms ?drinkers? and ?sporters? to divide 
themselves into two groups, the later (predominantly graduate profesionals, thus 
members of the inteligentsia) being asociated with use of the tennis and squash courts, 
and the former (predominantly managers in manufacturing and other traditional 
industries who had left school at 16, thus members of the bourgeoisie) being asociated 
with use of the lounge bar. Wynne found many contrasts betwen these two groups at 
the level of habitus: comfortable home furnishings (drinkers) versus stylish home 
furnishings (sporters), musicals (drinkers) versus avant-garde theatre (sporters), package 
holidays (drinkers) versus self-catering cotages (sporters). Wynne sugests that the 
?drinkers? and the ?sporters? both construct their middle clas identity through 
consumption, but whereas the former emphasise volume of consumption, and the 
objects of their consumption are those valued by their working clas parents, the later 
  85/379   
emphasise consuming in an elite or refined manner, and consume objects that they 
asociate with the clas they perceive themselves as having entered. 
Like Bourdieu, Wynne takes no particular interest in the consumption of literature 
(there are no questions on literature in Bourdieu?s survey, for example, and Wynne 
takes no note of the books on the shelves of the houses with the fited carpets and 
the parquet floors),
37
 nor inded of television, but his work provides an intriguing 
context for another clasic work of ?second generation? media reception study: 
David Morley?s Family television (1986). Contrary to asumptions of a complete 
break with prior audience research traditions (discussed above), this ?atempted to 
build upon some of the insights of the ?uses and gratifications? approach to 
audience research ? asking what people do with the media ? but taking the dynamic 
unit of consumption to be more properly the family/household rather than the 
individual viewer.? (Morley 1986:15) This modification ? which might sem 
counterintuitive, in these days of multiple television sets and media players within a 
single home,
38
 but which were highly appropriate to the mid-1980s ? permited 
                                                
37
 Bourdieu?s major work on literature, The rules of art (196[192]), comes to the question of 
reading only at the very end; moreover, the chapter in question, ?A theory of reading in practice? 
(32-30), is in fact a reading, in the conventional literary critical sense, of Wiliam Faulkner?s ?A 
Rose for Emily?. The implication would sem to be that the reading of literature is uniquely diferent 
from the forms of cultural consumption analysed in Distinction (1984[1979]); however, since 
Bourdieu does not explicitly state, explain, or justify this position, I shal ignore it. Fowler (200, 
discused below in Sections 1.7 and 1.8) aplies some of the ideas from The rules of art to the case 
of The Satanic Verses. 
38
 Though se Morley (192:175-176): ?even in multi-set households, there is usualy a ?main set?, 
which is the focus of competing demands?. 
  86/379   
Morley to addres ?questions of diferential power, responsibility, and control 
within the family, at diferent times of the day or evening.? (ibid.) Although Morley 
does not employ a Bourdieusian framework to interpret the data he collected, 
something very like Bourdieu?s ?distinction? appears to be operating in much of the 
discourse he recorded, and (though this is dificult to be sure of) to be correlated 
with something like clas fraction, or at least with aspirations to clas-fraction 
membership.
39
 The following extract, for example, begins with an exchange 
produced in the course of Morley?s interview ith one of the middle clas families 
in his study: 
 ?I?m into opera, wel, clasical music anyway or blues and jaz. On the TV and 
radio you get what they cal folk music. Like the Spinners! I mean, that?s like 
Boy George!? 
Daughter: ?What?s wrong with Boy George?? 
This interchange betwen father and daughter clearly catches a smal slice of an 
ongoing dynamic in the family where the father defines himself as part of a 
cultured minority and scorns popular television and music, much to the 
                                                
39
 I do not wish to sugest that Morley should have interpreted his data in relation to Bourdieu. As 
Ang (191[1989]:109) argues, Morley?s aproach was a feminist one, in the sense of being ?sensitive 
to the fact that male/female relationships are always informed by power, contradiction, and strugle.? 
Bourdieu?s work can inded be criticised for insensitivity to this fact, although, as have sen, a case 
can stil be made that gender per se may be unecesary to a theory of cultural consumption, at least 
on the level dealt with by Bourdieu. I interpret Morley?s data from a diferent point of view than he 
does, however, not because of oposition to feminist analysis because but this disertation is not 
primarily concerned with male/female relationships. As I have acknowledged, gender diferences 
certainly can be performed through taste in reading mater. 
  87/379   
annoyance of his daughter who identifies strongly with these things. Thus, later, 
when discussing EastEnders, the daughter justifies the programe, against her 
father?s rejection of ?popular culture? ? which is part of his concern that he and 
his family should escape from his own working-clas roots.. 
.. 
Her father?s views on popular television are perhaps best encapsulated in his 
earlier comment that the crucial point is that ?You?ve got to discriminate, haven?t 
you?? This is in the context of his wife?s explanation that they, as a couple, ?can?t 
stand Dynasty?, although her husband admits, with some embarasment, that 
?my mother likes it, and Dalas?.. Interestingly, in this family the woman does 
not occupy the traditional feminine position as a soap opera fan. Indeed, she 
makes a point of distancing herself from that type of programe. 
Morley 1986:128-129 
Though this couple appear to exhibit something like the habitus of Wynne?s ?sporters?, 
they both left school at nineten, and the husband is a furniture dealer. However, the 
wife is a mature student, which shows that the couple?s aspirations have much in 
common with those of the inteligentsia, and in turn may explain their rejection of 
cultural objects they asociate with the working clas tastes (which Wynne?s ?drinkers? 
continue to embrace). Morley?s particular focus on gender in his interpretation of the 
findings of his study may have prevented him from generalising at this level. The 
extreme divergence betwen the daughter?s expresed tastes and her parents? (just like 
her father?s ?embarasment? when speaking of his mother?s tastes) may reflect a desire 
on the behalf of al thre speakers to perform a generational distinction that might not 
have come to the fore had they been interviewed separately, or in diferent groups: the 
  88/379   
parents display the cultural capital they have acumulated in moving into the middle 
clas (in contrast to the grandmother, who has remained working clas), and the 
daughter, in what could be interpreted as an example of ?inverse snobbery?, displays her 
disdain for such cultural capital (se Hawkins 1990, discussed in Section 1.2 and 
Chapter 4). It is possible that, interviewed alongside an haute bourgeois jaz buff, the 
father might have emphasised taste in something else, and that, interviewed alongside a 
fanatical admirer of Boy George, the daughter might have echoed her father?s 
disparagement of that particular pop singer. Of course, it is also possible that they might 
not, since distinction ? the clasifying of the clasifier ? is, like other forms of 
identification, an agentive proces. This also goes to ilustrate the importance of 
recognising the discursive context for each performance of consumption that we study. 
A further criticism of Bourdieu is John Fiske?s alegation that ?[h]e does not alow that 
there are forms of cultural capital produced outside of oficial cultural capital.? (Fiske 
1992:32) This is, I think, an intriguing idea, but one that should be treated with a degre 
of caution; in Fiske?s hands it unfortunately tends towards utopianism: 
Fans, in particular, are active producers and users of such cultural capital and, at 
the level of fan organisation, begin to reproduce equivalents of the formal 
institutions of official culture.. fan culture is a form of popular culture that 
echoes many of the institutions of official culture, although in popular form and 
under popular control. It may be thought of as a sort of ?moonlighting? in the 
cultural rather than the economic sphere, a form of cultural labour to fil the gaps 
left by legitimate culture. Fandom offers ways of filing cultural lack and provides 
the social prestige and self-estem that go with cultural capital. 
  89/379   
Fiske 1992:33 
Fiske thus sugests that the ?cultural economy of fandom? to which the title of his esay 
aludes is one run acording to something very like the Socialist principle ?to each 
acording to his needs?. However, I would sugest that, in order to function as capital, 
non-official (ie. ilegitimate) cultural capital must necesarily produce inequalities of its 
own, rather than simply compensate for the inequalities of the larger cultural economy. 
Inded, it would by no means sem unlikely that the unequal distribution of fan cultural 
capital might to some extent coincide with the unequal distribution among fans of 
economic capital (due to the cost of the merchandise, books, DVDs, etc that fans must 
purchase in the course of acumulating their own brand of cultural capital) and inded of 
official cultural capital too (Hils [2002:18] notes that some of the most prominent 
fanzine writers have ben English Literature or Media Studies graduates ? and even 
lecturers ? and the analysis provided in Chapter 3 of this disertation sugests that 
academic knowledge and status may be highly valued in some fan comunities). 
Furthermore, whilst Fiske (1992:45) insists that only official cultural capital ?can readily 
be converted into carer oportunities and earning power?, we can readily find 
phenomena that chalenge this thesis; examples would include fan artists who sel their 
work to other fans, ?big name fans? who are paid to speak at fan conventions, and fan 
writers who have ben comericaly published. For these reasons, although I would not 
dismis Fiske?s notion of unofficial forms of cultural capital, I would sugest that it is 
insufficiently developed for application, since its distinction from what Bourdieu 
refered to as ?cultural capital? is unclear. The trend in sociological studies of cultural 
consumption is clearly towards the recognition of complexities and divisions overlooked 
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by Bourdieu, and so it would sem likely that ?cultural capital? wil ultimately be 
replaced by a more nuanced concept or set of concepts, but I am poorly equiped to 
atempt such an analysis, and I do not believe that it can be caried out on the basis of 
Fiske?s theories of fandom. 
As in Bourdieu?s foundational work, reading has continued to receive les atention 
from sociologists than certain other forms of cultural consumption (particularly 
music-listening, the focus of many of the studies cited above). However, oficial 
surveys incorporating questions about reading behaviour are caried out in many 
countries, and these have been used to provide large-scale pictures that appear to 
confirm the applicability to this area of cultural life of Bourdieu?s theory of 
distinction: for example, Florencia Torche uses evidence of this type to show that, 
in Chile, ?a country where books have traditionaly been asociated with the cultural 
elite?, the reading of books (as opposed to magazines) ?stil appears to be a powerful 
vehicle to expres, and perhaps maintain, status distinctions? (2007:89). More 
detailed survey data was available to Erzs?bet Bukodi, who discovers that, in 
Hungary, ?serious readers are a kind of cultural elite comprising high-status people 
coming from high-status family backgrounds? (2007:125); her analysis shows that, 
in contrast to these ?readers of clasical and modern novels, drama, poetry, etc? 
(117) ? most likely to be ?teaching and cultural profesionals and legal 
profesionals? (118) ? readers of ?factual and technical books, including work-
related materials? (117) are likely to be ?engineers and computer scientists, social 
science profesionals, and senior government officials? (118), that ?readers of crime 
stories, love stories and romances, adventure stories, science fiction, etc? (117) are 
most numerous in ?the middle ranges of the status order?, ie. among such people as 
?cultural asociate profesionals and personal service workers? (118), and that over 
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80% of general labourers, the lowest status occupational group in her study, are 
non-readers (Fig. 1, fourth graph), with the proportion of non-readers faling rapidly 
as status rises. If the relevance of al this for reception study of the type caried out 
in this disertation is not imediately obvious, the following excerpt from an 
explanation of Bourdieu should make it clear: 
To take an example that Bourdieu might use were he to study the 
contemporary United States, when someone details Milos Forman?s 
directorial prowes in The People vs Larry Flynt to a friend over dinner (or, 
conversely, offers a damning harangue of Forman as an unrepentant 
proselytiser of the dominant gender ideology), this discussion not only 
recreates the experiential delight that the movie provided, but also serves as 
a claim to particular resources (here, knowledge of directorial styles in 
movies, and the ability to carefully analyse these characteristics) that act as 
reputational currency. Such actions are perceived not as explicit clas 
markers but as bases for whom one is atracted to and admires, whom one 
finds uninteresting or doesn?t understand, and whom one finds unimpresive 
and so seks to avoid. Thus, status boundaries are reproduced simply 
through expresing one?s tastes. 
Holt 1997:102 
Social identity is thus displayed through styles of discourse on text: talking about 
The People vs Larry Flynt in either of the ways described above would (provided it 
was done competently) demonstrate high cultural capital on the part of the speaker, 
whose specific identity within his or her clas fraction might be further signaled 
through the choice of one or the other: connoiseur vs feminist, perhaps. Training in 
  92/379   
these kinds of discourse is (of course) available at university level, and therefore it 
is hardly surprising that diferences in terms of both content (ie. which works to 
expres appreciation for, and which to dismis) and form (ie. the verbal style in 
which to do so) were found in Marcy Dorfman?s experimental atempt (se also 
Section 1.5) to compare the behaviour of members of ?interpretive communities? 
defined by participation or non-participation in postgraduate literature courses: 
For literary novices, there was a clear discrepancy in ratings betwen the 
science fiction story and the literary texts. The science fiction story was 
perceived to be more interesting, more enjoyable, beter writen, and easier 
to understand. Novices were also more likely to derive a mesage or point 
for this story when asked to do so. In contrast, experts found the literary 
texts to be more interesting and more enjoyable. Experts also showed more 
interest in stories they did not particularly like, and were more wiling to 
interpret stories they did not readily understand. Finaly, in comparison to 
novices, experts? literary and critical judgements were more closely aligned 
with conventions established by the literary community. 
..it is clear that the groups of readers studied here approached the 
interpretive task with diferent asumptions concerning how a text should be 
read. 
Dorfman 1996:465-466 
Whether we should atribute these diferences to literary training (se Bortolussi and 
Dixon [1996] for an experiment testing the efects of this as a variable) or to clas 
fraction is debatable; I would suggest that these two interpretations are in fact 
compatible, since literary training can be asumed to be one of the means by which 
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cultural capital is acquired (Van Dijk [1979], for example, suggests that the purpose 
of a literary education may simply be to prepare the student for a lifetime?s polite 
conversation in the middle clases; se the data analysed in Section 1.2 of this 
disertation for a possible example of how this training might function). At this 
point, however, we are approaching the current limits both of the sociology of 
cultural consumption and of empirical literary studies, for which reason we must 
return to media reception study. 
Although, as I have stated, this field is primarily ocupied with television audiences, 
some of its key studies have been on the readerships of mas-produced print media: 
above al, the work of Janice Radway (1987[1984]) and Elizabeth Long (1986). To some 
extent, these two studies represent a unique research tradition of their own, since Long?s 
work was partly inspired by Radway?s, which was in turn (as Radway explains in the 
introduction to the British edition of her book [1987]) produced in ignorance of recent 
Cultural Studies research, responding largely to debates within the discipline of 
American Studies. However, Radway and Long?s work closely paralels that of Hal, 
Hobson, etc, and they have, with those British researchers, come to be regarded as the 
representatives of a single, transatlantic research tradition (this is, for example, how they 
are discussed by Gibson [2000] and Travis [2003]). 
After 24 years, Radway?s Reading the romance (1987[1984]) remains one of the most 
thorough, important, and rigorous studies of reception ever to have been caried out. The 
core of Radway?s research consisted of eight hours of group interviews with members of 
a network of frequent romance readers to whom she had ben introduced by Dot, a 
bookshop worker who was also the editor of a newsleter for romance readers. In 
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addition to this, she caried out a series of interviews and informal conversations with 
Dot herself, and created two questionnaires, the first of these being completed by her 
interviewes and the second by a wider sample of Dot?s regular customers. In common 
with my approach in this disertation (se Chapter 4 in particular), Radway does not 
wish to ?deny the worth of the readers? understanding of their own experience? 
(1987[1984]:187); rather than taking what they say at face value, however, she engages 
with it carefuly and criticaly, working betwen the interviews and questionnaires, her 
own analyses of the books being read, and Nancy Chodorow?s (1978) social and 
psychological analyses of the American family. Her use of textual analysis is 
particularly important, because it enables her to go beyond the readers? own statements 
of why they read romances: by carying out a Proppian analysis of a corpus of twenty 
novels that had been repeatedly cited as favourites by her research subjects or that had 
been highly rated in Dot?s newsleter, she was able to identify the characteristics that set 
these readers? ?ideal romances? apart from those that they ?deemed disappointing or 
?disgusting?? and to correlate these characteristics with the readers? ?comments about 
how they fel when they read bad romances? in order to reach the conclusion that ?one 
of the measures of an ideal book?s succes is its ability to deal convincingly with female 
fears and reservations by permiting them to surface briefly during a reading proces that 
then explicitly lays them to rest by explaining them away.? (1987[1984]:158) Without 
the Proppian analysis, Radway would have been unable to reach such a conclusion, 
since her research subjects? acounts were contradictory: they could, for example, deny 
?the repetitious or formulaic quality of the fiction they read? whilst ?exhibit[ing] fairly 
rigid expectations about what is permisible in a romantic tale and expres[ing] 
disappointment and outrage when those conventions are violated.? (63) However, 
without eliciting her research subjects? preferences and dispreferences, she would have 
  95/379   
been unable to cary out the Proppian analysis (which is not in itself an interpretation but 
a claim about generic regularities), and without her application of Chodorow?s ideas and 
(for that mater) her research subjects? statements, she would have been unable to 
establish the significance of this analysis. Radway?s study of the arguments romance 
readers use to justify their reading is particularly interesting, and prefigures the 
?rhetorical? approach to reception discussed in Section 1.5 of this disertation: 
When Dot and her customers insist that they have a right to escape and to 
indulge themselves just as everyone else does, they are justifying their book 
purchases with arguments that are basic to a consuming society... However, 
when they subsequently argue that romances are also edifying and that reading is 
a kind of productive labour, they forsake that ideology of perpetual consumption 
for a more traditional value system that enshrines hard work, performance of 
duty, and thrift. 
118 
Although Radway describes the system of values appealed to in the first argument as 
?subversive? of the system of values appealed to in the second (ibid.), it is clear that 
there is nothing radical about this: the ideology of a later mode of capitalism subverts 
that of an earlier, but both are sufficiently wel established for these readers to appeal to 
in constructing arguments. Radway?s use of diferent forms of data and diferent 
approaches to the same data (note also her use of book historical methods, refered to in 
Subsection 1.3.1) should ensure that her work remains a source of ideas in reception 
study for some time to come: there is certainly nothing comparable in the literary 
reception studies discussed in Subsection 1.3.2, for al that single studies may have 
exceded her work in particular respects. 
  96/379   
Elizabeth Long?s (1986) research was very diferent, in that she collected her data not by 
interview but by ethnographic observation of a range of al-female, middle clas reading 
groups (ie. book clubs) in Houston, seking to learn about their practices of selection 
and interpretation of reading mater. Although she aserts that their interpretative 
practices were more playful than those of the literary academy, she finds that their 
practices of selection were far from independent, in that ?reading groups generaly 
acept without question the categories of clasification and evaluation generated by 
socialy sanctioned sources of cultural authority?, employing them as means for 
?demarcating what is worth discussing from trash? (599). Moreover, Long?s arguments 
suggest that the playfulnes she discovered may have been no more than a sort of 
blisful uncriticality: ?[o]ne reason that reading groups can be playful?, she writes, ?is 
because they are not held acountable for their discussions and interpretations as are 
?profesional readers? and their students?, and therefore ?do not have to asert their 
interpretations in a serious way or defend them with tightly reasoned arguments from the 
text.? (603) Moreover, she also found that reading groups tend to employ naively realist 
and mietic conceptions of literary meaning: a tendency exacerbated by their lack of 
atention to context, such that ?modern novels, especialy, float in a context-fre space 
that strips them of intertextual situatednes and alows them to appear to be simple 
utterances directly representing the world.? (606) 
Despite their critique of their research subjects, Radway and Long?s investigations have 
come to be identified, like Hobson?s, with a growing ?populist? trend in Cultural Studies: 
an anti-authoritarian, anti-sexist, anti-capitalist aproach to the mas media organised 
around a notion of ?resistance? that had first been asociated with reading in Michel de 
Certeau?s The practice of everyday life (1984[1974]). The central thesis of this aproach 
  97/379   
has been that, for al that mas media texts might sem to promote represive ideologies, 
ordinary people exploit the polyvalence of those texts to consume them in ways that 
resist those ideologies. This was taken to its logical extreme (and thereby to a large extent 
discredited) by John Fiske (1989a, 1989b). Fiske advocates the study of ?how people 
cope with the system, how they read its texts, how they make popular culture out of its 
resources.? (1989a:105) In practice, what this amounts to is Fiske presenting his own 
readings of ?popular? texts, together with his speculations as to how other audiences 
might be reading those same texts: readings and speculations that sem to be underpinned 
by the unspoken asumption ? traceable back to Certeau ? that there is something 
inherently resistant about activity on the part of readers, and that for people to ?make 
popular culture? out of mas media texts is in itself a form of resistance to the mas 
media and the ?system? in which it operates. Although this may sem to be mitigated by 
Fiske?s description of ?popular culture? (ie. ?the people?s? uses of mas media texts) as 
?potentialy, and often actualy, progresive? (1989a:21, emphasis added), it is in fact 
asumed by it, since Fiske never discusses the posibility that popular culture may be, 
by the same token, ?potentialy, and often actualy? reactionary (a posibility that is 
highlighted by my analysis of ?resistant? reading in the clasroom in Chapter 3).
40
 
                                                
40
 Compare Stacey (194:47): ? ?Activity? in and of itself is not a form of resistance: women may be 
active viewers in the sense of actively investing in opresive ideologies.? Fiske?s aproach is, as he 
admits ?esentialy optimistic? (1989a:21), and this optimism leads him not only to ignore such 
posibilities, but to produce interpretations that border on the bizare, as when he aserts (on the grounds 
of a boutique owner?s estimate that a mere one in 30 people browsing through her shop actualy buys 
something) that ?[s]hoping mals are where the strategy of the powerful is most vulnerable to the tactical 
raids of the weak.? (1989b:18) Se Be (1989) for an early and incisive critique of Fiske?s populism. 
  98/379   
Dangerous populist asumptions are also implied when media scholar Henry Jenkins 
(1992) draws on Certeau in order to propose a ?conception of fans as readers who 
apropriate popular texts and reread them in a fashion that serves diferent interests, as 
spectators who transform the experience of watching television into a rich and complex 
participatory culture? (23): for al Jenkins?s care to hold back from the populist 
enthusiasms displayed by Fiske, these notions of appropriation, of diferent interests, 
and of transformation sugest that there is something revolutionary about the intensive 
consumption of mas media texts. The most strident atack on this tendency has come 
from Thomas Frank (2001:276-306), who observes that, in the 1990s, the ?market 
populists? of consumer capitalism joined with the radical intelectuals of cultural studies 
in extolling ?the revolutionary power of popular culture and the wonders of subjects who 
talked back?. The brushstrokes with which Frank lays on his polemic are broad, and 
sometimes excesively so ? his misreading of Levine (1988, se Frank 2001:281) is 
particularly glaring ? but he is right to observe that something must have gone wrong in 
a situation where ?the gap betwen critical intelectuals and simple salesmanship sems 
only to shrink.? (2001:305) The notion that audiences are empowered through their 
active construction of meanings from the industrialy-produced texts of mas culture is 
profoundly convenient for the multinational corporations that own the copyright to those 
texts. And the notion that these constructions of meanings can be re-constructed through 
close interpretative commentary on those mas media texts might be thought equaly 
convenient for academics who would rather produce close readings of glossy magazines 
and television programes than cary out empirical studies of reading and viewing 
practices in their social contexts:
41
 Morley warns against ?the tendency towards the 
                                                
41
 This is not to deny that certain producers of mas cultural gods have taken legal steps to constrain 
  99/379   
?textualisation? of cultural studies?, which he asociates with the establishment of 
departments of cultural studies within faculties of arts and humanities rather than of 
social sciences (1992:5), and Rojek and Turner complain that, in cultural studies, 
?literary interpretation has marginalised sociological methods? (2000:629; se Footnote 1 
of the current study for a brief discussion of such literary interpretation as imported 
back into literary studies under the banner of ?cultural studies?). 
It is against this background that Shalini Puri (2003:24) decries ?a fetishisation of 
resistance and transgresion in cultural studies?, and that Trysh Travis (2003:136) 
protests against the ?populist comforts? of the cultural studies ?narative of resistance, 
contest, and solidarity among the marginal?: comforts that must be set aside if we are to 
investigate ?the specific historical conditions in which people make and read books.?
42
 
Travis?s investigation of the reception of Rebeca Wels?s Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya 
Sisterhood leads her to the conclusion that, though this novel?s readers ?register 
disatisfaction and desire.. these are then ever-more-rapidly rerouted.. into 
unthreatening forms.? (2003:155) It also shows the extent to which the suposed 
grasroots enthusiasm for the novel was manufactured in the proces of promotion: 
perhaps Travis?s bigest blow against the ?resisters? thesis in an argument that is 
specificaly writen against the work of Radway and Long: 
                                                                                                                                    
the expresion of certain forms of audience autonomy (se section 1.7), nor that certain literary 
critics wish to preserve the principle of a single meaning for a single text (se Chapter 2). 
42
 As Travis observes, the encoding/decoding model has ben taken to provide suport for this 
comforting narative. Given the theoretical purposes for which the model was proposed (se above), 
this is somewhat ironic. 
  100/379   
Radway and Long each qualified her findings, admiting the partial and inded 
ambivalent character of the ?resistance? her readers offered to cultural authority. 
But both concerned themselves primarily with noting and validating their 
subjects? resistant behaviour rather than with plumbing its ambiguities. 
138 
Given the total content of Long?s paper and Radway?s monograph, Travis?s judgement 
might sem rather unfair. However, it sems an apropriate response to both Long and 
Radway?s conclusions: Radway describes romance reading as ?a valid, if limited protest? 
(1987[1984]:220) and a ?minimal but nonetheles legitimate form of protest? (222); Long 
comes to se the naively realist interpretative strategies that she has earlier implicitly 
criticised her subjects for as ?giv[ing] them the authority to interpret [characters] in ways 
that chalenge the critical establishment.? (1986:610) And this is what Radway and Long 
have generaly been taken to stand for, their critique of the readers they study forgoten, 
their afirmation of those readers? powers to ?protest? and ?chalenge? remembered. A 
good example of this is inadvertently provided by Nick Turner (2005:195), who states 
that Radway ?showed in 1984 in The Reading of Romance that alegedly ?escapist? 
fiction can give female readers identity in a partriarchal society?: that Turner was not 
refering directly to Radway?s book is clear from the fact that he provides no 
bibliographic reference and gets the title wrong; what he cites is the Radway that almost 
everyone knows (or thinks he or she knows): the afirmative, populist Radway who 
  101/379   
suposedly tels us that serial consumption of mas-market paperbacks is an act of 
defiance against patriarchy.
43
 
Alasuutari considers the next big change in reception studies to have ben the 
?constructionist? turn, which may have begun as early as the mid 1980s and which is 
characterised by greater reflexivity and by an aim ?to get a grasp of our contemporary 
?media culture?, particularly as it can be sen in the role of the media in everyday life? 
(1999:6). It must be observed, however, that the studies he groups together as third 
generational poses no unifying factors other than that they involve aspects of critique 
regarding various characteristics of studies he asociates with the first and second 
generations. I shal therefore focus from now on purely on those studies that directly 
prefigure this disertation by employing a broadly ?discursive? aproach to reception 
data. Before I can do that, however, I would like to consider the meaning of ?discourse 
analysis? outside of reception study. 
                                                
43
 Although Radway notes that romance readers frequently claim to have gained confidence from 
reading romances, she remains ambivalent, describing romance reading as an experience that may 
help a female reader to ?fel temporarily revived? (1987[1984]:84) but canot help her to adres the 
causes of her disatisfaction, since its ?short-lived therapeutic value? is ?made both posible and 
necesary by a culture that creates neds in women that it canot fulfil? (85). In other words, 
romances are not ?alegedly? but genuinely escapist, and the benefits of their reading do nothing to 
compromise their readers? continuing ocupation of a patriarchaly-defined identity position. The 
one aspect of romances that Radway discovered to chalenge patriarchal conceptions of a woman?s 
role apears to be that they enable their readers ?to throw up a scren betwen themselves and the 
arena where they are required to do most of their relating to others.? (92) 
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1.4 ?Discourse analysis? 
In The Archaeology of knowledge, Michel Foucault influentialy defines a discourse as 
?the group of statements that belong to a single system of formation? (1972[1969]:107), 
such that he can ?speak of clinical discourse, economic discourse, the discourse of 
natural history, psychiatric discourse? (108), and the word is used in a similar sense by 
many of those who can broadly be caled discourse analysts, since it enables them to talk 
specificaly about something that would otherwise have to be given the vaguer label of 
?ideology?. For instance, Roger Fowler (who always described himself as a critical 
linguist, but for our purposes can best be sen as a discourse analyst with a very tightly 
defined methodology) employed the more metaphysical but clearly very closely derived 
definition of a discourse as ?a system of meanings within the culture, pre-existing 
language.? (1996:7) However, in the current work, the word ?discourse? is used as in 
contemporary linguistics, ie. to mean situated language use. Thus, this disertation 
involves discourse analysis in the sense that ?[t]he analysis of discourse is.. the analysis 
of language in use? and ?cannot be restricted to the description of linguistic forms 
independent of the purposes or functions which those forms are designed to serve in 
human afairs.? (Brown and Yule 1983:1) 
?Discourse analysis? does not constitute a procedure, an approach, or even a set of 
research questions, but rather a loose grouping of academic traditions defined largely by 
the type of data on which al of them focus: which is to say, almost any kind of 
?naturaly occurring? writen or spoken language. It is, as Martin Barker writes, 
a motley domain, made up of scholars who probably cannot agre on any 
fundamental definitions, yet al of whom are drawn to certain questions, which 
are sen as of particular relevance today. These questions concern the nature and 
  103/379   
role of language and other meaning-systems in the operation of social relations, 
and in particular the power of such systems to shape identities, social practices, 
relations betwen individuals, communities, and al kinds of authority. 
forthcoming 
For the purposes of this disertation, the most important form of discourse analysis is 
discursive psychology (often abreviated to DP), an aproach to social psychology 
whose principles are laid out in Poter and Wetherel?s Discourse and social psychology 
(1987), and Derek Edwards?s (1997) Discourse and cognition. Robin Wooffit 
(2005:113) describes discursive psychology as ?a thorough reworking of the subject 
mater of psychology? which ?seks to analyse reports of mental states, and discourse in 
which mental states become relevant, as social actions?: a good practical example is 
Abel and Stokoe?s analysis of a Panorama interview ith Diana Spencer. Abel and 
Stokoe show that Diana invokes ?[t]he dispositional characteristics both of her own 
personality and ?others?.. as [she] locates her blamings [of others] within descriptions 
of past events.? (1999:301) ?[T]o study ?felings?,? as Michael Bilig writes with 
characteristic irony, discursive psychologists pay ?atention to what people are doing 
when they claim to have felings.? (1997:141) When it comes to identity, discursive 
psychologists regard this not ?as a fixed set of properties or operations? which ?may 
receive ocasional expresion? through language, but ?in terms of lay or vernacular social 
categories, the ascription of which is inextricably tied to the details of talk-in-
interaction.? (Woofit and Clark 1998:107) 
Discursive psychology takes its lead from conversation analysis (often abbreviated to 
CA), itself originaly an offshoot of ethnomethodology. The later is a radical aproach 
  104/379   
to sociology pioneered by Harold Garfinkel in his clasic Studies in ethnomethodology 
(1984[1967]). Ethnomethodology consists in studying the ways in which people display 
and negotiate their understandings of the social world and in doing so create social order. 
It terms these displays and negotiations ?acounting practices? and ses them as ?caried 
on under the auspices of, and.. made to happen as events in, the same ordinary afairs 
that in organising they describe? (Garfinkel 1984[1967]:1). Conversation analysis 
develops this by specificaly studying the orderlines of conversation, defined as ?that 
organisation of talk which is not subject to functionaly specific or context-specific 
restrictions or specialised practices or conventionalised arangements, in the way in 
which courts of law in sesion are, or clasrooms, or religious ceremonies, or news 
interviews, or talks at scholarly and scientific metings.? (Schegloff 1999c:407) 
Although conversation analysis was first proposed by Harvey Sacks in a series of 
lectures given betwen 1964 and 1968 (1995[1992]), it has in its development largely 
been stered by his colleague and literary executor, Emanuel A Schegloff, whose 
pronouncements can therefore be considered to represent its mainstream. For Scheglof, 
the key principle of conversation analysis appears to be that ?talk-in-interaction has an 
internaly grounded reality of its own that we can aspire to get at analyticaly? 
(1997:171) but that this is only possible if one comes to one?s data with a ?clean gaze? 
(1999a&b). This realist ontology and positivist epistemology may explain a 
preoccupation among conversation analysts with the question of eliminating bias, 
leading to a ?general CA dispreference for studying interactions in which oneself has 
taken part, as this may bias one?s understanding of what went on.? (Ten Have 2002:529) 
Nonetheles, Michael Bilig (1999b) and Stokoe and Smithson (2001) complain that 
conversation analysis relies on untheorised presupositions and cultural knowledge on 
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the part of the analyst, and it should be noted that Schegloff?s implication that it is 
posible to understand the world through induction alone is outside the scientific 
mainstream. Further complaints against both conversation analysis and those forms of 
study inspired by it often relate to its fetishisation of data, which Scollon and Scollon 
object ?has come to mean ?that which can be recorded as sound and/or images and 
then.. transcribed so that it can be placed typographicaly silent and supine on the 
printed page of the disertation, book, or journal article?? (2007:620): the resulting 
transcriptions are of ever-increasing complexity and are pored over by analysts on an 
almost microscopic level; a touch sardonicaly, Bilig (1996:19-22) thus refers to 
discursive psychologists as ?students of detail?. 
Perhaps the most serious limitation of conversation analysis, however, is its principle 
that the terms on which an interaction can best be analysed are given by the interaction 
itself: as Scheglof puts it, ?because it is the orientations, meanings, interpretations, 
understandings, etc, of the participants in some sociocultural event on which the course 
of that event is predicated.. it is those characterisations which are privileged in the 
constitution of socio-interactional reality, and therefore have a prima facie claim to 
being privileged in eforts to understand it.? (Schegloff 1997:166-167) Although 
analytic atention to the categories used by participants in an event (as opposed to the 
categories imposed by the analyst) is valuable (se Edwards 1998; Widdicombe 
1998a&b), to state ? as Schegloff does ? that these categories are always the best ones to 
employ in analysing the event involves the manifestly unjustified asumptions that (a) 
participants invariably understand what it is that they participate in, and (b) they 
invariably display these understandings as they participate. These asumptions have 
generaly been acepted by discursive psychologists, with the result that, as Bilig notes 
  106/379   
in an article on the unconcious, ?analysts tend not to search for absences in 
conversation? and ?[w]hat is absent from the conversation tends to be absent from the 
analysis.? (1997:146) 
Although Bilig sometimes argues in favour of critical discourse analysis (1999a&b), he is 
primarily asociated with (and is the primary exponent of) an aproach to social and 
cognitive psychology that he cals ?rhetorical psychology?, the key texts for which have 
been his monographs, Arguing and thinking (1996[1987]) and Ideology and opinions 
(1991). Rhetorical psychology has afinities with discursive psychology, and is often 
bracketed with it. However, at its core, it is far closer to traditional psychology: it is 
primarily interested not in talk about mental proces but in mental proceses themselves, 
its radical manoeuvre being not the discursive psychological strategy of studying talk 
about mental proceses, but the very diferent strategy of studying particular kinds of 
talk as mental proceses. The basic rhetorical psychological position is that to engage in 
argumentation is to think and that to think is to engage in argumentation: a position 
deriving from the ideas of Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca (1969[1958]), who stated that 
?it is by analysing argumentation addresed to others that we can best understand self-
deliberation, and not vice versa?, since ?[a]grement with oneself is merely a particular 
case of agrement with others? (41). Rhetorical psychology ses individual people?s 
?atitudes? as stances taken in relation to public controversies (se Section 1.8), and 
examines ideology in terms of argumentative justifications. Bilig has argued that not only 
thinking, but other psychological mechanisms besides, such as represion, might be 
learnt from proceses occurring in conversational interaction (1997); and, in this, 
rhetorical psychology would sem to have strong afinities with the work of Lev 
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Vygotsky, who holds that ?[e]very function in the child?s cultural development apears 
twice: first, on the social level, and later on, on the individual level; first, betwen people 
(interpsychological), and then inside the child (intrapsychological)?, such that ?[t]he 
internalisation of socialy rooted and historicaly developed activities is the 
distinguishing feature of human psychology, the basis of the qualitative leap from animal 
to human psychology.? (1962:57; se also 1978) Interestingly, although this conception 
of psychology was dismised for many years by cognitive science, it has now 
significantly gained in curency due to suport for Vygotsky?s ideas in the results of 
?[r]ecent research on human infants, nonhuman primates, and human adults? (Spelke 
2003:305). 
Rhetorical psychology would thus sem a promising tradition for reception studies to 
engage with, since its principles would suggest that readers? and viewers? suposedly 
private mental responses to texts can be aproached through the study of public uses of 
literature. However, it has been subjected to criticism from a discourse analytic and 
conversation analytic viewpoint by Robin Wooffit, who objects that ?[r]hetorical 
psychology restricts its focus to argumentation and ideology; and empirical research thus 
concerns a limited set of isues.? (2005:112) This is a fair coment, although I might 
venture to sugest that, for at least some purposes, even such aparently unimportant 
subjects as argument and ideology might be of at least some smal interest to somebody: 
perhaps even of as much interest as the ?natural? organisation of conversations. A 
restricted focus is not necesarily a bad thing in itself, and inded it is part of the 
scientific method. Although Wooffit disaproves rhetorical psychology?s practice of 
?establish[ing] from the start what might be analyticaly interesting? (2005:167), this is 
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no more than the practice of having a set of research questions that lay out what it is that 
one is atempting to theorise ? a practice that conversation analysis shares, though does 
not always admit to: 
CA has been from its outset a formalistic programe of inquiry. Its fundamental 
concerns are with structures of interaction and.. in pursuit of rigorous description 
of these, clasical CA consciously ignored particularities of ?content? ? such as 
speakers? social identities, the location and avowed purpose of the interaction, 
and other contextual features ? except insofar as these were analyticaly relevant 
to the description of the structures under consideration. 
Hester and Francis 2001:216 
Rhetorical psychology reminds us that ?there are other stories to be told beyond stories 
about the micro-proceses of discourse? (Bilig 1996:22): something that is easily 
forgotten when there is a heavy emphasis on ever-more-finely-detailed transcriptions. 
Although I wil continue to make reference to arguments from within discursive 
psychology, rhetorical psychology is closer to the heart of this disertation. 
What is it, then, that I take from these traditions discused above: ethnomethodology, 
conversation analysis, discursive psychology? Esentialy, it is their aim of exploring the 
categories made relevant by the participants in the conversations being analysed rather 
than imposing analytic categories on that discourse: an aim which I would rather treat as 
a positive ambition than a negative prohibition. I mean by this that I shal not atempt to 
analyse discourse solely on its own terms, but shal nonetheles aproach discourse in 
the hope of discovering (amongst other things) the categories and distinctions that 
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discourse participants use to organise their activities. These I shal atempt to relate to 
larger structures discussed on the level of theory, history, etc: an aproach that might 
perhaps be acurately described as a form of critical discourse analysis. 
The term ?critical discourse analysis? (often abbreviated to CDA) is used in several 
senses. In what was for many years its best known sense, it is roughly synonymous 
with so-caled ?critical linguistics?, and refers to the politicaly engaged analysis of 
writen or spoken text using the frameworks of systemic-functional linguistics (as can be 
sen in several studies published in Caldas-Coulthard and Coulthard [1996]). In the 
sense asociated with the journal Discourse and Society, however, it refers to a school of 
spech (and sometimes text) analysis that resembles conversation analysis but rejects the 
idea that al the resources necesary for the analysis of a conversation are to be found 
within that conversation: in their spat over the legitimacy of this aproach to spoken 
data, both Bilig (1999a&b) and Scheglof (1999a&b) take this to be the primary 
distinction betwen critical discourse analysis and conversation analysis. Both of these 
types of critical discourse analysis are politicaly engaged, but the first sems to imagine 
itself more as a means for political intervention than as a means for finding out about the 
world, for which reason I shal be rejecting it here: its utopian political programe (?to 
bring a system of excesive inequalities of power into crisis by uncovering its workings 
and its efects through the analysis of potent cultural objects ? texts ? and thereby to 
help in achieving a more equitable social order? [Kres 1996:15]) is in many respects 
laudable but does not realy coincide with my current project, and neither does its 
obsesion with systemic-functional linguistics. A methodology for critical discourse 
analysis of the second type is proposed in a survey article by Alan Luke (2002), who 
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argues that the basic critical discourse analytic procedure is the simultaneous analysis of 
discourse and of social context ? a procedure that, I might observe, sets critical discourse 
analysis clearly apart from ethnomethodology, conversation analysis, and discursive 
psychology. As Luke puts it, 
CDA involves a principled shunting back and forth betwen analyses of the text 
and the social, betwen cultural sign and institutional formation, betwen 
semiotic/discourse analysis and the analysis of local institutional sites, betwen a 
normative reading of texts and a normative reading of the social world. 
104 
Critical discourse analysis of this type achieves the linkage of the specific sample of 
discourse under analysis to the social by means of something like Foucault?s concept of 
a discourse (discussed above): discourses circulating in society are presumed to be 
manifest in individual interactions. This aproach discredits it in the eyes of 
positivisticaly-minded conversation analysts, who complain of ?a clear lack of 
consistency as to what counts as evidence for the presence of [a] discourse? and ask 
?what value is the concept of discourses as an analytic tool if there is no clear method by 
which to establish the presence of any particular discourse in any specific sequence of 
talk-in-interaction?? (Woofit 2005:183) As can se, however, critical discourse analysis 
of this type is not a technique for the analysis of talk-in-interaction, but an atempt to 
simultaneously aproach large- and smal-scale social phenomena in context of each 
other: so many factors are involved that the quest for a ?clear method? would probably 
be futile, with each case neding to be argued on its own merits. This is acknowledged in 
the arguments of Ruth Wodak (?CDA.. should.. justify theoreticaly why certain 
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interpretations of events sem ore valid than others? [2001:65, emphasis added]) and 
Norman Fairclough: 
the identification of configurations of genres and discourses in a text is obviously 
an interpretative exercise which depends upon the analyst?s experience of and 
sensitivity to relevant orders of discourse, as wel as the analyst?s interpretative 
and strategic biases. There are problems in justifying such analysis which are not 
made easier by the slipperines of constructs such as genre and discourse, the 
dificulty sometimes of keeping them apart, and the need to asume a relatively 
wel-defined repertoire of discourses and genres in order to use the constructs in 
analysis. 
Fairclough 1995:212 
Fairclough concludes that the analysis must be properly contextualised through long-
term ?social and ethnographic research? (ibid.). An alternative approach would be to 
study both contemporary and historical discourse, but, though this would sem to be the 
best way for critical discourse analysis to make use of the heritage of Foucault, who 
writes history in order to understand the development of topics that are important today 
(Dreyfus and Rabinow 1982), the only prominent critical discourse analyst to take a 
sustained interest in history is Ruth Wodak. Wodak?s ?discourse-historical? approach 
focuses closely on argumentation, and has much in common with what I shal be 
atempting in this disertation, Chapter 4 in particular. For example, in her study of a 
document produced by the right-wing populist Austrian Fredom Party, Wodak 
examines ?five types of discursive strategies, which are al involved in.. positive self- 
and negative-other presentation? (2000:73): 
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1) How are persons named and refered to linguisticaly? 
2) What traits, characteristics, qualities, and features are atributed to them? 
3) By means of what arguments and argumentation schemes do specific 
persons or social groups try to justify and legitimise the exclusion, 
discrimination, suppresion, and exploitation of others? 
4) From what perspective or point of view are these labels, atributions, and 
arguments expresed? 
5) Are the respective utterances articulated overtly? Are they intensified or 
are they mitigated? 
72-73 
For al that my interest here is in discursive realisations of reading, rather than of 
discrimination, and that I have tended to follow arguments wherever they may lead, 
rather than to set out and then follow a systematic list of analytic questions such as the 
above, the approach I have taken to discourse is very closely related to Wodak?s. At one 
stage or another in the following thre chapters, I have asked al the above questions of 
my data, with the partial exception of the third, since I have examined the use of 
?arguments and argumentation schemes.. to justify and legitimise? reading practices, 
rather than practices of ?discrimination, suppresion, and exploitation?. Moreover, I have 
followed Wodak?s advice in atempting to avoid bias by ?work[ing] with diferent 
approaches, multimethodologicaly and on the basis of a variety of empirical data as 
wel as background information? (65). There might therefore be some justification for 
applying the terms ?critical discourse analysis? and ?discourse-historical approach? to at 
least some parts of this disertation. 
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1.5 Discursive aproaches to reader and reception study 
From a discourse-analytic perspective, the idea is not to treat the interviewes? 
talk as a scren through which to look inside their head [sic]. Instead, the idea is 
to start by studying the interview text ? or any texts or transcriptions of 
conversations for that mater ? in its own right. What is going on in the interview 
text and in the interaction situation? How do the participants (the interviewer and 
the interviewe) co-construct and negotiate their roles, definitions of the 
situation, or diferent objects of talk? What frames, discourses, or ?interpretive 
repertoires?.. are invoked, and what functions do they serve? 
Alasuutari 1999:15 
Arguably the first ?discursive? approach to reception study (although it has never been 
claimed as such) was taken by Lyons and Taksa in Australian readers remember (1992), 
a work of oral history that aimed to reconstruct the early twentieth century reading 
habits of Australians born in 1917 or earlier. They state their principles as follows: 
Al autobiography, whether writen or oral, is a form of fiction. When informants 
speak to the historian, they do not give us a transparent view of lived experience, 
but one which is censored and reconstructed by memory... Past reality is 
reworked for a particular purpose: to justify oneself, to make a special claim on 
the interest and sympathy of the interviewer, or to give meaning and coherence to 
one?s experience. Writing or speaking an autobiography is part of a proces of 
discovering, or of manufacturing, a personal identity. 
Lyons and Taksa 1992:13-14 
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Thus, what Lyons and Taksa saw their interviews as providing was ?not something 
concrete and factual, but the perceptions and atitudes of the interviewes.? (15) One 
problem with ?many interview and questionnaire studies?, as the discursive psychologist 
Jonathan Poter notes, is that they ?put people in the position of disinterested experts 
on their own and others? practices, thoughts, and so on, encouraging them to provide 
normatively apropriate descriptions? (2002:540). However, this could be argued to be 
an advantage if one wants to learn what constitutes a normatively apropriate 
description in the interviewes? estimation, and this is precisely the aproach taken by 
Lyons and Taksa. Theirs is a fascinating approach that could do much to improve other 
testimony-based histories of reading (in particular Rose 2002[2001]; se Chapter 4 of 
this disertation). However, the earliest such work to lay claim to a discourse analytic 
heritage was Joke Hermes?s Reading women?s magazines (1995). An admirer of Ien 
Ang and Janice Radway?s work, Hermes set out to discover, through interviews, the 
meanings that women?s magazines had for their male and female readers in her native 
Holland, using a smal sample of British readers for comparison. To her initial 
frustration, she found that her interviewes had very litle to say about those magazines, 
eventualy leading her to realise that she had ? in common with much of media and 
cultural studies ? been labouring under the misapprehensions of a ?falacy of 
meaningfulnes?. This is the asumption that anyone using a text must be making 
meaning from it, and has been discussed in Subsection 1.3.1. It is reflected, Hermes 
argues, in studies that focus ?on isolated bodies of text? (such as Dallas in Ang?s study) 
?or on interviews with readers who, on average, are more knowledgeable than other 
viewers or readers? (such as Radway?s romance readers), where it has the ?unintended 
consequence.. that popular culture is given the status of high culture.? (14) Hermes 
proposes that women?s magazines are consumed in the interstices of daily routines, and 
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in a distracted, discontinuous manner, their textual content seldom coming to have much 
significance for their readers; moreover, she suggests that a study of listening or viewing 
that followed her research procedures would probably ?find that much of the radio and 
television text never acquires substantial meaning? either (145). These are al points with 
which I would concur: in this study I focus on articulate readers and viewers not because 
I take their practices of public commentary to reveal private sense-making practices 
shared by a silent majority of inarticulate readers and viewers, but because I am 
interested in practices of public commentary. 
Hermes proposes a form of audience study that she cals ?repertoire analysis?, which, 
taking its lead from Potter and Wetherel?s (1987) concept of the interpretive repertoire, 
?consists of going back and forth through the [interview] text, summarising transcripts 
acording to diferent criteria, for as long as it takes to organise the bits and pieces in 
meaningful structures. One looks for statements or manners of speech that recur in 
diferent interviews.? (1995:27) These repertoires ?are not available at the level of 
everyday talk; they are the researcher?s reconstruction of the cultural resources that 
everyday speakers may use (dependent upon their cultural capital and, thus, the range of 
repertoires they are familiar with)? (145). There is a problem, however, in that while she 
sometimes takes these repertoires to reveal something about reality ? for example, she 
takes the ?easily put down? repertoire to reflect the actual usage of women?s magazines 
in day-to-day life (ie. to suggest that men and women read them to provide ?instant, 
short reads? [53] when they have no time for anything else) ? at other times, she takes 
them to be purely rhetorical ? for example, she takes the ?practical knowledge? 
repertoire to be a way of talking about women?s magazines developed for use in social 
interaction with those who are scornful of such magazines (ie. as ?a way to legitimate 
spending money on them? [37]). Of these two approaches to repertoires, only the later is 
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consistent with Potter and Wetherel?s (1987) methodology. Thus, Hermes takes both a 
realist and a discursive approach to her data: although this disertation broadly 
concludes that a unrelievedly discursive approach may in the long term be neither 
possible nor desirable, I find Hermes?s asumption that it is possible to divide repertoires 
(or any other discursive phenomena) into those which are to be interpreted as 
transparent and those which are to be interpreted as rhetorical to be unwaranted. 
This asumption is avoided in Bethan Benwel?s (2005) study of readers of men?s 
magazines. Much in the vein of Radway, Benwel ?proposes a triangulated method 
whereby the discourses and categories identified in talk can be intertextualy linked (and 
indeed are sometimes intertextualy indexed within the talk itself) to other 
communicative contexts in the circuit of culture, such as the magazine text, media 
debates, editorial identities and everyday talk.? (147) Drawing on the methodology of 
discursive psychology (rather than simply the concept of repertoires), Benwel analyses 
the speech of her readers far more closely than Radway or Hermes, and is therefore able 
to draw links betwen talk and text on the level of register and vocabulary and thereby 
?recreate the rich ethnographic context in which the spech event or text is embedded, by 
tracing the discourse through a variety of relevant contexts or instantiations? (2005:158-
9). However, like David Morley?s (1999a[1980]) work on ?Nationwide?, this work was 
handicapped by the need to elicit discourse in artificial situations: as Benwel 
recognises, the interview situation obliged readers to comment in depth on parts of the 
magazines that they might not have chosen to read otherwise. Although this may help us 
to identify the repertoires that these readers are able to draw on in verbaly making sense 
of texts, a degre of inference is necesary to relate this to their actual reading practices 
outside of the experimental seting. 
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This problem can be avoided if we directly study reading practices that involve talk, 
provided that we do not then take those practices to stand in for the whole range of 
reading practices in which our research subjects engage. Eriksson and Aronsson?s work 
on schoolchildren?s discussions of short stories takes this tack in ?focus[ing] on 
institutional book talk practices, ie. on conversations, not on the participants or on reader 
responses per se.? (2004:512; se also Eriksson 2002) These discussions are institutional 
practices, and cannot be taken to represent the participants? private mental responses to 
texts, but that is not the point: they (like the institutions in which they take place) are a 
part of ?real life? for the participants. Eriksson and Aronsson?s insight is that, ?[w]ithin a 
theoretical framework of discursive psychology, booktalk (like other conversations) is 
sen as a type of social action? (2005:723) ? it is not something diferent, for example a 
report of a private mental ?decoding?. The important leson to learn is that if reading 
does not appear as a social interaction, then it does not appear, as is indeed the case with 
most of the (decidedly unliterary) reading that goes on in the world. In these cases, to 
make a reader speak about his or her ?interpretations? of the mater being read wil be to 
place him or her in a social relationship with the researcher and the other participants, in 
which he or she becomes, for interpretations he or she might not otherwise have 
produced, publicly acountable in ways that would not otherwise have been the case (se 
below on the particular instance of this phenomenon which is the experimental 
situation). This wil activate the sorts of shifts, acommodations, and (in some cases) 
instances of learning and discovery sen in the data analysed in the following chapters: 
proceses that would never ordinarily occur in (for example) the consumption of glossy 
magazines and the advertisements that fil them. With regard to the study of the reading 
of such texts ? customarily without discussion, without even concentration ? such 
occurences can only be considered an interfering distortion (which is how Hobbs et al 
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[2006] quite correctly treat them in their study of young girls? interpretations of weight 
loss advertising), but, with regard to the study of the reading of literature ? on which 
discourse is incesant (while not ubiquitous) ? they must constitute one of the central 
objects of enquiry. 
The status of such discourse qua discourse ? and not as the expresion of the mysterious 
esence of ?real? reception, unspoken reception, reception in general ? should not be 
taken for a stumbling block. Greg Myers (2008), for example, argues that reading groups 
are important both as an example of literary reception and as a common form of social 
activity that deserves to be studied in its own right ? which is perhaps to say that they 
can be regarded as worth studying both because they are a form of social activity and 
because they are one of the many forms of social activity through which literary works 
are audibly received.
4
 Psychological experiments on literary reading, with their ?think 
aloud? protocols, their rating tasks, their tests of recal, etc, can be regarded in much the 
same way (for al that they are rather les common than reading group metings), 
although the atempts by some theorists (se Footnote 28) to abstract universal mental 
proceses from the highly institutional practices that, in seting up such experiments, 
they engineer, should (by the same token) be treated with a degre of caution: I would 
rather treat such practices, like those engaged in by Morley (1999a[1980]) and 
Benwel?s (2005) subjects, as ilustrative of the public acts of which particular groups or 
                                                
4
 Drawing on conversation analysis, Myers?s aproach is related to that adopted here, and ? had this 
disertation not ben submited for examination some months before Myers?s presentation ? the 
folowing chapters would have benefited from sustained consideration of it. Myers aplies his 
methodology not to reading groups but to broadcast literary punditry ? yet another culturaly 
important form of discourse on literature. 
  119/379   
individuals are capable when presed. This can in itself be put to good use, as in the 
following procedure: 
Each [subject] received a booklet consisting of an instruction sheet and six 
randomly-ordered short stories. Thre of the stories consisted of materials 
for the current experiment.. while thre of the stories were materials from a 
diferent, but related experiment. The thre stories chosen for the current 
experiment were reprinted verbatim from the collections in which they 
appeared with the exception that information which identified the author or 
the title of the text was omited. 
Subjects were tested in groups. At the beginning of each sesion, subjects 
were given the test booklets and asked to read the instructions on the first 
page of the booklet.. 
At the end of each story, subjects were asked to answer 15 questions that 
measured their responses to the text. Some of these questions required short 
answers, while others asked students to complete 7-point rating scales. 
Dorfman 1996:459 
This experiment obliges its subjects to engage in a reading practice that is highly 
typical of the reading practices undergone in experiments but ecentric on at least 
thre counts when considered in relation to many reading practices elsewhere: 
subjects read a bibliographically idiosyncratic text and respond to it simultaneously 
but without interacting with one another by filing out a questionnaire. The non-
experimental reading practices most similar to this are those taking place in formal 
examinations. Such practices wil not have been entirely alien to these particular 
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subjects (students at a British university), but are also noticeably diferent from the 
reading practice produced in the experiment, being organised around tests in which 
?succes? and ?failure? wil have consequences for the individual (not the case here) 
and in which one is not typicaly paid to take part (as these subjects were). But this 
is not a problem for the particular study in question, as its point was simply to find 
out whether subjects from two diferent groups (undergraduate students of computer 
science and postgraduate students of English literature) would respond diferently to 
an identical task (as indeed they did), and in this way to test hypotheses following 
from (a version of) the ?interpretive communities? theory (originating in Fish 
1980).
45
 Rather more problematic are atempts to discover, through experiment, the 
nature of literary reading (se Mial 2006:26-32 and passim), since these rely upon 
the asumption that this nature exists independently of the diverse literary reading 
practices to be found in the world, such that it can reliably be abstracted from 
subjects? engagement in the highly specific reading practices local to each 
experiment ? as, for example, if we were to asume that the questionnaire responses 
of the subjects in the experiment above were determined by specific mental 
proceses that wil also determine their engagement in al other literary reading 
practices. 
                                                
45
 Dorfman (196:457): ?(1) that there are identifiable comunities of readers, (2) that readers who 
belong to the same interpretive comunity wil demonstrate similar paterns of response in terms of 
comprehension, liking, and story apreciation judgements when asked to read and respond to the 
same text, and (3) that readers who belong to diferent interpretive comunities wil demonstrate 
diferent paterns of response in terms of comprehension, liking, and story apreciation judgements 
when asked to read and respond to the same text.? These hypotheses are suported by Dorfman?s 
findings; in Section 1.3.3, I place this result in a Bourdieusian frame. 
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A diferent approach is taken by Jackey Stacey (1994a) in her discussion of the 1536 
leters sent to Picturegoer magazine in 1940: a discussion which is not identified as 
discursive but approaches its data in a similar manner. Stacey finds that these leters 
appear to follow an agenda set by the articles published in the magazine, and concludes 
that they cannot be separated out from the contents of the magazine to which they are 
addresed and treated as the ?pure? expresion of a ?raw? response to cinematic text 
(1994a:54-56). However, she does not atribute this to the ?mediation? or ?distortion? of 
response by the constraints of leter-writing, since this would suggest ?that there is pure 
cinematic experience beyond the limitations of representation.? (56) This would appear 
to amount to the position that experiences are already structured by discourse before 
they come to be represented in discourse ? indeed, at (or perhaps before) the very 
moment of their being experienced (cf. Bamberg 2006:143). Thus, one could describe 
the experience of those who wrote leters to Picturegoer in 1940 as ?mediated through? 
the discourses common to their leters and the magazine articles, meaning not that the 
experience was misrepresented, but that, even while siting in the cinema, these people 
subjectively experienced the films and their relationship to them through the mediation 
of these (and other) discourses. And whether or not this theoretical fix is acepted, 
discourse on reading could stil be comfortably counted among the ?underlying 
structures of reception? which can be asumed to have generated ?the myriad [private] 
readings of individual texts? (Alen 1990:353) now lost to view. 
This is an idea that I have tentatively revisted throughout my research, which has drawn 
both on discursive and on rhetorical psychology. In my first published work, I used 
Bilig (1996[1987]) and Edwards?s (1997) comments on schema theory to argue that ?in 
stylistics, the script [ie. schema] has pased from being a scientific theory about the 
brain into being a highly formalised variant of a type of argument familiar from ordinary 
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conversation? (Alington 2005:3); my analysis was of two cognitive stylistic readings, 
but I argued that there were continuities betwen stylistic (not to mention other kinds of 
literary critical) readings and day-to-day talk on literary works: ?a stranger on the train 
ses you with a book and asks you what you think of it, a friend wonders what you 
would recommend for holiday reading? (4). The folowing year, I published a longer 
analysis of four studies in Conrad criticism, in which I argued that the critics in question 
?produc[e] readings principaly constituted by their convergences with and divergences 
from previous readings? (Alington 2006:141): each of these readings comprises a set of 
rational engagements with other readings, engagements that I showed to function much 
like the ?anti-logoi? described by Bilig (1985[1996]) or the types of argument 
catalogued by Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca (1969). In my conclusion to that paper, 
however, I was cautious enough to admit that these findings could not be generalised 
beyond the world of literary studies until further work was done. My subsequent 
publication, ?How come they don?t se it?? (2007a; se Chapter 3 for an updated 
version) was in many ways designed to achieve this goal, focusing as it did on online 
interpretative argument, and I again found evidence of the importance of rational 
refutation, with textual details becoming relevant acording to the evidential needs of 
the unfolding argument; there, I argued that, for certain kinds of reader (who may be 
found both inside and outside of the academy), ?textual consumption is a long-term 
relationship composed of repeated readings or viewings framed by revisited discussions 
? or, equaly, of revisited discussions framed by repeated readings or viewings.? (59) 
What is at stake in al this is the question of the relevance of the academic sub-field to 
which I have endeavoured to contribute, since it is endlesly vulnerable to the acusation 
that it focuses on reading practices that are ? because verbalised ? in some respect 
atypical. This question is perhaps resolved in ?Reading the reading experience? (under 
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review), a chapter that I wrote with Bethan Benwel and which makes the following, 
overtly ethnomethodological, argument: 
Although the analysis of ?booktalk? as talk is the renunciation of the indirect 
study of silent reading, it may be considered the direct study of the verbal stage 
of an individual or group?s encounter with, or reading of, a text. One obvious 
example of this ?verbal stage? of reading occurs in book club or reading group 
sesions, where a text?s meaning and the experience of reading it are publicly 
articulated, negotiated and made acountable. This public and social form of 
reading not only alternates with the private and solitary form: it represents it, too. 
Similarly, the sorts of documents that historians of reading have often regarded 
as evidence can be studied not for what they sem to tel us about instances of 
reading that took place prior to their own creation as documents, but as texts 
whose production was integrated into lengthy carers of reading, and which may 
not merely mark, but constitute, key moments in those carers. Such 
verbalisations are not, then, the hoofprints and broken twigs from which a 
tracker may reconstruct the elusive private reader?s vanished progres (for those, 
look to library records, sales receipts, and the like), but the scent marks by which 
a reader organises his or her public/private life of the mind relative to that of 
other readers. 
unpaginated 
On such a view, private reading is not deducible from talk about reading, but neither is it 
seperable from it: it is through talk that (certain kinds of) private reading are organised, 
and if we cannot study the private acts of reading, we can at least study the public acts of 
speaking that organise them. Although I am not entirely persuaded by our argument, I 
  124/379   
am nonetheles encouraged by its possible connection to Eric Livingston?s view of 
writen or spoken exegesis ?hover[ing] around our reading as its organisational theme? 
(1995:23). As with ?How come they don?t se it??, however, the analysis contained in 
that chapter to some extent undercuts this by viewing representations of reading 
experiences and of emotional responses exclusively as rhetorical warants for arguments 
made in the here-and-now. 
Perhaps the best answer to the objection that ?[r]eading is esentialy a silent, private 
activity? (Alderson and Short 1989:74) is simply to observe that this is only necesarily 
true of silent, private reading ? and that, far from being the norm from which al other 
forms of reading depart, silent reading develops out of reading aloud ? not only for the 
individual learner, but also (Svenbro 1999[1995]) in human history. 
1.6 The world outside discourse and the problem of 
metatheoretical regres 
And this raises a question. If discourse is always to be regarded as discourse and as 
discourse alone ? if everything everybody ever says is a situated performance, an 
acounting practice, an atempt to achieve imediate pragmatic goals in the imediate 
pragmatic context ? if a report of what hapened before should always be understood 
purely by reference to the here-and-now of its making ? then what are we to make of the 
discourse that constitutes discourse analysis? This problem is always present in 
discourse analysis, but discourse analysis of reception data brings it uncomfortably to 
the fore: a reader purports to analyse a text of a literary work, but in my analysis of the 
text that is the transcript of his or her uterance, I show that what semed to be the 
analysis of a work was in fact a series of rhetorical strategies by which the putative 
  125/379   
analyst presented him- or herself in a particular light: but what, then, of my analysis? Is 
it just more of the same? It would be hard to argue otherwise ? and inded, discourse 
analysts generaly do not. 
Let?s look at what they do instead. Poter and Wetherel write that ?[d]iscourse analysis 
aims to explicate the constructive activity involved in the creation of a ?world out 
there?? (1987:181); having acknowledged that this creates a problem, they then propose 
a non-solution:
46
 
if the upshot of research of this kind is to question the simple realist model of the 
operation of discourse and sugest that ?realism? is, at least partly, a rhetorical 
efect constructed through the careful choice of particular linguistic forms, then 
what are we to make of the discourse in which this claim is itself couched? How 
should we deal with the fact that our acounts of how people?s language use is 
constructed are themselves constructions? 
..Most of the time.. the most practical way of dealing with this isue is simply 
                                                
46
 Poter and Wetherel deserve credit for raising the problem, however, since it is often more swiftly 
brushed under the academic carpet: for example, Stokoe states that ?EM/CA [ie. ethnomethodology / 
conversation analysis] does not take up a particular ontological position with regards to the nature of 
?reality?. Instead, it ?respecifies?.. isues of what is real, authentic, factual, and true.. as maters for 
?members? [ie. participants in interactions] themselves to deal with? (205:124). I would sugest that 
this may be a problem, because (a) it is not strictly true (given that, as we have sen in Section 1.4, 
the most influential living conversation analyst adopts a realist ontology), and (b) it has not ben 
demonstrated that the deferal of ontological questions is indefinitely sustainable. As wil become 
clear, my point is not to criticise this ?respecification? per se, but to question whether ontology can 
be treated solely in this ?respecified? maner. 
  126/379   
to get on with it, and not to get either paralysed by or caught up in the infinite 
regreses posible. 
Poter and Wetherel 1987:182 
Poter and Wetherel?s ?practical way of dealing with this isue? is, in other words, to 
avoid dealing with it. The ?infinite regreses? to which they alude are not snares in which 
one can simply choose not to get ?caught up?: they are serious objections to any theory 
which ses discourse as a closed system of representations. When people speak about 
the world, they construct discursive representations ? ?St Paul?s Cathedral is in the City 
of London? no les than ?St Paul?s Cathedral is on Montmartre? ? and we can, without 
steping outside of discourse, study the discursive strategies by which certain 
representations come to be acepted as reality ? eg. the apeal to authoritative 
representations such as official maps. This means that ?reality? is itself a discursive 
representation, hence the scare quotes with which Poter and Wetherel frame the words 
?world out there?. When we cary out discourse analysis of the kind that Poter and 
Wetherel promote (ie. discursive psychology), we therefore make no judgements as to 
what is ?true? or ?false? in what our research subjects say, treating everything they asert 
about the world as a sort of fiction that aims at a ?rhetorical efect? of realism, and 
studying the means by which this efect is created. The problem is that our analyses 
themselves wil trade upon and construct discursive representations, and apear to 
depend for their interest on that same ?rhetorical efect?, since nobody would bother to 
read a study of conversation that claimed not to have anything to say about real 
conversation, but only to play around with some representations. Interpreted in this 
  127/379   
way, discursive psychology ? and al other forms of scientific investigation ? are no 
more than rhetorical exercises. 
Fortunately, however, Poter and Wetherel have made a mistake: the constructing of 
representations and rhetorical efects is not the only thing that we can do through the 
isuing of uterances; one of the other things that we are also able to do is to refer. As 
John Searle (1979:xi) writes, reference has, ?since Frege.. been regarded as the central 
problem in the philosophy of language?; he goes on to explain that by reference, he 
?mean[s] not predication, or truth, or extension but reference, the relation betwen such 
expresions as definite descriptions and proper names on the one hand, and the things 
they are used to refer to on the other.? If I state that St Paul?s Cathedral is on 
Montmartre, I am not merely constructing a representation but aserting the truth of a 
proposition that happens to be false; it is false by virtue of the facts that ?St Paul?s 
Cathedral? and ?Montmartre? are not simply representations, but proper nouns, and that, 
in using these proper nouns, I refer. I cannot state what I refer to without refering again, 
but this simply reflects the fact that reference cannot be reduced to anything else. When 
we analyse discourse, it is inded important to ?explicate the constructive activity 
involved in the creation of a ?world out there?? (and, for that mater, ?in here?): but we 
should not blind ourselves to the fact that, in constructing ?a world out there?, our 
research subjects also refer to the world. If we do not do this, then we wil destablise our 
own atempts to refer to our research subjects? constructions. 
I would like now to turn to a reception researcher?s engagement with the same problem. 
Mat Hils is not a discourse analyst, but his ?performative? aproach to reception (on 
which I shal be drawing heavily in Chapters 3 and 4) creates the same dificulty that 
  128/379   
Poter and Wetherel face, and leaves him equaly unable to do anything much about it. 
Instead, he gets it out of the way in what looks suspiciously like a token admision to be 
promptly forgoten (note the page reference): 
my work here cannot escape its own emphasis on performativity, and must 
therefore be sen as an instance of that which it seks to analyse, rather than as a 
constative reflection on performative consumption and analyses of horror 
occuring elsewhere. 
2005:xii 
Hils is nothing if not consistent, at least in the neutral space of his preface. He analyses 
horror fans? statements about their fandom as performative rather than constative ? as, 
that is, performances of (fan) identity, nothing more, nothing les ? and then admits that 
his own statements about horror fans? statements should, by the same token, be 
understood purely as performative of (academic) identity. But if Hils?s asertions about 
the performative utterances of fans ?must? themselves be taken for performative ?rather 
than? constative uterances, then we cannot supose ourselves to learn anything from 
them about their seming referent, ie. the performative uterances of fans: we can, of 
course, analyse them as further examples of performative utterances, but our analytic 
statements wil in turn be performative ?rather than? constative. The problem can be 
traced back to the works of Austin (1962) ? but so (aparently unbeknownst to Hils) 
can its solution: as we shal se in Chapter 2, Austin found the idea that uterances are 
either constative or performative to be untenable, rejecting this dichotomy in favour of 
the idea that uterances are used to perform both locutionary and ilocutionary (not to 
  129/379   
mention several other kinds of) acts at one and the same time. The locutionary and 
ilocutionary acts performed in isuing an uterance may even be thought of as the 
constative and performative aspects of the same spech act. Hils?s notion of 
performativity derives more from Judith Butler?s (1990) reading of Austin than from 
Austin himself, but the same point aplies: his book may be a performance of academic 
identity, but that does not mean it cannot also be sen as a ?constative reflection on 
performative consumption and analyses.. occuring elsewhere?. This does not mean that 
we have to acept it as the revealed truth about horror fans, but it does mean that we can 
judge it on its reasonablenes and explanatory power. It is, in other words, both 
ilocutionary and locutionary, both performative and constative. Inded, I would insist 
that it performs academic identity precisely by engaging in constative reflection, and that 
it would be dificult to perform academic identity without doing this (except in the sense 
that stalking around Cambridge in a black gown and scowling at tourists is a performance 
of academic identity). To take a more imediate example, in unloading thre copies of 
what you are now reading into the university?s bureaucratic mechanisms, I wil have 
caried out the ilocutionary act of submiting a PhD thesis: but this act wil in itself have 
comited me (and comited me in an unusualy strong way) to the reasonablenes and 
explanatory power (not to mention originality) of this work?s propositional content (the 
?thesis? itself). That Hils?s work and mine can be sen as performative should not 
prevent it from being sen as constative, because (as Austin showed) there is no 
sustainable distinction to be made betwen ?performative? and ?constative? utterances. 
Hils?s ?rather than? is an eror.
47
 
                                                
47
 As should be aparent from the use I make of their work elsewhere in this disertation, I am a 
  130/379   
One last point, echoing my response to Poter and Wetherel. If an academic treatise 
analysing the performative aspects of uterances can itself be sen both as performative 
and as constative, then perhaps the uterances it refers to should be sen in the same 
way. This means that analyses of the kind that Hils caries out are incomplete (not that 
any analysis of qualitative data can ever be complete). An awarenes of this 
incompletenes permeates this disertation, particularly in Chapter 4, where I have tried 
to acknowledge that much of the data that I analyse can itself be regarded as something 
not entirely disimilar to my own analysis. In a way, the most important point is simply 
to remember the two historical senses of the word ?rhetoric? when we are analysing the 
rhetorical character of our research subjects? uterances: as Michael Bilig (1996[1987]) 
reminds us, in the ancient world, ?rhetoric? meant not only (sophistic) employment of 
arbitrarily impresive turns of phrase (Poter and Wetherel?s ?careful choice of 
particular linguistic forms?) but also (philosophical) engagement in dialogic reasoning. 
1.7 The data cited in this study 
There are thre basic types of original data studied here: (1) conventionaly published 
texts; (2) texts ?published? on (what was at the time) an open-aces website discussion 
forum; and (3) verbal interactions whose participants had agred to my recording them 
for research purposes. The first of these sources has long ben used in reception 
research, and even employed as a substitute for ethnographic research ? as in the work of 
Bridget Fowler (2000), who caried out her reception study using materials drawn from 
                                                                                                                                    
great admirer of Poter, Wetherel, and Hils. The tone I take in this section reflects not my overal 
asesment of their work, but the importance I atach to this particular isue, and to its being engaged 
with directly, rather than waved away. 
  131/379   
Appignanesi and Maitland?s (1989) edited colection of Satanic Verses punditry because 
?older men and women from the Muslim community were loath to discuss their detailed 
response to the book with a non-Muslim outsider? (Fowler 2000:48). To regard 
newspaper articles, etc, as in some sense equivalent to private responses is, from a 
discursive point of view (if not from Fowler?s sociological point of view, grounded as it 
is in a diferent research tradition), entirely unaceptable: talk is to be analysed as talk, 
and journalism as journalism. The two do not have to be considered to operate in 
entirely diferent worlds, however, as Martin Barker makes plain when he argues that 
?[r]eviews need to be considered for their place in the flow of talk around a film? (2004: 
no pagination). 
With online data, one of the greatest problems is the ease of acquisition, and the over-
enthusiasm this may lead to: a few hours of Googling wil yield great volumes of what 
would sem to be the sort of data that reception researchers of the past could only dream 
of. While the more careful studies (eg. Baym 1993, Clerc 1996, Pearson 1997) avoid 
this, there is therefore a danger of ?suposing that the Internet can unproblematicaly 
unveil those cultural proceses and mechanisms which cultural studies has been positing 
for the past two decades? (Hils 2002:175), when in fact it has provided the posibility 
for new cultural proceses: internet-mediated cultural consumption is not simply cultural 
consumption made conveniently visible to the researcher. This ?transparency falacy? is 
characteristic of much academic writing on fans, which often (and arbitrarily) takes fan 
behaviour to be paradigmatic of reception beyond the fan comunity, as when Janet 
Staiger argues that ?[f]ans display interpretations and efects (activities) in their most 
observable form? and that ?[w]hile the phenomenon of fandom exceds the typical, likely 
it points toward the more silent spectator? (2005:114). By contrast, the current study 
  132/379   
treats internet fan activities as specific uses of texts, and makes no asumption that these 
uses reflect ?silent? mental or emotional proceses engaged in by non-fans. 
A further problem raised by the use of online data is that of informed consent, since it 
may be very dificult to track down the individuals responsible for material one wishes 
to quote (as in a mailing list to which somebody posts and then unsubscribes) and it is 
(in any case) practicaly imposible to discover whether a pseudonymous internet user is 
legaly capable of giving consent. Lynn Cherny argues that ?develop[ing] a presence and 
show[ing] some comitment to the comunity? makes it easier for a researcher to gain 
informed consent, but warns that ?comitment to the comunity may leave one?s 
research hostage to the comunity?s aproval? (1999:303): a drawback that my own 
experience confirms. For this reason, I chose to study only postings made 
pseudonymously on openaces fora, and to anonymise them for quotation. Although 
they may be considered something of a grey area, I would insist that postings made to a 
mesage board that appears on Internet search engines and does not require the reader to 
log in should be regarded from an ethical point of view as analogous to leters published 
in magazines or newspapers, being acesible to anyone who can aces the World Wide 
Web. Furthermore, it is wel known among fans that statements they make in contexts 
such as this are liable to being quoted without their permision and with no concesions 
to anonymity on various blogs, including the notorious ?Fandom Wank? 
(ww.fandomwank.com). It would, then, be extremely condescending to suppose those 
using this forum to believe it to be somehow ?private?, for al that Cherny (1999:309) 
insists that internet users may not fully understand the non-privacy of the fora they use. 
My approach can be compared to the following, which was taken by an ethnographer 
who belonged to the broad online community she was engaged in researching (ie. 
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players of ?first person shooter? games). I have in fact been far more cautious in that I 
have anonymised quotations which she would not have, and refrained from quoting 
statements which her principles would have permited her to quote once anonymised: 
The key criterion I used was whether or not the statement was intended for 
publication. 
Using this approach, I considered any material appearing on webpages (site 
content, forum postings) to be publicly available, and had no hesitation in 
reproducing statements and authors? (online) names. Material not meant for 
public consumption required more ethical consideration, and its use depended on 
gaining permision from the author, concealing their identity, or avoiding the use 
of direct quotes requiring atribution. 
Morris 2004:37-38 
Lastly, the spoken data used in this disertation might be thought to be the most 
authentic and least mediated example of reception, but this is an ilusion: it was recorded 
in the relatively formal environment of the higher education clasroom and the relatively 
informal but stil conventionalised environment of a reading group (se Tyler 2007); 
moreover, the speakers knew that they were being recorded and understood (in broad 
terms) the reasons why. Whether or not this is a problem is another mater. O?Rourke 
and Pit note that though discourse analysts worry about ?a supposed ?corrupting? of the 
data? in interview sesions, in fact, ?all forms of interaction.. are ?incorigibly 
contaminated? by the fact of being the subject of research, by media constructions, or by 
other public portrayals of similar interactions.? (2007:22, emphasis added) Similarly, 
Bethan Benwel (2005:164) argues that ?all talk is to some degre mediated by the 
constraints of its context; and al talk, whether before an academic interviewer in a 
  134/379   
formal situation or before one?s peers in an informal situation, is likely to involve forms 
of acounting and self-presentation?. Rather than waste time hunting out mythical 
unmediated data, I have simply chosen to acept that al data, and indeed al textual 
usage, is mediated, and to study these data and these textual usages as examples of 
mediation. Reading group discussion, seminar interaction, newspaper journalism, and 
asynchronous chat are not asumed to mediate the use of literary text in the same way, 
however, and my analyses shal atempt to come to terms (so far as is possible within 
their limits) with the specificity of each mediating medium or genre. 
1.8 Introduction to the ?primary texts?
48
 
Whether the topic is political, moral, religious, comercial, or whatever, an atitude 
refers to a stance on a mater of public debate and disagrement. In other words, an 
atitude represents an evaluation of a controversial isue, or sometimes a 
controversial individual, such as a president or a queen. 
Bilig 1996[1985]:207 
A response to a work, like an atitude, always entails a stance on a mater of public 
disagrement, though the precise mater involved may be dificult to identify.
49
 Where it 
is the work itself that is the object of controversy, this becomes especialy apparent. For 
reasons that I shal now discuss, Salman Rushdie?s bestseling novel, The Satanic Verses 
                                                
48
 The scare quotes are necesary not because the meaning of the term is in doubt, but because its usual 
significance does not aply here: my study of the works in question does not proced through analysis of 
their texts. Inded, for the purposes of this disertation, it is data pertaining to the works? reception which 
is truly primary and my own (ocasional) coments on or quotations from their texts that are secondary. 
49
 Except in academia, where public debates are explicitly invoked and diferences of opinion 
carefuly cros-referenced (se Mailoux 1989 and Alington 206). 
  135/379   
(se Chapters 2 and 4) and Peter Jackson?s blockbuster film trilogy, The Lord of the 
Rings (se Chapter 3), are excelent examples of such works. They may have nothing in 
common in terms of medium, ideology, and intelectual ambitions, but they have each 
been highly controversial, with this controversy played out in ways that should be of 
great interest to scholars of reception, of reading, of audiences, etc. I wil now treat them 
one by one. 
The Satanic Verses was the fourth novel by Salman Rushdie, who was already a 
criticaly aclaimed writer with a high public profile as one of Britain?s leading left-
wing intelectuals: Midnight?s Children, his second novel, published in 1981, had won 
Britain?s most prestigious literary prize, the Booker, and Shame, his third, published in 
1983, had been shortlisted. Like its predecesor, The Satanic Verses was also shortlisted 
for the Booker Prize; unlike it, it was widely perceived to be ofensive to Muslims, and, 
in the months following its British release on 26 September 1988, it was banned by 
numerous Muslim and non-Muslim states, starting with India on 5 October.
50
 British 
Muslim protests took time to get underway, and were most strongly asociated with the 
north of England: a copy of the book was publicly burned in Bolton on 2 December, and 
again (with rather more pres coverage) in Bradford on 14 January, making the later 
city the symbolic centre of outrage against the book, at least in the British imagination. 
                                                
50
 It has frequently ben observed with respect to The Satanic Verses that the censorship of boks is 
unenforceable in India, as cheap pirate editions of baned novels are easily available (Kuorti 
197:58, 6). Pipes (203[190]:201) claims that bans turned The Satanic Verses into ?highly valued 
contraband? throughout the Muslim world and elsewhere. In retaliation for the publishing of The 
Satanic Verses, the Organisation of the Islamic Conference resolved on 16 March 1989 to ban al 
Penguin boks, though I have found no record of any significant practical consequences folowing 
from this ban. 
  136/379   
Thus began a truly extraordinary reception history: since that time, The Satanic Verses 
has overwhelmingly been perceived in terms of its status as either ?the pre-eminent 
symbol of both censorship and fredom of speech, of cultural misunderstanding and 
shared values? (Pipes 2003[1990]:202) or else an entirely despicable slander on one of 
the world?s major religions. Before that time, the reception of The Satanic Verses was 
low-key: reviews sem to have appeared in only thre British newspapers (the centrist 
Times and Independent, and the left-wing Guardian), and only one of these refers to the 
novel?s religious significance ? telingly, with a bafled question as to ?why exactly are 
we being treated to a fanciful recreation of selected aspects of Muhamad's story?? 
(Tomalin 1988:28) No-one at that time could have foretold what was about to happen. 
For reasons that are not entirely clear, thousands of anti-Rushdie protestors atacked the 
American Cultural Centre in Islamabad on 12 February, resulting in five deaths. The 
following day, a major riot in India led to the death of one anti-Rushdie protestor, and 
the Supreme Leader of Iran, the Ayatollah Khomeini, isued a fatwa, or legal ruling, 
caling on al Muslims to asasinate both Rushdie and his publishers: as he explained a 
wek later, it would also be aceptable for Muslims to arange the asasination of 
Rushdie at the hands of a non-Muslim. Rushdie was given full police protection by the 
British state, and went into hiding for the next decade. Joel Kuorti (1997) claims that 
?[i]n Britain, the [Bradford] book-burning was the spark which set emotions alight? 
(122), but he is emphatic that it was the fatwa that most radicaly changed perceptions of 
Rushdie, The Satanic Verses, and Rushdie?s earlier novels, al of which came to be 
perceived in relation to it (158). At any rate, both of these events took place at what Ian 
Richard Neton cals the afair?s ?shatering climax?, ie. January and February 1989 
(1996:20). Protest and violence continued sporadicaly thereafter, with a number of 
atempts made on the lives of individuals involved in the novel?s international 
  137/379   
publication ? including the Japanese translator, who was kiled in 1991. The appearance 
of paperback English-language editions of The Satanic Verses in 1992 led to renewed 
controversy, and Neton records that, in 1993, up to forty people died in a Satanic 
Verses-related Islamist arson atack in Turkey (1996:21), but it is clear that interest 
faded throughout the 1990s. However, Rushdie?s knighthood in June 2007 led to fresh 
expresions of Muslim outrage, particularly in Pakistan, where news of the award was 
met by government condemnation, anti-British stret protests, and the (subsequently 
retracted) statement from the Minister for Religious Afairs that ?[i]f somebody has to 
atack by strapping bombs to his body to protect the honour of the Prophet, then it is 
justified? (Ijaz-ul-Haq, quoted Hoyle 2007:3). Twenty-first century condemnation was 
no les quick in coming from the right wing of the British pres: a journalist writing in 
the Daily Telegraph opined that a knighthood ?should never have been ofered? to 
Rushdie, as ?[h]e is an appaling writer, and sems to despise the country honouring 
him.? (Hefer 2007:25) 
Due in no smal part to its complexity, its dificulty, and its controversiality, The Satanic 
Verses has also been the subject of a vast number of conference papers, journal articles, 
and monographs, but I shal make no atempt to survey them here since my concern is its 
reception outside academia. For these purposes, the most important contextualising 
resource is probably The Rushdie affair, by the political journalist, Daniel Pipes 
(2003[1990]). Though this work is occasionaly mared by bias (most blatantly in what 
John Swan [1991:436], in an otherwise complimentary review, describes as Pipes?s 
?excesive iritation with Rushdie?s politics? and the ?one-dimensionalism? and 
?falsifying? evident in his portrayal of Rushdie), it remains a thoroughly detailed factual 
investigation, and is particularly valuable for its analysis of the book?s title as perhaps 
the defining factor in its public reception. Neton?s (1996) Text and trauma is more 
  138/379   
balanced, but far les detailed, covering two other case studies besides that of The 
Satanic Verses. Richard Webster?s (1990) A brief history of blasphemy is an interesting 
meditation on the course of the afair and on its precedents, but, as what appears to be a 
self-published work, it necesarily caries les weight. Perhaps the closest paralel to my 
own work (in Chapters 2 and 4) on The Satanic Verses is Place of the sacred (Kuorti 
1997), which examines the worldwide reception of The Satanic Verses in terms of the 
public rhetoric employed. Appignanesi and Maitland?s (1989) The Rushdie file is a 
useful scrap-book of published discourse on The Satanic Verses (though its referencing 
of sources is often inadequate), and I was greatly helped in the early stages of my 
research by the opportunity to browse James Procter?s personal archive of pres 
clippings related to the work. 
Kuorti?s (1997) study highlights the role of ?fundamentalism? and ?liberalism? as 
(vaguely defined) argumentative touchstones, of ideas of the sacred (including of the 
sacrednes of literature and of fredom of expresion), and of metaphors of pollution. 
Perhaps most interestingly, Kuorti applies Albert Hirschman?s (1991) analysis of the 
?theses? (ie. arguments) of ?perversity (any action is only counterproductive), futility 
(any action is unavailing), and jeopardy (any action endangers achievements already 
made)? (Kuorti 1997:57) to the Rushdie afair, finding that futility theses were used 
against Rushdie?s atackers, that perversity theses were used against Rushdie and against 
his atackers (in particular, Khomeini), and that jeopardy arguments were made most 
frequently of al, and against a range of positions. Kuorti?s approach chimes closely 
with the arguments made in the preceding sections of this disertation: ?I am not,? he 
writes, ?interested in applying media efects theories.. the afair was from the onset 
largely a series of responses, texts containing persuasive arguments about the mater.? 
(9) In other words, he recognises that writings on The Satanic Verses do not 
  139/379   
transparently reflect the ?efects? of the book upon the individual reader; rather, they 
take stances on particular controversies. Even emotional responses were clearly 
(produced in the knowledge that they would be) understood as declarations of 
allegiance: Shabbir Akhtar, for example, insisted that ?[a]nyone who fails to be ofended 
by Rushdie?s book ipso facto ceases to be a Muslim.? (1990: 228, quoted Mufti 
1994:323) Thus ? and particularly when protest leaders (including Akhtar himself, se 
Akhtar [1989]) organised the reading to asembled Muslims of those pasages from The 
Satanic Verses that they could be expected to find most offensive ? being offended by 
The Satanic Verses arguably became a new ay of doing being a Muslim. Amir Hussain 
discusses this in relation to Canadian Muslims, though his analysis clearly applies more 
widely: 
this novel, and the controversy that surrounded it, alowed the Muslims of 
Toronto (as wel as Muslims worldwide) to articulate their ?positions? as 
members of a minority religious tradition. To be sure, the Gulf War also alowed 
for this articulation, but there were, of course, many non-Muslim groups in 
Toronto that were also opposed to the war. 
2002:2 
Why did this happen? Incorporating a satire on the origins of Islam, the novel?s potential 
to offend is unquestionable, particularly in the era of rising fundamentalism for which it 
was writen. As Aamir Mufti (1994: 325) explains, through its ireverence and 
questioning, ?the novel throws into doubt the discursive edifice within which ?Islam? 
has been publicly produced in recent years.? But the text of the novel alone is 
insufficient to explain the maelstrom of its reception ? the phenomenon by which its 
offensivenes was broadcast, as Mufti puts it, ?through writen and verbal commentary, 
  140/379   
and general rumour and hearsay? (331) ? even if one acepts Mufti?s argument that it 
anticipates this mode of disemination with its ?pastichelike structure? (332). As James 
Procter (2003:168) insists, ?The Satanic Verses did not initiate protest and counter-
protest within a political vacuum, it acted as a catalyst to local and pre-existing cross-
cultural tensions.? In other words, complex pre-existing disagrements became catalysed 
into disagrements over the single isue of the book. This catalysing was transparently 
political (indeed, Sadik Jalal Al-?Azm [1994:281] notes that the Arab world ? as 
opposed to the wider world of Islam ? ?took the whole Rushdie Afair with a grain of 
salt?), and, as discussed above, achieved in large part through the open manufacture of 
outrage. Responses to these expresions of outrage were in many cases equaly 
opportunistic, even amounting to Christian or European suprematism (se Webster 
1992), though it was harder for such invectives to structure themselves as responses to 
the book, since the satirical object of the later is more often British racism and 
Thatcherite brutality than Islamic fundamentalism. 
It should be noted that, though Pipes (2003[1990]:94) dismises Muslim criticisms of 
Khomeini?s ruling as ?diferences of procedure, not of substance? (ie. as diferences as to 
?whether his [Rushdie?s] death should precede or follow a trial? [ibid.]), this is unfair: as 
Zaki Badawi (1989) shows, a death sentence for Rushdie would not be inevitable in an 
Islamic trial, and even if such a penalty were to be meted out, Rushdie would stil be 
offered the chance of a reprieve. Moreover, Lewis (1991) observes that, in condemning 
also Rushdie?s (non-Muslim) publishers, ?Khomeini?s fatwa goes beyond even the most 
extreme of earlier Shi?ite rulings? (193), and that, though there is a (primarily Sh?ite) 
view that a Muslim ust imediately kil anyone who insults Mohamad in his 
presence, ?even the most rigorous jurists.. say nothing about an aranged kiling for a 
reported insult in a far place.? (194) A further peculiarity in this case was the 
  141/379   
extraordinary status acorded to the ruling itself: although a fatwa is not usualy 
considered to be definitive, on the third anniversary of Khomeini?s ruling, the death 
threat was ?extended to al Iranians speaking against the fatwa?.
51
 
I have already mentioned The Rushdie Files (Appignanesi and Maitland 1989), and 
Bridget Fowler?s (2000) analysis of the texts it reproduces in Section 1.7. Fowler?s 
analysis of these textual responses is limited to such observations as that ?[i]n the main, 
reception can be divided into those that sustained an anti-modernist popular aesthetic 
and those that acepted a critical aesthetic response? (48), the purpose being to establish 
the relevance of what are (for al that they are ilustrated and developed in dialogue with 
quotations from The Rushdie Files) esentialy Fowler?s own readings (48-50) of The 
Satanic Verses in terms of ?the popular aesthetic? (to explain conservative Muslim 
responses to The Satanic Verses), ?an Islamic critical aesthetic? (to explain responses to 
The Satanic Verses from Muslims critical of Islamic politics), and ?the critical aesthetic 
of Modernism? (to explain responses that defend The Satanic Verses as a ?moral 
parable?). Such observations are very interesting, although they to a great extent 
misrepresent the public reception of The Satanic Verses by suggesting that this work 
was invariably perceived in literary-critical terms, ie. that it was present to the public as 
what Livingston (1995) cals a ?poetic object?. For example, Fowler holds that, in the 
popular aesthetic, ?[f]airy-tale and realism are held to be ilegitimately mixed together 
[in The Satanic Verses] in a form of unaceptable literary miscegenation? (58): a 
suspiciously literary reading of the book for a supposed explanation of its popular 
                                                
51
 ?The Rushdie Afair: chronicle of deaths forewarned?, Index on Censorship 193, isue 10, p40. 
Under normal circumstances, a fatwa is ?neither binding nor enforceable?, and ?[i]f the inquirer is not 
persuaded by the fatwa, he is fre to go to another mufti and obtain another opinion? (Esposito 203: 
Fatwa). 
  142/379   
reception. Daniel Pipes emphasises that such an approach to The Satanic Verses cannot 
acount for the ?Rushdie afair?: 
asesing the acusations against the book requires that it be looked at in a literal, 
and very unliterary manner, for this is the way it is understood by those who 
protest it. This means that every statement in the book must be taken as 
representative of the author?s own thinking, even though that is clearly not the 
case; on occasion, for example, two characters debate a point and hold contrary 
views. Intelectualy deficient as it may be, such a narow approach is 
unavoidable if one is to understand the novel?s political meaning as understood 
by unsophisticated readers. 
2003(1990):53 
Moreover, it should not be forgoten that most of those ?readers? never actualy saw a 
copy of The Satanic Verses. The statements to which Pipes refers were circulated in 
photocopies and excerpts, or declaimed in public readings, and the content of the book 
was the subject of untrue rumours that greatly exaggerated its offensivenes (se, for 
example, Siddique [1989], discussed in Chapter 2): this is what Mufti (1991:98) cals the 
novel?s ?reception by pastiche?. To a great extent, this was also how it was received by 
non-Muslims, and some Muslim commentators made much of this, arguing that it was 
being defended by people who had not read it properly: for example, Ahmed Dedat?s 
pamphlet, ?How Rushdie fooled the West? (1989) suggests that, if non-Muslim 
  143/379   
Westerners were aware of the real content of The Satanic Verses, they too would fel 
offended and join with Muslims in condemning it.
52
 
On the one hand, this might be thought to make The Satanic Verses a signaly unsuitable 
focus for a study of reception: how is one to separate out responses to the book itself 
from responses to its public representation, or simply to the controversy? But in fact this 
makes it an ideal focus: the reception of The Satanic Verses makes clear the extent to 
which ?the New Criticism?s dream of a self-contained encounter betwen innocent 
reader and autonomous text is a bizare fiction.? (Culler 1988:13) Thus, it is with 
specific reference to The Satanic Verses that Mufti (1991:97) argues that ?[c]onceptions 
of reception based on an almost Victorian image of the solitary bourgeois reader? must 
be abandoned in favour of a ?reconceptualisation of reception? that wil ?acount for 
forms of mas ?consumption? other than ?reading? in the narower sense of that word.? 
It is social factors, and not individual psychologies, that acount for the diverse ways in 
which The Satanic Verses was received around the world: its lethaly violent reception 
in South Asian states (Mufti 1994), its peaceful reception in Canada (Hussain 2002), and 
what would ? had it not been for the shooting of its publisher ? have been an equaly 
muted reception in Norway (Harket 1993). And, similarly, it is to the social that we must 
look for an explanation of the commonalities betwen these local phenomena: as Mufti 
(1991) argues, though there is great diversity within the Islamic world ? and even 
betwen fundamentalist Muslim groups ? a ?discursive unity? in the ?self-representation? 
of the later ?in terms of ?Islamic? cultural authenticity and anti-imperialist political 
                                                
52
 Ironicaly, this pamphlet suports its position not by reference to the novel?s unflatering portrayal 
of the UK as a racist state, but by means of a great many very short (frequently, one-word) 
quotations whose significance is entirely lost (and, in at least one case, reversed). 
  144/379   
purity? enables ?similar fundamentalist arguments to be formulated in very diferent 
political and cultural contexts.? (106) 
To turn to the second ?primary? work, The Lord of the Rings (which is usualy 
considered to be a single novel although it was initialy printed in thre hardback 
volumes) is an internationaly bestseling work of fantasy by the respected philologist, 
JR Tolkien. It was first published betwen 1954 and 1955, and was the sequel to its 
author?s first novel, The Hobbit, a very succesful children?s book that had appeared in 
1937. Although CW Sullivan (2007[1992]:425) voices a common opinion in describing 
The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings as ?perhaps the best and the brightest? examples 
of the High Fantasy genre, it should be recognised that this is itself an unprestigious 
genre. Much of it consists of what Thomas Roberts (1990) fondly refers to as ?junk 
fiction?, ie. mas-market category publishing, but ? unlike the ?sword and sorcery? 
works of, say, Fritz Leiber or Lin Carter ? the works of Tolkien are (with the exception 
of The Hobbit) writen with a scholarly seriousnes that may have played a role in 
elevating them from the lowbrow and the unliterary to the middlebrow and the 
embarrasingly unliterary (se Section 1.2). For Tolkien?s admirers, such as the poet 
WH Auden (1968), The Lord of the Rings is an epic tale of good and evil; for his 
detractors, it is a work of kitsch characterised in particular by its ?childishnes? (se 
Smol 2004:949). Thus, Shaun Hughes writes, in a pro-Tolkien polemic, that ?The Lord 
of the Rings is.. a work that has provoked, from the very beginning, especialy from 
among sections of the inteligentsia, an almost irational hostility? (2004:808), and 
complains that even ?[l]iterary theorists trying to make a claim for fantasy as a literary 
genre.. have found Tolkien?s work not worthy of serious consideration.? (810) Despite 
this, The Lord of the Rings, together with its author?s other, leser-known works, has 
generated a sizeable amount of scholarship and literary criticism, as can be sen from 
  145/379   
the various annotated bibliographies of the field of ?Tolkien studies? (eg. West [2004], 
which lists thre earlier such bibliographies). Moreover, the published existence of at 
least one study guide (Hardy 1977) and two critical readers (Bloom 2000a&b) indicates 
that Tolkien?s works are not uncommonly taught in the US, presumably (to judge by 
these thre volumes) to high school and undergraduate students. 
This disertation is not, however, concerned with the reception of the novel, The Lord of 
the Rings, but with the thre live action films directed by Peter Jackson and released in 
cinemas worldwide betwen 2001 and 2003: The Lord of the Rings: The Felowship of 
the Ring, The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers, and The Lord of the Rings: The 
Return of the King. Kristin Thompson?s The Frodo franchise (2007) is the major study 
of this trilogy and its spinoff products, covering every stage of negotiation, production, 
marketing, and distribution, and drawing on interviews with many of the people 
involved. Thompson writes about the trilogy both as thre individual works and as a 
single work in thre parts: a practice that I shal follow, since I shal be analysing 
discourse which was produced in 2005 and which is therefore able to refer to the trilogy 
as a whole. As Thompson argues, the film trilogy is not a literary adaptation in the usual 
sense but a series of genre films constructed on the basis of a novel. In acordance with 
the conventions of the fantasy film genre, there are more action scenes in the films than 
in the novel, and these scenes are longer and more spectacular. Narative followability 
was sacrificed at the editing stage in order to avoid cutting the action or the very large 
cast of characters caried over from the book;
53
 moreover, Thompson shows that these 
                                                
53
 Although her own examples comprise two edits so bafling as to be incomprehensible on first 
viewing, Thompson coments only that ?Jackson?s team opted to depend on the film?s spectators to 
make the efort to folow along.? (73) Les idealisticaly, one might say that they opted to depend on 
the film?s fans to buy the ?extended edition? DVDs, which restored scenes cut from the original 
  146/379   
characters are reconceived as types from various genres of action movie: ?humble 
everyman figures?, a ?kung fu fighter?, a ?comic warior?, a ?heroic warior?, and a ?sifu?, 
or kung fu master (63-64). However, as Thompson also shows, the filmakers paid 
unprecedented levels of atention to the visual details of the imaginary ?world? in which 
that novel is set. Thus, Thompson, an admirer of both the novel and the films, writes that 
?[a] book about imaginatively conceived characters on a lengthy journey interspersed 
with skirmishes has been turned into what some might se as a galery of batles and 
monsters.? (54)
54
 
                                                                                                                                    
releases: ?For example, the Faramir/Boromir/Denethor storyline exists almost entirely in the 
extended versions of The Two Towers and, we can presume, the forthcoming The Return of the King 
extended cut. In fact, astute viewers.. note that some back-story apears to be mising in theatrical 
releases, and they asume and expect they wil se more scenes in the later editions.? (Sue Kim 
204:88) If viewers fel that they have not sen the whole of a film until they have watched these 
previously deleted scenes, then the release of a sequel provides an aditional incentive to purchase 
the extended edition (particularly if it is released just in time for such a viewing practice). As 
Thompson notes: ?A print ad for the extended version of Felowship urged magazine readers, ?Se 
this version before you se The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers!?? (207:215) 
54
 Comparison of boks with their scren adaptations would sem to constitute a very widespread 
form of academic and popular textual comentary, and would certainly reward further investigation 
as such. The generaly likeable Peter Jackson: the power behind cinema?s The Lord of the Rings 
(Wright 204), for example, discuses Tolkien?s trilogy and Jackson?s in terms of the Christian 
Humanist philosophy which it argues to be expresed more consistently by the former than by the 
later. Thre chapters in the (intermitently) more academic Tolkien on film: esays on Peter 
Jackson?s The Lord of the Rings (Brenan Croft 204) are primarily concerned to advance 
arguments that the films are in various senses worse than or equal to the boks, and seven more 
compare the construction of particular characters acros the films and the boks, eg.: ?JR Tolkien in 
his Lord of the Rings gives us.. the lofty poetic expresion and larger-than-life heroes of epic.. In his 
film treatments of this material, Peter Jackson, in contrast, ofers the conflicted, modern protagonist, 
  147/379   
The Lord of the Rings: The Felowship of the Ring was released in the USA and UK on 
19 December 2001 and in much of the rest of the world over the next two or thre 
months. In common with worldwide pres, British reviews were generaly very positive, 
from tabloids and broadsheets alike: Alun Palmer (2001:5) cals it ?a stunning visual 
epic? and Andrew O?Hagan (2001:6) describes it as ?the modern quest film to beat al 
quest films?. The remaining two films in the trilogy were released over the following 
two years: The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers from 18 Dec 2002 and The Lord of 
the Rings: The Return of the King from 17 December 2003. The second film won the 
fewest Academy Awards (two, to the first film?s four and the third?s eleven), and, 
though it atracted a certain amount of criticism from Tolkien fans for involving the 
greatest sacrificing of character development and plot continuity for the sake of action, it 
was also widely considered an improvement on its predecesor for precisely this reason: 
one UK broadsheet reviewer described it as ?a beter film than the first, simply because 
it gets on with the busines of big and beefy fights? (Clarke 2002:12). The final part of 
the trilogy met with the greatest praise, and was described by one British tabloid 
reviewer as ?the blockbuster of the year? as wel as ?of the decade? (Tookey 2003:58). 
Generaly received as a series of increasingly spectacular action movies, the trilogy has 
been incredibly lucrative, with major corporate sponsorships, combined worldwide box 
office takings running into bilions of dollars, and imense continued earnings from the 
sale of film erchandise, DVDs, computer games, etc: Thompson writes that she ?would 
                                                                                                                                    
smaler in scope and leser in nature.? (Wigins 204:121) I have also come acros examples of fiery 
internet mailing list discusions on the relative merits of the papery and celuloid versions of The 
Lord of the Rings ? not forgeting the mock outrage expresed by some ?slashers? (se below) at the 
celuloid Arwen?s having ?stolen Glorfindel?s horse? (an outrage not at al incompatible with 
prefering the film overal). 
  148/379   
not be at al surprised if Rings? gross income ultimately went wel over $10 bilion.? 
(2007:9) 
The audience for the Lord of the Rings film trilogy was the object of a major research 
project (Barker 2005) that wil be refered to again in Chapter 3. Other investigations 
relevant to aspects of the trilogy?s reception include Sue Kim?s (2004) discussion of 
atempts to rebut acusations of racism in the book and film versions of The Lord of the 
Rings, Jones and Smith?s (2005) analysis of discourses of ?authenticity? in the films? 
promotion, and Carl, Kindon, and Smith?s (2007) study of Lord of the Rings tourism. 
Much ?slash? (ie. homoerotic and copyright-infringing) fiction has been inspired by the 
movies, and this is discussed by Thompson (2007:117-180; se also Booker 2004 and 
Sturgis 2004). Two published papers also discuss the reception of the films by slashers: 
one has been refered to already (Alington 2007a; se Section 1.5) and forms the basis 
of Chapter 3; the other, Anna Smol?s ?Oh.. oh.. Frodo!? (2004; se Chapter 3) takes a 
very diferent approach by focussing on the textual elements that are given a sexual 
interpretation in slash fiction featuring the characters Frodo Baggins and Samwise 
Gamgee. 
1.9 A guide to this study 
This chapter has been painfully (although, I think, rather necesarily) long, and I am 
grateful to the reader who has presed through to the end of it. The remainder of this 
disertation shal atempt to addres specific theoretical and methodological problems 
that arise against the general background that has ben discussed in Sections 1.1 to 1.7. 
At its heart are thre case studies, contained in Chapters 2 to 4. Each of these involves 
two analyses, one involving spoken discourse that I audio-recorded, and one involving 
published discourse: in Chapter 3, this discourse was published on the internet, in 
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Chapters 2 and 4, in traditional print media. The second of each pair of analyses is 
considered to be the focus, and it is these that relate to what I have reluctantly been 
caling this study?s ?primary? works. 
Chapter 2 discusses theoretical atempts to consider literary discourse in terms of a 
mesage pasing from author to reader, focusing in particular on those that function by 
reference to general theories of language use: the work is the vehicle of intentions that 
are realized (or not) in the reader?s responses; the work is a ?speech act? that operates on 
the reader and causes his or her responses. This chapter argues that such theorizations 
mistake the role of communication in literature, but suggests that they nonetheles 
reflect prevalent ways of talking about literary texts, which should be investigated as 
tacticaly useful techniques employed in discourse betwen readers (and non-readers) of 
those texts. Drawing on the work of a range of thinkers, notably Quentin Skinner and 
Jerome McGann, it then proposes an alternative application of the concepts of authorial 
intention and speech act to the genesis of literary works. This is exemplified first with 
some spoken data, in which a gay reading group discuss a work of gay fiction, and then 
with a study of early contributions to the public controversy over The Satanic Verses, in 
which commentators atempt to structure this novel as a speech-like action caried out 
by its author. 
In Chapter 3, I examine the question of whether meaning is determined by the text or by 
the reader, treating this not as a theoretical problem, but as a practical problem faced by 
interpreters of texts. I take this approach to two samples of data, in each of which the 
possibility of ?hidden? sexual meanings in a work is at isue for a group of readers. In 
the first sample, the readers are a tutor and her students in a first year undergraduate 
literature clas, and the work is Oscar Wilde?s play, The Importance of Being Earnest; of 
  150/379   
al my analyses of data, this comes closest to what is usualy regarded as discourse 
analysis and a discursive-psychological approach. In the second, the readers are 
members of an online community dedicated to slash fiction, and the work is the Lord of 
the Rings film trilogy. These two analyses constitute this disertation?s most sustained 
application of the discursive psychological approach to discourse analysis, though the 
second makes much use of Chaim Perelman?s theories of argumentation, representing a 
crossover with rhetorical psychology. 
Chapter 4 brings together scholarship from audience study, cultural theory, and social 
psychology to re-theorise one of the key forms of data in the history of reading: 
anecdotal descriptions of reading experiences. It proposes a methodology for the 
analysis of such anecdotes that asumes neither their literal truth nor their literal falsity, 
treating them not as records of responses to text, but as responses in their own right. 
Drawing on a range of theoretical and methodological sources, from media studies and 
discourse analysis to historiographic theory, this approach explores the historical 
determination of representations of the ?subjective? aspects of reading by showing how 
and for what ends these representations have been constructed in situated discourse. 
Primarily concerned with the reading of literature, it is exemplified first with a short 
stretch of data from an undergraduate seminar devoted to Irvine Welsh?s novel, 
Trainspotting, and then with a Spectator article about The Satanic Verses. 
Chapter 5 discusses the limitations of the ?discursive? approach to reception, and 
considers some alternatives. 
  151/379   
2. Spech acts, intentions, and uncomunicativenes: 
a theory of literature and of how literature is used
5
 
2.1 Introduction 
when language is spoken, it occurs in a specific location, at a specific time, is 
produced by a specific person, and is (usualy) addresed to some specific other 
person or persons. Only writen language can ever be fre of this kind of 
anchoring in the extralinguistic situation. A sentence on a slip of paper can move 
through space and time, ?speaker?-les and addrese-les. 
Fromkin et al 2003:217 
Struggling to se literature as a form of communication, and seing in speech the 
prototype thereof, theorists have often treated authors as the senders of mesages 
through the medium of their works, and readers as the recipients of those mesages. 
There is nothing straightforward about this treatment: as I hope to demonstrate, atempts 
to theorize a literary work as a mesage from its author to its future readers turn out to be 
rather les intuitive than they might initialy sem.
56
 There is also nothing necesary 
                                                
5
 This chapter is adapted from Alington (208). 
56
 Cf. Dixon and Bortolusi (201:1-2): ?we question a fundamental tenet that is comonly found in 
the field of discourse procesing. That conception, simply put, is that text is comunication: based 
on a linguistic model of oral language use, it is asumed that the writer has the goal of 
comunicating an intended mesage, encodes this mesage in the text, and then the mesage is 
decoded by the reader.. we argue here that although there may be a limited sense in which text 
functions as comunication under some circumstances, in general this is an unproductive and 
misleading way to think about text and text procesing.. we believe that the problems with the text-
as-comunication view are most acute and aparent in the procesing of literature.? Dixon and 
  152/379   
about it: the mesage pased betwen a sender and a recipient may be a text (literary or 
otherwise), but ? as the above quotation reminds us (and I take it from such a 
reasuringly pedestrian source as an undergraduate linguistics textbook in order to make 
plain how very uncontroversial a claim it realy is) ? a text?s usability for its readers (and 
never mind that of a literary work) cannot depend on its playing the role of such a 
mesage, for, if it did, Fromkin et al?s ?sentence? would become incomprehensible the 
moment it slipped anchor. Indeed, as Stein Haugom Olsen (1982) argues, it may be 
inappropriate to speak of a literary work as having a ?meaning? at al, in the simple sense 
that a mesage does: Olsen rejects any analogy betwen literary works and ?basic 
linguistic expresions like metaphor, sentence, and utterance? (31), and, as in the 
following aphorism of Northrop Frye?s, asociates them instead with entirely mute 
objects of appreciation (in Olsen?s case, not statues but fine wines and beautiful 
landscapes [21]): 
Criticism can talk, and al the arts are dumb. In painting, sculpture, or music, it is 
easy enough to se that the art shows forth, but cannot say anything. And, 
whatever it sounds like to cal the poet inarticulate or spechles, there is a most 
important sense in which poems are as silent as statues. 
Frye 1957:4 
What, then, is the impulse behind the contrary theoretical position, that poets speak to 
their readers through their poems? I wil argue that it derives from two sources: on the 
one hand, the ubiquity of certain ways of talking about literary works, and, on the other, 
                                                                                                                                    
Bortolusi?s psycholinguistic aproach would be dificult to integrate with the anti-mentalist 
aproach taken here, but it is interesting to note the similarity of their conclusions. 
  153/379   
from the fact that there is (and has been) communication going on, whether or not it 
realy is betwen the author and readers of the work under discussion. I wil suggest that 
there is a role for discussions of intentions and speech acts in the investigation of literary 
works, but that this role may not serve the purposes of post-New Critical literary 
interpretation. 
Those ?ways of talking about literary works? are explored in the penultimate section of 
this chapter, which examines a selection of early responses to Salman Rushdie?s The 
Satanic Verses (1988). None of these responses constitutes academic criticism of this 
work; they are polemics isued by public commentators and ilustrate (a) its wider 
reception, and (b) its author?s responses to that reception. Although this analysis follows 
Jonathan Culler?s (2001[1981]:3-19) recommendations in its refusal to offer its own 
interpretation of a literary work, it is diferent from Culler?s approach to interpretations 
(as embodied in his seminal Structuralist Poetics [1975]), in that it aims not at the 
reconstruction of a past state of ?literary competence?, but at the understanding of 
specific responses to a given work as events taking place in the context of high profile 
ideological conflicts. These responses are collected, then, in much the same spirit as the 
dossier reproduced in the edited volume I, Piere Rivi?re (Foucault 1975a): ?to draw a 
map, so to speak, of these combats, to reconstruct these confrontations and batles.? 
(Foucault 1975b:xi).
57
 
2.2 Comunicative circuits 
There is a longstanding tradition of conceiving a work of literature as the medium of 
one-way communications from a single author to a theoreticaly unlimited number of 
                                                
57
 I am indebted to one of the anonymous per reviewers (of Alington 208) for pointing out the 
comparison. 
  154/379   
individual readers. IA Richards (1960[1924]:184-189), for example, conceives of an 
author as someone who has experiences of a special character that he or she then 
communicates to his or her readers, in whose consciousnes the experiences are 
replicated ? provided, of course, that the author is ?eficient? (206) and the readers are 
?adept? (114). Robert Darnton (1990) decisively breaks from this tradition with his 
famous description of the ?life cycle? of a book.
58
 He envisages this life cycle as ?a 
communications circuit that runs from the author to the publisher (if the bookseler does 
not asume that role), the printer, the shipper, the bookseler, and the reader?, where 
?[t]he reader completes the circuit? not only ?because he influences the author both 
before and after the act of composition? but also because ?[a]uthors are readers 
themselves.? (111) This is a model of the proces whereby manuscripts and early 
editions of books come (or rather, came, for the publishing industry is rather more 
complicated now) into being. It explodes the fantasy that to read is to enter into solitary 
communion with the author: the author has been in direct and indirect communication 
(with publisher, printer, etc), but, in the case of the vast majority of literary texts, the 
?circuit? in which the author?s communications took place is irevocably closed, al 
readers but a privileged few locked out by time, geography, and social distance. The 
work of literature is thus sen as the product of multidirectional communications 
betwen the members of a finite set of people, among them the author. We could 
imagine further life cycles for the subsequent editions, but these would stil remain 
acesible only to a tiny minority of readers, ie. those involved in or otherwise able to 
                                                
58
 There is some comparison with the ?circuits of culture? model used in the aproach to material 
culture asociated with the Birmingham Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies (eg. Johnson 
1986). In the later conception, however, diferent problems are adresed, and the ?circuit? is more 
metaphorical. 
  155/379   
influence the proceses of editing and production. What can it mean to read while 
belonging to none of these circuits? Lynne Pearce (1997) has considered the ?emotional 
politics? of such a position: the excluded reader is in the position of a ghost, haunting 
the work but unable to influence it (24-25),
59
 and, though he or she may imagine that the 
author speaks to him or her alone (89), his or her real relationships are with felow 
readers and potential readers: that is, with extratextual others (235). Works of literature 
are thus sen as the mute objects of readerly love and disappointment, as much 
alienating as inspiring to their readers. 
If we focus on those extratextual relationships betwen readers, however, the picture 
becomes more lively. The Darntonian life-cycles of books, kept turning by authors, 
publishers, printers, et al, can be considered the preliminary stage for unlimited 
?afterlife-cycles? kept turning by flesh-and-blood human beings who make use of texts 
in a variety of ways. In a study of news media, Ron Scollon (1998:20-21) conceives of 
the production and subsequent use of (in his case, non-literary) texts in terms of distinct 
sets of social interactions: 
The central argument is, first, that, in the production of the texts of the news 
media, the primary social practices, and therefore the primary social interactions, 
are concerned with negotations of power and identity within the communities of 
practice [Lave and Wenger 1991] formed by journalists, newsmakers, owners, 
and editors of the organizations. Secondly, in the communities of practice within 
which these texts are appropriated for use by readers and viewers, the primary 
                                                
59
 One is, of course, at liberty to tear out old pages from a text of a work and paste in new ones, but 
one canot thereby avert the suicide of Romeo and Juliet, except in the new text of which one makes 
oneself the editor. 
  156/379   
social interactions are among viewers and readers, not betwen them and the 
producers of the texts. 
In this conception, reading is understood in terms not of receiving a mesage, but of 
carying out social actions made possible by the text. Once more in the air following 
protests against its author?s knighthood, The Satanic Verses reminds us that such actions 
are by no means trivial, and we shal return to its case following a theoretical discussion 
of communication and meaning in the production and consumption of literary works and 
a demonstration of that discussion?s relevance to a group of readers outside the 
academy. My aim throughout shal be to provide conceptual tools by which book history 
may, as Peter McDonald (1997:120-121) puts it, concern itself ?not only with the initial 
field of writing and reading, but with the ongoing history of such fields, tracing the 
text?s [ie. the work?s] various material and social predicaments, and the history of its 
uses and meanings?. 
2.3 Comunication and signification 
Literature is the most interesting case of semiosis for a variety of reasons. 
Though it is clearly a form of communication, it is cut off from the imediate 
pragmatic purposes which simplify other sign situations. The potential 
complexities of signifying proceses work frely in literature. Moreover, the 
dificulty of saying precisely what is communicated is here acompanied by the 
fact that signification is indubitably taking place. 
Culler 2001[1981]:39 
Considered from the viewpoint adopted in this chapter, Culler?s statement raises many 
questions. In what sense is literature ?clearly a form of communication? ? indeed, how 
  157/379   
can it be, in the absence of ?imediate pragmatic purposes?? It is certainly meaningful ? 
?signification is indubitably taking place? ? but does that automaticaly mean that it is 
communicative in any useful or interesting sense? Who, for example, is communicating 
with whom? Elsewhere, Culler describes literary works very diferently: as something 
disturbingly other than comunication, which we recuperate with interpretative 
atempts ?to make literature into a comunication, to reduce its strangenes, and to draw 
upon suplementary conventions which enable it, as we say, to speak to us? (1975:134). 
This view ? that literature is not communicative, but that interpretation may 
(mis)represent it as being so ? is closer to what this chapter wil be arguing. In this 
section, I wil briefly recap two aproaches to comunication that originate in the field 
of pragmatics but have ben used ?to make literature into a comunication?, and then 
contrast these with an aproach to signification promoted by Jacques Derida and 
arguably underpinning much contemporary literary study. 
2.3.1 Communication: speech act theory 
An important theory of communication was proposed by JL Austin in a series of lectures 
delivered in 1955 and subsequently published as How to Do Things with Words (1962). 
This is ?speech act theory?, which theorises the uttering of sentences as the carying out 
of actions. Austin?s lectures are exploratory and whimsical in character, but the theory 
they propound has been usefully and systematicaly developed in several works by his 
student, John Searle, in particular Speech Acts (1969) and Expresion and Meaning 
(1979). As we shal se, both Austin and Searle discuss literature in pasing, though 
without making it a central concern; however, a number of works of critical theory, 
today most famously Sandy Petrey?s monograph, Speech Acts and Literary Theory 
  158/379   
(1990), atempt to develop speech act theories of literature and the reading of literature. 
Beyond literary theory, the influence of speech act theory appears to have been both vast 
and difuse: Jonathan Potter (2001), for example, credits it with great influence on 
discourse analysis, and, thanks to Judith Butler?s Gender Trouble (1990), it has arguably 
influenced much of feminist and queer theory, though the practical debt to Austin sems 
in both cases slight. Rather than atempt a survey here, therefore, I wil constrain my 
atention in this chapter to the thre works already mentioned by Austin and Searle, and 
to works of hermeneutic theory that engage with them directly. 
Austin?s lectures begin with a distinction betwen ?constative? utterances, ie. ?true or 
false statements? (1962:3) and ?performative? utterances, ie. utterances where ?the 
isuing of the utterance is the performing of an action? (6). Finding this distinction to be 
untenable, he proposes in its place a distinction betwen kinds of acts that may be 
performed in the isuing of a single utterance. For the purposes of this chapter, the most 
important of these are locutionary acts, ilocutionary acts, and perlocutionary acts: when 
I say a certain set of words, my locutionary act is what I do by virtue of the fact that the 
words of my utterance have a certain sense and reference, my ilocutionary act is what I 
do by virtue of the fact that my utterance is of a recognisable type that has certain 
conventional efects, and my perlocutionary act is what I do by virtue of the fact that my 
utterance comes to have certain consequences that are not determined by convention. 
One of Austin?s best examples is that of enquiring about a third party ?whether it was 
not her handkerchief which was in X?s bedroom? (110): the locutionary act is that of 
uttering these words with a certain sense and with reference to a specific object and 
place, the ilocutionary act is that of uttering a structure of words that (by linguistic 
convention) counts as a question, and the perlocutionary act might be something as 
dramatic as convincing the addrese that adultery has ben commited. There are 
  159/379   
linguistic conventions for asking, but not for convincing ? nor for surprising, 
intimidating, annoying, beguiling, etc. Austin does not arive at a completely 
satisfactory distinction betwen ilocution and perlocution (se 117-119), and Searle, 
who is largely uninterested in perlocution, shows that the distinction betwen locution 
and ilocution is highly problematic (1968),
60
 but there is something intuitive about the 
distinction of sense and reference from action-type, and of action-type from specific 
consequence. To consider literary works in relation to this scheme leads to problems, 
but, as we shal se, there are respects in which it can also iluminating. 
2.3.2 Communication: intentionalism 
There is in the philosophy of language and in theoretical cognitive psychology a 
tradition by which speech and the comprehension of speech are understood in terms of 
the speaker?s intentions and the hearer?s recognition of these intentions: the intention is 
then a mesage that begins in the speaker?s mind and ends in the hearer?s, having been 
infered by the later from the former?s utterance. This tradition begins with Paul Grice?s 
much-referenced argument that to say something and to mean something by it is to say it 
?with the intention of inducing [in one?s hearers] a belief by means of the recognition 
[by one?s hearers] of this intention.? (1957:384) In a modified form, it is the basis of 
Sperber and Wilson?s theory of communication, in which people are conceived of as 
?information-procesing devices?: one device ?modifies the physical environment?, for 
example by speaking or writing, and thereby stimulates other devices to construct 
?representations similar to representations already stored in the first device.? (1986:1) 
                                                
60
 Instead, he conceives of speakers carying out ?propositional acts? and ?spech acts of refering? in 
carying out many, but not al, ilocutionary acts (1969:26-3). Saying ?Hurah?, for example, neither 
expreses a proposition nor refers. 
  160/379   
The writing and reading of literature is theorized in a directly analogous way by IA 
Richards, as we have sen (above), and authorial intention is identified as the true goal 
of literary interpretation by ED Hirsch (1967). Nonetheles, this position has been 
heavily contested within critical theory, particularly since the development of the New 
Criticism and its partial supersesion by forms of criticism influenced by structuralist 
and post-structuralist thought: authorial intention is directly atacked by Wimsat and 
Beardsley in their famous esay ?The intentional falacy? (1946), and is sometimes taken 
to have been a casualty of the bewildering aray of arguments and asertions in Roland 
Barthes?s ?The death of the author? (1997[1967]). 
An alternative approach to intention is put forward by the philosopher and intelectual 
historian Quentin Skinner, who makes a distinction betwen ?locutionary?, 
?ilocutionary?, and ?perlocutionary? intentions (1972a).
61
 This distinction is founded on 
Austin?s distinction betwen kinds of spech act (above): a locutionary intention is the 
                                                
61
 It should be acknowledged that Skiner (1970) expreses aproval of Strawson?s (1964) reading of 
Austin (1962) in terms of Grice (1957), and that this might be taken to indicate that Skiner?s theory 
is in some sense a variant of that described in the previous paragraph. However, what Skiner takes 
from Strawson is only the idea that the uptake of an ilocution (ie. the recognition that an uterance 
constitutes some particular ilocutionary act) must involve the recognition of the speaker?s intention 
to cary out some particular ilocutionary act (Skiner 1970:121). Once we consider Skiner?s 
concept of intention in depth (se Subsection 2.4.2), it becomes aparent that, for Skiner, 
recognising the intention with which an uterance is produced is the same thing as recognising what 
conventional uterance-type was produced: this is very diferent from the idea that comunication is 
realised in the hearer?s sucesful reconstruction of the speaker?s intention. Moreover, for Skiner, 
an intentional description of an action (for example, an uterance) is ?neither causal, nor reducible to 
a causal form.? (1972b:156) This is entirely incompatible with Sperber and Wilson?s (1986:2-23) 
contention that one recognises intentions by reasoning from efect (action/uterance) back to cause 
(intention). 
  161/379   
intention that the words of one?s utterance have a certain sense and reference, an 
ilocutionary intention is the intention that one?s utterance be of a particular 
conventional type, and a perlocutionary intention is the intention that one?s utterance 
wil have particular non-conventional consequences. The intentions around which the 
theoretical arguments of Hirsch and others have tended to centre are Skinner?s 
locutionary intentions, but Skinner argues that it is ilocutionary intentions to which 
interpreters need to atend: a view to which the current chapter asents. 
Although I consider (for reasons that wil become apparent) that Skinner is corect in his 
view that talking of ilocutionary acts is the same thing as talking of intentions (1971:2, 
1972b:141-142), the idea of ilocution is made to do very diferent work in his system 
than in Austin or Searle?s, and so I wil discuss it separately from the theory of speech 
acts. In particular, Skinner?s ilocutionary intentions appear to be much more subtly 
variable than Austin and Searle?s ilocutionary acts: while the later two philosophers are 
primarily concerned with explicating the general principles of utterance as act, Skinner 
is primarily concerned with detailed explication of works in relation to their historical 
context, a project for whose purposes the taxonomies of ilocutionary acts that Austin 
and in particular Searle are at pains to develop (eg. Austin 1962:150; Searle 1969:vii-
vii) are more-or-les irelevant. I wil argue that Skinner?s approach to ilocutionary 
intention is useful, but that it does not support the model of literary works as author-
reader communications. Where I discuss what Skinner cals perlocutionary intention, I 
wil employ ethnomethodologist Lena Jayyusi?s (1993) analysis of intention talk, since 
this provides a coherent framework for investigation of this problematic category. This 
is the approach put into practice in the analysis of The Satanic Verses caried out in 
Section 2.6. I would argue that this separation of ilocutionary and perlocutionary 
intentions is potentialy very helpful in distinguishing the diferent kinds of intentionalist 
  162/379   
rhetoric that have been employed with regard to The Satanic Verses and other novels. 
For example, what appears to be ilocutionary intention is discussed by Joel Kuorti 
(1992) when he meditates on contrary understandings of The Satanic Verses as ?a 
contest of fixed language? on the one hand and ?a parody of the sacred? on the other 
(133). These are, he suggests, ?diferent approaches.. by which the author?s name 
?Salman Rushdie? is connected with The Satanic Verses.? (ibid.) Elsewhere, however, 
he discusses what Skinner would term perlocutionary intentions, though without 
acknowledging this distinction: in the type of argument that, following Hirschman 
(1991), he cals ?the perversity thesis?, Kuorti states that ?the central argument is that 
the outcome of an action is the opposite of intentions.? (63) 
2.3.3 Signification: the functioning of the mark 
One of the central dificulties in trying to understand the scene of reading other than as 
one in which the reader receives a mesage from the writer, is that of seing how else the 
reading mater might be present, than as an utterance ? whether ?utterance? is conceived 
in intentional or speech act terms. To structure a text or a work as an utterance is above 
al to relate it to an utterer who sent it forth at some particular moment and in some 
particular context; as I shal show in Sections 2.4 and 2.5, one can do this without 
conceiving of it as an author-reader communication, but it is important to recognise that 
structuring it in this way may be very unhelpful in understanding many scenes of 
reading. To understand many such scenes, we wil have to recognise that a stretch of 
discourse can mean independently of what anybody has meant by it. Rather than talk of 
? ?understanding? the ?writen uterance??, Derida (1977b:199) thus discuses the 
?functioning of the mark?, which ?operates a fortiori within the hypothesis that I fuly 
understand what the author meant to say, providing he said what he meant?, but ?also 
  163/379   
operates independently of such a hypothesis?. He insists that in the nature of the mark 
is ?the posibility of its functioning being cut off, at a certain point, from its ?original? 
desire-to-say-what-one-means [vouloir-dire] and from its participation in a saturable and 
constraining context.? (1977a:186) It can thus ?break with every given context? (ibid.) 
through ?engendering and inscribing itself? or ?being inscribed in, new contexts? 
(1977b:220). Intentionalism and speech act theory can acordingly be sen as atempts 
to return ?the mark? (here, the work) respectively to an ? ?original? desire-to-say-what-
one means? or to ?a saturable and constraining context?; in writing the above remarks, 
Derida was critiquing both speech act theory and the intentionalism of its major 
advocate since Austin, John Searle (more of which in Subsection 2.5.1).
62
 
It is necesary to consider the reasons hermeneuts might have for making and for 
resisting such atempts to return the work to its origin: Jason David BeDuhn (2002:95-
96), for example, approves Skinner?s (intentionalist) use of ?Austin?s language of 
ilocutionary act? to facilitate the discussion of ?texts as events in a past context, not as 
linguistic resources whose meaning is constantly reconstrued in interpretation?, but, 
while this goal is clearly appropriate for the historical study of works, its 
                                                
62
 Cf. Dixon and Bortolusi (201:23): ?we are not disputing that writers have intentions and that 
these are reflected in the text; clearly they do. We are also not arguing that readers are uninterested in 
the intentions of the (implied) author. Our point is simply that what controls the reader?s inferences 
in this regard is generaly the text, not the author?s intention.? I would sugest, however, that Dixon 
and Bortolusi?s reference to ?inferences? implies a lingering debt to a version of the comunication 
model, and that the idea of the text exercising control over the reader is misleading; for these 
reasons, I would favour the slightly diferent formulation these writers ofer earlier on the same page 
(?what determines readers? atributions.. is primarily the text, together with the context and the 
reader?s knowledge and goals? [ibid.]). 
  164/379   
appropriatenes to their literary study is problematic. Stein Haugom Olsen (2004), for 
example, argues that there are diferent forms of interpretation, and that each has a 
diferent aim: ?a literary interpretation is concerned with the experience of a work of art? 
and its aim is ?appreciation?, which makes it diferent from a ?historical interpretation 
concerned with recovering what the clauses of [a] document would have meant in the 
historical situation in which it was produced.? (147) ED Hirsch (1967), on the other 
hand, rejects the possibility of any such special dispensation for literary interpreters: ?Al 
valid interpretation of every sort is founded on the re-cognition of what an author 
meant.? (1967:126) If Hirsch is right, then a literary work can only be understood in 
terms of its having isued from a particular person at a particular place and time; Hirsch 
of course proposes that this be done through the recovery of authorial intention, but this 
particular argument of his would also suport a spech act aproach, amongst others. If 
Olsen is right, then it is legitimate for certain hermeneuts (ie. those who are engaged in 
?literary interpretation?) to read a work as something connected les to the historical 
moment of its production, than to the experiential moment of its reading. 
Although there is clearly strong feling on both sides, I would suggest that, for al the 
arguable anachronism of his focus on ?appreciation?, Olsen has understood something 
about the practice of post-New Critical literary study that Hirsch has not: that it has 
tended to promote interpretation not as a means to an end (the discovery of a uniquely 
valid reading of the text) but as an end in itself.
63
 Post-New Critical literary study has, I 
                                                
63
 Livingston (195:134) writes that, in contemporary literary criticism, ?[e]ach instructed reading 
[ie. interpretation] puts together the comunity?s arts of reading to reveal, as a discovery about those 
arts, how those arts can be organised as a novel, distinctive, and original instructed reading.? 
Compare: ?When, in a pedagogic mode derived from New Criticism (and which is stil the norm in 
  165/379   
would therefore argue, generaly been commited to what Derida would cal the 
inscribing of the mark in new contexts, a proces that Jefrey Stout (1982:3) 
recommends as providing more various and more interesting results than a focus on 
what the author intended: ?Take as your frame of reference the history of Scotland, and 
Hume?s Dialogues wil have one ?meaning?. Concern yourself with dialogue as a genre, 
critiques of religion, or psychobiography, and it wil have another.?
64
 Wiliam Downes 
                                                                                                                                    
high schols and probably in undergraduate clases as wel), students are taught to respond 
sensitively and fuly to a literary work, they are expected to detect the unique and permanent 
significance of the work in question (or what the teacher, representing a cultural tradition, takes this 
significance to be). At the same time, there is also an insistence on responsivenes as a mark of the 
individual reader?s unique identity; students of literature are encouraged to develop their ?own? 
responses, and censured if they merely reduplicate someone else?s response. A student handing in an 
esay that largely repeated an existing critical work would not expect high praise, no mater how 
acurately it represented what was held to be the work?s esence.? (Atridge 204:90) Similarly: ?a 
literary interpretation?s suces means that its claims canot be repeated? (Jackson 203:19). Se 
McGan (198:105-106), Mailoux (1989), and Culer (201:xvi-xvii) for further discusion of the 
persistence of this New Critical principle beyond the aparent colapse of the New Criticism. 
64
 Hirsch might not disagre with Stout on this point; his real diference of opinion from the later is 
in his insistence that the contextual significance of a work is in the relationship of its author?s 
intended meaning to some particular context (Hirsch 1967:143). Stout refutes this by analogy: ?just 
as I can ask, ?What is the meaning of I do?? when inquiring about the significance of a linguistic act 
in a ritual or institutional context, I can raise a question of similar form when inquiring about the 
significance of some text within a given frame of reference or system of relations.. For any given 
text, numerous contexts could in principle be demed relevant, with the contextual significance 
varying acordingly.? (1982:3) Just as I can ask about the meaning of ?I do? without asking about any 
specific individual?s intentions in utering those words, so can I ask about the significance of a work 
without asking about its author?s intentions. A similar point arises in Graham?s (198) critique of 
Skiner, discused below. 
  166/379   
takes this stil further, writing of literary studies and its ?institutional exaggeration of the 
property of the under-determination of interpretation by literal meaning? (1993:125, 
emphasis added). These principles are combined in Derek Atridge?s conception of 
?creative reading? as the succesful apprehension of a literary work?s ?othernes, 
inventivenes, and singularity? (2004:79), where a reading is creative if it is ?not entirely 
programed by the work and the context in which it is read.. even though it is a 
response to.. text and context? (80). For this kind of reading, the relevant context is that 
in which the work is read, and not that in which it was composed, but the work or 
mark?s mere functioning in this new context is not sufficient, and must be creatively 
extended by the reader: ?in this sense?, a creative reading ?might be caled a necesarily 
unfaithful reading.? (ibid.) 
To literary criticism of this type, works are thus known as, in BeDuhn?s words, 
?linguistic resources whose meaning is constantly reconstrued in interpretation?. The key 
asumption that makes possible the post-New Critical mode of literary interpretation is 
that a literary work ?belongs to the public? (Wimsat and Beardsley 1946:470) and the 
only meanings that anyone can legitimately claim to find in a work are those that others 
can, through careful explanation of its wording in context of the histories of words and 
of literature, also be brought to se. This is what Paul Armstrong (1990) cals the 
requirement of ?intersubjectivity?, and it entails a (purely) notional equality betwen 
readers: if one reader ses a work as having a meaning that, even following explanation 
of this sort, nobody else can se a textual basis for, then it must ? at least in theory ? be 
discounted.
65
 Importantly, this must apply even if that reader is also the author of the 
                                                
65
 That this principle is not limited to post-New Critical aproaches should hardly be in doubt; 
inded, something like it may even be observed outside of academic literary criticism. In the 
  167/379   
work, because otherwise, the careful and continuous appeal to public (and preferably 
internal) evidence that characterizes criticism of this type would count for les than 
argument from authority (?I wrote it, so I should know what it means!?). Under these 
conditions, it is hard to se how a work could be conceived otherwise than as an entity 
which ?is detached from the author at birth? and which subsequently ?goes about the 
world beyond his power to intend about it or control it? (Wimsat and Beardsley 
1946:470). Given any specific text, the writer then becomes one reader among many, 
albeit an early one: ?the Dante who writes a commentary on the first canto of the 
Paradiso is merely one more of Dante?s critics.? (Frye 1957:5) One of the best 
expresions of this state of afairs can be found in the analogy betwen criticism and 
direction. As Northrop Frye argues, the discovery of Shakespeare?s ?own acount of 
what he was trying to do in Hamlet would no more be a definitive criticism of that play, 
clearing al its puzzles up for good, than a performance of it under his direction would 
be a definitive performance.? (1957:6) The wording of the play is there for any reader to 
make sense of, just as it is there for any director to stage a production of.
6
 
Although there exists in literary studies the desire (as sen in Hirsch and those who have 
put forward similar proposals) to practise forms of historical interpretation that would 
return each literary work to its originary moment, the discipline?s procedures emphasize 
(and perhaps even, as Atridge and Downes suggest, exaggerate) the continued 
                                                                                                                                    
folowing chapter, we wil examine a sample of non-academic interpretative discourse on a popular 
film; in it, the interlocutors orientate towards a closely related notion, problematic for some of them 
because of their comitment to an interpretation that is not widely shared. 
6
 In keping with the use Frye makes of this argument, I would insist that the same principle aplies 
to non-dramatic works: the words of a literary text are there to be made use of, and, for our purposes, 
it maters litle whether this hapens in the private reading of a novel (or a play) or in the public 
performance of a play (or a novel). 
  168/379   
?functioning of the mark? beyond that point, such that those who engage in literary 
studies may unapologeticaly reconstrue the meanings of works indefinitely (whether or 
not they in practice choose to do so: elsewhere, I have found that academic critics may 
move betwen the two modes [Alington 2006]). Thus, within as wel as without the 
academy, literary works remain among those discourses ?which give rise to a certain 
number of new spech-acts which take them up, transform them or speak of them.. 
which, over and above their formulation, are said indefinitely, remain said, and are to be 
said again.? (Foucault 1981:57) As wil be demonstrated in Section 2.6, reception study 
can foreground this proces by practising historical interpretation on interpretation itself, 
and taking for its object the reconstrual of meaning that begins with a work?s first 
appearance. 
This method can be compared to Jorg Gracia?s (2000) approach to ?meaning 
interpretations?. Like Hirsch (1967:24), Gracia argues that interpretation must choose its 
goals; unlike Hirsch, he ses many diferent goals as valid, and gives no special status to 
the goal of reconstructing authorial intention. Thus, while Hirsch rejects the idea that a 
work?s meaning changes over time as one that would deny us a ?dependable glas 
slipper? by which to identify the ?real meaning? of the work, and thus leave us with ?no 
way of finding the true Cinderela among al the contenders? (1967:46), Gracia treats 
atempts to discover the original meanings of a work as qualitatively similar to atempts 
to discover the meanings that work has had for subsequent audiences. Gracia argues that 
such interpretations ?are not relativistic insofar as, in principle, there are criteria for 
determining the value of these interpretations, and these criteria are not determined by 
individual persons, social groups, or cultures, but rather derive from the aim of the 
interpretation? (2000:54, emphasis added): if my aim is to reveal the meanings that the 
  169/379   
works of Aristotle had in Medieval Europe, for example, then the meanings I proclaim 
can be judged for the understanding they facilitate of actual Medieval European 
interpretations of Aristotle. Gracia?s focus on understanding and interpretation as events 
taking place in an unobservable mental realm ay, however, make this judgement 
somewhat dificult to make in practice (although not more so than the application of 
Hirsch?s equaly mentalistic ?glas slipper?
67
): this chapter, by contrast, focuses on the 
meanings literary works (specificaly, The Satanic Verses) acquire in the ?public sphere? 
(specificaly, of Britain in the late 1980s; se Mufti [1994] for a discussion of the same 
work?s reception in other public spheres). It proposes a number of approaches to literary 
works that, for al their historicism and their concern with intentions and speech acts, 
respect those works? fredom from the context of their production by refusing to treat 
them as communications from their authors to their readers. 
2.4. Literary intentions 
2.4.1 Locutionary intention 
Theoretical debates on authorial intention frequently concern what Skinner cals 
?locutionary intention?, and, where this is the case, these can take a variety of forms. 
Two of the main isues are the idea that the meaning of an utterance or a literary work is 
identical with the speaker or author?s intended locutionary meaning (what Monroe 
Beardsley [1968] cals ?the identity thesis?), a position which is advocated by Hirsch 
(1968:1-27), Grice (1969), Hancher (1972, 1981), and Sperber and Wilson (1986:1-64), 
                                                
67
 ?I can never know another person?s intended meaning with certainty because I canot get inside 
his head to compare the meaning he intends with the meaning I understand, and only by such direct 
comparison could I be certain that his meaning and my own are identical.? (Hirsch 1967:17) 
  170/379   
and atacked by Beardsley (1968) and Dickie and Wilson (1995); and the idea that what 
a speaker or author can ?mean? by an utterance or work is limited by the conventional 
meanings of the words he or she uses, a possibility which is left ambiguous by Grice 
(1957), insisted upon by Hirsch (1968:27-31, 48-51) and Searle (1969:42-50), asumed 
by Grice (1969), and atacked by Hancher (1981) and Sperber and Wilson (1986:24-28). 
Of these two isues, the first would sem to have very litle practical consequence to 
literary scholars. Hirsch, for example, suggests that where a word might have more than 
one sense, one should try to establish (so far as is possible) which sense is appropriate, 
but one does not need to be an intentionalist to do this, nor even to follow the 
methodology he recommends: his advice that one can consider as evidence usages of the 
word typical of works composed at the same approximate time (1967:184) would, for 
example, be entirely aceptable to Wimsat and Beardsley (1946:478), for al that his 
underlying theory would not.
68
 The second isue, on the other hand, could have serious 
practical consequences, since rejection of the principle that ?one?s meaning when one 
utters a sentence is more than just randomly related to what the sentence means in the 
language one is speaking? (Searle 1969:45) would, when combined with the ?identity 
thesis?, imply that there was no necesary connection betwen what an author wrote and 
the meaning of what that author wrote, which would (if taken to its logical conclusion) 
make the interpretation of works impossible. Both Hancher (1972) and Sperber and 
Wilson (1986:24-26) atack Searle for this modification of Grice?s (1957) acount of 
meaning, although Grice?s (1969:148) later work implies the adoption of the same 
                                                
68
 Cf. Eco?s structuralist methodology: ?a sensitive and responsible reader is not obliged to speculate 
about what hapened in the head of Wordsworth when writing that verse [?A poet could not but be 
gay?], but has the duty to take into acount the state of the lexical system at the time of Wordsworth.? 
(192:68) 
  171/379   
position as Searle. I would like to examine Hancher?s argument briefly: first, since he 
develops it in direct reference to a problem in interpreting a literary work, and second, 
since the problem in question develops the argument of this chapter by suggesting the 
importance of ilocutionary intention. 
Hancher (1972:844) begins his case against Searle with a jibe at Witgenstein:
69
 ?At the 
grocer?s, I can (mistakenly) say ?Six apples, please?, while meaning ?Six tomatoes, 
please??, in which case, ?anyone who wanted to understand my utterance would have to 
know that, in uttering it, I am requesting tomatoes, not apples?. It sems to me that 
Hancher has already gone too far at this point: al I would be inclined to say in such a 
situation is that, anyone (for example the grocer) who wanted to understand what 
Hancher wanted (ie. tomatoes) would have to know that the later had mistakenly 
requested something he did not want (ie. apples). Nonetheles, Hancher?s subsequent 
argument about the interpretation of Robert Browning?s dramatic work Pippa Passes 
deserves fuller consideration: 
When Browning refers to nuns? ?twats? at the end of Pippa Passes, he uses the 
token-word to mean something like ?wimples? even though the semantic rules of 
English make no provision for such a use. Browning is lucky that he has been 
understood here; usualy the penalty for a linguistic mistake of this order is blank 
misunderstanding, or worse. But he has been understood: we understand that the 
word in this pasage means what he intended
A
 it to mean.
70
 
                                                
69
 ?Say ?It?s cold here? and mean ?It?s warm here.?? (Witgenstein 1968[1953]:Para. 510) Searle 
argues that this is posible only with ?further stage seting? (1969:45). 
70
 The term ?intended
A
? refers to the author?s intentions at the time of writing, which Hancher 
distinguishes from the author?s intentions before writing and at the time when writing is complete. 
  172/379   
Hancher 1972:844-845 
This is an interesting example, but it does not prove Hancher?s point that meaning is 
constrained by authorial intention rather than linguistic convention, since there are at 
least two other ways of approaching the problem. The first is to understand the word 
?twat? as a synonym of ?wimple? in Browning?s ideolect but not in the English language 
as a whole. This makes the meaning a mater of (admitedly idiosyncratic) convention, 
rather than intention, and is consistent with Wimsat and Beardsley?s position that ?the 
meaning of words is the history of words, and the biography of an author, his use of a 
word, and the asociations which the word had for him, are part of the word?s history 
and meaning.? (1946:477-478) Indeed, Browning?s aberant usage of the word ?twats? is 
recorded in that paragon study in the history of words, The Oxford English Dictionary. 
The second way to approach the problem, and the one I would favour, is simply to 
understand the word ?twat? as it is usualy understood, ie. as a vulgar synonym of the 
word ?vulva?, and to acknowledge that, in considering Pippa?s song as a whole, readers 
are likely to be struck by the inappropriatenes of this word?s inclusion. While Hancher 
(1981:52) later argues that ?to interpret Browning?s phrase as if it encoded the standard 
meaning of ?twats?, would be to mistake his token utterance as badly as he mistook the 
type meaning of the word?, I would insist that it would be no les a mistake to interpret 
the phrase as if ?twats? really were a synonym of ?wimples?; the best interpretation of 
the word ?twats? in this context is not as a synonym of ?wimples? but as a blunder on the 
author?s part. Implicit in these judgement of inappropriatenes and blunder is, I would 
suggest, a conception of the author?s intention to write Pippa?s song as the dramatic 
monologue of a tragic innocent: an intention we infer from the fact that it would have 
entirely succeded ? were it not for the ?twats?. 
  173/379   
2.4.2 Illocutionary intention 
As this example shows, a statement about intention does not have to be a statement 
about sense and reference: it can also be a statement about the type of work we are 
dealing with, and about what would constitute its succes and failure. Awarenes of the 
later kind of intention prompts John Searle (1979:66) to argue against absolute anti-
intentionalism in literary criticism with the observation that ?even so much as to identify 
a text as a novel, a poem, or even as a text is already to make a claim about the author?s 
intentions?. A work or text is not a natural phenomenon but something made, the result 
of human action, and to try to ignore this would, as Searle reminds us, be perverse. 
Similarly, Stanley Fish (1989:99-100) argues that ?one cannot read.. independently.. of 
the asumption that one is dealing with marks or sounds produced by an intentional 
being, a being situated in some enterprise in relation to which he has a purpose or a point 
of view.? Although they do not make the link themselves, Searle and Fish would appear 
to be invoking the sort of intention described by Quentin Skinner as ?ilocutionary?: not 
the sense and reference of the wording of a work, but the deliberate, purposive character 
it has when considered in relation to the human being who composed that wording. This 
is, then, a form of what Olsen (2004) cals ?historical interpretation?, and involves 
ignoring al aspects of the signification of a work?s wording that cannot be explained in 
terms of a purpose with which it can be asumed to have been created. This may render 
it inappropriate for the aims of many literary scholars (se Subsection 2.3.3), and even 
for those of some historians: Keith Graham (1988) and John Keane (1988), for example, 
both criticise it for its wilful blindnes to whatever a work?s author would also have 
been blind: as Graham puts it, ?a text might have the force of expresing the aspirations 
of an ascendant social clas in circumstances where there was barely a recognition that 
the clas in question existed (or where, perhaps, the concept of social clas was itself 
  174/379   
unavailable).? (153) Taken within its limits, however, the concept of ilocutionary 
intention can, as we shal se, be a powerful tool, and it is the only form of intention 
which I consider to be of use in analysing literary works (as opposed to discourse on 
literary works; se Subsection 2.4.3 and Section 2.6). 
The first point to note about ilocutionary intentions is that they are explanatory re-
descriptions of works in terms of their origins. Skinner writes that to discuss intentions 
of this sort is ?to characterize what the writer may have been doing ? to be able to say 
that he must have been intending, for example, to atack or defend a particular line of 
argument, to criticize or contribute to a particular tradition of discourse, and so on.? 
(Skinner 1972a:404) This intentionalism is to be further distinguished from explicitly 
mentalist theories such as that of Sperber and Wilson (1986), since it involves no 
necesary reference to the private mental states of individual human beings. As Jason 
BeDuhn (2002) explains, there is no implied atempt to aces ?the actual subjective 
states of individuals in the past? (88), since ?for Skinner the ?actual intention? is the 
position or stance of an utterance determined relative to other possible utterances in a 
tradition of speech acts.? (100) 
A second point to emphasize is that the ilocutionary intentions with which a work was 
composed do not constitute a ?mesage? to be received by the reader: simply ?to identify 
a text as a novel, a poem, or.. as a text? is not to have received a mesage from its 
author, and nor, I would suggest, is to identify it as (let us say) the dramatic monologue 
of a tragic innocent. Indeed, recognising an author?s ilocutionary intentions may 
involve the recognition that the work was not intended as a communication from its 
author to anybody else. It could be argued that this should be the standing asumption 
where there is no evidence otherwise (as there wil be, for example, if what we are 
  175/379   
refering to as a work is a leter). Ilocutionary intention is actively ignored in the type of 
criticism which approaches literary works with the asumption that they are invariably 
communicative, since this involves treating al works as of the same mesage-bearing 
type, regardles of the intentions with which we suppose them to have been produced: 
reading works of fiction, drama, and verse as if they were ?texts that have imagined 
themselves as informational ? texts that have been constructed on a sender/receiver, or 
transmisional, model.? (McGann 1991:11) This can be sen in one leading advocate of 
the literature-as-communication school?s revealing admision that, although he 
considers that ?it is as a communicator that it is most profitable to consider the artist, it is 
by no means true that he commonly looks upon himself in this light? (Richards 
1960[1924]:26).
71
 Such a statement clearly entails the recognition that it is very unlikely 
that an author composing a work of literature would have understood him- or herself to 
be engaged in communication: a point that for Skinner would disalow that his or her 
intention had been to communicate (1972a:406, se below). 
In defining his concept of ilocutionary intention, however, Skinner arguably confuses 
this isue by moving from utterances to works as if the transition were unproblematic, 
thereby suggesting that a work is a sort of utterance. For example, he writes that the 
question of the meaning of Machiaveli?s ?uterance? of the sentence, ?Princes must learn 
when not to be virtuous? is a question about ?what Machiaveli may have ben doing in 
                                                
71
 Richards?s sugestions for what an artist might be likely to consider himself to be doing are both 
vague and unworldly, eg. ?making something which is beautiful in itself? (ibid.). With regard to this 
point, Hirsch?s position is relatively close to that advocated in this paper: he argues that the 
intentions that an author wil have had in producing ?such formalized uterances as poems? should be 
conceived les in terms of his or her personal experiences than of ?genre conventions and limitations 
of which the author was very wel aware? (1967:15-16). 
  176/379   
making this claim? (1972b:144), aparently without considering the diference betwen 
composing a work containing this sentence and utering it in conversation. Skinner is 
perfectly wel aware that a work is not an utterance, and elsewhere this is reflected in his 
analysis ? he does not write that Machiaveli atacks the moral conventions of advice 
books to princes, for example, but that he intended his work, The Prince, as an atack on 
them (155) ? but he does not theorize works independently of utterances. To do so is 
necesary to avoid sliping at this point into the naive comunicative model against 
which this chapter has been writen. I would therefore sugest the folowing reading of 
Skinner?s example: There is a book caled The Prince which contains certain ideas which, 
judged against the standards of a genre to which we have reason for taking it to belong 
(that of advice books to princes), sem rather scandalous; since we know that the 
apearance of this book was not ?a strange and miraculous event with no connection 
whatsoever to human history? (BeDuhn 2002:95), we read it in terms of (to quote Fish) 
an ?intentional being?, Machiaveli, ?situated in? the ?enterprise? of the writing of a book 
of that particular genre, ?in relation to which he has a purpose? ? which, given the ideas 
in the book and the moral conventions of the genre, we take to have been that of 
atacking the genre?s moral conventions. My point is that it is not realy an action that 
we interpret, but a work, conceived in relation to its author: the author?s action was not, 
strictly speaking, to atack anything, but to have put together a composition some of 
whose characteristics are conventional for a genre (permiting it to be identified as 
participating in that genre) and some of whose characteristics are anticonventional for 
that same genre. The meaning of the sentence, ?Princes must learn when not to be 
virtuous?, in other words, is probably best conceived not in terms of what Machiaveli 
was doing in utering it (if, inded, he can be said to have uttered it), but in terms of its 
  177/379   
relation to generic conventions: a relation the explanation for which is a purpose that we 
ascribe to Machiaveli and somewhat metaphoricaly cal ?atack?. 
The usefulnes of Skinner?s conception of ilocutionary intention becomes al the more 
apparent when debates on the intentional falacy are re-appraised in its light. An 
instructive example of this can be found in No?l Caroll?s (1997) debate with Dickie and 
Wilson (1995). In the course of presenting their anti-intentionalist case, Dickie and 
Wilson admit that there are situations where one?s goal in conversation may be to 
understand a speaker?s intentions, to whit, when the meaning (ie. the sense and 
reference) of a speaker?s utterances is puzzling or unclear, but they argue that such cases 
are exceptional (1995:246).
72
 Caroll picks up on this admision by arguing that though 
this may be the exception when we are dealing with conversational utterances, it is 
something very like the rule when we deal with works of art: it is, he states, ?a standard 
characteristic of artworks.. that they often come with features that are unusual, puzzling, 
initialy mysterious or disconcerting? (1997:307). Although Caroll?s suggestion is that 
we respond to what is puzzling in artworks precisely as we do to what is puzzling in 
what he cals ?everyday conversations?, ie. by trying to grasp the intended sense and 
reference, his argument invokes the specificity of artworks, and therefore the possibility 
that what is puzzling in them plays a specific role and is responded to diferently. My 
                                                
72
 This is fairly intuitive. A relative of mine who spoke por German quite often mistakenly initiated 
social interactions with the words ?Danke sch?n?: where this was sucesful, we could quite 
reasonably say that her interlocutor had recognised her intention to gret him or her, but there would 
be something quite strange about saying this if her uterance had ben the more conventional ?Guten 
Tag?. Pace BeDuhn, I would sugest that this is because it is only in those cases where we do not 
aply ?the working asumption that the speaker knows what he or she is doing? (202:95) ? or where 
we aply it, but acknowledge either our own or our audience?s ignorance in this mater ? that we 
employ ?the language of intention? (ibid.). 
  178/379   
suggestion is that the presence of such puzzling elements in artworks is in fact 
conventional (as is suggested by the phrase ?standard characteristic?), and indeed Caroll 
sems to recognize this in refering to them as ?the sort of artistic innovations and 
defamiliarizations that we expect from avant garde novelists? (ibid): not only can he put 
them into conventional categories (?innovations and defamiliarisations?), he knows to 
?expect? them in particular types of literary work. Caroll, however, resists any 
suggestion that these features are conventional, arguing that because they ?defy, 
redefine, or complicate standing conventions, we do not explicate them by applying 
meaning conventions, but we ask ourselves what the artists in question intend to mean 
by them.? (ibid.) If we look at this from the point of ilocutionary intention, however, we 
can simply recognize the author?s intention to write a literary work of a type (the avant 
garde novel) that is conventionaly defined by innovations and defamiliarizations ? and, 
moreover, we can note that these innovations and defamiliarizations are what they are by 
virtue of their defiance, redefinition, and complication of ?standing conventions?, ie. 
that they are recognisable for what they are in relation to those conventions. This 
approach wil remain closed to Caroll so long as he asumes that intended and 
conventional meaning are opposed; acording to Skinner, they are not, because 
intentions are conventional: 
even if S can in principle conceive, he cannot in practice communicate an 
intention which is not already conventional in the sense of being capable of 
being understood, executed in the way S intends, as being a case of that 
intention... If S?s speech act is also an act of social and linguistic innovation 
which S nevertheles intends, or at least hopes, wil be understood, the act must 
necesarily, and for that reason, take the form of an extension or criticism of 
  179/379   
some existing atitude or project which is already convention-governed and 
understood. 
Skinner 1970:135 
Skinner?s hermeneutic methodology is therefore to asume that ?whatever intentions a 
given writer may have, they must be conventional intentions in the strong sense that they 
must be recognisable as intentions? and that in order ?to understand what any given 
writer may have been doing.. we need first of al to grasp the nature and range of things 
that could recognisably have been done.. at that particular time.? (1972a:406) As his 
interest lies in the study of works of political philosophy such as Machiaveli?s The 
Prince, Skinner is interested in understanding, for example, what positions could 
recognisably have been argued for or against through particular uses of particular 
concepts. To apply his methodology to the study of literature whilst respecting the 
specificity of literature (ie. without studying it as political philosophy) would involve a 
historical study of the intentions that would have ben recognisable for people engaged 
in the writing of literary works: something that would arguably amount to a history of 
literary purposes (se Footnote 4). Suppose we tried ?to grasp the nature and range of 
things that could recognisably have been done? in the late 20th century by means of the 
?outlandish, enigmatic events, irational character motivations, unusual metaphors, 
oxymoronic sentences and sentence fragments, as wel as the gaping narative elipses? 
that Caroll (1997:307) finds in Kathy Acker?s novel Pussy, King of the Pirates, then (if 
  180/379   
Caroll?s own intuitions are correct) we might wel discover that one of those things was 
the putting together of an ?avant garde novel?.
73
 
This approach to intentions can be refined through a consideration of arguments put 
forward by the philosopher Gilbert Ryle, in particular his use of ?thick? description as a 
means of analysing actions that would be, from a strictly physical point of view, 
indistinguishable (1990[1971]). Although ?thick? description has, following Cliford 
Gertz?s (1993[1973]) influential appropriation of the concept, been regarded as a 
method in anthropology, its initial use was in Ryle?s demonstration that ?thinking? is not 
the carying out of a particular brain activity, and in other related arguments. Ryle best 
defined ?thick? description by example, particularly in his discussion of winking 
(1990[1971]:480-483), made famous by Gertz (1993[1973]:6-7): ?winking? is the 
?thick? description of an action to which could also be applied the ?thin? description of 
?contracting the eyelids?. Moving on to stil thicker descriptions, Ryle observes that 
covertly signaling to an acomplice by contracting the eyelids is not the same as 
pretending to do so, nor the same as parodying somebody else doing so, nor the same as 
rehearsing such a parody, even though the very same ?thin description? could apply in 
each of these four cases. 
What distinguishes betwen these actions must be the intentionality of the eyelid-
contraction, but not in any mentalist sense: not, in other words, because the eyelid-
contraction is acompanied or preceded in each case by diferent mental activities (even 
though it might be true that this does actualy happen), since this would (for example) 
                                                
73
 Hirsch?s (1967:71-126) meditations on genre are very interesting in this regard, although I find his 
repeated insistence on the authorial wil as the determinant of genre highly unconvincing, 
particularly since his own arguments for the defining importance of wil relate to meaning (1-23). 
  181/379   
contradict Ryle?s acount of what it is for someone to have been ?thinking what he was 
doing? when speaking. Ryle argues that, where this has happened, the ?bits of uttering 
were not acompanied by or interspersed with bits of something else [ie. thinking] that 
he was also doing [as wel as speaking]; or if they were, as they often are, it was not for 
these acompaniments that he qualified as thinking what he was saying.? 
(1990[1971]:468) Rather, ?if a person spontaneously initiates or embarks on something.. 
and if he does the thing with some degre of care to avoid and correct faults and failures, 
and if, finaly, he learns something as he goes along from his failures and suceses, 
dificulties and facilities, he can claim and we shal alow that he has been thinking what 
he was doing.? (ibid.) 
For the same behaviour to be caried out with two diferent intentions is, on this 
analysis, for it to be caried out under diferent succes/failure conditions: to return to 
the example of winking, a covert signal fails if it is spotted by a third party, but a parody 
fails if its irony is mised. This notion of succes/failure conditions has clear bearing on 
the literary works that result from authors? actions, since the evaluation of literature is 
one of the tasks of criticism. As we shal se, Hirsch (1967) asumes that evaluation is a 
mater of judging the correspondence betwen planned and actual efects, and so locates 
the object of evaluation outside the text, but the Rylean analysis proposed here suggests 
a diferent approach that recals one of Wimsat and Beardsley?s aphorisms: ?Judging a 
poem is like judging a pudding or a machine. One demands that it work.? (1946:469) A 
souffl? wil be evaluated diferently than a pancake, a hairdryer diferently than a 
blowtorch, and a lament diferently than a lampoon, not because of inferences about 
their creators? mental states, but because the conventions by which they are recognisable 
as particular kinds of things include or imply the conditions for their succes or failure 
as the kinds of things as which they have been recognized. To recognize a milk-and-egg-
  182/379   
based substance that has collapsed below the rim of the dish in which it was baked as a 
?souffl?? is to understand as pertaining to it certain succes/failure conditions under 
which the act of its creation wil be deemed to have failed. To recognize an arangement 
of words as a ?lampoon? is to acknowledge that it wil only have succeded as such if it 
represents some real individual in such a way as to make him or her look ridiculous.
74
 
This form of intention is clearly at isue for the following readers: a group of gay men 
who met every month in a gay pub to discuss books ?of gay interest? (here, My Lucky 
Star by Joe Kenan, which they are comparing to Parallel Lies by Stela Duffy). The 
interaction has some very interesting interpersonal features, but I shal focus here only 
the relationship of what they say to the ideas discussed in this section. The transcript has 
been broken up to facilitate the insertion comments, with some material cut to save 
space. 
                                                
74
 Hirsch employs something very like these notions of ilocutionary intention and suces/failure 
conditions in deciding which word an author intended to use in a work: ?it is in general very likely 
that a medieval homilist would be hostile to the pagan gods.. it is usual that a homilist would not 
confuse maters by making his judgements only halfheartedly pejorative? (1967:187). The 
asumption Hirsch makes here is, of course, that the author in question would have writen a work 
that would be demed sucesful. What is most interesting for the purposes of this paper, however, is 
that these entirely conventional intentions and conditions amount to the whole of ?authorial intention? 
in this case. Compare BeDuhn?s (202:10-101) observations on the interpretation of anonymous 
and pseudonymous literature: ?we extrapolate a model of the author as a convenience.. ?Actual 
intentions? are positions within this model, not mental states or events in a dead writer.? There may 
be a paralel in Eco?s notion of the text?s, rather than the author?s, intentions: ?[in interpreting a verse 
by an unidentified author] I am not speculating about the author?s intentions but about the text?s 
intention, or about the intention of that Model Author that I am able to recognise in terms of textual 
strategy.? (192:69) 
  183/379   
As this extract begins, the group have been talking about how ?interesting?, ?charming?, 
and ?fantastic? Stela Duffy had been in person when she came to read from her book, 
but also about how ?dreadful? that book was ? one even caled it ?drivel?, although two 
claimed to have heard that ?her other books are much beter?, and a third leaned across to 
me and said ?I enjoyed the book?. 
S1 okay well . the one that [sh- th- th- 
S8                          [that?s ?Parallel Lies? it?s it?s a 
very similar sort of [book it?s the same 
S1                      [it is  
well= 
S8 =[it?s s- 
S2  [it?s much drier though= 
S8 =s- same [area 
S1          [it?s a simi- it?s similar subject matter [but= 
S2          [it?s not so cram-packed 
S                                                    [yeah 
S1 =I think told with a from a very different [perspective 
S8                                            [and the 
storyline is about as 
S1 about a [lesbian                           [yeah 
S8         [about as convincing as (laughing) [this one 
S1 well absolutely but it?s . but the thing is 
[that book is meant to be convincing this mean- this= 
S8 [this one?s funny 
S1 =one?s meant to be [funny 
S7                    [it?s funny okay yeah= 
S1 =[yeah . but 
S2  [that wasn?t . it had humour in it . it wasn?t . 
[essentially a comedy though 
S1 [no 
no it wasn?t 
The first thing to note is the implied perception of each work in terms of its similarities 
to and diferences from other more and les similar works to be found in the intertextual 
  184/379   
field in which it is embedded (another such work is mentioned below). It is close (if not 
identical) to the mode of reading that Thomas Roberts (1990) asociates with genre 
fiction, and resembles what Stanley Fish suggests is the typical eightenth century 
commentator?s approach to literature, in which each work was understood not as a 
mysterious and iconic artefact whose meaning must be teased out but as ?a poetic 
performance.. judged against the background of past performances of a similar kind.? 
(1995:27)
75
 Above al, neither My Lucky Star nor Parallel Lies is being discussed as a 
                                                
75
 Note the knowledge of genre necesary to discus texts in this way: a specific cultural competence. 
In their study of Dalas audiences, in which they also argue that American audiences wil have had 
the greatest exposure to the genre of soap opera (se Chapter 1 for further discusion), Liebes and 
Katz make the folowing observation: ?Apart from identifying Dalas as a soap opera, there is 
ocasional awarenes of the way in which Dalas is not a soap opera. The Americans specialise in 
these nuances, emphasising that Dalas is in prime time, and that the leading character, in his devil-
like surealism, is somehow diferent from soap opera characters.. Comparisons are made betwen 
Dalas and sucesors such as Dynasty, in character delineation, geographic location, dramatic 
inventions, and rhythm.? (191[1989]:214) To discus (say) Lycidas in this way would be far beyond 
the abilities of most twenty-first century readers, since extensive knowledge of sevententh century 
poetic genres is imensely time-consuming to acquire (arguably representing a particularly rarified 
form of cultural capital, fructifiable in the rewards of an academic apointment in Early Modern 
Literature). This may to some extent explain the persistence of post-New Critical aproaches to 
pedagogy, since it is arguably more eficient to teach universaly-aplicable hermeneutic procedures 
(eg. Broks 1968[1947]) ? particularly if they can be boiled down to checklists (eg. Short 196) ? 
than to atempt to impart detailed knowledge of genres the great majority of whose constituent works 
are non-canonical (and therefore, at least from the point of view of curicula aiming to acquaint 
students with the ?most important? works of the ?most important? authors of al periods in a suposed 
cultural heritage [se Van Dijk 1979, Readings 196], superfluous). With regard to the literatures of 
the past, therefore, ?reading-by-genre? is likely to remain the province of experts and PhD students 
  185/379   
?singularity? (Atridge 2004; se Chapter 1 of the current study) ? there is no suggestion 
in these readers? discourse that reading these novels would involve a creative encounter 
with the Other; instead, the books are represented as operating entirely within the limits 
of the known. 
Firstly, these two works of fiction are found to be similar in terms of their ?subject 
mater? but diferent in terms of their tone; secondly, they are found similar in that 
neither of them is ?convincing?, but found diferent in that only one of them is ?meant to 
be convincing?. As with the pancake/souffl? example above, these judgements apeal to 
the intentional nature of the two works? creation ? as too with the pancake/souffl? 
example, this is not a mater of the creator?s past mental states but of the conditions that 
constitute succes and failure for each conventional type of creation. Unconvincingnes 
is considered one of the failings of Parallel Lies because, even though ? as S2, the 
speaker who stated that he had enjoyed that novel, says ? it ?had humour in it?, it was 
not ? as S2 admits ? ?esentialy a comedy?. Quite a large proportion of the group 
expresed a strong dislike for My Lucky Star, but a consensus sems to arise that 
unconvincingnes cannot be one of that book?s failings, since it is of a type that would 
not have to be convincing to succed (whether or not it actualy does). This point is 
taken further in the folowing extract, which folows a quick recap of Parallel Lies 
betwen S1, S8, and S2: 
                                                                                                                                    
(se Roberts 190), with taught postgraduate and advanced undergraduate courses providing a sort of 
halfway stage at which the focus is stil on a relatively smal group of authors and works that are, 
however, encouraged to be sen as representative of larger genres (se Bortolusi and Dixon [196] 
for an experiment apearing to confirm the efectivenes of this pedagogical aproach). 
  186/379   
S1 yeah yeah [so  
S6           [but it . with this book I mean . the only thing 
in . you could say for the author . he doesn?t sort of say . 
?this is a serious [book? 
S7                    [no= 
S1 =no= 
S6 =and so you I mean in . and in a way he may actually find it 
a little bit absurd [that we?re actually talking about= 
S1                    [mn 
S6 =a book [that he                          [but i- 
S8         [I think that?s why that?s why it?[s . it?s 
enjoyable= 
S7 =that?s e[xactly it 
S6          [I think yeah 
S8 if he had . m- [made it serious . it I mean it would?ve= 
S               [ch- 
S8 =been drivel but it?s= 
S7 =yeah 
S6 has earlier been very disparaging about My Lucky Star, and what he says here comes 
as a concesion prompted by the preceding interchange about what the book is ?meant 
to? be (?the only thing.. you could say for the author? is a very smal concesion, 
however). What he refers to in his mention of what the author ?sort of say[s]? is not the 
contents of Joe Kenan?s mind at the time of writing but the novel?s generic signposting: 
S6 certainly regards this signposting as deliberate, as when he suggests that Kenan 
might ?find it absurd? that the group are ? in having a serious discussion about his novel 
? putting it to a use for which it was not designed and to which it is not suited. 
S8 develops the point made above: My Lucky Star would be a failure ? would not be 
?enjoyable? ? if Kenan ?had made it serious?, ie. had writen it in such a way that it 
would be identified as a serious book rather than a ?comedy?. That this is what S8 
regards as having happened with Parallel Lies is emphasised by his use of the word 
  187/379   
?drivel?, which he had earlier used to describe that book. A book that is ?meant to be 
convincing? is a book that is ?made.. serious?. Interestingly, the conversation moves 
imediately into a more detailed discussion of conventional kinds ? here, of humour ? 
and of My Lucky Star?s positioning in relation to those kinds: 
S2 [quite aside from the comedy there?re different kinds of= 
S1 [I think 
S2 =comedy there?s really bi- . biting dark . comed[y 
S                                                 [yeah= 
S1 =mn= 
S2 there?s really mordant . ugly y?know . his is very amiable . 
it?s sort of ?like me please? 
S1 yeah [but I I [th- 
S2      [comedy 
S7               [it?s very gay comedy 
S oh [oh yeah= 
S1    [it is 
S2 =it is very gay but it?s [also 
S7                          [yeah which we get, well I get 
S2 he?s is very [genial you can tell he tell he wants you to= 
S7              [s- sarcastic * * 
S2 =like him  
S1 mn yeah 
S2 and the character the that [speaks in the first person  
Speaking over the top of each other, S7 and S2 define two specific conventional types of 
comedy into which My Lucky Star fals: ?genial? or ?amiable? comedy (defined here by 
its diference from ?biting dark? and ?mordant ugly? comedy) and ?very gay comedy? 
(defined here by being ?sarcastic?). Intention is again invoked, here by S2 and in relation 
to the idea of ?genial? comedy: he states that the author ?wants you to like him and the 
character.. that speaks in the first person?. But what does this mean, and how is it that 
?you can tel?? S2 is drawing on the cultural knowledge that this is the type of humour 
that speakers use in order to make their hearers like them, such that using this type of 
  188/379   
humour is hearably equivalent to saying ?like me please?. This leads back into direct 
comparisons with Parallel Lies (note that the last line of the above is repeated in order to 
make the overlap clear): 
S2 and the character the that [speaks in the first person  
S7                            [yeah 
S1                            [but but I th- I think I think 
from this . I think this book makes all the s- same points 
that Stella Duffy?s book was making but but but because it?s 
. but because it?s . it?s . I gue- I think a more 
interesting book . it can it makes them better even though 
it?s a comedy 
S7 this one? 
S1 yeah= 
S =yeah= 
S1 =yeah  
S2 [although I think her book reads a little more= 
S [* * 
S2 seriously [because she doesn?t try to pack it . I mean= 
S           [it does 
S2 =there?s= 
S1 =aha= 
S2 =humour in it but she doesn?t try to pack it . [so choc= 
S1                                                [yeah 
S2 =a bloc [with jokes and . every line with description is= 
S1         [yeah 
S2 =meant to be [funny and 
S1              [but it?s not about it?s not meant to be about 
S2 yeah I know 
S1 jokes . uhm 
S7 yeah 
S8 has anybody read uh . ?California Dreaming?? 
Here S2 is explicit about what makes My Lucky Star, unlike Parallel Lies, ?esentialy a 
comedy?: it is packed with jokes to the extent that ?every line with description is meant 
  189/379   
to be funny? ? meant to be funny in the sense that (being ?pack[ed]? with what are 
recognisable as ?jokes?) it wil be a failure if it is not funny and a succes if it is. 
Although S2 consistently advocates My Lucky Star throughout the discussion, he could 
be regarded as criticising it slightly in comparison to Parallel Lies: there is a suggestion 
of tiresomenes about the phrase ?choc-a-bloc with jokes?, and he does not state that 
?every line with description? in the former actualy is ?funny?. Perhaps in emphasising 
the humorous content of Parallel Lies he is implying that, like My Lucky Star, it does 
not need to be ?convincing? to succed, and in emphasising the (possibly overdone) 
?pack[ing]? of the later with jokes, he is suggesting that the les overt nature of the 
former?s humour should count in its favour. He does not pres the point, however, and 
S8 brings up a third book likewise identified as relevantly similar to My Lucky Star, thus 
shifting the topic away from Parallel Lies. 
On the view that I have been developing here, an author may have ideas about his or her 
intentions in writing a work, but these are to be given no priority over the ideas of 
anyone else who is literate in the conventions of the genres in which it participates. My 
Lucky Star is ?esentialy a comedy? because it is ?choc-a-bloc? with recognisable 
atempts at humour, and that is al we need to know: we do not need any information 
about the author?s mental states, because it is no more possible that anyone could 
accidentally compose such a work than that they could accidentally make a grandfather 
clock. It is because we know this that we may say that its composition as a work of a 
particular kind was an act of the author?s wil, and atribute its succeses and failures as 
such a work to his or her eforts, calculations, and abilities. But we say this and do this 
because it is a work of a particular kind, and not (as Hirsch [1967] would have it) the 
other way around. And this is why it is possible to ?discount a writer?s own statements 
about his.. intentions? (Skinner 1972a:405), this being ?only to make the (perhaps rather 
  190/379   
dramatic, but certainly conceivable) claim that the writer himself may have been self-
deceiving about recognising his intentions, or incompetent at stating them. And this 
sems to be perennialy possible in the case of any complex human action.? These 
particular readers, fully literate in the conventions of contemporary gay fiction, would be 
unlikely to take Joe Kenan seriously if he stated that My Lucky Star was a serious book: 
indeed, they might even regard such a statement as a rather good joke. 
2.4.3 Perlocutionary intention 
Having defined perlocutionary intention, Skinner argues that it requires no further 
atention, since the question of whether or not the author of a work intended it to induce, 
eg. sadnes, can be ?setled (if at al) only by considering the work itself? (1972:403), 
and in any case ?does not sem to be a question about the meaning of his [ie. the 
author?s] works so much as about the succes or failure of the work?s structure of 
efects.? (ibid.) Following my arguments above, I would suggest that Skinner is at this 
point failing to distinguish adequately betwen ilocutionary and perlocutionary 
intentions, since it is on the basis of an ilocutionary intention recognized through 
?considering the work itself? that a given ?structure of efects? wil constitute ?succes or 
failure?. A more clearly perlocutionary intention is invoked in Hirsch?s (1967:12) 
argument that an author?s intention for a work to induce a particular emotion in those 
who read it constitutes the meaning of that work even if the emotion is not, in fact, 
induced ? although he gives no clue as to how such an intention could ever be known. 
Questions of perlocutionary intention are, I think, fundamentaly questions of the 
author?s responsibility for whatever are presumed to be the efects of the work, for 
example in the sense of the emotions experienced by those who read it, in the sense of 
its influence on subsequent literary work, or in the sense of the political consequences 
  191/379   
ensuing from its publication ? and, as we shal se with regard to The Satanic Verses, the 
first and third senses may be interlinked. 
It is thus perlocutionary intention that Lena Jayyusi (1992) analyses as one among 
several ?critical parameters for the moral constitution, asesment, and description of 
actions and events? (1993:442). In discourse that invokes it, Jayyusi discerns what she 
(somewhat metaphoricaly) cals a ?logical gramar?: 
the gramar of ?action? acounts is a logical gramar of ?intention?, 
?knowledge?, and ?outcome?. What ?action? atribution or description is given or 
used in any particular context, then, depends on and projects a particular 
?composite? or ?conjuncture? of these thre action parameters. 
452 
?Murder? is a good example of such an action description. The Oxford English 
Dictionary defines ?murder? (sense A. 1a) as ?[t]he deliberate and unlawful kiling of a 
human being, esp. in a premeditated manner? (draft revision, Dec. 2007); thus, to 
describe an incident as murder is to credit that incident with an outcome (a human being 
has been kiled), to credit someone responsible for the incident with an intention (kiled 
deliberately), and perhaps also to invoke the knowledge of that responsible person (since 
premeditation at least suggests that this person knew hat he or she was doing). 
Conversely, the appropriatenes of the description ?murder? can be contested by 
chalenging any or al of these parameters: for example, ?He was already il, and that?s 
what finished him of?, ?I only meant to frighten him?, or ?I didn?t know the gun was 
loaded?. 
  192/379   
To consider a person?s speech as an action may involve judging the speech by the 
speaker or the speaker by the speech (Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca 1969[1958]:316-
321), and it sems to have become vital to the concept of an ?author? that he or she 
should be held in an analogous relation of responsibility to his or her writing (Foucault 
1987[1970]). Thus, we can reasonably apply Jayyusi?s framework to the analysis of 
discussions of literature, expecting the atribution of knowledge and intentions to the 
author of a work, combined with the atribution of outcomes to the writing, publishing, 
or reading of the work, to form parameters in the representation of author, work, and 
readers by the atributor. For example, if I were to claim that the publishing of Capital 
had a negative outcome (Stalinism), but that Karl Marx could not have known that this 
would occur, then this might form part of an apologia for Marx, but if I were to claim 
that a poem was writen to stir its readers with an emotion that it does not actualy 
inspire (ie. that its outcome, in the form of the readers? emotional response, does not 
match the poet?s intention), then this might function to denigrate both poem and poet (as 
in Hirsch?s [1967:12] invented example). To finish with a real example, to say that a 
body of works ?resonates with themes that consistently inspire later generations of 
writers? (Shire 2006:377) is unmistakeably to commend both it and its creator by 
crediting the former?s appearance with this positive outcome. 
These simple examples showcase entirely ordinary ways of talking about literary texts 
that we shal se more of in section 2.7; and, whether or not one subscribes to the forms 
of literary criticism that institutionalize them, they are extremely dificult to avoid, for 
the simple reason that they are so familiar and so useful. One does not have to be a 
reader response critic to say of a book, ?It left me cold? (invoking the outcome of 
reading), any more than one would have to be an intentionalist to cal it ?unintentionaly 
hilarious? (invoking the author?s intentions). Though invocations of intention and 
  193/379   
outcome may be much more principled and regularized in academic literary criticism 
than in everyday discourse, they should not be reified by hermeneutic theory, for 
instance by supposing them to be hypotheses regarding the actual mental states of 
authors and readers (as in Gracia 2000). Having considered the ways in which concepts 
of intention might be employed in the understanding of literature and of discourse on 
literature without asuming literary works to communicate those intentions to their 
readers, I would now like to enter into a paralel discussion of a diferent approach to 
utterances: speech act theory. 
2.5. Literary spech acts 
2.5.1 Speech act theories of literature, and literary theories of speech 
acts 
Speech act theory has long found literature problematic, in that it is hard to place literary 
texts into its framework of ilocutions and perlocutions (Austin 1962:104; Searle 
1979:74-75). It has at the same time, however, aroused great interest in literary theory, 
perhaps because ?the subject of speech act theory is the contribution that contextual 
factors make to the significance of a piece of discourse, and this would also constitute a 
fair definition of much literary criticism? (Gorman 1999:94). As an approach to literary 
interpretation, it suffers from some of the same problems as intentionalism, since it 
focuses on the literary work as a sequence of sentences uttered by the author (se for 
example Searle?s [1979:58-75] discussion of fiction), rather than as an entity detached 
from its author and going about the world independently of him or her. For this reason, 
speech act theory as known within criticism sometimes sems to bear litle resemblance 
to speech act theory as known within philosophy, which David Gorman (1999) ascribes 
to literary critics? ignorance of the philosophical tradition in which Austin worked, but 
  194/379   
which I would prefer to explain more charitably, in terms of critics? having read Austin 
for those aspects of his work which semed to have a bearing on their own practice: to 
employ the curiously bucolic imagery of Petrey?s (2000:425) response to Gorman, they 
have found in fragments of Austin?s lectures suggestive ?avenues? of thought down 
which they have subsequently ?gambolled.. with endles delight?. 
A teling explanation of speech act theory?s literary appeal can be found in Jonathan 
Culler?s observation that ?literary criticism involves atending to what literary language 
does as much as to what it says? (2000:506, emphasis in original), and that ?the concept 
of the performative sems to provide a linguistic and philosophical justification for this 
idea? (ibid., emphasis added). If this is acepted, then the delighted gambolling of 
literary critics may be sen to have les to do with any sense in which literary texts are 
speech acts than with its frequently being, for the purposes of literary criticism, 
productive to talk or write about them as if they were. But this is not al that Culler?s 
explanation reveals, since it also implies an understanding of the term ?speech act? that 
would sem peculiar to literary criticism. Language, literary or otherwise, does not do 
anything, and this is presupposed by Austin?s speech act lectures, published not as How 
words do things but as How to do things with words.
76
 However, post-New Critical 
literary criticism is (as Culler?s pronouncement makes clear) founded on the contrary 
presumption that works do and say what they do independently of their authors, and, 
though the standard critical usage of speech act theory may have been to ?provide a 
linguistic and philosophical justification? for forms of interpretation for which this is the 
starting point,
7
 the use to which Austinian ideas sem best suited is, as BeDuhn puts it, 
                                                
76
 Cf. Searle: ?spech acts are performed by speakers in utering words, not by words.? (1969:28) 
7
 The choice Culer presents is betwen language the sayer and language the doer; the writer of that 
language is ignored. Compare Petrey?s contrast betwen deconstruction and spech act theory: ?One 
  195/379   
?to bring speakers and writers into some sort of relation to the speech acts which flow 
from their mouth or pen? (2002:95). I do not think (against my own arguments in the 
preceding sections) that the independence of a literary work from its author is a fantasy: 
though ignored by speech act theory, it is as real as a speech act?s dependence on the 
human agent who caries it out. But I do think that atempts to apply speech act theory to 
literary interpretation have often suffered because of a failure to recognize the esential 
mismatch betwen a philosophy concerned with the act of utterance and ?the modern 
hermeneutical tradition in which text is not something we make but something we 
interpret.? (McGann 1991:4). 
This mismatch is at its most pronounced when it comes to the literary critical focus on 
outcomes (as discussed at the end of the previous section). Austin refered to poetry as 
one among several ?parasitic uses of language?, in which there is ?no atempt made at a 
standard perlocutionary act, no atempt to make you do anything, as Walt Whitman does 
not seriously incite the eagle of liberty to soar.? (1962:104) The sentences of which 
literary works are composed may thus resemble utterances that might perform particular 
speech acts, but the people who wrote them sem not to have done so in the atempt to 
bring about the standard perlocutions of those acts. As I se it, critical theory has had 
thre problems with this aspect of Austin?s thought. 
One of the most celebrated is Jacques Derida?s (1977a) charge of phonocentrism with 
regard to this exclusion of ?parasitic uses of language?: that ?[i]t is as just such a 
?parasite? that writing has always been treated by the philosophical tradition? (190). 
There is not much to say about this, except that it is correct, though possibly beside the 
                                                                                                                                    
method concentrates on the things language does by virtue of its nature, the other on the things it 
does by virtue of its conventional context? (190:164, emphasis aded). 
  196/379   
point: speech act theory is, as its name suggests, unapologeticaly phonocentric. It is not 
a theory of language, nor of writen language, nor even of the act of writing. It is a 
theory of signaling, with speech as its paradigm: a theory that describes the isuing of 
signals from individuals and their direction towards other individuals, where this is al 
asumed to take place within a determinate context. Such signals may take the form of 
writen texts, but speech act theory wil have nothing to say about them from the 
moment they start behaving like Fromkin et al?s ?sentence on a slip of paper? (above). 
Al that speech act theory can enquire about is the nature of the texts? isuing as signals, 
and this is what Austin does when he notices (above) that Whitman?s verse does not 
appear to have been isued with the force of a ?standard perlocutionary act?. Similarly, 
when Searle (1969:58-75) discusses ?The logical status of fictional discourse?, what he 
is enquiring into is not fiction, nor the language of fiction, but the isuing of the 
sentences inscribed in texts of fictional works: the isuing of asertion-like sentences, for 
example, to whose truth the isuer is not by their isuing commited. 
The explanation that Searle was to adopt, and which is, I would suggest, already implicit 
in Austin?s formulation (?does not seriously incite?), is that the ilocutions are pretended: 
that, just as he or she might pretend to hit someone by actually moving his or her arm, 
?[t]he author pretends to perform ilocutionary acts by way of actualy uttering (writing) 
sentences.. the ilocutionary act is pretended but the utterance act is real.? (Searle 
1979:68) From the point of view of speech act theory (understood as a theory of the 
isuing of signals), this is, I think, entirely aceptable. From the point of view of literary 
theory, to which (as we have sen) literary works are known as entities independent of 
their authors, and in which such notions as authorial or narative voice are recognized as 
tremendously unstable (se Barthes 1997[1967]), it is likely to sem naive, and this is 
the second problem that critical theory has had with speech act theory. Acordingly, 
  197/379   
some literary theorists have recast this aspect of spech act theory in terms of miesis 
(which is sen as a property of the work), rather than pretence (sen as an action of the 
author?s). Thus, Richard Ohmann (1971), and subsequently Mary Louise Prat (1977), 
conceive of literature as mietic of real speech acts. Although these conceptions are 
interesting, they fail to provide the ?definition of literature? or ?theory of literary 
discourse? that the titles of Ohmann and Prat?s works promise, largely because of the 
inadequacy of speech act theory to any such task. Ohmann, for example, suggests that ?a 
literary work purportedly imitates.. a series of speech acts, which in fact have no other 
existence?, and that ?[b]y doing so, it leads the reader to imagine a speaker, a situation, a 
set of ancilary events, and so on.? (1971:14) But does the poem to which Austin aludes 
lead the reader to imagine a speaker who seriously addreses the eagle of liberty? I think 
not. And very often, it is dificult to imagine any form of speech act that a literary work 
might be imitating. Prat (1977) proposes a new spech act for this very purpose: the 
?writen narative display text?, her sole example of a real one being Truman Capote?s In 
Cold Blood. This enables her to define novels as ?(imitation) writen narative display 
texts? (207). Thus, a novel is an imitation of the real narative display text that would be 
writen in a world where the events of the novel were not fictional but true. However 
this solution relies upon the asumption that a narative must narate real events if it is to 
be a real narative. Without this arbitrary rule, there is no sense in which the novel as 
such is an imitation of anything (even of something imaginary).
78
 This is not to deny the 
importance of imitation to novelistic texts: dialogue may be mietic of real speech, for 
                                                
78
 There are, of course, particular novels writen in this way, such as Margaret Atwod?s The 
Handmaid?s Tale, which imitates a historical document produced in an imaginary future reality. But 
this is a specific case of literary style, and not a general rule for literature or even fiction as a whole ? 
and the work imitated does not have to be factual. Norman Spinrad?s The Iron Dream, for example, 
imitates a work of fiction writen in an imaginary past reality. 
  198/379   
example, and a novel may imitate other novels, pastiche other forms of text, and 
incorporate elements of ?skaz? into the naration in order to suggest (through limited and 
conventionalized imitation of spoken language) that it records an oral narative. 
However, as Culler (1988:214) argues, even ?in the case of novels with distinctive first 
person narators ? the case for which the theory [of literary text as imitation speech act] 
is explicitly designed ? one often finds not an imitation of a real world speech act but a 
quite fantastic speech situation and mode of utterance.?
79
 The obvious solution to this 
particular problem is to se literary texts not as imitation speech acts but as real ones, 
which Culler does when he argues that any writen narative display text is a real one 
(1988:211). But this leaves speech act theory with nothing to say about literature, other 
than that it is a special case.
80
 
The third major problem with Austin?s formulation, as sen from a literary point of 
view, is that it has been taken to imply that the isuing of a literary work is a speech act 
without efects. Literary studies is commited to literature as aesthetic experience (recal 
                                                
79
 The problem here is not so much that the naration, taken for spech, would apear ?fantastic? ? 
after al, there is much in literature that apears fantastic ? but that Ohman?s general rule ? that a 
literary work ?leads the reader to imagine a speaker, a situation, a set of ancilary events, and so on? ? 
sems only to aply to the kinds of narative to which Culer refers, and even there, raises questions. 
It is posible that, in those cases, the use of spech act theory might help to explain what about the 
spech situations evoked sems so fantastic. But this would not constitute a theory or definition of 
literature, only the analysis of a particular stylistic efect. 
80
 Whether it is useful for spech act theory is another mater. Searle (1979:63-64) rejects, but does 
not refute, the notion that there is a ?clas of ilocutionary acts? that includes ?writing stories, novels, 
poems, plays, etc?. I wil be proposing (below) an ilocutionary act that to some extent coresponds to 
this, but it bears on a diferent problem than the one that Searle is discusing (ie. the problem of the 
?seriousnes? or ?non-seriousnes? of the ilocutionary acts aparently caried out in writing the 
sentences of a work of literature). 
  199/379   
Olsen?s conception of literary interpretation),
81
 and this has made it sem obvious to 
some theorists that there is, in literature, an atempt to make you do something: when 
one isues a literary work, one atempts to make those who read it undergo the 
experience of interpreting it. Thus, Stanley Fish (1982:706) protests that ?the reading or 
hearing of any play or poem involves the making of judgements, the reaching of 
decisions, the forming of atitudes, the registering of approval and disapproval, the 
feling of empathy or distaste, and a hundred other things that are as much 
perlocutionary efects as the most overt of physical movements.? Petrey (1990:52) 
makes much the same argument, though he identifies the efect as ilocutionary rather 
than perlocutionary: 
Agred that I don?t do what Donne orders when I read his injunction to go and 
catch a faling star or get with child a mandrake root, but why does that mean the 
absence of conventions rather than the presence of the conventions defining 
literary language? Those literary conventions would, say, invite me to interpret 
Donne?s imperative rather than execute it, through social proceses identical in 
kind to those that invite an infantryman to execute a sergeant?s imperative rather 
than interpret it. 
Thus, there are countles works that have been made the object of literary study, many 
of which are very complicated and many of which are very long, but the isuing of each 
of these diverse linguistic formulations was always the same ilocutionary (or 
perlocutionary) act: in isuing a work, an author invites (or induces) everyone who 
comes into contact with that work, everywhere and for al time, to interpret it. To 
incorporate such efects ? occurring as they do not in the context of isuing but in every 
                                                
81
 Se McGan (198:38-39) on the Kantian origins of this comitment. 
  200/379   
single context of reception ? into something as phonocentric as speech act theory, we 
would need to asume that literary works ?move through space and time? not 
? ?speaker?-les and adrese-les? like Fromkin et al?s ?sentence on a slip of paper? 
(above), but followed everywhere by virtual speakers and finding addreses in 
everyone who lays eyes on them. But this extravagance is unnecesary, since Fish and 
Petrey?s arguments realy do no more than to formulate, in the terms of speech act 
theory, the standing asumption in literary studies that works of literature are there to be 
interpreted: it is not the conventions of utterance but the conventions of reception that 
produce such efects, which cannot therefore be explained through speech act theory, at 
least as formulated by Austin and Searle. 
As we shal se, however, speech act theory can help by re-focusing our atention on 
what is more firmly within its scope: the communicative behaviour of real individuals. 
Consider the following example: 
it is possible that when Elizabeth Baret Browning sent or gave ?How do I love 
thee? Let me count the ways? to Robert, she and he both understood the 
discourse to be a standard speech act, with the ilocutionary force of a declaration 
of love. In that case, I would have to say that the discourse was not at that time a 
literary work. Did it then become one when it was shown to other people? When 
it was published? The suggestion that it could so change its status is mildly 
disturbing, but hardly unprecedented... 
.. 
I would be wiling to live with such bizare side-efects of the definition [of 
literary discourse as lacking in real ilocutionary force], for they simply reflect 
  201/379   
the fact that it is the whole context of the whole discourse that establishes its 
literary status. 
Ohmann 1971:15 
Ohmann?s analysis is entirely consistent with speech act theory, and he should find 
nothing ?bizare? in the poem?s change of status. Indeed, in yielding such ?side-efects?, 
speech act theory proves its value to literary studies, underlining the point that 
?[b]ecause literary works are fundamentaly social rather than personal or psychological 
products, they do not even acquire an artistic form of being until their engagement with 
an audience has been determined.? (McGann 1983:43-44) Considered in the abstract, the 
wording of ?How do I love thee? Let me count the ways? is no more a declaration of 
love (nor even a work of literature) than the sentence ?Helo?, considered in the abstract, 
is a greting; only the use of a linguistic form in a context (and never the form itself) can 
be a speech act, and an arangement of words can only be a work of literature if it is 
used as such. 
It would be ?bizare? to deny that Elizabeth Baret Browning could have declared her 
love for Robert by presenting him with a text of that splendid poem ? just as it would be 
?bizare? to deny that anyone else can now declare love for any other individual by 
presenting him or her with another such text. Nonetheles, it is worth reflecting on the 
diference betwen responding to a poem as a token whose isuing from one individual 
to another constituted a declaration of love (as one might perhaps be likely to do on 
finding it copied out by hand into a Valentine?s card), and responding to it as a work of 
literature (as one might perhaps be likely to do on finding it printed in an anthology of 
verse). This is not to say that the two modes of response may not be simultaneously 
engaged in, as when one reads a work of literature in the knowledge that it was writen 
  202/379   
to be presented as a declaration of love ? or reads a text presented as a declaration of 
love with the awarenes that it could also be read as a work of literature, as, in this case, 
Robert Browning evidently did.
82
 But, even in such cases, neither the work not the 
declaration is reducible to the other. A text of the sonnet was isued from a woman to 
her husband; texts of the sonnet exist in collections of verse. In the former ?form of 
being?, the sonnet is known to what Wimsat and Beardsley (1946:477) cal ?personal 
studies? (ie. biography); in the later, to what they cal ?poetic studies? (ie. criticism). 
There is, of course, no uniquely correct response to a work of literature, just as there is 
no uniquely correct response to a declaration of love. Once a work has acquired what 
McGann cals ?an artistic form of being?, there are many ways to acknowledge its status 
as such: aesthetes may read it for pleasure, philistines may snif at it derisively, 
academics and students may make it the object of research (for example, by interpreting 
it), and anyone at al may talk about it. It is such talk (or writing) that this disertation is 
primarily concerned with, and, as we shal se, talking about a work sometimes involves 
describing its writing, publishing, or both as a speech act whose agent is the author. But 
speech act descriptions that fit conversational utterances comfortably sit uneasily with 
literary works. 
To read a poem by a poet who is not an acquaintance is very diferent from 
reading one of his leters. The later is directly inscribed in a communicative 
circuit and depends on external contexts whose relevance we cannot deny even if 
                                                
82
 ?Mr Gose has recorded, upon information imparted to him by Browning eight years before his 
death, how in the spring of 1847, at Pisa, the bundle of manuscript was sliped by the poetes into 
her husband?s hand. The later, imediately conscious of their permanent value, ?dared not,? he said, 
?reserve to himself the finest sonets writen in any language since Shakespeare?s.? Moved by his 
persuasion, Elizabeth consented to their preservation in print.? (Wise 1970[1918]:75) 
  203/379   
we are ignorant of them.. The poem is not related to time in the same way, nor 
has it the same interpersonal status. Although in the act of interpreting it we may 
appeal to external contexts, teling ourselves empirical stories (one morning the 
poet was in bed with his mistres and, when wakened by the sun which told him 
that it was time to be up and about his afairs, he said, ?Busie old foole, unruly 
Sunne..?).. we are aware that such stories are fictional constructs which we 
employ as interpretive devices. 
Culler 1975:164-165 
In such cases, the context, the speaker, the addrese, and the communication itself are 
al imaginary, even if they have a degre of historical or textual grounding: the poet 
Culler half-seriously imagines waking up and saying ?Busie old foole? to the sun is John 
Donne, but this ?empirical story? is not deployed as a hypothesis about the real speech 
behaviour of the historical personage John Donne. For one thing, it would be untestable: 
the closest we could get to a test would be to ask how satisfactory it sems as an 
imaginative reading of the poem, as compared to other imaginative readings. But more 
importantly, there is no need to test it, since we know that poems do not come into being 
like that: that they are not the transcripts of utterances spontaneously produced by their 
authors in the speech situations they sem to imply. There were speech acts, but they 
were not the kind one plays with when interpreting a poem in this manner. Rather, they 
were the speech acts that the participants in Darntonian ?communications circuits? must 
have uttered to one another to bring literary works into being. 
We are moving into the teritory of textual scholars, genetic critics, and book historians, 
because it is the documents with which they deal ? manuscripts, corrected proofs, 
contracts, etc ? whose pasing betwen the people in question wil have constituted 
  204/379   
many of these speech acts. The result of al these speech acts is that a work appears and 
is typicaly atributable to an individual author, and so we might want to postulate a 
notional speech act, authoring: something that a person does not so much do as, through 
the appearance of a work atributable to him or her, come to be regarded as having 
done.
83
 The ilocutionary efects of this act might be compared to those of christening, 
analysed by Austin as follows: ? ?I name this ship the Queen Elizabeth? has the efect of 
naming or christening the ship; then certain subsequent acts such as refering to it as the 
Generalisimo Stalin wil be out of order.? (1962:116) My authoring of a work is what 
establishes the existence (from that time onwards) of the work, and entails that certain 
subsequent acts wil be ?out of order?: for example, speaking or writing a sequence of 
words that was not to be found in any text of my work would not be quoting my work.
84
 
?Authoring? might then be usefully compared with Searle?s clas of ?declarations?, a 
category of ilocutionary act whose ?succesful performance guarantes that the 
propositional content corresponds to the world?, as in the utterance ?your employment is 
                                                
83
 This terminology of authoring as ?notional? spech act, of ?works?, and of the ?apearance? of 
works, should not be taken to imply the unreality of writing, of texts, and of publishing. It is rather 
employed to avoid the sugestion that these maters can satisfactorily be analysed in purely material 
terms, or purely in terms of the spech acts of proposing and acepting manuscripts for publication, 
requesting and making revisions to those manuscripts, etc. 
84
 Cf.: ?This arangement of thirty-four words [Wiliam Blake?s ?The Sick Rose?].. constitutes a 
linguistic text that is diferent from every other linguistic text, which is only to say that these words 
in this order wil always constitute this poem.? (Atridge 204:65) Thre things should be noted: first, 
that, from the viewpoint laid out in this chapter, we would rather say that these words writen or 
printed in this order wil always constitute a text of this poem; second, that other arangements of 
words can also potentialy constitute texts of this poem (for al that they may be considered 
?corupt?); and third, that these things can only have ben the case since the poem was authored ? 
whenever we consider that event to have ocured. 
  205/379   
(hereby) terminated? (Searle 1969:17): the act of authoring guarantes correspondence 
(and not, I note, identity) betwen the authorised text and the authored work. A further 
point of comparison exists betwen the conditions necesary for declarations and those 
necesary for authoring. As Searle argues, to make a declaration that concerns anything 
other than language, the utterer must occupy a special place within an ?extra-linguistic 
institution? (18): ?It is only given such institutions as the church, the law, private 
property, the state, and a special position of the speaker and hearer within these 
institutions, that one can excommunicate, appoint, give and bequeath one?s possesions, 
or declare war.? (ibid.) This can clearly be compared to the conditions necesary for 
authoring: 
Literary work can be practised, can constitute itself, only in and through various 
institutional forms which are not themselves ?literary? at al, though they are 
meaning-constitutive. The most important of these institutions, for the past 150 
years anyway, are the commercial publishing network in al its complex parts, 
and the academy. The church and the court have, in the past, also served crucial 
mediating functions for writers. 
McGann 1988:117 
The most important point to recognize from this is that, though discussion of this sort 
might encourage us to talk about how writing and publishing have operated at diferent 
times, or about how particular works came to be writen and published ? which are, of 
course, tremendously interesting topics ? it wil not permit us to engage in the sort of 
study that Olsen (2004) describes as ?literary interpretation?, because it wil show us the 
work not as an experience but as what McGann cals the ?residual form? of an ?action? 
(1988:55). Although the action to which McGann refers wil have been communicative 
  206/379   
(in that it wil have involved the pasing of mesages betwen various people), the 
residue ? the authored work ? is not (in that it is not itself a mesage, even though its 
texts may ? as we have sen ? be employed as mesages). In short (and pace Culler 
[2000]): when it turns to works of literature, speech act theory shows us not language 
that does something, but language that somebody did something with. It is, in other 
words, best suited for employment in something closely related to what Olsen (2004) 
cals ?historical interpretation?. 
When one authors a work, one authors a work of a particular character (as discussed in 
Subsection 2.4.2: avant-garde novel, lampoon, etc), and, just as analysis may tease this 
out, so may it tease out what has semed to be its character in contexts other than that in 
which it was authored: for example, in other regions, or other eras, or to readers with 
cultural literacies diferent from those of the author and his or her peers. As the character 
of the work changes, so wil that of the act presumed to have produced it. But the work 
that is ?considered by some to be an extended exploration of the theme of cultural 
alienation, and by others to be an atheistic and blasphemous atack on a major world 
religion.. and its holy Founder? (Neton 1996:134) was not authored twice: there were 
not two speech acts, one for each group of readers? benefit, but two recognitions, one by 
each group, of the character of the single work that was authored, each recognition 
acording diferent succes/failure conditions to the same work, and each thereby 
acording diferent intentions to the individual who caried out the act of its authoring. 
These recognitions occur in acts of reading, and the history of a work is a history of such 
events, as much as of those of writing and publishing (the bulk of Karen Armstrong?s 
[2007] ?biography? of the Bible, for example, concerns the uses to which this work has 
been put, rather than the composition or editing of its various texts). The communicative 
  207/379   
acts of a book?s readers may be subjected to speech act analysis in much the same way 
as the communicative acts that constituted that book?s Darntonian ?life cycle?: recal 
Scollon?s discussion of news media texts in terms of the social interactions through 
which they are produced and the social interactions in which they are used. This makes 
it important to analyse, not only the speech acts of authors, publishers, etc, but also those 
of the people who read the books produced, or who do not read them but nonetheles 
discourse upon them in their own communities of practice. Moreover ? and this is one of 
the asumptions behind Section 2.6 ? in the course of reconstructing these many speech 
acts, it may be helpful to reconstruct the reader-addresed speech acts a work has been 
(mis)taken for by its interpreters. But before we can do this, we wil have to depart from 
speech act theory proper to the mesier ?folk-categorizations? employed in non-academic 
discourse on literature. 
2.5.2 Literary works and speech-like actions 
Lena Jayyusi, from whom we last heard in Section 2.4, argues that any action can be 
given a ?second-order moral action description? in discourse: ?such an ordinary act as 
?turning on the light? can be constituted as ?harasment?, ?escalating a quarel?, or simply 
?doing something mean?, given the appropriate context.? (1993:442) By the same token, 
any speech act can be provided with just such a second-order description: such an 
ordinary utterance as ?I like your dres? can be constituted as ?a compliment?, ?flatery?, 
or indeed ?harasment?, and conversational debates over such descriptions (?I was only 
trying to give her a compliment!?) may be considered a sort of ?folk? version of speech 
act analysis. Literary works, too, can be constituted, asesed, and described in the same 
way ? which is to say, in terms developed for the second-order moral action description 
of speech ? although any atempt to impose such a description as ?flatery? or 
  208/379   
?harasment? on the complex structure of a novel, play, or poem, is unlikely to withstand 
close scrutiny: while an utterance spoken in conversation may fit a number of such 
descriptions equaly wel, works of drama, fiction, or verse are likely to fit them al 
equaly poorly, exceding (and yet faling short of) every single one. As we shal se, 
however, this does not stop people from trying to make them fit, and controversy over 
literary works can thus find expresion in iresolvable arguments as to which speech-like 
action description to (mis)apply. 
A theoretical problem identified by Searle (1979:74-75) is that, though ?[l]iterary critics 
have explained on an ad hoc and particularistic basis? how specific, individual works 
have caried the ilocutionary force that their interpretations identify them with, it has so 
far proved impossible to explain the general ?mechanisms? by which this operates 
(Searle 1979:74-75). Recal Northrop Frye?s asertion that poems are ?as silent as 
statues?: I would suggest that what happens in the cases that as Searle mentions is that 
criticism, able to talk, makes literature appear to say things by quoting or paraphrasing 
it in a manner that sems to resemble comunicative spech. This is the closest that 
literary works can get to the ordinary communications that they obviously are not 
(Culer 1975:134), and it is what we shal se in action in the folowing section. 
2.6. Analysis: The reception of The Satanic Verses as a 
comunication from its author 
In the following extracts from the early stages of the controversy over The Satanic 
Verses, intention, foreknowledge, and outcomes, along with various speech action and 
speech-like action descriptions, are used in the performance of real communicative acts 
  209/379   
by public commentators.
85
 Analysis of these extracts shows how works of literature in 
general ? and this one in particular ? are given a (typicaly very straightforward) pseudo-
interpersonal moral character in the course of the (at times highly politicized) public 
debates that coalesce around them. For the sake of providing a coherent corpus, the 
extracts chosen are al broadly critical of the people responsible for the publication of 
The Satanic Verses, but no implication is made that the statements of Rushdie and his 
supporters are les open to analysis of this kind; indeed, comments from Rushdie 
himself are appended for comparison. Each extract is followed, first by a list of 
intentions, knowledge, speech-like actions, speech actions, and outcomes explicitly 
atributed to the people and institutions involved, and second by a discussion of these 
atributions and their rhetorical function. 
In the first atack, Mohamed Siddique, a representative of the Bradford Council for 
Mosques (the organization most strongly asociated with the first UK protests against 
the book) writes a guest feature for a local newspaper: 
He has made history ? by abusing his rights to fredom of speech and expresion, 
he wrote a book, which sent him into hiding. 
In his Satanic Verses, he mocked the character and personality of the Prophet of 
Islam (by caling him the Devil?s synonym ?Mahound?), insulted the wives and 
Companions of the Prophet (by caling them ?prostitutes? and ?bums and scums? 
                                                
85
 In this section, I wil use ?spech action? rather than ?spech act?, to reflect the fact that I am no 
longer dealing with spech act theory but with the ways in which ?ordinary language verbs carve the 
conceptual field of ilocutions? (Searle 1979:ix). ?Spech-like actions? wil be used where a work of 
literature is described; ?spech action?, where spoken or writen comunications are described. 
  210/379   
repectively), and made ridiculous alegations that the Quran contains revelations 
inspired by the Devil. 
Muslims al over the world are ofended and hurt by such lies, and are protesting 
against the supposedly ?fictional? novel, on the grounds that it is blasphemous 
and should be withdrawn for the sake of maintaining world peace. 
The publishers paid more than ?850,000 to Salman Rushdie, and asked him to 
write the controversial Satanic Verses. The Viking-Penguin staf warned the 
senior management that if the book was published, there could be a serious 
escalation of violence. 
Muslim leaders, too, pleaded with the publishers and the Government to stop the 
publication, but both defended Salman Rushdie?s rights to fredom of speech and 
expresion. Also, the Government sent Ministers to key cities to tel the Muslim 
communities: ?You can march, you can shout, and you can protest, but you must 
not break the law ? the law il protect Salman Rushdie and his publishers.? 
Consequently, several protest marches followed, in the Muslim world as wel as 
in several European countries, which culminated in 22 deaths during clashes 
betwen the police and protesters. 
Siddique 1989:6 
Speech-like actions (Rushdie?s): mockery, insult, alegation 
Speech actions (of publishers): ask Rushdie to write The Satanic 
Verses 
  211/379   
Speech action (of Viking-Penguin staf): warn management of 
escalation of violence 
Speech actions (of Muslim leaders): plead for publication to be 
stopped 
Speech action (of publishers and the British Government): defend 
Rushdie?s rights 
Knowledge (Viking-Penguin senior management): had been warned 
of the likely outcome 
Outcomes (of the acts of Rushdie, his publishers, and the British 
Government): Rushdie sent into hiding; Muslims are offended and 
hurt; there are protest marches, clashes, and deaths 
Siddique atributes several negative outcomes to the publishing of The Satanic Verses, 
and asigns responsibility for these to thre diferent agents: Rushdie for writing it, his 
publishers for (a) commisioning it, (b) defending Rushdie?s rights, and (c) going ahead 
with the publication, and the British government for (a) not banning the book, (b) 
defending Rushdie?s rights, and (c) promising legal protection to the other two agents. 
The force of Siddique?s polemic is clear: from the deaths to the felings of offence and 
hurt, al of the negative outcomes listed were caused by the aforementioned agents and 
no others. The ascription of blame not only to Rushdie and his publishers, but also to the 
British government, was a familiar theme in Iranian rhetoric at the time.
86
 Most 
                                                
86
 This, however, tok a more paranoid tone. As Pipes ironicaly puts it, ?[n]ot for a minute were the 
Iranian authorities foled by the story put out that this bok had ben writen by a single author 
pursuing the whimsies of his own imagination.? (203[190]:126) 
  212/379   
strikingly, Rushdie was sent into hiding not by the people who threatened his life, but by 
himself, through the performance of the speech-like actions of mockery, insult, and 
alegation that, in this version of events, constitute the writing and publication of The 
Satanic Verses. 
It should be noted that Siddique plays fast and loose with the facts, both historical and 
textual. The Satanic Verses was not commisioned, there was no campaign against it 
prior to its publication, and the ministerial visits to which Siddique aludes cannot 
therefore have taken place.
87
 The supposed ?revelations inspired by the Devil? do not 
become part of the Qur?an, as represented in the novel, in which it is, for that mater, far 
from clear that they are to be understood as satanic in origin. Moreover, neither Rushdie, 
nor any of the voices in his novel cals the wives of the Prophet ?prostitutes?; rather, a 
character in the novel re-names a group of prostitutes after the Prophet?s wives.
8
 
                                                
87
 It is harder to find references to a non-ocurence than to an ocurence, and Sidique?s vaguenes 
(?Muslim leaders?, ?Ministers?, ?key cities?) makes it doubly hard to establish with certainty that this 
part of his acount is spurious. Nonetheles, histories of the Muslim response to The Satanic Verses 
(eg. Pipes 203[190]:19-37, Neton 196:19-21) identify the British campaign as having begun in 
October 198, ie. in the month folowing publication. 
8
 On the suposedly ?satanic? verses: ?These verses are banished from the true recitation, al-qur?an. 
New verses are thundered in their place.? (Rushdie 198:124) The verses, moreover, apear ? like 
the ones that replace them ? to have ben spoken not by the Devil but by the ?angel? Gibrel, though 
the question of who inspired Gibrel to speak is ambiguous: ?Gibrel, hovering-watching from his 
highest camera angle, knows one smal detail, just one tiny thing that?s a bit of a problem here, 
namely that it was me both times, baba, me first and second also me. From y mouth, both the 
statement and the repudiation, verses and converses, universes and reverses, the whole thing, and we 
al know how my mouth got worked.? (123) On the naming of the prostitutes: ?How many wives? 
Twelve, and one old lady, long dead. How many whores behind The Curtain? Twelve again; and, 
  213/379   
The following is an extract from a monograph by Shabbir Akhtar, an Islamic scholar 
who was, at his time of writing, also a member of the Bradford Council for Mosques. It 
provides an interesting comparison, since it is focused on Rushdie?s intentions and 
makes none of Siddique?s factual erors. 
The life of the Arabian Prophet is of great interest to many thinkers and 
historians.. It is also valid teritory for imaginative reconstruction.. But neither 
historical nor fictional exploration of his biography can, with impunity, lapse into 
abuse and slander. Rushdie relishes scandalous suggestion and pejorative 
language. His acount is uniformly self-indulgent, calculated to shock and 
humiliate Muslim sensibilities. It is unwise to ignore the role of provocation and 
polemic in exciting hatred and anger to the point of physical confrontation. 
Akhtar 1989:12 
Speech-like actions (Rushdie?s): abuse (in the sense of ?insult?), 
slander, suggestion (in the sense of ?insinuation?), provocation, 
polemic 
Intentions (Rushdie?s): shock and humiliate Muslim sensibilities 
Outcomes (of Rushdie?s actions): hatred and anger, physical 
confrontation 
This acount is (especialy with regard to the speech-like actions in terms of which The 
Satanic Verses is described) substantialy similar to the first, except that, where Siddique 
suggests that the intention that set the train of events in motion was the publishers?, and 
                                                                                                                                    
secret on her black-tented throne, the ancient Madam, stil defying death.. Bal told the Madam of 
his idea; she setled maters in her voice of a laryngitic frog.? (380) 
  214/379   
that Rushdie, motivated by financial gain, was only the instrument of that intention, 
Akhtar insists that Rushdie calculated the book to hurt Muslims, implying not only 
intention but also a degre of foreknowledge on Rushdie?s part.
89
 Physical confrontation 
occurred because hatred and anger had been excited by provocation and polemic, ie. by 
Rushdie?s planned infliction of shock and humiliation. Indeed, Akhtar?s blandly mater-
of-fact description, on the same page, of a murder that took place many years earlier in 
Lahore, reinforces the idea that the ilocutionary act of slandering Muhamad is 
invariably the perlocutionary act of causing a Muslim to asasinate the slanderer: like 
Siddique, Akhtar acords agency (and therefore moral responsibility) only to the 
slanderer. 
An intriguingly similar strategy is pursued in the following acount, writen by a British 
convert to Islam, Yakub Zaki. This was published in that most Establishment of British 
newspapers, The Times, its author?s intelectual credentials established by the 
acompanying description of him as ?a visiting profesor at Harvard University?: 
Perhaps more nonsense has been uttered on the subject of Islam in the last wek 
or so than at any time since the Middle Ages. The ravings of the popular pres 
may be discounted, but when the Independent says that Khomeini?s verdict on 
Salman Rushdie is aceptable only to the 10 per cent (realy 12 per cent) of the 
Muslims in the world who are Shi?ite, it is time for scholarship to enter the fray. 
                                                
89
 Compare the Ayatolah Khomeini?s pronouncement: ?The Satanic Verses.. is a calculated move 
aimed at roting out religion and religiousnes, and above al, Islam and its clergy? (al-Khomeini 
1989:90, emphasis aded). Mercenary motives are ascribed in Akhtar?s asertion that ?Rushdie?s 
bok was writen for instant fame and easy money.? (1989:135) No contradiction is involved if it 
may be asumed that fame and fortune predictably result from sucesful humiliations of Muslims. 
  215/379   
.. 
To the medieval mind.. Islam was nothing les than a satanic conspiracy and the 
Koran a satanic fabrication. Satan had pulled of the greatest religious fraud of 
al time, producing a scripture purporting to come from God while al the time 
being the work of the Devil. Only satanic intervention in world history could 
explain Islam?s phenomenal succes. 
Rushdie?s use of the name of the devil responsible for the fraud is intended to 
indicate that the whole Koran is fraudulent and Muhamad a mean impostor: not 
a question of the two verses spotted as such but al the 6236 verses making up 
the entire book. In other words, the title is a double entendre. 
.. 
On the penalty for apostasy, there is complete unanimity betwen al five schools 
of law in Islam (four in Sunnism, one in Shi?ism).. 
Imam Khomeini, simply by articulating what every Muslim fels in his heart, has 
recouped at one stroke everything lost in the war with Iraq and emerged as the 
undisputed moral leader of the world?s one bilion Muslims. Meanwhile, the 
silence from such Islamic capitals as Riyadh, Cairo, and Islamabad is deafening. 
Zaki 1989:14 
Intention (Rushdie?s): indicate Koran fraudulent and Muhamad an 
impostor 
Speech action (Khomeini?s): articulate what every Muslim fels in his 
heart 
  216/379   
Outcome (of the above acts): Khomeini is moral leader of al 
Muslims 
This article presents Khomeini?s ?verdict? as an inevitability, given the content of The 
Satanic Verses. It acords Khomeini a speech action, but makes this no more nor les 
than the act of articulating what al Muslims know to be the case: thus, Khomeini has no 
moral responsibility for Rushdie?s fate, since he did no more than speak the obvious 
truth ? and yet because, in speaking it, he was the only Islamic authority to state what 
?every Muslim? already knows, he thereby established for himself a moral authority that 
transcends the Shi?a / Sunni divide.
90
 
As a response to The Satanic Verses, this has a certain superficial resemblance to a work 
of academic literary criticism, in that the interpretation (expresed in the form of a claim 
as to Rushdie?s intentions in writing) is anchored both in a linguistic feature of The 
Satanic Verses (ie. the name ?Mahound?) and in an asembled mas of contextual 
information. It should be noted, however, that this is a very great weight to place on a 
single piece of textual evidence, and that a diferent interpretation of the name is 
explicitly stated by the omniscient narator of the novel.
91
 Zaki does not atempt to argue 
                                                
90
 That this was a fantasy of Zaki?s should hardly be doubted. Husain (202:17) cites the idea ?that 
somehow Khomeini spoke for al Muslims? as a point of concern for many Muslims at the time. 
Zaki?s invocation of ?complete unanimity betwen al five schols of law in Islam? is also highly 
misleading, since it implies that Khomeini?s pronouncement was in acordance with Islamic law, 
when (as we have sen in Chapter 1) it was not. 
91
 ?Here he is neither Mahomet nor MoeHamered; has adopted, instead, the demon-tag the farangis 
hung around his neck. To turn insults into strengths, whigs, tories, Blacks al chose to wear with 
pride the names they were given in scorn; likewise, our mountain-climbing, prophet-motivated 
solitary is to be the medieval baby-frightener, the Devil?s synonym: Mahound.? (Rushdie 198:93) 
  217/379   
against this alternative interpretation. Indeed, since his article is not a work of 
?scholarship?, he does not realy have to; addresing a general audience proportionaly 
few of whose members are likely to have read The Satanic Verses, he can quote as 
selectively as he pleases. Perhaps the most interesting thing about this piece is that, 
although Zaki uses The Satanic Verses to make his case ? it is because this novel shows 
that its author is an apostate that ?every Muslim fels in his heart? that Rushdie should 
die ? his main purpose is clearly to praise the Ayatollah: the article announces itself as 
having been occasioned by a slight on the later?s authority, and it concludes with scorn 
for Sunni leaders and hyperbolic aggrandizement of Khomeini himself. 
The next acount, writen by a right-wing British historian, Hugh Trevor-Roper, and 
also published in a national newspaper, recognizes both Rushdie and Khomeini as 
agents, and atacks both of them: 
I wonder how Salman Rushdie is faring these days, under the benevolent 
protection of British law and the British police, about whom he has been so rude. 
Not too comfortably, I hope. Of course, we must protect him against holy 
murder, and in general I admit to some sympathy for heretics; but I cannot 
extend it to him. After al, he is wel versed in Islamic ideas: he knew hat he 
was doing, and could forese the consequences. 
If an expert entomologist deliberately pokes a stick into a hornet?s nest, he has 
only himself to blame for the result.. 
.. 
                                                                                                                                    
The theme of being negatively labeled by Westerners and of rebeliously apropriating the label 
recurs in the primary narative: Saladin Chamcha is transformed into a devil by British racism, and 
British Asian youths begin to wear devil horns as a stret fashion. 
  218/379   
I would not shed a tear if some British Muslims, deploring his manners, should 
waylay him in a dark stret and sek to improve them. If that should cause him 
thereafter to control his pen, society would benefit and literature would not 
suffer. If caught, his corectors might, of course, be found guilty of asault; but 
they could then plead gross provocation and might merely, if juvenile, be bound 
over. Our prisons are, after al, overcrowded. This would sem ore satisfactory, 
in the long run, than extending the law against blasphemy. 
If only it had not been for the Ayatollah in Iran!.. Once the late Ayatollah, for 
his own internal political purposes.. had caled on the faithful to despatch the 
heretic, the whole situation was transformed. 
Trevor-Roper 1989:14 
Speech-like action (Rushdie?s): provocation 
Knowledge (Rushdie?s): could forese the consequences 
Speech action (Khomeini?s): cal for Rushdie?s murder 
Outcome of the above acts: Rushdie needs protection from murder 
The first point to note here is the way in which Rushdie?s knowledge of ?Islamic ideas? 
is used to establish his moral responsibility for his own sufferings (?he has only himself 
to blame?). This was a common theme in non-Muslim criticism of Rushdie (an almost 
identical argument was, for example, made by the popular children?s author Roald Dahl 
in a leter to the Times [Dahl 1989:15]), as was the insinuation that the protection of 
Rushdie by the British police in some way refuted Rushdie?s expresed views of Britain 
  219/379   
and the West (?benevolent protection.. been so rude?).
92
 Muslims are, in Trevor-Roper?s 
version of events, only hornets into whose nest a stick has been poked (a familiar 
metaphor for needles provocation, and one that distinctly implies mindlesnes on the 
part of the provoked), and Trevor-Roper even suggests that this viewpoint should be 
adopted by a court of law, in the event of Rushdie?s being physicaly asaulted (?they 
could then plead gross provocation and.. [o]ur prisons are, after al, overcrowded?). The 
Ayatollah Khomeini is acorded responsibility for making the situation worse, and for 
doing so hypocriticaly, ie. not because he was provoked, but ?for his own internal 
political purposes?. Interestingly, Trevor-Roper implies that the main cause for regret 
(?If only it had not been..!?) is that, in caling for Rushdie?s murder, Khomeini has 
obliged the British state to protect Rushdie, and thus prevented the later?s would-be 
                                                
92
 Rushdie responded to the ?he knew hat he was doing? argument by chalenging those who 
endorsed it to aply its underlying axiom to any other case but his own: ?when Osip Mandelstam 
wrote his poem against Stalin, did he ?know hat he was doing? and so deserve his death??, etc 
(Rushdie 191a[190]:407). Pipes (203[190]:70-93) takes the argument literaly, and finds it to be 
without basis: there are long histories of apostasy and blasphemy in the Muslim world, but the 
response to The Satanic Verses was absolutely unprecedented and could not, therefore, have ben 
foresen by anyone, including Rushdie. On the irony of Rushdie?s predicament, however, Pipes takes 
the conservative, pro-Western line sugested by Trevor-Roper: ?Wil he regret having reviled Mrs 
Thatcher after her government stod by him in his hour of ned? In the final analysis, Rushdie can 
only make a home in the West.? (Pipes 203[190]:49-50) Seing in Rushdie?s satirical atacks on 
the governments of India, Pakistan, and Britain, on American foreign policy, and on Islamic 
fundamentalism only the disafection of ?an imature and spoiled intelectual? (49; the contrast with 
the Western response to Soviet disidents is striking [se Al-?Azm 194]), Pipes thus ignores the 
posibility that such a recantation might be given the second-order moral action description of 
hypocritical toadying. Such a description is implied, for example, by Gopal?s claim that Rushdie?s 
aceptance of a knighthod from a later British government confirmed ?[t]he mutation of this 
relevant and stentorian writer into a palid chorister? (207:3). 
  220/379   
?correctors? from giving him the beating that might otherwise have semed such a 
?satisfactory? resolution to the controversy. 
The following acount by political writer Richard Webster appeared in The Bookseler 
in 1992 (the year of the long-delayed British paperback edition of The Satanic Verses), 
updating a book-length version published shortly after the two above-quoted acounts 
(Webster 1990). It is critical of Rushdie, but neither acuses him of malintentions nor 
acords him sole responsibility for his predicament: 
Today, more than thre years after Khomeini pronounced his tyrannical fatwa, it 
is possible to se what the consequences of Penguin?s decision to publish 
Rushdie?s novel actualy were. The Rushdie afair has led directly to 
demonstrations, riots, murder threats, and the death of more than 30 people; it 
has also resulted in the destruction of international goodwil on a huge scale and 
caused incalculable damage to race relations throughout Europe. 
Perhaps most tragicaly of al, The Satanic Verses has had the opposite efect on 
the worldwide Muslim community from that which was apparently intended by 
its author. For instead of undermining the cruel and murderous rigidity which is 
so clearly a part of some forms of Islamic fundamentalism, the publication of the 
novel has strengthened the hand of extremists in countles Muslim communities 
? especialy in Britain. As Mahmood Jamal has writen, Salman Rushdie, by 
choosing to atack Islamic rigidity in the way he did, ?galvanized al Muslim 
opinion behind the bigots, hence furthering the cause of revivalists and 
fundamentalist forces within Islam?. 
  221/379   
It is dificult not to come to the conclusion that Rushdie badly misjudged the 
mood of British Muslims and failed to understand the full complexities of the 
situation he had placed himself in by writing as he did. 
To say this is not to sek to shift the blame for the Rushdie afair from religious 
zealots entirely onto the shoulders of Salman Rushdie and his supporters. 
Webster 1992:99-100 
Speech-like action (Rushdie?s): atack on Islamic rigidity 
Intention (Rushdie?s): undermine the cruel and murderous rigidity of 
some forms of Islamic fundamentalism 
Knowledge, or rather, lack thereof (Rushdie?s): bad misjudgement, 
failure to understand 
Outcome (of the above acts): strengthening the hand of extremists 
Interestingly, Webster clasifies the most violent outcomes as consequences not of 
Rushdie?s writing The Satanic Verses but of ?the Rushdie afair?. This phrase may be 
taken to refer to the complex interaction betwen the actions not only of Rushdie and of 
Penguin, but also of Rushdie?s ?supporters?, and of Khomeini, whose death sentence for 
Rushdie is denounced as ?tyrannical? and therefore no mere efect of Rushdie?s agentive 
activity. Moreover, the publisher appears to be acorded a more powerful agency and 
greater responsibility than the author, since Webster discusses the decision not to write 
but to publish the book. This implies a multi-agentive view of the production and 
reception of literature that might be thought incompatible with an interpretation of The 
Satanic Verses based on reconstruction of the author?s intentions. However, Webster 
  222/379   
does not decline to supply such an interpretation, suggesting that, to the extent to which 
the fault is Rushdie?s, it is a mater of profesional eror (which can be sen in 
opposition to anything resembling the ?[m]ilitant evil? with which Akhtar [1989:7] 
credits Rushdie): of having intended one outcome but, through misjudgement and 
misunderstanding, having achieved the precise reverse.
93
 Of particular interest is 
Webster?s presupposition that blame would (without this argumentative intervention) be 
placed with Muslim ?religious zealots?. Webster denies that his argument shifts the 
blame entirely from the one to the other, and yet the very denial signals that blame is 
indeed being shifted in this direction, making this acount a criticism of Rushdie ? 
despite the conspicuous spotlesnes of the motives with which it credits him. This 
demonstrates the importance of argumentative context (Bilig 1996[1987]:121) for al 
such acounts: in direct response to Siddique and Akhtar?s contributions, the same 
configuration of intention, knowledge, and outcome would function as a defence of 
Rushdie, since it presents him as innocent of everything that they acuse him of. 
Presented in a book industry trade magazine and therefore to an audience who might be 
asumed likely to fel sympathy with Rushdie and his publishers, it operates very 
diferently.
94
 
Another moderate response asigning responsibility (though not blame) to multiple 
agents is the following statement by the liberal Islamic scholar and community leader, 
                                                
93
 This is a typical example of what Kuorti (197, folowing Hirschman 191) cals the ?perversity 
thesis?: as noted in Chapter 1, a comonly used argument in debates on The Satanic Verses. 
94
 Inded, the main target of Webster?s article is not Rushdie himself but those who defend him in 
the name of Western values in general and fre spech in particular, and, in this, his argument comes 
to resemble portions of Akhtar?s (1989:130-131). The later, however, constructs Rushdie not as ?the 
victim of a cruel injustice? (Webster 192:10), but as a sort of thus-far-unsucesful suicide whose 
impending anihilation wil have involved no agency but his own. 
  223/379   
Zaki Badawi, who combines criticism of Rushdie with criticism of the extremist 
response. His formulation is particularly interesting for its justification of the stance vis-
?-vis Rushdie that he advocates elsewhere in the same national newspaper interview: he 
would be wiling to shelter the apostate from those who would cary out the fatwa. 
The book, which I?ve read from cover to cover, is a confused surrealistic jumble: 
a hurling of insults and mockery rather than a concerted argument or campaign 
against Islam. It does make Islam look ridiculous and les than holy and it 
violates the Prophet?s person. That?s a very deep wound to those who read it ? 
but the remedy was for Muslims not to read it. 
Martin 1989:39 
Speech-like actions (Rushdie?s): insult, mockery, violation of the 
Prophet, making Islam look ridiculous and les than holy 
Outcome (of the above acts): very deep wound to Muslims who read 
it 
These thre sentences set out a complex representation which needs to be unpacked. The 
speech-like actions with which Badawi identifies the book ? ?hurling of insults and 
mockery? etc ? are similar to those of Siddique and Akhtar?s acounts, and elsewhere in 
the same interview, Badawi expreses the pain of reading The Satanic Verses in 
hyperbolic terms (?far worse.. than if he?s raped one?s own daughter.. an asault on 
every Muslim?s inner being.. like a knife being dug into you ? or being raped yourself? 
[ibid.]). However, what distances Badawi?s acount from the other Muslim responses 
quoted here are his claims as to what The Satanic Verses is not: ?a concerted argument 
  224/379   
or campaign against Islam.?
95
 His negative evaluation of the book?s aesthetic qualities (it 
is ?confused? and a ?jumble?) supports this, suggesting that it is too badly writen, too 
much of a mes, to acomplish the kinds of speech-like actions that might require a 
response (let alone a retaliation).
96
 It is painful for a Muslim to read it, but the 
responsibility for the pain is shared by the individual Muslim who chooses to let it be 
inflicted on him or herself: ?to those who read it.. the remedy was for Muslims not to 
read it?. Importantly, Badawi identifies himself as just such a Muslim (?The book, which 
I?ve read from cover to cover?), as indeed he must for his claims to knowledge of the 
text to be credible. 
This acount to some degre resembles Webster?s, since it suggests that Rushdie is 
guilty of profesional failures, although it would appear to rule out any possibility of his 
having had any such noble intentions, since a campaign against Islamic fundamentalism 
would be no more compatible with ?a confused surrealistic jumble? than would a 
                                                
95
 Note that he does not describe it as a failed argument or campaign against Islam. 
96
 Interestingly, in their own textual analyses of The Satanic Verses, Akhtar (1989, pasim) and 
Webster (192:9) both make the same acusation of unclearnes, but without considering this to 
undermine their (radicaly oposing) interpretations of the novel. Akhtar (1989:27) suports his case 
with the asertion that the dream sequences (wherein are to be found the aleged blasphemies) are 
unique in being the only parts of The Satanic Verses to ?retain complexity, motivation, and 
coherence.? This asertion is, however, itself unsuported, and would certainly be rather dificult to 
suport: a picaresque novel, The Satanic Verses is largely composed of fantastical episodes with 
minimal continuity betwen them, so it is easy to se how a reader might find it incoherent or even 
nonsensical as a whole, but the episodes themselves do not divide in any obvious way into those that 
are coherent, complex, and motivated, and those that are not. Webster?s acusation of unclearnes 
relates specificaly to the function of the name ?Mahound?; strangely, he does not discus the 
explanation of its function that is to be found in the novel itself (se Fotnote 91), presumably 
regarding it as inadequate. 
  225/379   
campaign against Islam per se. Indeed, the intention to work against fundamentalist 
Islam is one that Badawi would have sympathized with (se O?Sullivan 2006:31) and 
might therefore have been particularly reluctant to asociate with the hated Rushdie. 
Instead, he presents a response to Rushdie?s work that sems both distinctively liberal 
and distinctively Islamic, and in doing so promotes yet another: leave it alone.
97
 
Again, however, argumentative context is everything. In a BC TV interview five years 
later, Salman Rushdie himself appealed to something very like Badawi?s ?remedy?, 
although with the very diferent purpose of insinuating that the degre of offence it had 
caused had been overstated. As he argued, ?a lot of the people it has alegedly offended 
are people who haven?t read it. It?s very easy not to be offended by a book. Al you have 
to do is shut it.? (Isacs 2001[1994]:157-158) Badawi would not, of course, have wanted 
to endorse Rushdie?s atempt to downplay the negative outcomes of his work (?alegedly 
offended? is belitling to anyone who has felt ofended by the book), but it relies upon 
the same atribution of agency to the individual reader and on the same theory that a 
closed book has no power to hurt anyone.
98
 Rushdie?s claims with regard to his own 
intentions are also very interesting: 
                                                
97
 Initial hyperbole aside, Badawi presents a detailed argument to the efect that Rushdie must not be 
kiled, and the interview concludes with his expresing a great deal of sympathy for the author, 
whom he describes as ?a tortured soul, whose los of faith apears to have stemed in part from the 
disgust he felt at some Islamic rulers? (ibid.). 
98
 Pipes (203[190]:15-18) provides a convincing explanation of why this was not the case: the 
word ?verses? was rendered into Arabic and other major languages of the Muslim world as ?ayat?, 
which specificaly means Qur?anic verses. Thus, the title of Rushdie?s novel ? which was visible to 
those who did not open the bok, and audible to those who could not read ? was widely taken to 
mean ?The Satanic Qur?an?. 
  226/379   
For over two years, I have been trying to explain that The Satanic Verses was 
never intended as an insult; that the story of Gibrel is a parable of how a man 
can be destroyed by the loss of faith; that the dreams in which al the so-caled 
?insults? occur are portraits of his disintegration, and explicitly refered to in the 
novel as punishments and retributions; and that the dream figures who torment 
him with their asaults on religion are representative of this proces of ruination, 
and not representative of the point of view of the author. 
Rushdie 1991[1990]:431 
As in the many atributions of intention to Rushdie by others (above), this self-
atribution (?never intended as an insult?) supports a particular understanding of the 
moral nature of The Satanic Verses (and therefore of the various responses to it), and has 
implications for the author?s moral responsibility for the events folowing its 
publication: if he did not intend the book as an insult, then he is not responsible for 
anyone?s feling insulted by it. And, like Siddique and Zaki?s atributions, it is in turn 
supported by a somewhat questionable reading of the book?s content.
9
 In one important 
respect, however, this acount is very diferent from the others: it identifies The Satanic 
Verses as a work produced with specificaly literary ilocutionary intentions: to 
parabolize, to portray, and to represent. 
                                                
9
 ?Portraits of his disintegration?, etc, is highly reductive as a reading because it ignores the many 
alusions to Islamic history which are to be found in these sequences (se eg. Neton 196:2-40, 
Husain 202:6-9). That Rushdie should want to deploy such a reading in a reconciliatory article 
entitled ?Why I have embraced Islam? is hardly surprising; inded, his phrases ?destroyed by the los 
of faith? and ?torment him with their asaults on religion? are strongly redolent of Badawi?s 
reconciliatory coments (se Fotnote 97). 
  227/379   
2.7. Concluding note 
There is currently great interest in the reading practices of the ?ordinary? (ie. non-
academic) reader (eg. Long 2003, Crone 2008), and of how to interpret evidence of such 
practices (one major conference in 2008 is entirely devoted to this specific isue). 
Interest in reception study is similarly strong, and crosses disciplinary boundaries (as in 
Machor and Goldstein 2001, Staiger 2005, Long 2007). Given such a situation, atempts 
to theorize forms of discourse on literature, and the forms of discourse as which 
literature has been taken, would sem timely. This chapter?s atempts to theorize the 
discursive activity that is the production of literature have been limited to asides, but 
wil hopefully clarify maters by eliminating confusions that arise when theorists do 
what readers al-too-easily do, and begin to discuss literature as if it were spoken 
communication from those who write to those who read. 
If this approach appears to shift the focus away from the silent, solitary decipherer of 
texts as the object of reader and reception study, then that in itself may be something to 
recommend it (se McGann 1991:5, Long 1992). And if, in its focus on public punditry, 
the analysis performed has alowed non-readers of a work to compete with readers, then 
this too may be no bad thing: to focus exclusively on the pronouncements of those who 
read books carefully would entirely misrepresent the place of literature in the 
contemporary world; indeed, as so many comments on The Satanic Verses suggest, non-
readers and the non-reading of works are at least as important as readers and reading and 
as much in need of theorization.
10
 To say ?I have not read it, nor do I intend to? (as did 
                                                
10
 As Ranasinha (207:46) argues, ?the vocal ?non-readers? who constitute a significant interpretive 
comunity remain routinely sidelined in literary and sociological discusions of the Rushdie Afair.? 
Se Bayard (208[207]) for a lively theoretical discusion of many forms of non-reading. 
  228/379   
Indian politician Syed Shahabuddin [1989{1988}:47] in his defence of his country?s ban 
on The Satanic Verses) is as much an action as to say ?I?ve studied it in depth and I 
understand the author?s intentions perfectly?, and such denials and disavowals should be 
subjected to rigorous analysis in order to reveal their rhetorical and ideological 
functions: apart from anything else, they are integral to a work?s cultural reception. 
3. Sexual exegesis and the disasociation of ideas: 
representing the intimate textual encounter
101
 
3.1 Introduction 
I would now like to focus on a diferent type of discourse on literary works: 
discourse on their locutionary meaning, where such meaning is presumed obscure. 
This is the type of discourse that Susan Sontag cals ?interpretation? in her clasic 
esay, ?Against interpretation?. ?The task of interpretation?, she writes, ?is virtualy 
one of translation. The interpreter says, Look, don?t you se that X is realy ? or, 
realy means ? A? That Y is realy B? That Z is realy C?? (1994[1963]:5) 
Discourse of this type has been discussed in both the previous chapters, although at 
times in what some (I hope not too many) readers might consider to have been a 
rather disparaging tone: it is the species of discourse engaged in by practitioners of 
post-New Critical literary studies, and the practice of post-New Critical literary 
studies is one of the things to which I have at certain points ventured to raise 
objections.
102
 But (as Sontag?s esay makes clear) the New Critics and their 
                                                
101
 This chapter is adapted and expanded from Alington (207a). 
102
 I have also, as atentive readers may have noticed, ventured at other points to defend it against 
objections. Inded, one such reader considered an argument included in Chapter 2 of this disertation 
  229/379   
succesors have no monopoly on such discourse: they have simply institutionalised 
it in certain ways. In exploring this point, I could continue with The Satanic Verses 
and with published commentary. Joel Kuorti, for example, finds that, in many 
published responses to that work, 
the author is sen, in diferent ways, as the originator of some specific, inherent 
meaning. The position of the reader is understood as that of a cryptologist who 
tries to solve the problem, the enigma, the terifying secret of the text. Thus, 
readers have been able to claim that they are the best readers or interpreters of 
Salman Rushdie and The Satanic Verses, to claim that they know the proper 
reading, the true meaning of the novel. 
1992:148 
However, to so continue would render this disertation vulnerable to a number of 
criticisms that could also be leveled at my earlier studies of interpretative and 
evaluative rhetoric (Alington 2005, 2006). These studies focused on the reception of 
literary works in academic contexts, and so it is perhaps unsurprising that they should 
have found such reception to be saturated with rational argument (although the nature of 
this argument had been, I suggest, rhetoricaly disguised in the readings analysed in the 
first of these two studies): after al, such argumentative rationality has (as we saw in 
Chapter 1) come to be the defining feature of academic literary reading. Although the 
                                                                                                                                    
to be a case of ?loading the dice? in favour of ?anti-historicism, or anti-intentionalism? and to involve 
the implication that there has ben ?a quantum leap from unreason to reason since the New 
Criticism? (Sternberg 208:unpaginated). I mention this in order to sugest that my critique of post-
New Critical literary study may not have ben entirely one-sided, since it parts of it have also (in 
another context) ben read as an excesively biased argument for it. 
  230/379   
chapters preceding and following the current one avoid focus on academic responses to 
The Satanic Verses, the later remains a markedly ?intelectual? and ?literary? work, a 
?dificult? book that, it might be suggested, brings out the scholar in people: the very un-
scholarly responses analysed in the penultimate section of Chapter 2 should to some 
extent lay that suggestion to rest, but it remains necesary to look at the reception of a 
?popular? work. Moreover, it should be noted that the Satanic Verses afair has been 
dominated by male media pundits: as it has been suggested by Deborah Tannen (1998) 
that agonistic argument is a masculine obsesion, it would sem appropriate to examine 
a female-voiced debate, and in particular, one that has largely been caried out far from 
the control of the gatekeepers of print. 
This chapter shal therefore work towards an analysis of responses to Peter Jackson?s 
crowd-pleasing version of that popular work of twentieth century fiction, The Lord of 
the Rings. These responses are drawn from the world wide web, were produced by 
pseudonymous enthusiasts of a textual genre generaly asumed to be of solely female 
interest, and centre around the question of whether two fictional male characters are in 
love. On the way to that analysis, we shal detour through some comparative data: a first 
year English Literature tutorial, where the tutor and al the students but one are female, 
and where the question of homosexuality is also key. 
3.2 Slash, The Lord of the Rings, and A/L 
Prototypicaly, slash fiction is a form of fan fiction (ie. fiction writen by and for fans on 
a not-for-profit basis) that centres around romantic and/or sexual encounters and 
relationships betwen same-sex characters drawn from the mas media. Slash fiction is 
distinguished from camp re-writings of mas media texts by being created primarily by 
and for female fans, and the term is used contrastively with ?het fiction? (romantic or 
  231/379   
erotic fan fiction featuring mixedsex character pairings) and ?gen fiction? (fan fiction 
without romantic or sexual storylines). This definition is problematic, as we can readily 
se from the existence of slash fiction that is not fan fiction (eg. involving pairings of 
historical personages, such as Alexander Hamilton and John Laurens), but it sems les 
so than more specific definitions: I have, for example, avoided the frequently reiterated 
claim that slash is writen by and for heterosexual females, since this is contradicted by 
the self-identification of what appears to be a significant minority of readers and writers 
of slash as lesbian or bisexual. The word ?slash?, which derives from the forward slash 
conventionaly used to conjoin the names of paired characters (e.g. ?Kirk/Spock? or 
?Aragorn/Legolas?, abbreviated to ?K/S? and ?A/L?, respectively), has enjoyed an 
interesting etymological development: it can function as a synonym of ?slash fiction?, 
and also as a verb, refering to the consumption of texts that do not feature overt 
homosexuality (e.g. Star Trek and The Lord of the Rings) as romantic or erotic 
representations of homosexual desire. It has also yielded the noun ?slasher? ? one who 
participates in slash-inflected activities ? and the adjective ?slashy? ? homoerotic. The 
noun ?femslash? designates slash fiction where the primary pairing is female-female, 
which structures such stories as outside the norm, since there is no equivalent marker for 
slash featuring specificaly male-male pairings. The phrase ?real person slash? (RPS) has 
been coined to designate slash fiction that pairs non-fictional mas media personas 
(usualy contemporary celebrities, e.g. Viggo Mortensen and Orlando Bloom), and, 
much as the popularity of slash has required non-slash fan fiction to be reclasified as 
gen fiction or het fiction, the popularity of this new form ay soon require non-RPS 
slash fiction to be re-clasified as ?fictional person slash?. Although slash is regarded 
with horror by many in film and television, this atitude is far from ubiquitous, and it is 
  232/379   
hard to avoid the suspicion that media industry creatives have begun to draw on slash for 
inspiration (as in the BC science fiction series Torchwood). 
Slash occasionaly features in the mainstream edia ? for example, Kity Empire?s 
(2006) misinformed and sensationalist article on RPS ? and the study of it is a growth 
area in academia, with enquiries being published into many aspects of the slash 
phenomenon, from the literary qualities of the stories (Pugh 2004) to what they are 
aleged to reveal about evolutionary psychology (Salmon and Symons 2001); this ever-
gathering wave of publications dates back to the clasic studies of the early 1990s, 
which established slash as an academicaly respectable topic. The reception of mas 
media texts by slashers (and fans more generaly) was theorised as a form of cultural 
resistance by Constance Penley (1991) and Henry Jenkins (1992) in studies whose very 
titles announce their alegiance to Michel de Certeau (1984[1974]), loaded as they were 
with references to his terminology; se also John Fiske?s (1992) use of Piere Bourdieu?s 
(1984[1979]) very diferent theories to achieve an almost identical result (se Chapter 
1). This soon led to acusations that ?an almost uncritical celebration of fans as 
?resisters?? in cultural studies (Barker 1993:180). More recent studies of slash reception 
(for example, Jones 2002 and Woledge 2005) have rejected the paradigm of ?resistance?, 
although they have tended (like the published version of this chapter [Alington 2007a]) 
to avoid any serious investigation of respects in which slash can be reactionary.
103
 
                                                
103
 I have, for example, come acros an 89-part story that features the purchase of very smal children 
as slaves and their subsequent beating and rape/seduction. Such stories are not the norm in any slash 
fandom, but they can be found on major slash archives, and, while they may be described as 
?squicky?, a ?squick? is simply a sexual turn-of, a distaste: it is the same word that a slasher might 
use in explaining why she does not read sex scenes involving men with beards. Perhaps because 
  233/379   
There is in fact a great deal more work to be done on slash fiction, including on the 
reception of the stories themselves, a topic on which I have done some preliminary work 
elsewhere (Alington 2007b). Here, however, I wil be looking at what is probably the 
most obvious question, and the one which preoccupied most of the studies mentioned 
above, ie. the question of how slashers read what they cal the canon: not the canon as 
discussed in Section 1.2, ie. the chronological list of the works supposed to have been 
the best of al that has been writen, but the commercialy-published (usualy televisual) 
works regarded as authoritative in particular slash fandoms (eg. for Kirk/Spock fans, the 
thre Star Trek television series and at least the first six Star Trek films, but not the 
animated series, the spinoff fiction, or anything that has been produced and distributed 
solely within the fandom itself). 
I first came across Lord of the Rings slash while carying out preliminary research for a 
study of the online reception of popular fiction; it caught my atention because, to me, it 
semed to be an extreme interpretation of JR Tolkien?s work, and (as Jonathan Culler 
mischievously remarks) ?like most intelectual activities, interpretation is interesting 
only when it is extreme.? (Culler 1992:110) This is, indeed, how media studies has 
tended to view slash: it is as an example of the unpredictable extremes of interpretation, 
for instance, that Alan McKe aludes to K/S slash with the rhetorical question, ?If you 
wanted to find out what Star Trek viewers thought about the programe, would you 
actualy have thought to ask: ?Have you ever considered that maybe Kirk and Spock 
might be lovers??? (2003:84) What I slowly came to realise as I looked more deeply, 
however, was that this involves several misapprehensions: for one thing, slashers do not 
invariably claim that the homosexual relationships of which they write are ?in? their 
                                                                                                                                    
slashers perceive themselves to be vulnerable to criticism from non-slashers, they would apear to 
have developed a vocabulary in which genuine critique is almost imposible. 
  234/379   
?canonical? texts, and, for another, where they do make this claim, it is often supported 
through the use of very familiar and unextraordinary (which is not at al to say 
uninteresting) interpretative techniques. Both of these points come out in the data 
analysed here, although they have been obscured by studies that presume, with Jenkins, 
that slash fiction ?represents a mode of textual commentary? (1992:202): my decision 
has been to focus (like Woledge 2005) on literal textual commentary produced by 
slashers. 
As Thompson writes, The Lord of the Rings ?is considered one of the main fandoms for 
slash fiction? (2007:178): some Lord of the Rings slash predates the films, ?but the 
appearance of Film 1 [The Lord of the Rings: The Felowship of the Ring] led to an 
outburst of slash writing, much of it by people who had never read Tolkien.? (ibid.) 
There is an important relationship betwen slash and The Lord of the Rings films, not 
least because the former is primarily distributed via the internet, the same medium that 
was used to promote the later my means of ?viral marketing? (se Murray 2004; 
Thompson 2007:160-164). Moreover, the Lord of the Rings films appear to have played 
a role in the development of ?real person slash?. Slashers to whom I have spoken about 
this explained it in terms of the scorn expresed by the smal, established Tolkien slash 
community that existed at the time of the release of The Lord of the Rings: The 
Felowship of the Ring towards people who wrote stories about the characters in 
ignorance of the novel and its six appendices; writing stories about the movie cast was, 
my informants argued, a way of slipping below this subcultural critical radar. As 
Thompson argues, the acceptance of real person slash by the slash community as a 
whole sems to have been facilitated by the Lord of the Rings cast itself, certain 
members of which (Ian KcKelen, Elijah Wood, and Dominic Monaghan) indicated in 
interviews that, contrary to expectations, they did not find sexualy explicit homoerotic 
  235/379   
stories about themselves ?intrusive and exploitative? (2007:179).
104
 This atitude may not 
have been shared by al the other cast members, but it sems to have been generaly 
acepted that ?[h]owever distasteful many asociated with the film ight have found 
such material, it served as one more way of publicising the film, and slash authors, both 
FPS and RPS, were among the repeat viewers of the films, combing the scenes for ?plot 
bunnies? (inspiration).? (192) Thompson could have added that slashers were also keen 
to buy DVD editions of the films (and even, as we shal se, multiple DVD editions of 
the same films) at a time when, as she shows, the film industry was trying to phase out 
the rental of videocasetes in favour of the more profitable seling of DVDs: a change 
for which The Lord of the Rings was at the forefront (se Thompson 2007:219-223). 
This policy of tolerating fan activities did not originate with the Lord of the Rings 
trilogy, but it may have become more widespread in the entertainment industry partly as 
a result of its succes: Elana Shefrin (2004), for example, compares Peter Jackson?s 
apparent embrace of the internet fan community with Steven Spielberg?s atempts to 
control its activities, arguing that Spielberg acted against his own interests. The case of 
The Lord of the Rings thus goes some way towards undermining the idea that slash is 
?resistant?, although neither Shefrin nor Thompson make this point. 
In Tolkien slash fandom, the two most popular pairings are almost certainly Frodo/Sam 
and Aragorn/Legolas: as of 24 May 2008, the primary internet archive for the fandom 
listed altogether 368 fics under ?Aragorn/Legolas?, and 359 under ?Frodo/Sam?.
105
 The 
                                                
104
 Se, moreover, Sean Astin and Elijah Wod?s god humoured (and very physical) response to 
questions about slash at a fan convention (Smol 204:970). 
105
 Compare 218 for Glorfindel/Erestor, 142 for Mery/Pipin, 107 for Aragorn/Boromir, 97 for 
Legolas/Haldir, 92 for Legolas/Gimli, 6 for Eladan/Elrohir, and so on ? not forgeting the large 
number of novelty pairings with only a single story each (eg. Bil the Pony/Trebeard). These figures 
  236/379   
second of these can draw on much material from the book, as has been demonstrated by 
Anna Smol (2004). Smol argues that, in the context of First World War literature (with 
which she identifies The Lord of the Rings), ?the physical expresions of devotion that 
Sam shows Frodo.. are not extraordinary? (963), but that, even once these have been 
toned down (as they are in the film adaptations), they are strong enough ?by current 
standards? to ?evoke discomfort and commentary? among certain sections of the 
audience even while they provide the opportunity for pleasures among others (969). 
With Aragorn and Legolas, the case is very diferent. Aragorn is a secondary character 
in Tolkien?s novel, with his emotional life mostly confined to an appendix, and Legolas 
features as a minor character whose relationship to Aragorn is expresed in largely 
feudal terms; since the films are centred on combat action, however, Aragorn the ?heroic 
warior? (Thompson 2007:63) and Legolas the ?kung fu fighter? (ibid.) are central 
characters therein, and the relationship betwen them is arguably situated within the 
traditions of the ?buddy film? genre. Martin Barker?s (2005) paper on favourite 
characters in The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King may provide a way of 
contextualising A/L slash in the movie characters? wider (non-slashing) reception. We 
can se from Barker?s figures that, while sexual atractivenes was not the reason most 
likely to be given for either of these characters? being chosen as a favourite in his 
survey, they were (overwhelmingly) the two characters whose being chosen as favourite 
was most likely to be given this reason: 35 respondents out of 100 for whom Legolas 
was a favourite explained this by reference to his atractivenes, as did 17 out of 100 for 
Aragorn, but only seven out of 100 for Pippin, the character next most likely to have his 
                                                                                                                                    
were arived at by a simple count of entries in the index; no alowance was made for cases where a 
single entry covered multiple instalments of a single story, or for cases where multiple instalments 
of a single story were covered by multiple entries. 
  237/379   
being chosen as favourite explained in this way.
106
 An additional point of interest can be 
sen where Barker notes that, while ?choice of Frodo as favourite character is clearly the 
most strongly asociated with [claimed] knowledge of the books.. choices of Aragorn 
and Legolas are least asociated.? (364) This may perhaps reflect that, as mentioned 
above, these two characters are positioned very diferently in the films than they are in 
the book, from which the celebrated physical beauty of the two actors is, moreover, 
inevitably absent. In view of the data analysed here, however, it would be interesting to 
have more information about responses nominating both, and Barker?s paper does not 
provide this. Although survey responses nominating more than one character as 
favourite were filtered out of Barker?s sample, his findings might be taken to suggest 
that could be a substantial constituency of Lord of the Rings viewers for whom the 
personal qualities and sexual atractivenes of both Aragorn and Legolas would be a 
keynote in self-explanations of their commitment to the films, and for whom the films 
(as opposed to the book) would be the primary frame of reference. An interest in the 
personal qualities and sexual atractivenes of male televisual characters is, of course, 
fundamental to slash fiction, many of whose clasic pairings are of action heroes from 
the ?buddy? tradition (Napoleon/Ilya, Starsky/Hutch, Bodie/Doyle, etc). As we shal 
se, however, A/L shippers are able to construct a far more nuanced filmic basis for the 
slash relationship than I have done here. 
                                                
106
 Furthermore, Barker coments that ?quite a number? of explanations that were coded otherwise 
(for example, the name ?Orlando Blom?) may actualy have ben ?implicit references to his 
[Legolas?s] atractivenes? as a reason for chosing him as favourite (372). 
  238/379   
3.3 A discursive rereading of reader response 
The relationship betwen reader, text, and meaning has been discussed extensively in 
literary studies, media studies, and many other fields. In recent decades, theories of 
reception have tended to place themselves in one of two camps, which Stephen Mailoux 
(1989) styles ?textual realism? and ?readerly idealism?. Theories of the later type give 
priority to the reader and asume that reading creates meaning from the text. On this 
asumption, any text can mean anything, depending on the manner in which it is read. 
Theories of the former type give priority to the text and asume that reading discovers 
meaning in it. On this asumption, there are constraints on what a text can mean, and 
these constraints are to be found within the text itself. Slash would appear to be an 
interesting test case. Do slashers create or discover homoerotic meanings? I propose that 
the problem be approached from a diferent angle (at least temporarily): rather than se 
the reader/viewer and/or the text as controlling variables, we can look at how 
representations of texts/works and of readers or viewers are invoked by real readers and 
viewers in writen and spoken discourse on texts/works. Although this may appear to 
sidestep the isues, I would argue that it enables us (a) to beter understand such 
discourse, (b) to guard against the temptation to elevate discursive strategies into 
theories of reading, and (c) to propose theories of reading that wil acount for (rather 
than replicate) discourse on texts. This chapter therefore follows a similar pater to the 
previous one, but begins to consider the act of reading in more depth ? a move that is 
taken further in Chapter 4. 
The commonsense model of textual reception is of a private mental proces. The viewer 
or reader proceses the text on an inner, psychological level, making sense of it and 
experiencing emotional reactions to it: this is what viewing and reading is asumed, at 
  239/379   
heart, to be. At an optional subsequent stage, the viewer or reader reports on the sense he 
or she has made and the emotional reactions he or she has experienced, and perhaps also 
discloses the parts of the text that gave rise to these sense-makings and emotional 
experiences: this verbal stage is not viewing or reading, it is only a report on that 
supposedly prior activity. When the report and the disclosure are both caried out, this is 
what IA Richards cals a ?full critical statement? (1960[1924]:23). The underlying 
philosophy of mind is also a commonsensical one, and thus Jorg Gracia (2000:45) 
anticipates no controversy when he defines ?understandings? of texts as ?acts that take 
place in the minds of the members of the audience?. Given such a paradigm, the 
possibility sems to arise of reconstructing the private mental proces of reception in al 
its cognitive detail, or of showing how the real properties of the text gave that proces 
shape. As discussed in Chapter 1, the later course was atempted by IA Richards and is 
now asociated with certain contemporary stylisticians. The former course was at one 
time atempted by Jonathan Culler (1975:31), who argues in his early work for the need 
?to render as explicit as possible the conventions responsible for the production of 
atested efects?, where ?efects? are the mental states involved in reading, and are (by 
analogy with historical linguistics) ?atested? when there is evidence that they occurred 
(i.e. when there exist reports of them). This reflects the way in which we usualy talk 
about films we have sen and books we have read. It is the asumption behind much 
audience ethnography (for example, Morley 1999a[1980]), and also underlies what I 
have described as empirical literary studies (se Chapter 1): statements made by viewers 
and readers are taken as public reports on hitherto private sense-makings and emotional 
experiences, and there is a causal chain from text to reception to report on reception. 
Where the viewer or reader is not trusted to speak for him- or herself, it again comes into 
play, with vaguely defined mental proceses such as ?identification? being used to link a 
  240/379   
given text to a set of putative efects.
107
 In cultural studies, it is embodied in Stuart 
Hal?s (1980) encoding/decoding theory, already discussed in Chapter 1: as David 
Morley came to se it, ?[t]he encoding/decoding metaphor is unhappily close to earlier 
models of communication, insofar as it can be taken to imply some conception of a 
mesage which is first formed (in the author?s mind?) and then, subsequently, encoded 
into language for transmision.? (1992:121) 
I would now like to discard these commonsensical asumptions, in order to show what 
may be achieved by an analysis which does not make them. The commonsense relation 
of text to mental state to verbal response is directly analogous to the commonsense 
relation of reality to mental state to action. This is turned upside down in discursive 
psychology, which looks instead at how representations of ?inner? and ?outer? worlds are 
constructed in discourse: as Edwards and Poter (2001:15) put it, discursive psychology 
?focuses on what people are doing and how, in the course of their discourse practices, 
they produce versions of external reality and of psychological states?. I believe that we 
could usefully apply this paradigm to the things people say and write about texts they 
have consumed or the works which those texts embody. Take the following excerpt from 
a Guardian Books review of a novel by Ian Sansom: ?With such fine ingredients, it?s 
strange that The Case of the Mising Books didn?t grab me at the outset, but it drew me 
in soon enough, and I ended up thoroughly enjoying it? (Ardagh 2006:16). Here, the 
                                                
107
 Se Barker (205). Barker sumarises the asumptions of much film and media scholarship as 
folows: ?certain media/cultural ? typicaly, fictional ? forms contain ?textual? mechanisms that work 
to entrap their audiences.. As audiences are entraped, they go through thre proceses: they lose 
self-consciousnes; they become engaged in the story as if they were the character to whom they 
have become atracted; and they thus, perhaps fletingly but perhaps longer term, take on the point of 
view (including moral perspectives) of that character. In extremis, they might lose ?the line? betwen 
fiction and reality, and absorb the character?s atitudes into the rest of their lives.? (356-357) 
  241/379   
reviewer represents, on the one hand, the text and its objective characteristics ?/those 
?fine ingredients? ?/and, on the other, himself as a reader of the book; and he achieves 
this in the course of a narative:/initialy not being grabbed, but eventualy being drawn 
in, and ultimately having a thoroughly enjoyable experience. Whether this coresponds 
in any objective way to events preceding the writing of the review need be of les 
interest to us here than the rhetorical function it fulfils: that of qualified praise. 
This reviewer is not, of course, interpreting the book for the readers of The Guardian, he 
is only recommending it. What function might representations of text and reader or 
viewer have in interpretation? In general, viewers and readers do not wish it to appear 
that they are the source of the meanings they atribute to texts and works: thus, it is not 
so much that reading does, or does not, create meaning (as in the idealism/realism 
debate), as that it aspires never to appear to do so in the current instance. Recal the 
discussion of understanding and misunderstanding in Chapter 1. If I atribute a meaning 
to a work, then to acept that a text of that work was the source of that meaning is to 
acept my interpretation as a true one (provided, of course, that one acepts the text in 
question as an adequate text of the work). On the other hand, you may reject my 
interpretation by representing me (or my asumptions) as the source of the meaning I 
atribute to the text: that is, you may acuse me of a mis-reading or (as scholars of 
religion would have it) of eisegesis (to deny the adequacy of the text would enable you 
to reject my interpretation of the work without necesarily impugning my skils as an 
interpreter).
108
 Thus, Eric Livingston (1995:99) observes that, in literary studies, an 
                                                
108
 I emphasise the word ?necesarily? because my skils as an interpreter may in fact be impugned if 
the conventional separation betwen textual scholarship and literary criticism is not in force. 
McGan (1985) goes against the grain in promoting a form of literary interpretation that ?take[s] its 
ground in textual and bibliographical studies? (80). 
  242/379   
?instructed reading? (i.e. an expert interpretation) appears ?anonymous to authorship, a 
property of the text, a discovery for any competent reader to se?;
 109
 and Michel 
Foucault (1981:57-58) argues that ?commentary?s only role, whatever the techniques 
used, is to say at last what was silently articulated ?beyond?, in the text?.
 
In many cases, 
the most basic link possible link betwen text and interpretation ? that of quotation ?
/wil satisfy oneself and others that an interpretation is adequate, particularly if the 
meaning of the quotation gives the appearance of acording in some obvious way with 
the meaning aserted for the text as a whole. However, this strategy is vulnerable to the 
acusation that the quotation is ?selective? (ie. that other quotations could have been 
made that would contradict the aserted meaning) or that it is ?out of context? (ie. that 
the meaning or significance the quoted portion of text bears in context of the 
interpretation is not one that can reasonably be ascribed to it in context of the text in 
which it originated). Moreover, there are times when diferent things sem obvious to 
diferent people, and there are also times when a non-obvious interpretation is desired 
precisely for its non-obviousnes. To some extent, this is the foundation of institutional 
reading practices: exegesis, deconstruction, and textual analysis are al valued to the 
extent that they reveal what is not imediately apparent about a text or fragment 
thereof. Criticism is so replete with devices by which obvious meanings can be 
overturned that some of them have themselves become obvious. ?It?s a symbol of..?, 
?it?s a metaphor for..?, ?what the author is realy trying to get across is..?, ?there?s a 
subtext..?. Any number of other devices may be employed, such as appeal to the 
circumstances of the work?s authoring, or to codes that may be supposed to operate 
                                                
109
 ?Misreading? may, for the same reason, be valued in contexts where individual personality is 
valorised (eg. Blom 1975). Atridge?s (204) notion of ?creative reading? might be considered an 
intermediate position. 
  243/379   
within its texts. Al of these involve the discursive construction of further 
representations. And al can be woven into a narative of interaction betwen reader and 
text. 
That such strategies could occur in fan discourse might sem unlikely to many 
academics, but fans can be extremely sophisticated in their practices of consumption and 
commentary. Indeed, as Merick (1997:55) observes, fans are in many ways like 
academics, since ?the proces of interpretation is for both an avenue for making 
statements about their own identity and positioning within their respective communities, 
for both it is a site of pleasure (and a certain amount of power)?. Many academics who 
write on fandom are themselves fans, but perhaps the most intriguing blurring of the 
boundaries betwen fandom and academia occurs where the terminology and techniques 
of textual analysis and critical theory are appropriated for use within fandom ?/se Mat 
Hils (2002:15-21) on the ?fan-scholar?. 
Before we move on to close consideration of an example of such fan discourse, I would 
like to focus on an example that is in many ways its reverse. The folowing piece of 
spoken discourse is excerpted from a recording of an introductory undergraduate tutorial 
on Oscar Wilde?s play, The Importance of Being Earnest. The tutor is a teaching 
asistant in the third year of her PhD studies, and the students are in their second 
semester of undergraduate study. In their contributions to the leson, students not only 
reject the institutionaly-sanctioned ?decoding? of homosexual meanings in the play (as 
modeled in one of that wek?s lectures), they also reject the institutionaly-sanctioned 
means of rejecting interpretations, ie. with textual evidence. 
  244/379   
Although I must confes to a certain degre of impatience with this form of literary 
criticism, I do not interpret the students? resistance to it in terms of their rejection of 
what I in previous chapters identify as the post-New Critical aproach to literary study, 
but in terms of what Benwel and Stokoe (2002) find to be a behaviour typical of 
undergraduate students regardles of the subject being studied, ie. a general reluctance to 
engage in discussion tasks and resistance to ?academic? or ?intelectual? identity (Benwel 
and Stokoe?s data included tutorials in Science and Enginering subjects, for example). As 
for the tutors, Benwel and Stokoe observe that 
they.. are entitled to speak authoritatively, and yet they do not employ such 
strategies.. It is posible that this may be.. an atempt to ?democratise? a 
traditionaly hierarchical institution in order to yield more fruitful results from 
students.. However, the resistant moves of students.. sugest that they are not, 
in fact, taking up the interactional oportunities to take more control of the 
tutorial agenda, and ?more fruitful results? do not apear to be forthcoming. 
Rather than [sic] producing a ?democratised? context, the shift in participant roles 
does not apear to advance the pedagogic project. 
441 
Acordingly, the tutor in the following extract uses something like Joyce Purdy?s (2008) 
recommended booktalk strategy of ?structuring situations where students can engage in 
collaborative talk? about and around works (50) ? a clear democratising move ? but the 
direction in which this collaborative talk moves is towards the closing down of 
interpretative possibilities and away from the close analysis of the work and its historical 
context. As in the tutorials analysed by Benwel and Stokoe, the tutor generaly responds 
  245/379   
to this resistance with politenes and humour, constantly maintaining her students? ?face? 
(Goffman 1967, Brown and Levinson 1987). That ?resistance? is not automaticaly 
progresive (se Chapter 1) can be sen from the fact that student resistance is achieved, 
at one point, through performance of distaste for ?gay? lifestyles, and, at another, 
through explicit invocation of homophobic ideology.
10
 That dominance is not 
automaticaly reactionary can be sen from the fact that the tutor abandons her strategy 
of politenes and asumes a dominant hierarchical role in order to silence this 
homophobia. The interaction is quite extended, so I have broken it up into short 
segments which are not completely contiguous, summarising some of the intervening 
discourse. 
T . okay? . anyone else got a thing they disagreed with 
that they?d like to talk about? (5 sec pause) Monica? 
S7 ehm . well it?s kind of going back to what you were 
saying it kind of touches on that . but the whole 
(coughs) homosexuality thing I couldn?t (sniffs) I 
actually couldn?t find much evidence in the play . to 
. suggest that . like when I read it I didn?t 
S (very quiet) mm mm 
                                                
10
 Moreover, Benwel and Stokoe sugest that students? resistance to engaging in the colaborative 
production of knowledge may be explained in terms of their being encouraged by the higher 
educational funding policies of the Major and Blair governments to se themselves as consumers 
shoping for knowledge conceived as a product to be suplied (202:49). In this case, the students 
would apear to be rejecting the knowledge-product (in the form of the lecture?s propositional 
content) along with this tutor?s atempt to involve them in knowledge production; disparagement of a 
product is, however, in no way incompatible with aceptance of one?s role as consumer. 
  246/379   
S7 so I kind of disagree with that . but then I don?t 
know why . so many people . think that and . I can?t 
. see it= 
S6 =I think when you hear like a general view about 
something you think . ?oh . I?m meant to agree with 
that? . but . I don?t really find anything either . 
S (very quiet) mm 
S2 no that?s what I mean . cuz that?s what I was . 
thinking when I first saw it and read it I didn?t . 
really . read anything into the homosexua- 
homosexuality element but . after the . lecture . I 
was like . (affects surprise) ?oh . okay? (laughs) 
The tutor?s question is clearly informed by principles of student-centred learning, 
making the students? ideas, rather than her own, the focus of atention. Les obviously, it 
would sem calculated to prompt the students to engage with the work in question by 
criticaly entering into existing debates on the subject of that work ? which I have 
argued elsewhere to be the characteristic mode in which works are approached in an 
academic context (Alington 2006). Rather than model the procedures of literary 
criticism, then, the tutor is atempting to get the students to cary them out themselves: 
although in my research I found many staf in the department to employ this strategy to 
some degre, it semed most pronounced among teaching asistants. It might be 
interesting to speculate as to the reasons for this. One explanation could lie in the 
training course the teaching asistants had received, which placed particular emphasis on 
student-centred learning; another might be that they enacted their low status in the 
department by adopting a les powerful role in the clasroom. Interestingly, the patern 
  247/379   
was diferent for third and fourth year clases in which it was often the case that 
designated students gave presentations ? temporarily asuming, in efect, the monologic 
voice of the tutor (in my sample, invariably a member of the department rather than a 
teaching asistant) ? and in which there were points at which students debated with one 
another with apparent sponteneity (se Chapter 4 for an example), thus failing to enact 
(or enacting les consistently) the resistance noted by Benwel and Stokoe (2002), 
perhaps because they were more invested in the clases (only a minority of students 
taking first year English literature modules are registered for degres in English). By 
comparison, first and second year students never debated with one another unles 
instructed to do so ? an instruction isued only by teaching asistants. It would be 
interesting to review the situation now that first year clases in English literature at that 
particular university are taught solely by teaching asistants. 
This particular tutor?s question mets with imediate resistance in the form of an almost 
painfully long silence ? no-one volunters a response, forcing her to (undemocraticaly) 
nominate a specific student to respond. The student?s response initialy appears to 
resemble a literary-critical position on The Importance of Being Earnest, in that her 
statement that she had been unable to ?find much evidence in the play? for ?the whole 
homosexuality thing? might be taken to imply that she has examined the evidence and 
found it wanting. However, she qualifies this statement with ?like when I read it I 
didn?t?, which caries no such implication: she is not claiming to have examined the 
evidence, only to have read the play and not noticed any. The problem, as she presents 
it, is one of opinion versus perception: ?so many people think that and I can?t se it?. S6 
and S2 jump in to support S7,
11
 S6 suggesting that conformity (?I?m eant to?) to group 
                                                
11
 As noted above, first and second year students do not spontaneously debate with one another in 
my data. However, they do (as in Benwel and Stokoe?s [202] data) spontaneously produce 
  248/379   
consensus (?a general view?) would be the only reason for agreing that there are 
homosexual meanings in the play, where this consensus (and not the play) is identified 
as the source of such meanings, and S2 is emphatic that the supposed homosexual 
meanings came to her not while watching or reading the play (ie. not from the play 
itself) but during the lecture (ie. from the lecturer). 
S6 and S2?s utterances are also the first instances of reported speech which we have had 
a chance to examine. Reported speech is usualy divided into two kinds, with direct 
speech (which we se here) being discourse that afects to report ?both form and content? 
of an ?original utterance?, and indirect speech (which we shal se shortly) being 
discourse that afects to report ?content? alone (Baynham 1996:68). As Mike Baynham 
emphasises, direct speech does not typicaly reproduce an ?original utterance? verbatim, 
being rather ?a rhetorical device with its own distinctive claim to truth.? (66) In S2?s 
case, what is reported is a private thought supposed to have occurred to her after the 
lecture, and in S6?s, no specific occasion is refered to: it is an example of what Greg 
Myers (1999:386) cals ?typified reported speech?: utterances presented ?to be taken as 
emblematic of broader atitudes.? As Myers argues, direct speech usualy ?serves to 
provide evidence.. arising from the depiction, the conveying of how it was said as wel 
as what was said? (ibid.), such that ?it is the enactment that has the efect and cals on 
other participants for response? (396): here, S6?s ?oh I?m eant to agre? indicates the 
recognition of presure to conform, and S2?s performance of her past surprise (?oh 
okay?) indicates that nothing in her reading and watching of the play had prepared her 
for the lecturer?s interpretation. The later adds support to the asertion of 
groundlesnes for the homosexual interpretation in the play itself, and the former 
                                                                                                                                    
uterances both in suport of one another?s acts of resistance, and (as we shal se) in disparagement 
of individual students? performances of academic identity. 
  249/379   
identifies the rejection of this interpretation with resistance to conformity. In the 
following, the tutor is presented with a radical chalenge to academic practice: 
S4 and also I don?t want to so much . homosexuality in 
it . I don?t want to think that these . two 
characters . do have . that kind of . life . don?t 
want them to be like that so I don?t see it like that 
and I don?t read it like that . but . y?know . I can 
do . if . somebody . persuades me to . 
T okay . so the kind of [personal reactions you= 
S                       [(laughs nervously) 
T =might have to the play might sort of influence the 
kind of . reading into it you?re going to do= 
S4 =yeah 
S4?s initial uterance here does not even resemble an interpretation of The Importance of 
Being Earnest: it is simply an asertion of the student?s wil ? note the repeated use of 
the word ?want?, with sentence stres faling upon it each time: ?I don?t want.. I don?t 
want.. don?t want.. so I don?t se.. and I don?t read?. This is a complete rejection of 
academic practice ? not only in English Studies but elsewhere ? in that it is resolutely 
irational, offering no possibility for rational engagement. The student states that she is 
capable of reading the play otherwise if someone can persuade her to do so, but she 
offers no suggestion of any basis on which such persuasion might occur, in that her 
reason for reading as she does is simply her own expresed distaste for ?that kind of 
life?. Indeed, by insisting that seing or not seing homosexual meanings is a mater of 
how one wants to read, this student locates meaning entirely in the head of the reader, 
and thus rules out al possibility of literary-critical discussion. 
  250/379   
Even faced with such a chalenge, the tutor?s responds (as in Benwel and Stokoe?s 
[2002] data) in such a way as to protect the student?s face, here through the use of 
indirect reporting ? or ?reformulation? ? of the chalenging utterance. Baynham (1996) 
finds that, in adult education clases, teachers use ?reformulations? (ie. indirect speech) 
whereas students tend not to, and Myers (1999:394) finds that, in focus groups, what he 
cals ?formulations? (ie. reformulations or indirect speech) are used ?largely, but not 
exclusively.. by the moderators?. In both cases, they are used by powerful interlocutors 
to establish what les powerful interlocutors meant by what they said ? though it is 
important to se that what somebody meant by what he or she said is not an objective 
property of his or her speech but a mater of claim, counter-claim, agrement, and 
negotiation. The tutor?s strategy can thus be sen as an exercise of power, although one 
which avoids confrontation: she begins by positioning herself in agrement with the 
student (?okay?), then produces a formulation that she identifies with what the student 
meant, but which (unlike what the student actualy said) she is able to agre with. 
This would appear to be a common pedagogical strategy. Baynham, for example, shows 
a numeracy teacher reformulating student utterances and ?in so doing.. shifting them in 
the direction of a more mathematical discourse? (1996:72). In this literature tutorial, 
reformulation sems to be used in something like the same manner: the tutor 
reformulates the students? utterances to establish what they should have said, bringing it 
closer to the kind of thing that a literary critic would have said. This is not simply a 
mater of linguistic form: this tutor, for example, consistently reformulates expresions 
of resistance to the task in hand as expresions of general principles of literary criticism, 
as when (here), she reformulates the student?s refusal of rationality (?I don?t want?) as a 
theory of reader response (?so the kind of personal reactions you might have to the play 
might sort of influence the kind of reading into it you?re going to do?). Given that the 
  251/379   
student acepts this as a reformulation of what she meant (albeit with a minimal ?yeah?), 
this can be regarded as an example of the kind of gentle, face-saving correction that a 
diferent tutor, quoted in Chapter 1, employed in recognising a (spoken) reference to a 
West End musical as a (thought) reference to a Modernist poem. 
T well what are the arguments then . this . idea of 
homosexuality in the play where does it . come from . 
what sort of . things is it that people are picking 
up on? . any ideas? (4 sec pause) puzzled shaking of 
heads 
S (unvoiced laugh) 
T blank looks all around . (5 sec pause) [no? 
S2                                        [I guess it?s 
just . taking the . life of Oscar Wilde and putting 
it [into . uhm . the character of . is= 
S    [(sniffs) 
S2 =it Algernon? . uhm . yeah . (unvoiced laugh) uh and 
just kind of thinking well . he . doesn?t . maybe . 
s- . it?s just dependent on the actors who portray 
them . if the actors who portray them . are acting . 
kind of . gay . then . you will . perhaps . be 
motivated to think that but . if they?re not . if 
they?re playing it straight . then you won?t think 
that 
The use of humorous comments ? here, ?puzzled shaking of heads? and ?blank looks al 
around? ? in order to mitigate the damage to student face which would result from 
  252/379   
repeated questioning (not to mention the damage to the tutor?s face which has certainly 
resulted from her being ignored) appears to be a comon strategy in undergraduate 
teaching. Benwel and Stokoe present similar data, in which a tutor has to prompt 
students repeatedly ?in response to long pauses in which no activity or student uptake 
takes place?, and then resorts to humour to ?defuse [a] potentialy confrontational 
situation? (2002:440). In fact, the chalenge to the tutor?s authority was much greater in 
that case than here: in that extract, not only did students respond to tutor instructions 
with silent inactivity, thre of them announced that they had not done the required 
reading for the clas: an act of resistance made al the more pronounced by the fact that 
this reading had been set for them by the tutor himself, in a lecture preceding the clas. 
The significance of student resistance in this case should not be underplayed, however, 
since what they are expresing such reluctance to do (with two very long silences and a 
laugh) is to engage with the idea of ?homosexuality in the play? in terms of ?arguments? 
for that position, ie. to engage with it as literary critics with a case to make. Moreover, 
the response the tutor finaly receives again avoids examining The Importance of Being 
Earnest, rejecting the queer reading not by finding homosexual meanings not to inhere 
in the play but by locating them somewhere else: firstly, in ?the life of Oscar Wilde? 
(from where they have to be put into the character of Algernon), and secondly, in 
unspecified actors? ?acting kind of gay? and thus ?motivat[ing you] to think? the 
characters they portray are homosexual. 
S1 eventualy provides what the tutor sems to be looking for, noting that there are ?a lot 
of secrets and double entendre and meanings? in the play and making a connection 
betwen this and the fact that, at the time when the play was writen (unlike today, when 
she states, ?it?s just not an isue any more or it?s much les of an isue?), ?you couldn?t 
openly be gay?. The tutor states that this is ?a possible reading?, but S8 objects by asking 
  253/379   
?does this mean that every time a homosexual writes a book or a poem or a play then it 
always has to come back to his own sexual predilections? (implying that this reading has 
nothing to do with what is in the play, and everything to do with an arbitrary 
interpretative proces). The tutor begins with apparent asent, but reformulates what she 
has asented to as a general critical principle in acordance with the arguments of 
Wimsat and Beardsley (1946; discussed in Chapter 2 of this disertation): ?right it?s 
important to be cautious of.. things we know about the author?. This strategy of 
initiating what amounts to a disagreing uterance with an agreing formulation is used 
by S8 (in the tutor?s case, ?right?, in S8?s, ?I?d say that also about it?) in his riposte, 
which the tutor interupts as it becomes overtly offensive: 
S8 . I?d say that also about it and it was widely known 
even before he . I mean  that Oscar Wilde  . took the 
case to court . mm uh . y?know he wasn?t taken to 
court for being homosexual he took . the Marquis of 
Queensbury to court . but it was widely known he was 
a homosexual it wasn?t a secret . but he . perhaps 
the man in the street didn?t know he was a homosexual 
but certainly among the literati and among the 
aristocracy and among the people at Oxford and so on 
. y?know it was a sort of open secret . and it was 
the same for . eh n . there were always homosexuals . 
* * * * . talked about them . in a . * * * * * * sort 
of . clandestine or semi-clandestine and so on there 
was . y?know most people find their practices 
repulsive and they?re [aware of it= 
  254/379   
T                       [(loudly) well  
S8 =[(laughs) 
T  [that?s a very controversial position to argue and 
we?re definitely not going to get into the morality 
of particular societal views like that . here 
This is theoreticaly important, because it shows that, contrary to what some of the 
writers quoted in Chapter 1 would sem to asume, resistance ? here to academic 
identity, and the academicaly-approved way of using literary works ? may as easily be 
regresive as progresive: S8 continues to resist interpreting The Importance of Being 
Earnest, this time by launching into what is clearly working up to be an anti-gay 
harangue (which he later resumes after the tutor has left the room). Interestingly, its 
relevance initialy appears to be that of a refutation of S1?s suggestion, denying that 
homosexuality had to be ?secret? at the time of writing (note that this denial is founded 
not on the content of the play but on the life of the author), but S8 moves, via the notion 
of an ?open secret?, to the asertion that homosexuality had to be ?clandestine or semi-
clandestine?, which might be taken to support S1 and to contradict his initial position. 
However, this is only the case if S8 is engaging S1 in literary-critical debate, ie. if what 
is at stake for him is the context in which The Importance of Being Earnest should be 
interpreted. As an instance of the phenomenon whereby ?[s]tudents police each other?s 
utterances for signs of intelectual superiority? and thereby ensure the rejection of 
academic identity (Benwel and Stokoe 2002:449), S8?s contribution is coherent, since it 
contradicts S1 not only at the beginning, but throughout: late in his speech, S8 rejects 
S1?s liberal asertion that being gay is ?just not an isue any more? with his use of the 
present tense (?find?) to refer to anti-homosexual sentiment, and there is a marked 
contrast betwen ?you couldn?t openly be gay? (?you? is here impersonal and could refer 
  255/379   
to anyone; ?gay? is the self-identifier used by most homosexuals) and ?most people find 
their practices repulsive? (?their? implies not just anyone, but an objectified out-group; 
?repulsive? is an extremely perjorative term; the focus is not on identity but on 
?practices?, ie. sexual activities). S1?s position implies the possibility of interpreting The 
Importance of Being Earnest on the basis of a sympathetic understanding of the plight of 
late-Victorian homosexuals who ?couldn?t openly be gay?. This not only supports the 
interpretative position taken in the lecture and the interpretative practice promoted by 
the tutor, it also asents to the liberal atitude to sexuality that both asume. S8, on the 
other hand, implies that the normal atitude to homosexuality (?y?know most people?) 
understands it solely in terms of repulsive practices, which in turn implies that S1?s 
position is abnormal and suggests that it is not normal to go looking for homosexual 
meanings in this play (as she sems to be wiling to follow the tutor and the lecturer in 
doing). Indeed, after the tutor temporarily exits the room, S8 enters into a lengthy speech 
about Wilde?s homosexuality and the ?myth? that homosexuals were ?persecuted?, 
concluding with the description of homosexuality itself as an ?unsavoury subject?. 
Having interupted S8, the tutor returns to the (New Critical) idea that ?it?s perhaps not 
that important that Oscar Wilde wrote it? and that ?what?s important is the play itself?. In 
a quick-wited rejoinder, a diferent student acepts this position, constructing on its 
basis an argument against looking for any sort of ?deeper meaning? in the work in 
question: 
S4 mm I mean it can just be read as a light comedy . and 
. like there?s nothing wrong with that . you don?t 
have to read deeper meanings into it . I don?t think 
. it?s not necessary to do that with a play like this 
  256/379   
T right . well that?s an interesting point to raise if 
you all turn to uhm * you?ve got the Norton here 
Here a reference to the ilocutionary character of the work (se Chapter 2) is combined 
with a normative appeal to the uses appropriate to works ?like this? and can be connected 
to the suggestion by one of the reading group members quoted in Chapter 2 that it might 
be ?a litle bit absurd? to discuss books seriously if they were clearly not ?serious? in 
intention; the implication that there are types of work into which it is necesary to ?read 
deeper meanings? is not, however, developed further in the current discussion. The idea 
of not reading a certain way because one does not ?have to? appeals to a notion of 
volition in reading: this is the same student who earlier insisted that she does not find 
homosexual meanings in the play because she does not want to. Furthermore, the way of 
reading that would find such meanings is described as ?read[ing] deeper meanings into 
it?, ie. as eisegetical and therefore suspect.
 12
 
The tutor?s response is a brief example of ?positive politenes? (Brown and Levinson 
1987) that leads quickly into a move to bring the clas physically back to the text, ie. by 
asking them to open it. By this point, the students? resistance to interpreting the work 
has been so succesful that only one argument for or against the ?queer? reading has 
been produced that actualy refers to the detail of the work: S1?s reference to ?secrets 
and double entendre and meanings? (which was quashed by S8). The tutor does 
                                                
12
 Cf. Liebes and Katz (191[1989]), who asked audiences of Dalas the question (amongst others) 
of ?What is the programe / the producer trying to say?? (210) As they write, ?[i]n the domain of 
mesages, the Americans tend to be resistant. Not only do they ofer fewer mesages than any of the 
other ethnic groups, they also protest that Dalas can have no mesage for them since it is just 
entertainment, only escape.? (21) Se Chapter 1 for further discusion of this study. 
  257/379   
eventualy manage to get the students to engage in something resembling academic 
interpretative discourse, although by the undemocratic means of placing them in groups 
and ordering them to find textual evidence to support or refute the queer reading. 
3.4 Fan interpretations of cult media texts 
From her analysis of the types of text that have been most conducive to slash reading, 
Sara Gwenllian Jones (2002:89) concludes that ?[s]lash arises out of cult television?s 
intrinsic requirement of distance from everyday reality, its related erasure of 
heterosexuality?s social proces, and its provision of perceptual depths that invite and 
tolerate diverse speculation about characters? ?hidden? thoughts and felings?. This is 
both insightful and provocative, but, as an atempt to infer reception from what is 
received, it forestals the ?more open dialogue? that Gren, Jenkins, and Jenkins 
(1998:14) hoped to promote betwen fans and academics ? a dialogue that does not 
realy begin, at least within slash reception study, until Elizabeth Woledge?s use of the 
encoding/decoding model ?[t]o understand the interpretive practice of K/S.. on its own 
terms? (2005:237-238). Even there, however, it goes litle further than translating fan 
terms into academic ones ?/a deceptively straightforward proces, since, as we shal se, 
fans already use something very like the encoding/decoding model for their own 
rhetorical purposes. Woledge (2005:244) reconstructs the ?K/S decoding? of Star Trek as 
follows: 
recognition of the homoerotic possibilities in Star Trek can be acomplished by 
analysis of looks and gestural codes, and this is the point from which K/S fans 
begin their decoding. Discussions betwen K/S fans frequently focus on where 
these ambiguous moments can be found. 
  258/379   
This is more than the use of reader discourse to support a theory of reading (although 
that is in itself an important step forward). It is the recognition that reader discourse has 
something to teach the theorist. Nonetheles, I believe that the discourse in question is 
left under-analysed (I write ?I believe? because it is quoted from rather sparsely and in 
isolation, making it dificult to determine the argumentative meaning of individual 
statements; cf. Bilig 1991:17). From the perspective adopted in this chapter, the pasage 
quoted above sems more like an example of reader discourse than an analysis of it: 
although employing a more academic register than the above-quoted book review, like 
it, it is a narative of engagement betwen reader and text that serves a rhetorical 
purpose. Note how it represents the text: homoerotic possibilities are there to be 
recognised in it . And note how it represents K/S fans: as beginning with what is in the 
text. Thus, Woledge?s reconstruction of the K/S decoding proces legitimates K/S, 
representing Star Trek, and not K/S fans, as the source of the idea that Kirk and Spock 
have sexual felings for each other. Moreover, I would suggest that it functions as a 
more cautious (and more theorised) extension of the same ?[d]iscussions betwen K/S 
fans? refered to in support of it: the central claim involved in both ?/that there is a 
?homoerotic subtext? revealed in the way certain male characters look at one another ?
/has become so familiar within fandoms that it is even possible for slashers to speak of 
such looks as ?subtexty?. I would not oppose Woledge?s claim that such looks inspire 
K/S, but I find it les intriguing than the unanswered question of how and why K/S fans 
(including Woledge) establish these looks as the inspiration of K/S. There might, for 
example, be potential for comparison betwen talk of this kind and Hils?s (2002) notion 
of the ?discursive mantra?. Discursive mantras are formulaic constructions that circulate 
within fandoms and provide ready-made answers to the question ?Why are you a fan 
of..?? They are ?defensive mechanisms designed to render the fan?s afective 
  259/379   
relationship meaningful in a rational sense, ie. to ground the relationship solely in the 
objective atributes of the source text and therefore to legitimate the fans? love of ?their? 
programe? (Hils 2002:67). 
Thus, what slash fans sek in their discussions of ?looks and gestural codes? might be a 
grounding for slash consumption practices in the objective atributes of what is 
consumed, and, by the same token, a legitimisation of those practices. Given the 
ideological emphasis our society places on authorship, perhaps the strongest 
legitimisation slash consumption could receive would be an endorsement from the 
creators of the texts being slashed. The notion that the director of a film or series 
planned for it to be consumed as an erotic representation of homosexual love would thus 
acquire a tremendous appeal: under the ideology of the auteur, it amounts to the 
implication that the non-slashing majority have actualy misread the text. The notion of 
?subtext? can thus be used to give a minority reading greater legitimacy than that 
subscribed to by the majority: the subtextual meaning then becomes the real meaning, 
and a ?disasociation of ideas? (Perelman 1979:23-24) has been acomplished. Woledge 
does not follow this route, instead suggesting that the K/S ?decoding? is neither more nor 
les defensible than the majority ?decoding?. 
Woledge addreses an audience who are likely to begin from a position of scepticism 
with regard to Star Trek?s homoerotic subtext, and so her justifications are easily 
understandable ?/but what function might such justifications fulfil within fandom? 
Academic criticism ust also be backed up with evidence, but this occurs in a context 
where a critic must interpret a text diferently from other critics if he or she is to be 
published. Why justify an interpretation that is already held by those to whom one 
makes one?s case? John Shotter?s (1991) ?rhetorical-responsive? theory of personal 
  260/379   
identity streses the importance of the individual?s status as a socialy situated and 
defined ?first person? even when engaged in lone activities, and the psychological need 
that this implies for any individual to be able to justify his or her own actions to a 
potential ?second person?. If this may be extended to the activity of reading, it would 
suggest the continuing relevance of social norms even when text is consumed as a 
solitary activity. These norms might then lead to anxiety where the lone reader or viewer 
suspects that he or she may not be able to justify his or her mode of textual consumption 
to a felow reader or viewer.
13
 Slashers, of course, are not entirely alone, since they 
have contact with other slashers via mailing lists, websites, and other social networks. 
But, on a day-to-day basis, they wil be surrounded by people who would be likely to 
consume the same texts very diferently. This could then provide an incentive for 
slashers to communaly reiterate and refine justifications of their mode of consumption, 
periodicaly arguing away one another?s doubts. And furthermore, it should be 
remembered that no fandom is homogeneous: groups of slashers ?ship? (favour) diferent 
pairings, such that there are Star Trek slashers whose OTP (?one true pair?) is not 
Kirk/Spock but (for example) Spock/McCoy. 
It would, however, be unwaranted to asume that mere defensivenes was al there was 
to it. As we shal se in the following section, the certainty that slash is valuable does 
not necesarily require the certainty that it reconstructs a meaning intended by the 
creators of the texts being slashed. Justificatory discourse is likely to provide an 
additional, socialy cohesive role, since producing or giving asent to confirmations of 
what a group ?already knows? (here, that certain same-sex characters have sexual or 
                                                
13
 Cf. Barker (206:125): ?Audiences often have to find pleasure in the face of disaproval, 
dismisal, and derogation by comentators. In other words, they are often aware of being 
categorised and judged.? 
  261/379   
romantic felings for one another) would sem an excelent opportunity to perform one?s 
identity as a member of that group. Vouching for the validity of the proofs or declaring 
that they confirm what one had intuitively perceived may function as acts of solidarity 
when done communaly. It becomes one more way in which an audience of online fans 
?constructs itself extensively as a mediated and textual performance of audiencehood? 
(Hils 2002: 181, emphasis removed). 
Moreover, the search for proofs may be sen as a specific instance of the ?intense 
dedication to the faintest detail of the story world? (Brooker 1999:52) that characterises 
al fan consumption. For its fans, a cult text is a source of intrigue and frustration, 
implying a world beyond itself but confirming litle about it; Jones (2002) ses slashing 
as typical of the imaginative entering-into which al cult texts invite. And finaly, 
discourse of this type enables slashers to annotate the canon texts, re-packaging them for 
their own and one another?s consumption. Where this takes the form of screnshots or 
quotations interwoven with commentary or discussion (as in a LiveJournal page refered 
to in the discourse analysed in Section 3.5), the slash reading of the ?canon? text 
becomes inscribed into a version of that text. The resulting text may be consumed as 
erotica in its own right, but it wil also function as a set of instructions for consuming the 
?canon? text as erotic: it informs the slasher of where to find the slashy moments, and of 
how to slash them. 
3.5 Analysis: ?How come most people don?t se it?? 
I would now like to turn to some data with which to exemplify the points made in 
Section 3.3: a complete thread of postings to a mesage board atached to a wel-
established Lord of the Rings slash archive. Details have been removed to increase 
anonymity, and images within the text have been replaced with descriptions thereof. The 
  262/379   
postings were made pseudonymously on what was at the time an open-aces forum, and 
are reproduced here without permision (se Chapter 1 for discussion of ethical isues 
involved). 
Posted by [A], 1 October 2005, 03:21 pm 
At the first time I saw RoTK, I was absolutely blown away by Aragorn?s 
coronation [image: crowned emoticon] scene, I actualy said out loud in the 
theater: ?Oh, Legolas is the bride! cool!?, it was totaly there for me. this scene 
made me at last 100% convinced that the whole Aragorn/Legolas relationship 
isn?t just in our perverted minds but a real subtext planted by Peter Jackson & co. 
It reminded me of the wonderful documentary: 
?The Celuloid Closet?, this movie chronicles the way movies have portrayed 
homosexuals for the past 100 years. In the 50?s or so, during a period of severe 
censorship, the only way for movies to show a gay relationship was through 
hidden subtext. 
I think that if ?The Celuloid Closet 2? was to be made, it would focus on slashy 
mainstream ovies like: Spiderman, star wars & LoTR *gasp*. 
I fel that with LoTR being a blockbuster mainstream ovie, Peter had say 
whatever he wanted to say in a hidden way, hence Legolas being delightfully 
bridish.. [image: emoticon with big grin] 
But when I asked about 10 friends of mine who are intelgent, and open minded 
people only 2 (?!) of them agred with me that this scene shows a rather difrent 
and queer aspect of A/L relationship. I don?t get it [animated image: banging 
  263/379   
head against wal] how come most people don?t se it?! I am trying to be as 
objective as I can about as many things as I can, so I have to ask: 
Is it possible, that our longing to slash characters makes us se what we want to 
se, even if it ain?t realy there?! 
Pardon the Carie Bradshaw tone.. but I would realy love to hear your opinion.. 
Love, 
 [A] 
The first thing to be noted about this posting is the enthusiasm of the discussion that it 
occasioned. Not every atempt to start an online conversation is so succesful. As Hils 
(2005:79) concludes from his research on horror fandom, fan postings that do not 
?resonate with subcultural knowledge? are likely to elicit hostile responses or simply 
?languish unanswered?, and ?[t]he skil that posters are required to display when 
initiating threads of discussion is thus that of articulating shared asumptions within the 
fan culture?. This does not mean that, to succesfully initiate a thread, a poster must 
reiterate previously succesful formulas for the initiation of threads (although this does 
often occur, as the many variants on ?Which is your favourite slash pairing?? can 
testify). What it means is that a posting must engage with the obsesions and concerns of 
the fan community if it is to receive the torrent of replies that wil confirm it as what 
Hils (2005:79) cals ?a succesful ?doing? of being? a fan. I would suggest that what 
sets such torrents in motion is the opportunity that the initial postings provide for 
subsequent posters to ?do? the being of fans, which we shal se happening here. 
 [A] begins her post with a representation of herself at the time of watching The Lord of 
the Rings: The Return of the King for the first time, perhaps because her initial response 
  264/379   
to the film ay cary the implication of greater authenticity than subsequent and more 
considered responses, particularly given her spoken articulation of this response at the 
time: to speak ?out loud? in the cinema transgreses social rules, suggesting a reaction 
too strong to be contained (compare comments on direct speech in Section 3.2). Al this 
is in marked contrast to Penley?s (1991:137) claim that K/S slash arose ?as fans 
recognised, through seing the episodes countles times.. that there was an erotic 
homosexual subtext there, or at least one that could easily be made to be there?. The 
ideal presented here is the converse, a subtext ?planted by? the director, Peter Jackson, 
which can be recognised at first glance: resistant or oppositional reading/viewing is not 
valued. The possibility that Aragorn and Legolas?s love might be an unreal (imaginary, 
unintended) subtext is a clear cause of anxiety: what came ?at last? was a thing awaited. 
Thus, while Chery (2006: unpaginated) sems much impresed with female fans of Star 
Wars for (in her analysis) pro-actively inventing subtexts as a means of ?provid[ing] the 
romantic and/or sexual gratifications they desired ?/yet were denied ?/in the original?, 
this Lord of the Rings fan wants confirmation that her romantic and sexual gratifications 
originated in the original text, and not in the ?perverted minds? of herself and her felow 
fans. 
It is also noteworthy that the film is represented as an artefact to which known 
individuals have deliberately given particular properties: Fiske (1989:125) ses this as 
an intelectual, highbrow mode of viewing opposed to that of ?popular culture?. This is 
important for the implicitly elitist justification provided for the interpretation, which 
presents the A/L subtext as a mesage from the director that had to be encrypted into a 
form incomprehensible to the ignorant mas audience of a ?blockbuster mainstream 
movie?. The problem is that, even after the code has been explained to them, the 
slasher?s non-slashing peers stil do not decode it as she does. Nonetheles, it remains 
  265/379   
the majority reading that is anomalous and in need of explanation, hence the question 
?How come most people don?t se it?!? This ilustrates the rhetorical gulf betwen 
writings on slash produced inside fandom, and those produced outside it. Studies of 
slash that addres an academic audience implicitly atempt to answer the opposite 
question: ?How come some people do?? 
Posted by [B], 1 October 2005, 03:31 pm 
Wel, it is most certainly possible, but it would sem that since there is more than 
one person who considers it, the suggestive aspect of these relationships would 
be material. 
But about the other people not seing it, I don?t think it?s as a result of the 
suggestion not being there, I think it?s more of a reaction to your expresing 
something diferent and for most people, stil fairly taboo. Then again, I could 
just be wrong and there could never be a relationship to start with. But I don?t 
think so. 
The first argument ofered here ?/that if more than one person ses something, it must be 
real ?/is vulnerable to refutation by simple inversion: if more than one person does not 
se something, it cannot be real. Thus, the perceptions of those who do not se the 
subtext have to be pronounced invalid, here by reference to the idea of a taboo against 
homosexuality. This technique for ?disqualifying the recalcitrant? (Perelman and 
Olbrechts-Tyteca 1969[1958]:33) is efective here because a very progresive consensus 
on male homosexuality has emerged among slashers, superseding the residual 
  266/379   
homophobia noted by Jenkins (1992:219): a division can thus be made betwen slashers 
and non-slashers in terms of the aceptance and rejection of male homosexuality.
14
 
Posted by [C], 1 October 2005, 05:50 pm 
I suppose one could think of it as an inside joke, for lack of a beter term. The 
creator/director/actors/etc. know about the existance of slashers, and, those who 
don?t fight it or ignore it, try to give a nod to us for our enjoyment, while stil 
keeping it vague enough that someone who wasn?t looking for it wouldn?t notice. 
Examples include the infamous coronation scene and the blown kis in the POA 
movie. While we slashers would like it even more if there was wild man/hobbit/ 
elf/etc-sex in the movie/book/whatever, it would repel other viewers. The 
creators find a middle ground, putting in some hints here and there to keep the 
slashers watching and perving, while alowing those who are not slashers to be 
blisfully ignorant enjoy the show as wel. 
Eh, my two cents. 
Here, an alternative solution is proposed: the legitimacy of alternative readings. This 
recals Woledge?s (2005) strategy, although here the text is represented as intentionaly 
polyvalent ?/se Stein (1998) on the enforced ?deniability? of homosexual implications 
in Star Trek: The Next Generation. Like the earlier solutions, this represents slashers as 
detecting ?hints? that ordinary viewers do not detect but that are not imagined; however, 
it goes further by representing the creators of cult texts as having inserted those hints for 
slashers ?/thus, slashers are a special group of consumers not only because of their 
                                                
14
 For example, the ?we aren?t gay, we just love each other? clich?, familiar from earlier slash 
fandoms such as that for the LWT series The Profesionals (se Stasi 206), is very rare in Lord of 
the Rings slash. 
  267/379   
sensitivity and progresivenes, but because they have been singled out for atention by 
the creators of mas media texts. Note also how this poster performs her own group 
identity as a slasher through an expresion of shared desire (?we slashers..?). 
Posted by [D], 1 October 2005, 08:04 pm 
I honestly didn?t se it until someone with a pervier mind than me pointed it out. 
I just saw it as Legolas being the best man at his closest friend?s wedding. 
*shrugs*  
Here, cold water is poured on the notion of a subtext. Interestingly, this is done through 
representation of the slasher?s viewing of the film prior to engaging in slash reader 
discourse, with the same suggestion of authenticity invoked for the opposite purpose by 
[A]. The connection betwen text and meaning is destroyed by narating ?a pervier 
mind? as the source of the meaning. 
Posted by [E], 2 October 2005, 04:55 am 
of course Legolas is Aragorns bride [animated image: emoticon raising a toast] I 
agre with [C]; whenever I se a film with my brother and I find a hint of 
slashynes I start grinning and he doesn?t get what I?m grinning about [image: 
emoticon with big grin] 
Though I?m not so sure those slashy litle things are always there on purpose. We 
slashers sometimes tend to interpret things diferently than non-slashers of 
course. 
  268/379   
This posting makes the minority status of slash interpretation a virtue. To se 
homosexuality where others do not se it becomes, even more clearly than in [C]?s 
posting, the mark of a special group. Whether or not the ?slashynes? of a text was 
intended by its creators sems relatively unimportant, and interpretative diferences 
betwen ?[w]e slashers? and everybody else become a mater of course. 
Posted by [F], 2 October 2005, 06:48 am 
I?d just come across my first LOTR slash stories (les than a year ago . . .) but 
thought they were just the product of people?s overheated erotic imagination ?
/then I was raving about the films in general to an academic friend and without 
breaking stride she started talking about the ?homoerotic subtext? . . . Didn?t say 
anything, not wishing to look a complete idiot, but rushed home and watched the 
entire DVD-E again, as soon as I could. Talk about scales faling from eyes, 
loud crashing noises as any number of pennies dropped. 
Now can?t se the films or the books any other way. 
[F] 
This posting presents a diferent narative of interaction with text. The slasher represents 
herself as having initialy thought that Lord of the Rings slash was the product of 
?imaginations? (i.e. a misreading). It was only once the slash interpretation had been 
authorised by an expert interpreter that she at last admited its validity: her current 
inability to ?se the films or the books any other way? is thus the judgement of a viewer 
who had had no investment in slash hitherto, and was therefore an impartial judge. The 
citing of this expert?s opinion performs the additional function of aligning the activity of 
  269/379   
slashing with the critical practices of an educational elite, adding a further dimension to 
the ?slashers/mases? dichotomy that has been taking shape since [A]?s initial posting. 
Posted by [G], 2 October 2005, 08:20 am 
This has been posted on [mesage board] before but maybe some guys mised it. 
And no, it?s not al just in our heads! 
[http link] 
This posting links to a highly persuasive (although somewhat tongue-in-cheek) fan-
scholarly analysis that I shal be examining in a future paper, and which is taken to 
prove that Aragorn and Legolas?s homosexual relationship is in the text (not ?just in our 
heads?). Thus, although the analysis itself does not employ a narative of reader or 
viewer response, it can be incorporated into such a narative as a representation of the 
text?s ?objective? characteristics. With its instantly recognisable ?film studies? literacy, it 
may implicitly perform an analogous role here to [F]?s ?academic friend?, although there 
are no further alusions to the possible elite status of slash. It is structured as a series of 
captioned frames captured from both the widescren edition and the extended edition 
DVDs of The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers in order to present a maximum of 
visual detail, some of which is scarcely visible to the naked eye and has to be digitaly 
enlarged and enhanced. 
Posted by [H], 2 October 2005, 11:39 am 
I don?t think it?s our over . . . uh . . . zealous imaginations. I wasn?t thinking 
about slash when I saw FotR, but it semed a bit that way, you know? And then I 
entered the realm of LotR slash, and now I slash like hel! 
  270/379   
But even my ex-husband, who has no idea about any of this, told me after RotK 
that he thought Sam and Frodo were gay and that they should be together. This 
man is about as straight and traditional minded as you can get! 
Plus, there is no reason to make Legolas look like that and walk up with a train 
and everything. It could?ve been done diferently, but a director gains the efect 
he/she wants by subtle details. And we al know PJ is into details; it?s what 
makes a good director. I think that if it was not for the purpose of making 
Legolas and Aragorn sem like they were meant for each other (which they are), 
it at least was not just coincidence. 
Here, we find yet another representation of initial consumption:/?I wasn?t thinking about 
slash?. The implication is that, if she had been, then her mind might have been the 
source of the meaning, but she was not, so it cannot. Further support is provided by the 
incorporation of a representation of another viewer?s response:/having had ?no idea 
about any of this?, the slasher?s husband was an impartial judge, and any homosexual 
meanings he perceived must have originated in the text, since his ?straight and 
traditional? mind could not possibly have been the source of such ideas. 
It is tempting to pick apart the generalisation that appears to underpin the implied 
syllogism that follows: after al, the director of The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the 
King was not simply ?a director?, but the director of Bad Taste, Braindead, and Met the 
Febles, thre films in which efects are achieved through anything but subtle details. 
But this would mis the point somewhat: like academic criticism, fan interpretation 
involves the presumption of potential significance for any detail that can be perceived, 
  271/379   
and critics and fans alike may atribute this significance to the wil of an al-intending 
author/director.
15
 
Posted by [I], 2 October 2005, 01:31 pm 
[image: laughing emoticon] Honestly, I think it?s about 80% in our pervy litle 
heads. The other 20% is us seing perfectly normal atraction of friends for 
friends and men for other men. 
Yes, I think man/man is actualy NORMAL. To be atracted to folks of the same 
gender is perfectly natural, as far as I?m concerned, but a lot of people get totaly 
panicked when they even think about it, so it just gets al mesed up. I blame 
religious zealots for that. 
In China you se women walking along hand in hand, and young guys walking 
down the stret arm in arm, hanging over each other?s shoulders, and no one 
thinks anything of it. But that?s a Buddhist culture, and there?s a much beter 
integration, historicaly, of the male and female in people?s minds and in their 
culture. Westerners have it prety much screwed up. 
So, no, I don?t think there are secret homoerotic mesages in LOTR. But I do 
believe there are some very natural moments of male/male afection, which is 
                                                
15
 Cf. Livingston (195:59): ?through critical reading, a text is always found to be a reasoned and 
reasonable object; its finest details reveal the rational motives for their existence.? The word ?always? 
is an exageration ? Livingston has in mind a particular kind of criticism, and never discuses 
divergences from it (such as deconstruction) ? but this strategy for close reading is as recognisable in 
literary and (especialy under the ?auteur? tradition) film studies as it is in fandom. 
  272/379   
nice. It?s particularly acurate when you consider the ?brothers in arms? efect, 
how close men become going through a war together. Perfectly normal. 
Now if you?l excuse me . . . Dave as requested my asistance in tying up Viggo, 
and they?re both geting a bit impatient. [image: emoticon with protruding 
tongue] 
Like [D], this slasher is clear that the A/L subtext originates with slashers rather than in 
The Lord of the Rings. Paradoxicaly, her justification for this appeals to the same 
contextual factor as [B]?s justification of the opposite position: homophobia. She 
demonstrates that this opinion does not interfere with her identity as a slasher by 
humorously representing herself as a participant in an RPS sex scene involving the Lord 
of the Rings actors Viggo Mortensen (Aragorn) and David Wenham (Faramir). The 
notion of normality appealed to suggests the problems of aligning slash with queer 
theory (for example, Stein 1998):/at isue in this discussion is not the performativity of 
sexuality, but the question of whether Aragorn and Legolas are lovers or ?just 
friends?.
16
 
Posted by [F], 2 October 2005, 04:45 pm 
[quotes last paragraph of [I]?s posting] 
                                                
16
 Inded, the ascription of this normality ? this perfect normality ? to the experience of ?men.. 
going through a war together? must also discredit the utopian interpretation of slash as ?an explicit 
critique of masculinity? (Jenkins 192:219). Critiques of masculinity do circulate within slash 
fandoms, but, as Jenkins realises (?fan writers also acept uncriticaly many ways of thinking about 
gender that originate within the comercial naratives? [ibid.]), so do highly conservative gender 
ideologies: as here. 
  273/379   
If you find your hands over-full, I could always dash over and put my fingers on 
the knots to make sure they don?t slip.. if that would help? 
[F] 
That [I]?s scepticism does not create a crisis can be sen from [F]?s endorsement of her 
performance of slasher identity, tentatively writing herself into the same RPS scene. 
That slashers se homosexual desire in mainstream ovies is contentious; that they 
enjoy the fantasy of ?boy on boy? is something that al here can agre on (Lord of the 
Rings femslash is very rare). 
Posted by [A], 4 October 2005, 10:07 am 
[quotes G?s posting] 
I have sen it before, and found it realy cool and reasuring in a ?Yay! I am not 
halucinating!? kind of way. 
I agre with most of it, but I felt that in some points she was making, she 
interpreted the facts in a very wishfull thinking way, and realy lost her 
objectivity in the cinematic analysis she was trying to do. None the les she did 
an amazing job, and I am going to put a link to it in my site. I have to say that 
one of the ten friends I asked about the wedding scene, was a gay male, and he 
said something similar to what [I] wrote.. 
This would appear to support much of what has been argued in this chapter: the analysis 
is valued for its reasurance that the source of the homosexual meaning is the text; it is 
criticised for loss of objectivity, but this entails that there was objectivity to be lost. 
Nonetheles, this posting is no les troubled than [A]?s first, and it refutes [B]?s 
  274/379   
proffered solution of the original dilema by representing another viewer who did not 
se the subtext, this time ?a gay male?. Taboo cannot easily explain a male homosexual?s 
non-recognition of a text as a representation of male homosexuality. 
Posted by [J], 4 October 2005, 07:24 pm 
[A]: That is FUNY! [quote from website linked to by G] lol 
This response to the analysis values it as an artefact in its own right, rather than for what 
it might be taken to reveal about the ?canon? text. To do this, this slasher represents 
herself reading the analysis (?lol?, i.e. ?laughs out loud?) rather than watching the film. 
Posted by [K], 5 October 2005, 04:09 am 
 [A], you are very observant*/but looking at the [website] link of yours, have you 
also noticed that Legolas?s eyes? His pupils are dilated, showing sexual interest. 
Ooooohhh, you?ve set me off now . . . more Leggy/Raggy slash fics!! [image: 
Legolas] [image: heart] [image: Aragorn] [animated image: emoticon emiting 
hearts] 
The analysis now acquires two functions beyond those that it has held hitherto: a cue to 
the discovery of further erotic details for which one must be even more ?observant?, and 
a reinforcement of commitment to A/L. Thus, it is received as ?epidictic oratory?, or 
preaching to the converted, which aims at the ?amplification and enhancement? of values 
already adhered to by the audience (Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca 1969[1958], 51). 
The slasher?s own adherence to these values (and therefore her group identity) is 
emphasised through her use of the familiar (to A/L shippers) pet names ?Leggy? and 
?Raggy? to designate Legolas and Aragorn. 
  275/379   
Posted by [D], 5 October 2005, 05:50 pm 
Of course, one could argue that the interpretation of any/al afection betwen 
two people as sexual atraction is a direct product of the ingrained cultural 
homophobia of america. This country is very much a large ?personal space? 
culture ?/touching and afection is frowned upon as ?inappropriate? because it?s 
?always sexual? even in non-sexual context, like an elementary school teacher 
giving a student a hug. There are places they can get fired for that now, you 
know, because it?s ?inappropriate? and might be misinterpreted as pedophilia. I 
blame the psychiatry industry (and dipshits like Freud especialy). 
I think we?re al poorer as human beings for it. I like slash and al, but I?d be 
careful about picking threads from the books and movies as canon 
homosexuality  (not that you ever needed canonicity for writing slash!). 
Anyhow, it?s not a trend I?d support. 
So yea, there?s my 1 1/2 cents.. 
[D] returns to expres a similar view to [I], and to make explicit the implication that the 
meanings claimed in slash readings may have originated in homophobia. Like [I], [D] is 
careful to represent her identity as a slasher as uncompromised by her scepticism (?I like 
slash and al?), but what is of perhaps greater interest here is her representation of the 
mode of reading required to back up slash interpretations as reliant on selective 
quotation or quotation out of context (?picking threads?), a powerful refutation discussed 
in Section 3.2. This promotes a diferent conception of slash, in which it is understood as 
creative rather than interpretative, and therefore as not requiring the justifications 
proposed by other posters: ?not that you ever needed canonicity for writing slash!? 
  276/379   
3.6 Concluding note 
This chapter has so far presented a fairly coherent narative, a relatively untroubled case 
for certain understandings and against others. It has achieved this by discussing only 
representations, by adopting the anti-realist position promoted by discursive 
psychologists and ? in media studies ? Mat Hils. There are good reasons for adopting 
this position, and I am not entirely giving it up. But, while the following chapter shal 
make much of Hils?s notion of ?pleasure-as-performative? (2005), here I wil subvert it 
in advance by asking whether pleasure might not (possibly, perhaps) be felt as wel as 
performed. I shal not go so far as to suppose that Lord of the Rings fans enjoy watching 
The Lord of the Rings ? heaven forbid! But I wil venture to speculate that the people 
who produced the discourse analysed above enjoyed producing that discourse. This is 
not a mater of pleasure-as-performative, as it would be if I was discussing [I]?s use of a 
laughing emoticon as a performance of pleasure-taking. It is a mater of wondering, 
?Hey, I wonder if they had a good time posting those mesages?? It certainly semed like 
fun. Is that such a leap of faith? 
So there: I?l say it and be damned: there are pleasures in slashing. Although we can 
infer from the popularity among them of Velvet Goldmine, Brokeback Mountain, Queer 
as Folk, and indeed Torchwood (se Section 3.2) that many slashers would have 
appreciated explicit homosexuality in The Lord of the Rings, its presence would have 
diminished the possibility for those pleasures. None of the interpretative discourse here 
would have been possible had Aragorn and Legolas been easily readable as ?gay?, which 
in turn would have meant fewer opportunities for speculation, the exercise of readerly 
expertise, and the construction of slasher identity as something valuable and distinct. It 
is easy to se why, as Janet Staiger (2005:156, citing Ross 2002) contends, ?some 
  277/379   
minorities enjoy maintaining subtexts as just that: subtexts?. The discussion analysed 
here suggests an erotics of the barely perceptible: it is the uncertainty of the ground on 
which the slash interpretation rests that gives that ground its fascination. 
The discursive turn has given psychology a new object for investigation: the 
representation of psychological states in discourse. At the same time, it insists on 
rigorous agnosticism as to the ?real? nature of those states, taking interest only in 
discourse. That a number of psychologists (for example, Frosh 1999; Hollway and 
Jeferson 2005) should have expresed frustration with such self-imposed limitations is 
understandable; for beter or for worse, ?doing discursive psychology? means refraining 
from doing much of what psychology has traditionaly been asumed to be. It would 
sem likely that many scholars of reception wil fel the same way about the sort of 
work that has been recommended in this study, which has only considered what reader 
discourse reveals when considered as a form of social activity, ducking the isue of its 
referential content. Are we to deny that [A] spoke aloud in the cinema, that [F] was 
?converted? by an academic, or that [D] failed to se the potential for a symbolic reading 
of Orlando Bloom?s costume until an acquaintance speled it out? Within the limits of 
this chapter, it is of no significance whether these things actualy happened: acounts of 
such events can be analysed as events in their own right, and, as Silverman (1993:209) 
argues, ?for sociological purposes, nothing lies ?behind? people?s acounts?. But this 
wil clearly not do for the mainstream of reception study, which is interested not in what 
viewers and readers do through representing their practices of textual consumption, but 
in the practices themselves. 
At the risk of alienating the very theorists who have been my inspiration, I would like to 
suggest that discourse analysis of the type caried out here might also be of use to those 
  278/379   
working outside the discursive paradigm: it not only identifies forms of interference 
betwen the reception scholar and the phenomenon of reception, it suggests that this 
?interference? is interesting in its own right, and perhaps even a site of reception: works 
can be sen as received not only in minds, but also in social interactions. 
But what of those theorists whose primary object is the subjective experience of reading, 
and who must therefore continue to focus their atention on individual minds? The 
considerations raised here may sem irelevant to their endeavours, unles one or both of 
two asumptions can be made. The first of these is that the proceses involved in the 
viewing of the Lord of the Rings films by the producers of the discourse analysed above 
must have been such as could facilitate the production of that discourse. These proceses 
are not merely of the brain and eye: they are physical (repeat viewing), technical (use of 
frezeframe and scene selection), economic (cinemagoing, purchase of variant DVD 
editions), and social (watching in company, noticing other people?s reactions, 
participating in discussion). And then there are inded those brain and eye proceses ? 
atention to particular details, for example ? but those wil have been mediated through 
the others. On the one hand, this means that we cannot deduce from the fact that 
somebody mentions a detail that he or she spontaneously noticed that detail by him- or 
herself: it may have been pointed out ? and, if the person in question is reading from the 
virtual crib-sheet of fan general knowledge, it may not, strictly speaking, have been 
noticed at al (at least by the mentioner). But on the other hand, it also means that the 
contributors to discourse on a work may be mediating their own brain and eye (and 
other) proceses by contributing to that discourse. It was atention to this possibility that 
prompted Bethan Benwel and I to view readers? statements about their reading as 
means by which they organise their lives of the mind relative to one another (under 
  279/379   
review; quoted in Chapter 1 of the current study): where the life of the mind is 
understood to be something not entirely private. 
This leads us to the second asumption, which is that the subjective experience of 
consumption is mediated through the representation of such experience in discourse: that 
the experience of consuming a text may be influenced by the consumer?s obligation to 
represent that experience to others at a later stage or by others? prior representations of 
that consumer?s likely experience (?If you liked Brokeback Mountain, you?l love The 
Lord of the Rings?; cf. Barker 2004, discussed Chapter 1). Such possibilities are raised 
by Lynne Pearce (1997:89-93, 215), problematic though her methods are from a strictly 
discursive point of view,
17
 and are suggested by the very ubiquity of reader discourse: 
as Long (1992:191) observes, ?[m]ost readers need the support of talk with other 
readers, the participation in a social milieu in which books are ?in the air??. 
It should also be remembered that, for many readers (including both fans and 
academics), engagement in discourse on a work does not merely follow or precede the 
silent consumption of its texts (as suggested above), but alternates and interweaves with 
it, so that textual consumption is a long-term relationship composed of repeated readings 
or viewings framed by revisited discussions/or, equaly, of revisited discussions framed 
by repeated readings or viewings. These readers? subjective experience of a work would 
necesarily be the subjective experience of participating in simultaneous and intimately-
connected carers of reading/viewing and discussion. As Martin Barker puts it, 
audiences? encounters with films do not begin and end with opening titles and 
closing credits. Encounters begin as the first layers of knowledge and interest are 
sedimented in; and they ?close? with the proceses, after viewing, in which 
                                                
17
 Se Chapter 4 for further discusion. 
  280/379   
people review, discuss, argue, and setle ? into a relatively stable form ? the 
meaning and significance of the filmic experience. 
2004: no pagination 
If anything is clear, it is that the subtleties of the discourse analysed here wil be lost to 
view if we misconstrue it as what so much of it claims to be: straightforward reporting 
of prior encounters with texts. Taking such discourse seriously, then, does not 
necesarily mean taking it at face value: fan discourse, and discourse more generaly, 
posseses a level of complexity that wil remain invisible so long as we continue to treat 
it solely as a window onto something else. 
Nonetheles, to asume that discourse is al we can learn about by studying discourse ? a 
presumption of opacity, the very inverse of Woledge?s apparent (but unarticulated) 
presumption of transparency ? may arguably fail to do justice to discourse, which ? after 
al ? exists partly to gesture beyond itself. The next chapter turns again to the stories 
people tel of their encounters with texts, to read them in more detail and to ask: even if 
we cannot se through discourse to a reality on its other side, can we not at least se in 
discourse the atempt to comprehend a reality comprehensible in no other way? This is 
to develop my solution to the problem of meta-theoretical regres, touched upon in 
Chapter 1: to se my research subjects as themselves reception scholars in the very 
moment that they yield up each datum of reception. But before we can atempt such 
theoretical flights, we must return to earth: or rather, to the dificulties that such an 
approach may solve. 
  281/379   
4. Teling stories about readers: a naratology of 
reading
18
 
4.1 Introduction 
In his manifesto, ?Texts, printing, readings?, Roger Chartier (1989:158) conceives the 
history of reading in terms of ?the collection of actual readings tracked down in 
individual confesions or reconstructed on the level of communities of readers?, and thus 
places individuals? reports of their own reading at the methodological centre of the 
discipline. It is therefore interesting that two of the most most noted histories of British 
reading produced in recent years ? Jonathan Rose?s The intelectual life of the British 
working class (2002[2001]) and Wiliam St Clair?s The reading nation (2004) ? have 
taken diametricaly opposed approaches to this form of data. Though he does not claim 
it to be untrustworthy in the majority of cases, St Clair dismises it from consideration 
(2004:4-6), while Rose, though admiting it to be imperfect (2002[2001]:2), bases a 
great part of his argument upon the asumption of its transparency.
19
 Are these the only 
alternatives? I would like to suggest a more nuanced approach to such data: re-
conceptualising confesions, etc, not as anecdotal evidence of reading (with the stres 
either, with St Clair, on the ?anecdotal?, or, with Rose, on the ?evidence?), but as a sort 
                                                
18
 This chapter is adapted from Alington (forthcoming) 
19
 Many of Rose?s overal conclusions are suported by a range of relatively objective data and 
therefore reliable; the argument of this chapter may, however, have consequences for the 
interpretation of the substantial part of Rose?s data whose factual veracity canot be checked (se the 
fifth section of this chapter for a fuler discusion). 
  282/379   
of narative: the anecdote of reading.
120
 This approach is not in itself novel within the 
historical study of reading: as we shal se, a number of reader historians have analysed 
the ways in which a writers ?employ references to reading when constructing and 
presenting an identity through autobiography? (Flint 1993:191). What is novel here is 
the atempt to develop a systematic application for Lyons and Taksa?s principle that 
?[t]he potential of oral history is fully realised only when its novel-like quality is 
exploited? (1992:15), and applying it to al anecdotal evidence, rather than to oral 
testimony alone: in other words, to propose a narratology of reading. 
This involves turning one?s academic back on the quest to find in anecdotes of reading 
documentary proof either of past acts of reading or of their imediate cognitive or 
emotional consequences. To some extent, this approach has been premiered in the 
previous two chapters: claims to having been hurt by reading a book or to having ?sen? 
an interpretation of a film while seated in the cinema, eyes to the scren, were analysed 
in the context of evaluative and interpretative discourse on the book and the film 
respectively, and were recognised as playing functional roles, including as 
argumentative support for higher level claims (bad book, homoerotic film). In this 
chapter, however, the anecdote of reading wil be shown (a) to have rhetorical 
consequences beyond the evaluation and interpretation of specific works (although, 
given this disertation?s focus, these shal remain central), and (b) to posses internal 
complexities that reward further investigation. To put it another way, this means treating 
the following warning as a chalenge: 
                                                
120
 I use this term to refer to any mention or description of events that include or imply consumption 
of or response to text ? including the refusal to read ? particularly where the specific claims made 
canot be substantiated through hard evidence. The term is a convenience, and no claim is made that 
such mentions and descriptions constitute a single genre. 
  283/379   
As a means of asesing reception, difusion, impact, and influence, records of 
individual acts of reading are les useful than they may at first appear. Once a mental 
experience has been put into a text, even as simple a text as a note in a diary, it 
requires historical and critical interpretation. Why were certain reactions to reading 
recorded and not others? Who were the implied readers for those texts, and what did 
the writer hope to achieve? What horizons of expectations did the authors bring to 
their reading and writing? The words themselves need to be historicised. In 
describing the efects of their reading, the readers describe, recommend, and 
condemn. 
St Clair 2004:400 
What is at stake is the narative representation of reading. I am aware that, to certain 
historians of reading, what I propose may sem some dreadful post-structuralist exces 
(particularly when I cast it in terms of discourse analysis and historiographic theory), but 
it is realy no more than an extension of something we quite readily do in our day-to-day 
life. For instance, when the then Leader of the Commons, Jack Straw claimed to find 
Salman Rushdie?s books ?dificult? and never to have finished any of them ? a 
confesion that might sem to reveal something fairly straightforward about a British 
politician?s reading habits ? a Times journalist saw in it nothing more than Straw?s 
?making the point that, since Rushdie?s work is not his cup of tea, neither is Rushdie, 
and nor, by extension, is his knighthood ? nothing to do with me, guv, so please keep 
voting for me, Muslim constituents.? (Knight 2007:15) 
As in the previous chapter, I adopt a broadly discursive psychological approach. 
However, the current chapter atempts to move beyond the presumption of exclusive 
tacticality inherent in most implementations of discursive psychological thinking by 
  284/379   
atending to the cognitive function of anecdotes of reading: the extent to which their 
formulation may serve to make sense of the texts and the reading experiences not only 
constructed but refered to: that is, by recognising that, whatever else they are, anecdote, 
autobiography, testimony, etc may be themselves atempts (however confused, 
fragmentary, or impartial) to establish the nature and meaning of past events (including 
events of reading) that can only be discussed in the proxy form of representations.
121
 
This theoretical position makes of any history that works with anecdotal sources a 
?metahistory?, or critique of atempts to write or tel historical naratives, for which 
reason, a further importation, this time from theoretical historiography (White 1973), 
becomes necesary. There are iresolvable tensions betwen the theories here brought to 
bear on the anecdote of reading, but, as I hope to demonstrate, these can be productively 
played out in the practical activity of analysis. 
4.2 Audience research: memory 
Except in cases such as marginalia or focus groups, where a stretch of discourse on a 
text or on the reading of that text is produced in the presence of the text in question, the 
                                                
121
 What is sometimes caled the ?postmodern? critique of history has at times involved the claim that 
reference to past events is in some respect anomalous: ?If linguistic analysts define words as signs or 
signifiers that denote objects in their stead, then ?history? certainly fits this definition twice over.. no-one 
can point to the past in the same way that one can point to a horse or a tre (or even a picture of them) as 
the objects to which the words ?horse? and ?tre? refer.? (Berkhofer 197:148-149) But this critique is 
founded on a misunderstanding: the words ?horse? and ?tre? (as oposed to, for example, ?Shergar? and 
?Goethe?s Oak?) do not ?denote objects? that could ever have ben pointed at, and, though words may be 
used to refer to particular ?objects? (?a horse or a tre?, as Berkhofer writes), the spech act of refering 
(Searle 1969:26-3) is in no sense dependent on the posibility of ostensive definition for the refering 
expresion. 
  285/379   
referent of such discourse wil always be something acesible to the speaker or writer 
only through memory. Thus, as Janet Staiger observes, scholars of reception ?use 
memories for almost al their raw evidence.? (2005:186) This realisation has formed an 
important discussion point in mas media reception study: Staiger (191), for example, 
encourages an acquaintance with the work of cognitive psychologist Ulric Neiser 
(1981), who famously deduced the existence of thre distinct memory proceses from a 
comparison of White House oficial John Dean?s Watergate testimony and the (much 
later released) recordings of the same Oval Ofice conversations that he had, in that 
testimony, claimed to recal. These thre proceses comprise ?verbatim recal? (precisely 
recaled details of what was said and what happened), ?gist? (recaled summaries of the 
same), and ?repisodic memory? (recal of themes which remained invariant throughout a 
series of events). 
The implicit theory of remembering is that a person recals, and then recounts. Given 
such a dichotomy, one naturaly asumes that there are two distinct sets of causes 
afecting the content of autobiographical acounts: those arising in the brain, and those 
arising in the social environment inhabited by the brain?s owner, and in which it may, 
for example, may be conventional that ?incidents are selected to contribute toward the 
foresen moral of the tale.? (Staiger 2005:193) Commonsensical though this may sem, 
it is hard to se how, in any real-world situation, one may definitively atribute features 
of a given individual?s testimony to the former set of causes. Indeed, in their critique of 
Neiser, discursive psychologists Edwards and Potter (1992) argue that John Dean?s 
?eforts at remembering are.. indistinguishable from his mode of acounting? (44), and 
conclude that the features of Dean?s testimony that Neiser?s brain-orientated 
hypotheses purport to explain can beter be explained as atempts on Dean?s part ?to 
enhance his reliability as a prosecution witnes, to bolster his own disputed version of 
  286/379   
things, and to mitigate his own culpability under cross-examination.? (48) Thus, it might 
be beter to describe reception scholars as working with accounts of remembered events 
than as working with memories per se, unles ?a memory? is taken to mean an acount 
of a remembered event. This being the case, the problematics of memory may be 
subsumed into the more general problematics of situated storyteling, a move which is 
suggested by Annete Kuhn?s (2002) use of such terms as ?memory talk? and ?memory 
text? to describe the data from which she constructs her oral history of cinemagoing, and 
by Lyons and Taksa?s (1992) theories of autobiography. My claim is not, of course, that 
al stories are told with the hard-biten calculation of a public servant facing a tribunal, 
but only that memories are stories told in social situations and for social purposes. As 
Potter and Wetherel (1987:34) put it, ?[i]t may be that the person providing the acount 
is not consciously constructing, but a construction emerges as they merely try to make 
sense of a phenomenon or engage in unselfconscious social activities like blaming or 
justifying.? While, within oral history, psychoanalytic theories have been proposed to 
explain how witneses? memories of historical events can be ?scrambled and entangled? 
by official or popular acounts of those same events (Thomson 1990:77), it would 
certainly be easier to explain this invasion of memory by text if memories are viewed as 
performances, either improvised or habitual, produced in particular situations for 
particular purposes and drawing on a range of potential sources in order to achieve 
interpersonal efects: popular films and official histories become grist to the storyteler?s 
mil.
12
 
                                                
12
 A particularly god example of this sort of proces is provided by Robins and Cohen (1978) in 
their anthropological study of urban British working clas youths. As they put it, ?towards the end [of 
one story], media imagery spils out of its context and ?takes over the acount?? (102), but I would 
prefer simply to say that the storyteler employs media imagery to make the point of his acount al 
  287/379   
Thus, although proceses internal to the brain wil indubitably limit the memory texts 
that an individual is able to produce, it may be unwise to se these proceses and the past 
events refered to as the sole (or even perhaps the primary) determinants of the memory 
texts themselves. As Stokoe and Edwards (2006:60) argue, rather than asuming that 
? ?life stories? and experiences are readily available to ?dump? from memory?, analysts 
should atend to ?what, in their daily lives, people are doing when they tel stories and, 
therefore, what stories are designed to do.? Although there are dificulties with the 
appeal to the notion of design (unfortunately implying, as it does, that such stories must 
be narated in acordance with a preconceived plan), this may be, for the purposes of 
reader history and other forms of reception study, the most fruitful approach to memory. 
We are not the pasive bearers of our memories of reading. In a study of women?s 
memories of Hollywood stars, for example, Jackie Stacey (1994a:70) notes that ?[w]hat 
gets remembered and what gets forgotten may depend not only on the star?s carer, and 
changing discourses since the time period specified, but also upon the identity of the 
cinema spectator?, but the performance of such rememberings and forgetings can also 
be viewed as an active response to those discourses and an active construction of that 
identity. Indeed, Stacey subsequently came to view each respondent?s rememberings as 
the creation, in dialogue with herself as they imagined her, of ?a contrast and mediation 
betwen [the] past and present selves represented in [their] acounts? (1994b:326). This 
can be sharply contrasted with Dorothy Hobson?s dismisal of the ?observer?s paradox?: 
?since many of the viewers talked about programes which they had sen when I was 
not there, nor did they know that, months or years ahead, they would be talking about 
                                                                                                                                    
the more dramaticaly clear: ?So it?s the por mugs blind at the front that gets the first chunk of lead 
and al their face just going splut al over the place and al you hear is chop chop and litle groans 
and grunts, and litle kids crawling out with half their jaws mising.? (ibid.) 
  288/379   
them, it can be said that the efect which those programes had had upon their audience 
had not been afected by my presence.? (1982:107) To state that the researcher?s 
presence cannot have afected the ?efect? of a text upon its consumers in the past is to 
forget that this ?efect? is a discursive representation constructed by those consumers in 
dialogue with the researcher. 
4.3 Audience research: acounting 
That there exists no report of an event ? does this mean that it did not happen, that it 
happened but was not witnesed, that it was witnesed but was not retained by the brain 
of the witnes, or that, despite being retained, it was not reported? And if the later, was 
this due to censorship, to embarasment, to tact, or to modesty, or simply through 
seming so unimportant as not to be worth mentioning? 
In a fascinating study of writen responses to a Mas-Observation question on the 
subject of crying in the cinema, Harper and Porter (1996) provide examples of 
respondents of both sexes who identified tears as a feminine response to films. Based on 
respondents? reporting of their own tears (or lack thereof), Harper and Porter conclude 
that ?men and women had fundamentaly diferent atitudes to crying in the cinema, and 
these atitudes influenced their behaviour? (157). But it is hard to imagine that these 
atitudes could alter an individual?s propensity to cry without altering that same 
individual?s propensity to report him- or herself as having cried; indeed, Harper and 
Porter sem to suggest as much with their statement that ?far fewer men [than women] 
were prepared to cite topics which could bring a tear to their eyes? (157, emphasis 
added). Thus, the more secure of Harper and Porter?s discoveries relate not to 
behavioural responses to films (for which the Mas-Observation reports constitute 
  289/379   
anecdotal evidence) but to ways of talking about such responses (for which they 
constitute the phenomenon itself).
123
 This is a common experience in qualitative social 
science research; as David Silverman (1993:203) argues, ?[t]he phenomenon that always 
escapes is the ?esential? reality? pursued?, but ?[t]he phenomenon that can be made to 
reappear is the practical activity of participants in establishing a phenomenon-in-
context.? And not only should this ?practical activity? hold great potential sociological 
and historical interest for scholars of reception,
124
 the lack of such activity may be 
argued to hold equal interest. Andrew Hobbs (2007) argues that the reason why there 
exists litle writen evidence of responses to local newspapers in 18th Century 
Lancashire is that these newspapers were considered too unprestigious a reading mater 
to remark upon in writing: on the one hand, this can be sen as an impediment to 
research, but, on the other, it can be sen as a discovery about the culture of reading in 
that time and place. 
A no les conspicuous absence is that of Don Juan from Rose?s (2002) acount of 
British working clas reading. Rose mentions this early 19th century bestseler only 
twice: once in pasing, in a long list of reading mater extracted from a working clas 
woman?s autobiography (2002:85), and once when he quotes from the autobiography of 
                                                
123
 One male respondent recaled that he had ben deply moved by a film but had concealed this at 
the time. His confesion to having falsely presented his emotional response imediately after its 
ocurence must surely de-stabilise (which is not to say discredit) atempts to take as factualy true 
his later presentation of that same emotional response (and, inded, its very concealment). 
124
 In his study of television viewers (se chapter 1), Morley argues that, even if we are to supose 
that his ?respondents had misrepresented their behaviour.. ofering clasical masculine and feminine 
stereotypes which belied the complexity of their actual behaviour?, we should stil consider it ?a 
social fact of considerable interest that these were the particular forms of misrepresentation which 
respondents felt constrained to ofer of themselves? (1986:16). 
  290/379   
?a housepainter?s son who became a Cambridge don? (374). The former mention goes by 
without further coment, the later with the asertion that, reading Don Juan as a child, 
the reader in question had done so ?through a prepubescent frame, of course? (ibid.). 
Rose sems to draw no conclusions from this, but the clear implication is that the 
working clases did not read Don Juan very much, and that, if they did, it wil not at al 
have ben for its scandalous sexual content. Although we can have no objective evidence 
regarding the later idea, the former sems unlikely, since we know that, within two 
years of its completion, Don Juan sold in its hundred thousands in editions of ?tiny 
books, cramed pages, [and] tiny print? that were ?afordable by clerks, artisans, and 
others hitherto excluded from odern reading.? (St Clair 2005:7) This would sem a good 
ilustration of Jacqueline Pearson?s (1999:13) maxim that ?[e]ven autobiographical 
acounts.. may not be the transparent historical record they sem? as ?[t]he temptation 
to supres facts, even to tel outright lies, was sometimes strong?; inded, Pearson 
sugests that the reading of Don Juan was a ?fact? particularly likely to be supresed 
(ibid.). Thus, we should perhaps think of other reasons than simple truth teling for 
which an old Cambridge don might have insisted that, as an eleven-year-old boy in a 
working clas family, he ?saw nothing in? that infamous work ?but comic adventures, 
sunny shores, storms, Arabian Nights interiors, and words, words, words.? (Burton 
1958:95, quoted Rose ibid.) 
Alasuutari found from analysis of interview data that the admision of having watched 
certain types of programe semed to require an apology or justification, and that the 
watching of those same types of programe was often actively denied: on the basis of 
this, he proposes a ?moral hierarchy? of television, with current afairs programes at 
  291/379   
the top and soap operas at the bottom (1992:568).
125
 ?When you listen to people taking 
about their viewing habits and about their favourite TV programes?, he observes, ?it 
imediately strikes you how profoundly moral this isue is? (561) ? but morality is only 
the beginning of it, as one realises when one remembers Piere Bourdieu?s (1984[1979]) 
conception of habitus as the complex of behaviour and aesthetic preference asociated 
with membership of a particular socioeconomic group. As can be sen from research 
such as Jackson et al?s study of how readers of men?s magazines distance themselves 
from this low prestige form of text (2001:114-116), this applies at least as much to 
reading as it does to viewing. Indeed, Elizabeth Long (1986) observes a hierarchy of 
taste common to al the (middle clas, and al-female) reading groups in her initial study, 
noting that ?[n]o group considers romances, for example, to be discussable? (598). This 
point is intuitive enough to have been made in pasing by a number of writers,
126
 and its 
implications for the interpretation of anecdotes of reading are clear from Lyons and 
Taksa?s wry comment that ?[w]hile interviewes were happy to impres us with their 
familiarity with Dickens, they were not so forthright about their excursions into the 
world of popular thrilers and romances.? (1992:56) 
                                                
125
 Compare Morley?s (1986:16) sumary of masculine and feminine asociations in his interview 
data: 
Masculine     Feminine 
Activity     Watching television 
Fact programes    Fiction programes 
Realist fiction     Romance 
126
 Poter and Wetherel (1987:31) provide the sliping into conversation of a reference to one?s 
reading of Goethe as a typical example of how ?[t]o present yourself as a wonderful human being?; 
Scolon (198:109) sugests that ?the act of displaying one?s reading mater for others to se would 
be analogous to driving the latest prestigious car or living at the right adres?. 
  292/379   
Miscalculations in this regard could be potentialy dangerous. It is sometimes suggested, 
for example, that Al Gore?s expresed afection (on Oprah) for Stendhal?s The Red and 
the Black may have deepened his reputation as an intelectual out of touch with ordinary 
Americans, and thus (perhaps) indirectly contributed to his winning the presidential 
election by an insufficiently large margin to prevent George W Bush from being 
declared the victor. Whether or not this is true, it reminds us that there are situations in 
which the best-calculated display may be of the least ambitious reading mater.
127
 
Indeed, five years after Gore?s failure at the polls, members of the British parliament 
were expresing a marked preference for Hary Potter and The Da Vinci Code (Wiliams 
2005). And in some contexts, it might be dificult to admit to reading anything at al: 
Lyons and Taksa argue that, for many of their male respondents, ?[t]he myth of the 
Great Outdoors produced the asumption that reading was somehow incompatible with 
playing footbal or tennis, going surfing, or indulging in other physical or sporting 
activities?, while many females ?viewed reading as an individual indulgence, which 
could conflict with their perceived duty of service to a family group.? (1992:191) 
From such a starting point, two analytic approaches to the anecdote of reading can be 
proposed. The first aims to discover generalities about the place of text, texts, or text 
                                                
127
 Cf. Hawkins (190) on Tom Wolfe?s The Bonfire of the Vanities: ?in difering social and 
institutional circles.. there is a stigma atached to any writers or works that you might be, or once 
have ben, required to read in a course. Al of them are presumed to be equaly boring and irelevant. 
Therefore not to know, and above al defiantly not to care, and certainly not to want to know ho 
Christopher Marlowe was, would be a mark of status, a source of pride.. Can you imagine John 
Wayne playing a character with a first-hand knowledge of the works of Christopher Marlowe?? (12-
13) If it is ?traditionaly tabo for an Al-American Male to display any artistic or intelectual 
knowledge, pasions, or interests? (13, emphasis aded), how much more so must it be when the 
object of his knowledge, pasion, and interest is French. 
  293/379   
types in society. Just as Alasuutari (1992) is able, from statistical analysis of his 
interviewes? avowals or disavowals of taste for particular types of contemporary 
television programe, to place those types in a hierarchy of respectability, so can one do 
the same for books in any given historical period, based on that period?s documentary 
anecdotes of reading. Indeed, one can go further than Alasuutari, since Bourdieu?s 
asociation of diferent standards of taste with each clas fraction suggests the possibility 
of multiple hierarchies co-existing simultaneously. Read from this perspective, one of 
the most interesting aspects of Rose?s study is its revelation of a succesion of rivalries 
betwen competing hierarchies of books within the reading tastes of the British 
proletariat (which Bourdieu appears to approach as a single, undivided entity; se 
Peterson and Simkus [1992], Bryson [1997], and Tampubolon [2008], discussed in 
Chapter 1, for further acounts of why status group alone is not enough to explain taste): 
Rose finds the same ?distinct correlation betwen conventionality and manual labour? as 
does Bourdieu, with working clas tastes in literature ?consistently lagg[ing] a 
generation behind those of the educated middle clases? (117), but additionaly shows 
that there were sharp generational distinctions betwen working clas contemporaries 
(120) and suggests the possibility of regional diferences within the working clases, 
with proletarian readers in the north possibly having more conservative tastes than those 
in London (138-140). Interestingly, Rose finds evidence to suggest that this divide 
betwen provincial and metropolitan readers may not have extended to the middle 
clases (117).
128
 
                                                
128
 Like St Clair (204), Rose considers the primary reason for proletarian aesthetic conservatism to 
have ben the prohibitive cost of texts of works by living authors (Rose 202[201]:120-12,128). 
Rose considers this to have ben an ?obstacle to the working clas reader, but not an insurmountable 
one? (120), since second-hand texts, ?prepackaged colections of clasics? (128), and (in the twentieth 
century) Everyman editions of works old enough to have pased into the public domain (134) were 
  294/379   
Lyons and Taksa discover an equaly fascinating hierarchy to be implied by their 
interviewes? recollections of poetry: the most popular poets were Shakespeare, the 
Romantics, and the Victorians, where ?[f]or most interviewes, English romantic poetry 
meant one poet: Wordsworth, and indeed, one poem: ?Dafodils?? (Lyons and Taksa 
1992:62), and where the Victorians meant, above al, Tennyson and Longfelow. In 
particular, ?[n]o modern or modernist poet disturbed the peace serenely occupied by 
Shakespeare, Wordsworth, or the Victorians.. None mentioned Eliot or Pound, or even 
Yeats or Hopkins.? (65) Lyons and Taksa are able to explain this by reference to the 
institutions through which poetry was diseminated: the hierarchy reflects (a) the values 
of the educational system, as evidenced for example in the tendency of Anglican schools 
in particular to give out volumes of English poetry as prizes, (b) the activities of the 
Shakespeare Society, founded in Sydney in 1900, (c) Palgrave?s Golden Treasury, 
which included 41 poems by Wordsworth but only two by Coleridge and none by Blake 
(?[n]o respondents.. remembered Blake, and only thre recaled encountering Coleridge? 
[62]), and (d) the popularity of Tennyson and Longfelow in social and educational 
recitals. On the whole, the Australian poets remembered were those promoted in the 
                                                                                                                                    
cheaply available. St Clair, on the other hand, views such sources of obsolete texts rather les 
optimisticaly, fulminating against ?private intelectual property in the hands of the text-copying 
industry? (204:438) on the grounds that it results in ?[t]he impoverished mental and physical life 
historicaly sufered by constituencies of low-income readers, whose aces to modern knowledge 
was limited by price? (204:46). While, from a strictly utilitarian point of view, this may sem 
exagerated with regard to literature ? what, after al, does it mater whether readers amuse 
themselves with the poetry of their own age or with that of a previous one? ? we should think 
carefuly before dismising it. If one result of such ?impoverishment? was that, having ben exposed 
only to outdated models of style, working clas writers were les likely to suced in print or to make 
an impresion on posterity, then this wil have ben no trivial mater. St Clair?s point becomes al the 
more presing when we recal that the same situation wil pertain for non-literary texts. 
  295/379   
Anglican and Catholic school curricula, eg. Henry Lawson, Henry Kendal, and AB 
Paterson, the only notable exception being CJ Dennis, whom some informants ?frely 
criticised.. for the same reasons which denied him an entrenched place in schools? (71), 
ie. his use of an orthographic representation of working clas Melbourne speech.
129
 
Understood thus, anecdotes of reading become non-anecdotal but indirect evidence in 
the history of reading. This is because they are in this case to be interpreted as evidence 
not of what they refer to but of what they orient to, ie. socialy shared rules and norms 
that can be infered to have been operative in the anecdotalist?s community. For 
example, that members of a certain group deny enjoying a particular text may be 
anecdotal evidence that is not enjoyed by them, but it is also evidence (neither direct nor 
anecdotal) that the text features low on the group?s moral hierarchy, or even that moral 
or aesthetic aversion to it is (or is a function of) an in-group marker. 
The second approach treats individual anecdotes of reading as distinct social actions. 
Whenever a person mentions or describes his or her own reading, he or she is taking the 
highly reflexive step of creating or implying a representation of him- or herself, whether 
this is for a limited audience (eg. in a leter), a general one (eg. in a memoir), or for the 
self and posterity alone (eg. in a private diary). This is simply a fact of being human 
(which is to say, of being a member of human society), and has been discussed in the 
previous chapter. Moreover, as discussed in chapter 2, the ilocutionary character of the 
act of writing ensures that every text (and work) is to some extent generic. 
                                                
129
 That, decades later, this hierarchy should remain intact may sugest that a generational group?s 
tastes are defined early on, remaining relatively constant thereafter. On the other hand, it may simply 
sugest that, once the informants had left schol, and once the recital had ceased to be a significant 
social institution, poetry completely vanished from their lives, so that they ceased acumulating 
cultural capital in this regard. 
  296/379   
This turn I propose from anecdote as source of information on action (here, reading) to 
anecdote as action is informed by critical work within the social sciences. In an article 
entitled ?Rescuing narative from qualitative research?, Atkinson and Delamont 
(2006:164) bemoan the fact that ?[a] great deal of what pases for qualitative ? and even 
ethnographic ? research is grounded in the colection of personal naratives.? This is a 
specific case of what Silverman decries as ?the asumption that lay acounts can do the 
work of sociological explanations.? (1993:200) This problem can be sen to some extent 
even in highly sophisticated and reflexive work, as when Cliford Gertz meditates on a 
story involving a Jewish merchant, some Berber and Marmushan tribesmen, and the 
French Foreign Legion, somewhat belatedly revealing that the story was told to him 
decades after the event by the merchant in question: Gertz astutely describes the story 
as ?a ficti? ? ?a making?? (1993[1973]:16), but recognises only his own hand in this 
making; in other words, he leaves out of his analysis the question of what the merchant 
was doing in teling the story to him. Discourse analysts ? and particularly those 
influenced by conversation analysis ? have learnt to pay particular atention to the 
action of storyteling. Thus, Atkinson and Delamont argue that ?when social scientists 
colect naratives, whether life histories, biographies, myths, atrocity stories, jokes, or 
whatever, they need to focus on the social and cultural context in which such tales are 
told, and to recognise that al cultures or sub-cultures have narative conventions? 
(2006:165), and Bamberg argues that naratives must be analysed for the ways in which 
they ?index who is speaking/writing, from which position, and for what purpose.? 
(2006:141) These principles are vitaly important to the analysis which wil be caried 
out in this chapter, although I hope to transcend the phonocentrism of the scholarly 
  297/379   
traditions from which they derive: where Georgakopoulou writes that ?it is in the details 
of talk (including storyteling) that identities can be inflected, reworked, and more or 
les variably and subtly invoked? (2006:125), for example, I wil apply this principle not 
only to spoken but to writen storyteling, and where Bamberg argues that one should 
recognise ?that particular descriptions and evaluations are chosen for the interactive 
purpose of fending off and mitigating the interpretations of (present) others? (2006:145), 
I wil ignore the parenthetical qualifier and atend to the wider argumentative context. 
Without condoning total scepticism with regard to an individual?s ?confesions? of 
reading (more of which later), we can stil insist on sensitivity to the moral significance 
of the details and to their utility in the construction of a habitus (or the impresion of 
one). This should apply not only to the brute question of what is represented as being 
read, but also to a multitude of more subtle questions, such as why (for distraction, for 
knowledge, under obligation, on a friend?s recommendation), how (with interest, with 
boredom, with annoyance, in floods of tears), under what circumstances (in school, in 
bed, on the train, while watching television), and with what efects (becoming a fan of 
the author, losing al interest in the topic, being inspired to take up writing as a carer, 
faling aslep from boredom). Even such an apparently simple notion as ?reading for 
pleasure? can be subjected to detailed analysis. Stacey argues that memories of pleasures 
?are produced in relation to the idea of a judgement of such pleasures? (1994b:327); 
researching the online interactions of horor fans, Mat Hils provocatively claims that 
?pleasure-as-performative is always a cultural act, an articulation of identity: ?I am the 
sort of person who takes this sort of pleasure in this sort of media product.?? (2005:ix)
130
 
                                                
130
 Les provocatively: ?What we chose to engage in as audiences.. is a part of how e conceive of 
ourselves.? (Barker 206:125) 
  298/379   
The power of pleasure to define a person is exploited by Alasdair Gray in a scene from 
his novel, Lanark, in which textual consumption (together with other recreations) 
dramatises the distinction betwen two working clas boys: 
Coulter showed him a magazine caled Astounding Science Fiction.. Thaw shook 
his head and said, ?I don?t like science fiction much. It?s pesimistic.? 
Coulter grinned and said, ?That?s what I like about it. I was reading a great story 
the other day caled Colonel Johnson Does his Duty. This American colonel is in 
a hideout miles underground... there?s only one other man left alive in the world, 
and he?s in a city in Russia. So he gets into this plane and flies to Rusia.. It?s 
eight years since he?s sen another human being, he?s going mad with lonelines, 
se, and he?s been hoping to talk tae another man before he dies. The Rusian 
comes out of the building and Colonel Johnson shoots him.? 
?But why?? said Thaw. 
?Because he?s been trained tae kil Russians. Don?t you like that story?? 
?I think it?s a rotten story.? 
?Mibby. But it?s true tae life. What do you do after school?? 
?I go to the library, or mibby a walk.? 
?I go intae town with Murdoch Muir and big Sam Lang. We stage riots.? 
?How?? 
  299/379   
?D?ye know the West End Park?? 
?The park near the Art Galeries?? 
?Aye..? 
.. 
Thaw said, ?That?s anti-social.? 
?Mibby, but it?s natural. More natural than going walks by yourself. Come on, 
admit you?d like tae come with us one night.? 
?But I wouldnae.? 
?Admit you?d sooner look at that comic than read your art criticism.? 
Coulter pointed at the cover of a neighbour?s comic. It showed a blonde in a 
bathing costume being entwined by a huge serpent. Thaw opened his mouth to 
deny this, then frowned and shut it. Coulter said, ?Come on, that picture makes 
your cock prick, doesn?t it? Admit you?re like the rest of us.? 
Thaw ent to the next clasroom alarmed and confused. 
Gray 1991(1981):163-165 
Thaw?s habitus is centred around pleasures that Coulter regards as unnatural. He 
sugests that he only knows where the park is because it is near the Art Galeries. 
Coulter?s habitus, on the other hand, may involve what is (in his judgement and in 
Thaw?s) ?anti-social?, but he aserts (and Thaw sems to suspect) that is more ?natural? 
  300/379   
(recal Frow?s [1995] critique of Bourdieu?s romantic view of the ?naturalnes? of 
working clas culture, discussed in chapter 1). The isue of the pleasure that each takes 
in reading provides a more nuanced distinction betwen them: the very feature that Thaw 
atributes to science fiction in order to explain his dislike, Coulter is hapy to cal ?what 
I like about it?. Coulter?s selection and paraphrase of a specific story (posibly Gray?s 
invention) is particularly interesting: ?I was reading a great story the other day?, he 
begins, and it is clearly meant as an example of how enjoyable the (aleged) pesimistic 
nature of science fiction can be. It is a story whose point (at least in his rendition of it) is 
precisely its pesimism, and when he asks Thaw, ?Don?t you like that story??, he 
chalenges him to cross the distinction that has been constructed betwen them. Thaw 
declines, so Coulter provides him with a justification of his position: the stories he takes 
pleasure in may inded be ?roten?, but they are ?true tae life? (the natural again). And 
this justification coincides not only with Coulter?s contrast betwen his own natural 
pleasures and Thaw?s unnatural ones, but with his sugestion that Thaw is being untrue 
to himself: trying to make himself think he?s superior, pretending to prefer art criticism 
to erotica in order to avoid admiting that in fact he is ?like the rest of us?.
131
 
If one can contribute to a representation of oneself by representing oneself in the act of 
                                                
131
 Such considerations should be borne in mind even when we are dealing with non-narative forms of 
reader-historical evidence, such as readers? marks and marginalia: Wigins (207) observes that, 
particularly where the boks in question were likely to be sen by other people than the anotator, these 
may have ben used to display decorous reading practices. A reader might have underlined parts of a text 
in order to create the impresion that these were the parts of that text that he or she paid particular 
atention to, for example. 
 
  301/379   
reading, one may also do the same for others. Such considerations lend an extraordinary 
complexity to historical acounts of reading, an interesting case in point being the 
responses to the reading-related questions in a survey of rural culture in France, 
completed in 1790 by members of the provincial bourgeoisie: as Chartier (1988:165) 
concludes, ?al the respondents arange their observations so as to bring out an ideal 
configuration, positive or negative (or positive and negative) of the rural personality, 
and.. propose, consistently but unconsciously, traits that fit with the portrait that they 
intended to trace?. Chartier does not entirely dismis the survey responses as a historical 
source regarding the phenomenon that they purport to record, but is far more confident 
in describing them as a very diferent kind of source: one that ?teaches us how literature 
provincials represented peasant reading, for themselves or for others.? (ibid.) Awarenes 
of such isues informs Katie Halsey?s analysis of acounts of Jane Austen?s reading by 
her brother, Henry Austen (1818), and nephew, James Edward Austen-Leigh (1870), 
both of whom ?choose to mention, of the eclectic aray of literature Jane Austen read, 
the books that function as evidence for the person they say she was.? (Halsey 2004:25) 
4.4 Narative sense-making and dialectic reasoning 
Although I would suggest that the above should be borne in mind by analysts of 
reception, the reductivenes of the theory of discourse to which it appeals should not 
blind us to the possibility of further levels of complexity. In particular, it is important to 
avoid the presumption of exclusive tacticality (se Chapter 1) implicit in certain 
discourse approaches, including the above: it is surely unwaranted, for instance, to se 
in every expresion of feling only a ploy, as felings are not only claimed and 
atributed, but also felt. Discourse, including narative discourse, may aim at sense-
making as wel as at self-promotion and the manipulation of others (even if it aims at 
  302/379   
sense-making through self-promoting and manipulative acts, or vice versa). This 
potential exists in al discourse, and should be recognised as much in a diary note as in a 
learned treatise on a distant historical period. Thus, though I would agre with Bamberg 
(2006) that ?in the busines of relating the world that is created by use of verbal means to 
the here and now of the interactive situation, speakers position themselves vis-?-vis the 
world out there and the social world here and now? (144), I take isue with his argument 
that ?[w]hen we study naratives, we are neither acesing speakers? past experiences 
nor their reflections on their past experiences? (ibid.): I would insist that one reflects on 
one?s experiences by relating representations of them ?to the here and now of the 
interactive situation?, and that this is in no way incompatible with positioning oneself 
?vis-?-vis the world out there and the social world here and now.? Something like this is 
sugested by Stephen Frosh (1999) in a critique of discursive psychology. He gives the 
example of a traine clinical psychologist who came to him for a supervision meting 
after what had ben (for her) a very upseting counseling sesion with a six-year-old 
sexual abuse victim: 
at the time of the experience, the main event was not a discursive, linguistic one 
which could be transformed into a piece of knowledge. It was just an event, what 
Lacanians could be excused for caling the ?breakthrough of the Real?.. something 
extra-discursive and unnameable, a threat, an abjection, a piece of life. 
Retrospectively, we make discursive sense of it, in the supervision sesion, in 
this piece of writing. 
383 
  303/379   
Like Frosh, I would se talking and writing as tools for sense-making reflection, 
although I recognise that reflections (and representations) are always mediated by the 
tools by which they are acomplished, and by the ?interactive situation? in which they 
are acomplished. I would further argue that, if talking and writing are tools for sense-
making reflection, then tools for the study of talk and writing become tools for the study 
of such mediated thought proceses. In this section, I would like to reflect on two 
important scholarly tools of this type. Both originate in the heyday of Structuralism and 
embody the totalising ambitions of that movement; however, once their limitations are 
recognised, they can generate a great deal of insight with regard both to specific 
anecdotes of reading and to anecdotes of reading in general. 
The sociolinguist Wiliam Labov defined oral narative as ?one method of recapitulating 
past experience by matching a verbal sequence of clauses to the sequence of events 
which (it is infered) actualy occurred.? (1977:359-360) Labov and Waletzky (1967) 
identify the most important functions performed by these clauses as ?orientation?, 
?complicating action?, ?result?, and ?evaluation?. Labov (1977: 366) argues that, of these, 
?perhaps the most important element, in addition to the basic narative clause? (ie. a 
clause describing an event with a temporal relation to the other events narated) is the 
last of these four: ?the means used by the narator to indicate the point of the narative, 
its raison d??tre: why it was told and what the narator is geting at.? As he continues, 
?[p]ointles stories are met (in English) with the withering rejoinder, ?So what?? Every 
good narator is continualy warding of this question; when his narative is over, it 
should be unthinkable for a bystander to say, ?So what??? (ibid.) As Labov explains 
(370-375), there are many ways in which evaluations can be incorporated into a 
narative: the narator can explicitly state his or her evaluation to the narate (?external 
evaluation?), or can atribute this evaluation to his or her past self or any other character 
  304/379   
in the narative, doing this either directly, through quotation or paraphrase of thoughts or 
speech (?embedded evaluation?), or by implication, through a description of behaviour 
(?evaluative action?). Jonathan Culler rightly points out that this means that ?[f]or every 
report of an action, there is the possibility that it should be thought of as evaluative, 
determined by the requirements of significance, and not as the narative representation 
of a given event? (2001[1981]:206-207), but wrongly (I think) ses these as mutualy 
exclusive possibilities betwen which the analyst must choose. Rather than make such 
an artificial choice, it sems to me that it would be more consistent with Labov?s (1977) 
position to recognise that any ?narative representation of a given event? wil be 
?determined by the requirements of significance?, and potentialy evaluative in function. 
Let us consider a real example. In the following excerpt from an advanced 
undergraduate seminar on contemporary Scottish literature, a (Scottish) student uses the 
story of her husband?s reading (and non-reading) of Irvine Welsh?s Trainspotting in order 
to resist the (non-Scotish) tutor?s painstakingly academic interpretation of that novel; 
her resistance, however, provokes oposition from a second (also Scotish) student. 
This resistance can be compared to that faced by the tutor in Chapter 3, but it should be 
noted that there is no resistance here to participation in discussion: the two students 
who speak in this extract do so spontaneously, and, moreover, the second does so in 
what may be hearable as defence of the tutor?s point of view. This would sem, as I 
sugested in Chapter 3, to be explicable in terms of the students? greater investment in 
the course: unlike the first year students now taught exclusively by teaching asistants 
but at the time of recording taught by both teaching asistants and members of staf, the 
majority of these students wil have ben studying for single or joint honours degres in 
English, they wil have chosen this particular English course from among a range of 
  305/379   
others, and their succes in asignments caried out on this course wil have a direct 
impact on the degre they eventualy receive. It is also very posible that the two 
students in question both felt themselves to have a particular investment in the reception 
of what is, after al, the most famous work of Scotish literature to have ben published 
in recent years. In other words, the student who speaks first is arguably resisting not 
academic identity, but a particular conception of ?Scottishnes? that has been asociated 
with the book (something that, as we shal se, the tutor had explicitly orientated to). 
I have atempted in my transcription to represent orthographicaly the student?s use of a 
blend of Scottish English and Scots, which I would sugest is important, given that novel 
in question draws on both these languages, and that this had ben the subject of intense 
discusion earlier in the seminar. The student?s sociolinguistic choices can arguably be 
heard as a part of her argumentative stance, ie. a contestation of Welsh?s right to speak 
on behalf of Scottish people. 
T very quickly . more about the Scottishness of this 
book . I wanted to leave this till last because of . 
otherwise we?d have talked about . the whole time . 
this is the bit . the SNP used in their soundbite now 
which is I say embellished . in the film . this is on 
page one ninety 
(pages rustling)  
T um . he?s running down his . his hometown . Leith 
here . (reads) a place ay dispossessed white trash . 
in a trash country filled ay dispossessed white trash 
  306/379   
. some say that the Irish are the trash ay Europe . 
that?s shite . it?s the Scots . the Irish had the 
bottle tae win thir country back or at least maist ay 
it . ah remember gettin wound up when Nicksy?s brar 
down in London described the Scots as ?porridge wogs? 
. now ah realise that the only thing offensive about 
that statement was its racism against black people . 
otherwise it?s spot on . anybody will tell you the 
Scots make good soldiers (ends reading) . he goes on 
to make this famous speech about ?it?s t- shite being 
Scottish? . and that it?s the Scots? fault for being 
colonised by ?effete arseholes? like the English . um 
. so . there?s a- a very powerful . idea that 
Scotland is colonised . in the book . which is still 
a very big part of its appeal . that this is speaking 
for . the oppressed . in a certain kind of way . but 
at the same time . in the novel . um we have Mark?s 
brother . Billy . 
S mm 
T who?s given that name very purposely 
S mm 
T and who?s given the big . Loyalist funeral very 
purposely as well . um who?s seen as a victim of 
imperialism . but also as a tool of imperialism . cuz 
he?s uh . a kind of mindless . not very attractive 
  307/379   
character . who?s been killed . presum?ly by the IRA 
. in Northern Ireland . so . there?s [a kind of 
S                                          [(coughs) 
T doubleness in Scottish identity that . Welsh is 
honouring here . I think it?s simplistic for either 
the SNP . or Labour to . claim it as a British book 
because . it?s alive to some of those contradictions 
about national identity . um that have obsessed a lot 
of other Scottish critics . um . 
S6 tha?s what ah don? like about Irvine Welsh, ?is ?is 
that that element ay it the ?is ?is own politics if 
ye like ?is ?is g- you ye picked up?n?the 
sectarianism is it ma husband bought it like so many 
first . an? that was it . he shut it ?ahm no readin? 
that? . 
T yeah? 
S6 yep . an? so- ?e- uh- a- as ahm sayin? then he?s 
narrowin? his market in that department as well right 
an? [you ye think 
T     [(laughs) he?s offending everybody equally 
[though isn?t he (laughs) 
S6 [yeah he does an? he an? he done an interview n the 
Daily Record years ago where he was on about homs an? 
hick toons up and doon this nation an? eh well ahm 
quite proud t?be Scottish ah don? think it?s shite 
t?be Scottish ah wouldn?t like bein? anything else 
  308/379   
T mm 
S6 eh an? that?s it i- in that sense ay the word but ah 
think a lot ay . that comes across as Irvine Welsh?s 
. knowin? it?s him . ?s [his politics 
S5                            [he?s very proud t?be 
Scottish as well though d?ye not think is- is he not  
[just is he- 
S6 [well ah think he?d be prouder t?be Irish 
The ground for the tutor?s interpretation of Trainspotting was scrupulously prepared, 
and should be atended to in detail in order to compare it with S6?s response: note the 
tutor?s glossing of the anti-Unionist speech from the book?s narator with the comment 
that ?in the book? (se Chapter 3 on the importance of atributed sources of meaning) 
there is the ?idea that Scotland is colonised?. He folows this by contrasting it (?but at the 
same time?) with the idea that there is also ?in the novel? (again) a character (the 
narator?s brother) who is ?very purposely? (se Chapter 2 and the second analysis in 
Chapter 3) given the name ?Bily?
132
 and ?very purposely? (he use these words twice) 
given, after a military death in Ireland, ?the big Loyalist funeral?. It is for these reasons, 
acording to the tutor, that the character is ?sen as a victim of imperialism but also as a 
tool of imperialism?. The structure of meanings the tutor atributes to Trainspotting is 
thus closely tied to its textual details; moreover, the centrality of contradictorines to 
                                                
132
 The tutor does not explain the significance of this name, perhaps considering it unecesary. 
?Bily? is a name with strong Loyalist conotations. King Wiliam II and Wiliam, Duke of 
Cumberland both went down in history for supresion of the Scotish Highlanders and for victories 
over the (originaly Scotish) Stuart family and their suporters; both have ben popularly 
remembered under the name of ?Bily?. 
  309/379   
this structure indicates a level of complexity far beyond the merely propagandist: it may 
even be the kind of meaning that Stanley Fish (1995:27) claims critics since the 
Romantic period have asumed ?literary productions? to be ?saturated with?: ?a special 
kind of meaning that can only be teased out by interpreters with special skils?. The 
tutor?s choices of ilocutionary atribution (se Chapter 2) are also interesting: 
Trainspotting ?honours? and ?is alive to? what he cals ?doublenes? and ?contradictions?, 
and these verbal constructions imply a degre of subtlety and indirectnes that is 
congruent with the other aspects of his presentation. Through these contradictions, 
moreover, Trainspotting is pre-embedded in a corpus of critical writings: the ideas of 
Scottish critics are not imposed upon the book; rather, the book was writen with such an 
awarenes of them that its author can be counted as a critic (?other Scottish critics?), the 
book itself (perhaps) as a work of criticism. 
If the tutor is modeling an approach to literary works, it is entirely at odds with that 
which S6 adopts when she discusses Trainspotting as a statement of its author?s politics. 
This interpretation is supported by a reference to the author?s statements in a tabloid 
newspaper interview (establishing journalism, and not critical writings, as the relevant 
intertextual field) and through the production of an anecdote of reading featuring S6?s 
husband. Consisting of only four clauses ? ?ma husband bought like so many first?, ?that 
was it?, ?he shut it?, and ?ahm no readin? that? ? just two of which describe events, this 
anecdote is too short to comprise a complete narative in Labov and Waletzky?s (1967) 
terms. However, it qualifies for a ?minimal narative?, ie. ?a sequence of two clauses 
which are temporaly ordered? (Labov 1972:361): these are the first and third clauses, 
describing the buying and shutting of the book.
13
 ?That was it? is an external evaluation, 
                                                
13
 Although several clause-types from Labov and Waletzky?s (1967) original framework are not 
represented in this narative, we can stil usefuly aply labels from that framework: ?ma husband 
  310/379   
a comment from the narator that explains the point of the narative: ?that? sems to refer 
anaphoricaly to ?sectarianism?, and ?it? appears to mean something like ?the thing he 
reacted to?. The direct speech (se Chapter 3) ?ahm no readin? that? is an internal 
evaluation, an enactment of the force of the narator?s husband?s reaction and therefore 
of the importance of the narative point. And the closing of the book would appear to be 
an evaluative action, dramatising the husband?s felt revulsion. Though S6?s anecdote 
may simply appear to report a string of past, reading-related occurences (her husband 
bought and then closed Trainspotting) and a past, reading-related utterance (her husband 
pronounced upon Trainspotting), it is produced in acordance with generic expectations 
for oral naratives, and two thirds of what it reports functions to establish its ?point?. 
Although S6 cannot, therefore, be understood as providing an objective chronicle of 
past reality (which is, in any case, an impossibility), she can stil be understood as trying 
to establish the sense of her own and her husband?s felings about Trainspotting, as 
much to her own satisfaction as to that of the other people in the room, the point of the 
narative coinciding with this sense: which would appear to be ? as S5?s objection and 
S6?s rebuttal of the objection make clear ? that a good, patriotic, non-sectarian Scot 
would neither write nor wilingly read a book like Trainspotting.
134
 
                                                                                                                                    
bought it like so many first? may be considered the ?complicating action?, and ?he shut it? the 
?resolution?. Labov and Waletzky do not consider reported uterances, such as ?ahm no readin? that?, 
to be events. 
134
 The way in which S6 invokes sectarianism is interesting, because she atributes the invocation to 
the tutor (?ye picked up?n?the sectarianism?). The relevance of sectarian isues to the section which 
had ben read out ? in particular, to the words ?the Irish had the botle tae win thir country back or at 
least maist ay it? ? was not in fact ?picked up on? (at least in spech) by anyone else. Renton?s 
identification of Scotish resistance to English domination with Irish resistance to British domination 
is rather more controversial than is often recognised outside Scotland, particularly given the close 
  311/379   
I have so far been discussing anecdotes of reading in terms of oral narative, but oral 
narative and writen history have much in common at the cognitive level (that is, as 
atempts at sense-making), and both would appear to involve generic conventions. The 
generic quality of history is emphasised by Hayden White (1973), who found the 
naratives produced by the great ninetenth century historians and philosophers of 
history to be structured by a relatively smal set of rhetorical or poetic devices. 
Importantly, this does not mean that those historians subjected historical facts to 
decoration or distortion, but that they made rational atempts to explain them and to 
extract lesons therefrom through the application of those devices. White originaly 
catalogued these as comprising four modes of emplotment (romance, tragedy, comedy, 
and satire), four of argument (formist, mechanist, organicist, and contextualist), four of 
ideological implication (anarchist, radical, conservative, and liberal), and four of trope 
(synecdoche, metaphor, metonymy, and irony). Although there is no space here for a full 
exposition of these, the type of analysis White promotes can be exemplified with a short 
example, here from the history of reading. 
The creativity of the reader grows as the institution that controlled it declines. 
This proces, visible from the Reformation onward, already disturbed the pastors 
of the sevententh century. Today, it is the socio-political mechanisms of the 
schools, the pres, or television that isolate the text controlled by the teacher or 
the producer from its readers. But behind the theatrical decor of this new 
orthodoxy is hidden (as in earlier ages) the silent, transgresive, ironic, or poetic 
activity of readers (or television viewers) who maintain their reserve in private 
and without the knowledge of the ?masters?. 
                                                                                                                                    
historical and genealogical links betwen Catholic and Protestant comunities in Central Scotland 
and their counterparts in Northern Ireland. 
  312/379   
de Certeau 1984[1974]:172 
Here, the emplotment is romantic, with the heroic reader batling against and triumphing 
over the institutions who would limit his or her fredom, and the ideological implication 
is anarchist, with al institutional authority portrayed as requiring destruction for the 
sake of an imanent utopia. Despite this historian?s description of schools, etc, as 
?mechanisms?, the overal argument is organicist, with the growth of one power and the 
decline of another sen as inexorable natural proceses. And the trope is fundamentaly 
one of metaphor: readers are rebelious slaves; clerics, teachers, and critics are their 
tyrannical masters. 
In refutation of the alegation that his system equates history with fiction through 
implying that these poetic devices could be applied to past events at random, White 
insists that, in order to be a history at al, a narative acount must, for example, ?suggest 
that the plot type chosen to render the facts into a story of a specific kind had been found 
to inhere in the facts themselves?, and that there wil be cases where ?we would be 
eminently justified in appealing to ?the facts? in order to dismis [a given emplotment] 
from the lists of ?competing naratives?? for the construction of histories from those 
facts (1997:395). There being no hard-and-fast rules as to how this is to be done, it 
sems that each atempted emplotment must be judged on its own merits as an atempt to 
establish the meaning of a particular set of events. Some postmodernist historiographers 
have made much of the evident lack of ?explicit rules of historical inference? (Munslow 
1997:100), but such rules exist nowhere outside the artificial worlds of formal logic. 
Lacking a ?specific logic of value judgements? (Perelman 1979:56), al who sek to 
establish the sense of events are dependent upon ?the plurality of interpretative strategies 
contained in the uses of ordinary language? (White 1973:429). 
  313/379   
Why should this be? Experimental psychologist Lev Vygotsky (1962, 1978) argues that 
the higher mental functions are possible only through the mediation of socialy acquired 
symbol systems such as natural language, a theory that returns with yet further 
experimental support in the esays collected by Gentner and Goldin-Meadow (2004). 
Other symbol systems might include the formal languages of mathematics and logic, 
which benefit from an eradication of ambiguity but whose usefulnes evaporates when 
?we reason in a discussion, or in an intimate deliberation, when we give reasons pro or 
contra, when we criticise or justify a certain thesis, when we present an argument? 
(Perelman 1979:56). Social psychologist Michael Bilig (1996[1985], 1997) argues that 
rational thought and other mental proceses are learnt through participation in 
conversation. Thus, not only the medium in which we think, but also the techniques by 
which we use that medium, may be derived from the mesy busines of social 
interaction, which is (in a quite independent scientific tradition) widely considered to be 
precisely the thing that provides us with the necesity to think: ?[b]iologists explaining 
the origins of inteligence largely concur that the most powerful amplifier of inteligence 
is sociality, especialy in the need to infer what others want and intend so that one can 
react and plan acordingly.? (Boyd 2006:597) At the same time as this ironises reason 
by recognising that it is discourse, it dignifies discourse by recognising that it may be 
reason. Interpersonal strategies are al that a human being has with which to think, and 
so long as a human being thinks, he or she does so in an interpersonal context, knowing 
that he or she may always be wrong, that another may be right, that everything wil look 
diferent from another point of view. Lack of such interpersonality would then equate to 
the impossibility of thinking. One might even be reminded of Adolf Eichmann, the 
logistics manager of the Final Solution, whose ?inability to speak? was, in the analysis of 
  314/379   
Hannah Arendt, ?closely connected with an inability to think, namely, to think from the 
standpoint of somebody else.? (1994[1963]:49) 
White?s examples of devices for historical reasoning can thus be sen in context of other 
learnt strategies for talking and thinking, particularly since White himself does not 
present them as a definitive list. The four modes of argument White deals with, for 
example, are very general as compared to the complex range of possibilities explored by 
Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca (1969[1958]), and though there may be something 
culturaly basic about the four emplotments of comedy, tragedy, satire, and romance, the 
possibility of narative structures that do not fit easily into this schema should not be 
overlooked. To take a striking example, in the highly self-reflexive (and somewhat 
tormented) anecdote of reading that is Lynne Pearce?s (1997:89-91) acount of her 
evolving relationship to the works of Jeanete Winterson, reading experiences are 
emplotted into the schema that Pearce argues best fits them: an inexorable Barthesian 
progresion from enamoration to disgust that is, for al its bathos, not quite satirical. 
4.5 Reader history: re-examining two clasic studies 
there is no reason to suppose that consistency in acounts is a sure indicator of 
descriptive validity. This consistency may be a product of acounts sharing the 
same function; that is, two people may put their discourse together in the same way 
because they are doing the same thing with it. 
Potter and Wetherel 1987:34 
Robert Darnton (1984) writes that ?[i]n going through Rousseau?s Nouvele H?lo?se 
mail, one is struck everywhere by the sound of sobbing? (242); he goes on to explain this 
sobbing as ?a response to a new rhetorical situation?, created by Rousseau, in which 
  315/379   
?[r]eader and writer communed across the printed page, each of them asuming the ideal 
form envisioned in the text.? (249) Surely these many descriptions serve to corroborate 
one another, forming evidence that Rousseau's contemporaries realy did, in the privacy 
of their own hearts, respond to his epistolary novel just as its prefaces had requested? 
Not necesarily. Addresed to the author and to his publisher, these leters can be sen as 
atempts to obtain replies from ? and even audiences with ? the celebrated Rousseau; 
what beter way than to claim to be the very reader for whom Rousseau had, in his 
prefaces, asked? Moreover, even without the possibility of receiving the atentions of a 
great writer, there is stil the desirability of appearing to be the reader for whom a great 
book was writen (se Pearce [1997:47,163-169] on the jealousy of reading), and, as 
Jane Austen knew, where sensibility is lauded, there wil always be something to be 
gained from its exhibition. 
This same principle may give us cause to question Rose?s interpretation of the many 
acounts he quotes of working clas readers transformed by their reading of ?great 
books? ? like Kate Flint, we may begin to wonder at the reasons an autobiographer may 
have had ?for wishing to foreground certain aspects of herself through those texts which 
she chose to present as having been crucial to the development of her personality.? 
(1993:187) For example, one of Rose?s readers describes his experience of literature in 
terms of ecstasy and fireworks, and says of Keats, Sheley, and Tennyson that they 
?swamped the trivialities of life and gave [his] ego a fullnes and strength in the luster of 
which noble conceptions were born and flourished.? (Garat 1939, quoted Rose 
2002[2001]:43) Though this is presented as the experience of a factory worker who later 
(as Rose subsequently explains) became a journalist, it must be remembered that Rose is 
quoting a text writen by not by a factory worker but by a journalist. Thus, where Rose 
concludes that a factory worker?s ?reading of the great books made it intolerable [for 
  316/379   
him] to continue as a cog in the industrial machine? (ibid.), it might be more plausible to 
state that a journalist used his past reading of those books as an explanation or 
justification of his step up from the working to the middle clas: Rose observes a note of 
?contempt for his workmates? (42) in this individual?s approving response to Carlyle but 
treats this contempt as belonging exclusively to the reading worker, rather than the 
writing profesional, whose contempt for industrial workers could be interpreted as more 
crudely clas-based. Conversely, where a milworker-turned-Labour-Party-activist tels 
of his own early exposure to the same author, writing ?[t]he more I read of Carlyle?s 
heroes, the les atraction they had?. I had in me the feling that the common people 
should not be driven, and the more Carlyle crowned and canonised a ruling clas, the 
more I felt I was on the side of the common people? (Brockway 1946, quoted Rose 
2002[2001]:47), we might be inclined to find in this acount of a very diferent (though 
equaly transformative) experience the explanation or justification of a very diferent 
course of action vis-a-vis the clas into which he was born. Like Stacey?s (1994b) 
middle-aged respondents, these two autobiographers construct, through the production 
of anecdotes or memory texts, a past self in relation to a much older present self, and do 
so in imaginary dialogue with the readers they anticipate. The relation they construct is 
one of transformation, and the cause to which they ascribe this transformation is the 
reading of canonical texts. Why the canon? Perhaps (as Rose suggests) it is inherently 
transformative. Or perhaps a culturaly significant efect demands a culturaly significant 
cause, at least in the rhetoric of (auto)biography. It wil certainly be dificult (if it is not 
actualy impossible) to separate the role that reading played in the real life represented in 
a text from the role that representations of reading play in the text itself. And when we 
deal with a range of texts, each of which represents reading and a life similarly, it may 
  317/379   
be that these do not so much corroborate one another as shift our analytic problem from 
text to genre. 
There is no reason to doubt that Rose?s readers thought about themselves diferently 
after reading Carlyle, any more than to suppose that no tears were brought to the eyes of 
Darnton?s by Rousseau. But what can be sen as evidence that a text has been used (or 
responded to) in a certain way, can also (and with a greater degre of certainty) be sen 
as itself a use of (or response to) the text. Thus, while it may be the case that a young 
milworker used the works of Carlyle to radicalise himself, it is undeniably the case that 
a Labour Party activist later used those same texts to justify or explain his radicalism by 
teling a story about how he had read them as a young milworker. This is a much les 
abstract sense of the word ?use?, and therefore (if the impertinence may be forgiven) a 
more practical application of Rose?s own principle that reading can be understood in 
terms of the ideological work ?performed by the reader, using the text as a tool.? 
(2002[2001]:15) 
4.6 Analysis: Responding to Rushdie in Bradford and London 
It is this sort of approach that we must take to the anecdotes of reading to be found in 
Roy Keridge?s article ?Verses and worse? (1989) in the politicaly and culturaly 
conservative British wekly magazine The Spectator. 
This journalistic piece tels a story of intercultural harmony and intracultural conflict 
through a series of episodes centred around responses to The Satanic Verses, and strings 
these episodes together with the narative device of a trip from London to Bradford, a 
city whose significance to the afair was established by the book burning incident that 
was discussed in Chapter 1. Some of these episodes incorporate multiple anecdotal 
  318/379   
acounts of response to text, but the rhetorical unity of the whole is very striking. 
Keridge?s narative has many generic features for a Spectator article: the ?old fogey? 
persona of the narator, the ?opinion-travelogue? hybrid form, the lament over the state 
of modern society, and the expresion of scorn both for popular culture and for the avant 
garde would al have been as familiar to the magazine?s readership in the late 1980s as 
they stil are today. Of greatest interest to this investigation, however, are the ways in 
which the anecdotes of reading which constitute the narative?s main episodes are made 
to function within this generic structure. Four are contained in the article?s dense initial 
paragraphs: 
?I think Salman Rushdie?s Satanic Verses is a wonderful book!? a literary young 
lady told me, her eyes shining. 
To my amazement, she had actualy read it! She had long ago broken away from 
her Muslim background. It occurred to me that the Verses may be inteligible 
only to someone steped in Mohamedanism. Lenin in Zurich is one of 
Solzhenitsyn?s leser novels. Russian communists find it shocking yet fascinating 
to read this ireverent acount of Lenin?s life, iritability, headaches, and al. An 
incident that a Western reader would hardly notice may turn out to be a 
demythologised acount of an adventure taught with reverence to every Soviet 
boy and girl. Salman?s Ayatollah-like Mohamed may be exciting forbidden 
fruit for apostate Muslims, but he strikes no chord with any Westerner I have 
ever met. 
Keridge 1989:19 
In addition to an explanatory aside about Soviet readers, there are thre primary 
anecdotes of reading in the above: the story of a young woman from a Muslim 
  319/379   
community, the story of every Westerner Keridge has ever met who has read The 
Satanic Verses, and the story of Keridge himself, initialy (and in common with al his 
peers) unable to understand the book, but subsequently (having encountered said young 
woman) receiving what he took for an insight into the work. This can best be interpreted 
in conjunction with Keridge?s next anecdote of reading. 
A bookshop in an out-of-the-way part of London is doing a roaring trade in The 
Satanic Verses, fresh boxes ariving every day, and seling almost as quickly as 
they are unpacked. Many of the bookshop?s new customers are very unliterary-
looking people, who appear to regard the Verses as a tract in ?Paki-bashing?. 
?Have you got your Verses yet?? a huge Irishman in a trench coat roared to his 
friend. 
?Sure, I?m just geting them now!? 
ibid. 
Comparison of the two reveals an important respect in which Keridge?s narative, taken 
as a whole, is very unlike the histories analysed by White: since the chronological 
organisation of the individual episodes in relation to one another is purely a function of 
Keridge?s movement betwen the locations in which they take place, these episodes 
have litle or no causal relationship to one another (it is neither apparent nor important 
whether it was the ?literary young lady? or the ?huge Irishman? who spoke first, though 
both clearly did so in diferent locations and before Keridge?s journey to Bradford). 
Nonetheles, Keridge is careful to provide each episode with its own explanation, and 
in doing so to suggest (through synecdoche) an overal explanation of the complex event 
that was the initial reception of The Satanic Verses in Britain. In every case, the 
  320/379   
explanation proceds in the formist mode, identifying the atributes of each group or 
representative group-member that Keridge encounters so that, by the end of the article, 
a taxonomy has been produced to cover each of four clases of readers of The Satanic 
Verses: ?Westerners? who like it and ?Westerners? who do not, members of Muslim 
communities who like it and members of Muslim communities who do not. As we can 
se from the above two episodes, the characteristic property of members of the first of 
these four clases is that they are racists (elsewhere in the article, Keridge admits that 
anti-racist members of the Socialist Workers? Party may admire the author, but insists 
that they have not read the work), while the characteristic property of members of the 
third clas is that they are apostates.
 
These properties explain a positive reaction from 
Westerners to a book that (since they cannot understand it) strikes no chord with them, 
and from members of Muslim communities to a book that (in Keridge?s analysis) 
presents Mohamed as an Ayatollah-like caricature. Keridge provides two further 
characteristics for the Satanic Verses-loving Muslim that reduce the possibility of 
metonymicaly transfering to her (and thus her type) the glamour of a Glasnost-era 
disident: she is childish (?young lady? is a typical addres from an adult to a child, and 
her eyes shine with excitement at ?forbidden fruit?) and possibly pretentious as wel 
(?literary? is an ambivalent designation in the Anglo-Saxon world).
135
 Dislike is thus 
                                                
135
 For comparison, se Sadik Jalal Al-?Azm?s argument (194) that, as a ?Muslim disident? with 
?family resemblance to the celebrated literary-critical disidents of the Comunist countries? 
(194:25-256), Rushdie himself deserved far more earnest suport than he actualy received in the 
West. Though Al-?Azm?s defence of Rushdie depends rather more heavily on the later?s ?family 
resemblance? to Joyce and Rabelais, it is significant that it begins with the instantly emotive (given 
the historical context; it first apeared just two years after the publication of Keridge?s acount and 
the fal of the Berlin wal) Comunist conection. The anecdote Al-?Azm akes of his own 
relationship to the bok also makes for an interesting comparison: ?the parts of The Satanic Verses 
  321/379   
presented as the default response of both Westerners and members of Muslim 
communities to The Satanic Verses, with the atributes of the novel itself here providing 
the explanation. 
As I argue in Chapter 3, in cases where meaning is atributed to a text, to represent the 
atributor (and not the text) as the source of the meaning is to acuse the atributor of a 
mis-reading. The response whose explanation is the nature of that to which the response 
is made, is sen as truer, more appropriate than the response whose explanation is the 
nature of the responder. One ?should?, ?therefore?, dislike The Satanic Verses, and 
Keridge implies this thesis through anecdotes of reading in which the responses of 
various ?types? are represented. The more rational side of his argument is backed up by 
the metonymical transference to Rushdie and his work of the (uniformly negative) 
qualities he atributes to their admirers: qualities that might then metonymicaly adhere 
to anyone else inclined to praise The Satanic Verses or its creator. What Spectator reader 
would want to be tainted by asociation with childish apostates, belowing racists, and 
that Trotskyist anachronism, the Socialist Workers? Party? In the following episode, 
which takes place in the halway of a mosque in Bradford, this explanation is elaborated 
by Keridge in dialogue with another of the secondary characters. 
                                                                                                                                    
which drew greatest orthodox censure and provoked most hostility are exactly the ones which speak 
to me most personaly. They review in their own funy maner the maturing mental experiences, 
doubts, intelectual anxieties, and soul-searchings of a young Arab ?Muslim? strugling to live the 
life of his century and not of some other century.? (289) What Keridge implies is the result of 
childishnes, Al-?Azm narates as the result of childhod?s end. Writing from a pro-American 
perspective, Pipes (203[190]:49) implies that Rushdie is childish when he describes his 
?characteristics? as ?quite the oposite? of ? ?mature,? ?reasonable,? or ?proper?? (ie. the Arabic 
meanings of his name). 
  322/379   
A tal serious young man in Western clothes stopped in amazement when I asked 
him to give the readers of The Spectator his views on The Satanic Verses. Once 
he had satisfied himself that I wasn?t joking, he spoke in pasionate torrents, 
prefacing every other sentence with the phrase ?We Muslims?. Clearly, he had 
given the mater much thought. 
?Acording to Islamic law,? he said, ?Salman Rushdie would have to be tried in 
an Islamic state. He could not be tried here. It is certainly not lawful for any 
Muslim individual to kil him. The English newspapers have given a one-sided 
view of the whole afair. We Muslims are offended. We folow Islamic law, and 
would never agre with the demand to kil Rushdie. We merely want the book 
banned, as it causes great injury and insult to our people.? 
?I quite agre! It should be withdrawn from circulation,? I remarked. 
?Thank you! We Muslims are not afraid of criticism! In fact, we welcome it as an 
opportunity to propagate our faith. We acept genuine scepticism, expresed in 
good quality literature, not cheap fiction...
136
 It is very suspicious how popular 
the book has become among Westerners. How can they understand it? Myself, I 
am a British-born Muslim, and I can follow Rushdie?s brand of English, which 
can only be clear to someone with a knowledge of Eastern language.? 
                                                
136
 Se Chapter 1 on the contrast betwen the literary and the non-literary, here ?god quality 
literature? and ?cheap fiction?. This speaker sems to regard it as self-evident that The Satanic Verses 
fals into the later category. Cf.: ?The Islamic campaign would be more understandable if Rushdie?s 
novel were in any way trashy. But its literary merits are not in doubt.? (The Independent, 16 January 
1989, p.16) 
  323/379   
?Wel, I couldn?t understand it. Some people sem to be buying it because they 
think it?s a kind of National Front book.? 
?That?s right! They are jumping on the bandwagon to launch an atack on 
Islam!..? 
?Did you know that Mrs Rushdie has now writen a novel atacking Christianity?? 
I asked. 
?No!? he cried, and swayed, almost stunned by the news. 
19-20 
True to Formist form, Keridge begins this anecdote with a description of this reader of 
The Satanic Verses (acorded a respect that Rushdie-admiring Asians are not, ?young 
man? carying none of the condescension of ?young lady?) that wil, through revelation 
of his esential properties, explain his response to the book. Atending prayers at a 
mosque, he is not an apostate. Serious, he wil not be excited by forbidden fruit. A 
wearer of Western clothes, he wil hold views untainted by extremism. As we soon 
learn, he is responding as a Muslim, and one who, having given the mater much 
thought, wil have perceived the book?s true nature. Moreover, he brings expert 
knowledge to its reading, and pre-empts Keridge in articulating the thesis that, since 
The Satanic Verses cannot be understood by Westerners, racism ust be the cause of 
any Western enthusiasm for it. Keridge then introduces the theme that wil dominate the 
rest of his narative, namely that there is a widespread atack, not on Islam but on the 
traditional values of al cultures,
137
 thus making of The Satanic Verses a synecdoche 
                                                
137
 A similar asertion was made by the Ayatolah Khomeini in his initial denouncement of The 
Satanic Verses: se Chapter 2 of the curent work. 
  324/379   
(note the evaluative action of his interlocutor?s swaying). This leads to another anecdote 
of reading, a recollection of events that take place wel before the others described, tied 
into the overal story with the implication that it is Keridge?s meditation in a Bradford 
caf?: 
Cartoons, in my view, do more harm than literature. Thanks to cartoons, a whole 
generation looks on Ronald Reagan as a cowboy and on Mrs Thatcher as a 
blood-crazed witch. I once came across a cartoon book, on sale in most shops, 
caled something like The Comic Adventures of God.
138
 It depicted a foul-
mouthed God with an idiot son and a smooth PR man, Gabriel. I?m sure some of 
my readers are laughing already, as such cartoons epitomise al that is most 
popular in British humour. I sent a copy of the book to Mary Whitehouse, urging 
her to prosecute the artist, but her secretary replied to say that it could not be 
done. The artist was a fine draughtsman, and if ?fredom of expresion? had not 
tempted him into the mire, he might have created something worthwhile. 
Without acursed ?fredom of expresion?, Rushdie might have been forced to 
learn how to write a half-decent book. 
Finishing my tea.. 
20 
The evaluations with which the paragraph quoted here begins and ends may be sen 
either as external or as embedded; much as in the novelistic technique of fre indirect 
discourse, Keridge creates an ambiguity betwen himself-the-narator and himself-the-
experiencer: betwen having these thoughts while writing and having had them while 
                                                
138
 I have ben unable to trace this work. 
  325/379   
drinking tea in Bradford. The bulk of the paragraph consists, however, in the recounting 
of events prior to the remainder of Keridge?s narative, a digresion whose relevance is 
established through the evaluations with which it concludes: the first condemns the 
nameles draughtsman, the second, Salman Rushdie, but the similarity betwen the 
condemnations suggests an analogy betwen the condemned. Labov (1972) suggests that 
suspension of the primary action, of which this is a particularly clear example (the 
flashback, the narator?s imobility, the lack of an interlocutor) is itself an evaluative 
device, increasing the force of the narative resolution when this is what it directly 
precedes (as is the case here). 
The point of the narative, namely the esential badnes of fredom of expresion per se, 
is politicaly extremist, and so the manner in which Keridge presents it has to be 
carefully managed: an article that began with the words, ?Without acursed ?fredom of 
expresion?..? would sem the work of a fanatic, but, presented as a response to texts 
and to other people?s responses to text, it comes to sem uch more reasonable (and 
even more so when the very next phrase after ?half-decent book? is the sedate ? and 
stereotypicaly British ? ?Finishing my tea?). In this way, ?acursed ?fredom of 
expresion?? becomes the slogan not of a dangerous fascist but of an afable old chap 
who only wishes that artists and writers would get on with their jobs and stop upseting 
people. The presupposition that The Satanic Verses is not even ?half-decent? has become 
secure by this point, since there is no-one to oppose it but an overexcitable girl, a ?Paki-
bashing? Irishman, and a bunch of ridiculous Trotskyists who haven?t even read the 
book. The article ends with yet another compound anecdote of reading, in an episode 
that contrasts responses to The Satanic Verses with responses to an informal storyteling 
sesion: 
  326/379   
Finishing my tea, I popped round the corner and visited my friends the Khan 
family. 
?Come in. Where have you been?? old Mr Khan and the boys greted me. 
Soon I was siting on a sofa eating meat and chapatis prepared by the grown-up 
daughter of the house, Mussarat, or ?Happines?.. 
.. 
?A bad book,? Mr Khan continued. ?Yet your government supports it!? 
?Please don?t blame me for that,? I cried. 
?No, no,? he asured me. ?You like tea? My wife can make English tea.? 
.. 
?My dad knows a man in Pakistan who goes up into the mountains and talks to 
djinns,? Mussarat told me earnestly. ?Djinns can be bad. They have horns on their 
heads, you know, and realy strange fet.? 
Several ghost and djinn stories later, we al grew quite frightened. 
ibid. 
At last, then, The Satanic Verses is replaced by the traditional lore of earnest, grown-up, 
chapati-cooking Mussarat Khan (such a contrast with the ?literary young lady?!), and al 
is wel. To some, this happy ending may sem incongruous. Acording to the 
imediately preceding sequence, things have got so bad that even such unambiguously 
benevolent figures as Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan are under atack, and not 
  327/379   
even God can be protected from dangerous cartoonists. Why then the symbolic feast? 
What is the cause for celebration? Why is there not, rather, a cal to arms? 
Firstly, there are generic considerations. In the context of a Spectator article, an 
apocalyptic ending would be incongruous. But, more importantly, there is the ideology 
of the piece: not the beligerently radical conservatism of what would become America?s 
?Religious Right?, but old-fashioned British conservatism, ie. the conviction that al wil 
be for the best if as litle as possible is changed. Taking the article as a whole, it is plain 
that the overal emplotment used by Keridge is that of Comedy: a readerly mariage of 
Christian and Muslim civilisation, brought about by shared rejection of The Satanic 
Verses and shared appreciation of traditional Pakistani folktales. As White (1973:9) 
observes, it is with festivities that comic acounts of events traditionaly terminate, 
marking ?reconciliations of men with men?, in which ?semingly inalterably opposed 
elements in the world? are revealed to be, in the long run, harmonisable with one 
another, unified, at one with themselves and the others.? Roy Keridge is happy to eat 
chapatis, Mrs Khan is able to make English tea, and everyone is in favour of a good 
ghost story. The argument becomes explicit in the article?s final paragraph, the 
narative?s only overtly external evaluation: 
Salman Rushdie might sneer, but in folklore there are truths that transcend 
Christendom and Islam. Like the young man in the mosque, I would not condone 
physical atacks on Rushdie, but I would urge him to return to the traditional 
storyteling of Eastern vilages. Some Western ways are not worth imitating. 
ibid. 
Thus, Keridge has moved from his formist taxonomy of readers to an organicist 
argument: afable, rational conservatives from both Muslim and Western communities 
  328/379   
wil, his narative suggests, naturaly converge into an aliance, precisely because of 
their afability, rationality, and conservatism, and in such rapprochement may be found a 
solution, for Rushdie himself, seing sense, may voluntarily renounce his ?acursed 
?fredom of expresion?? and ?return? from the (Western) avant garde (only imitated by 
Rushdie the Oriental) ?to the traditional storyteling of Eastern vilages.? This vision of 
things, with its reasurance that problems are about to resolve themselves naturaly, is 
distinctly comforting, and also notably familiar: there is, as White (1973:29) notes, an 
?elective afinity? betwen the comic mode of emplotment, the organicist mode of 
argument, and the conservative mode of ideological implication. 
As we can se, a careful analysis of Keridge?s narative reveals some of the isues that 
were at stake for conservative British readers with regard to The Satanic Verses in 1989, 
and sheds light on some of the ways in which its reading was made to operate within the 
political discourses of the time. Other sources from the same period would appear, 
moreover, to suggest that Keridge?s response was far from idiosyncratic: days after the 
publication of his article, for example, the representative of a group of conservative 
Christian politicians introduced a parliamentary bil that would, had it been pased, 
would have extended Britain?s blasphemy laws to protect non-Christian religions, and 
indirectly strengthened the hand of Christians wishing to exercise censorship of their 
own.
139
 A curious footnote to the tale is that Rushdie?s next book, Haroun and the Sea of 
Stories (1990), was in many ways the return to traditional storyteling that Keridge had 
urged upon him, and yet can also be read as making arguments in defence of the very 
fredom of expresion Keridge atacks (Dragas 2006). 
                                                
139
 Se House of Comons Hansard Debates for Friday 30 June 1989, Column 121 
  329/379   
4.7 Concluding note 
This chapter difers from the preceding two in that it offers a methodology for the 
detailed analysis of single texts, treating other texts as context. As such, it comes closest 
to literary-critical methods, which to some extent brings us full circle: instead of 
applying those methods to the texts of literary works (as a literary critic might), we 
apply something very like them to commentaries on literature. This is perhaps a 
paradox, since one of the motivating forces behind reception study has long been a 
disdain for textual analysis, and even for text: 
it is necesary to abandon the asumption that texts, in themselves, constitute the 
place where the busines of culture is conducted, or that they can be construed as 
the sources of meanings or efects which can be deduced from an analysis of their 
formal properties. In place of this view, so powerfuly implanted in our 
intelectual culture, we shal argue that texts constitute sites around which the 
pre-eminently social afair of the strugle for the production of meaning is 
conducted, principaly in the form of a series of bids and counter-bids to 
determine which system of inter-textual co-ordinates should be granted an 
efective social role in organising reading practices. 
Bennet and Woolacott 1987:59-60 
As the last thre chapters have shown ? and this one, I think, more than any of them ? 
the above position is untenable, since that ?struggle for the production of meaning?, 
those ?bids and counter-bids?, take place very largely through texts and uterances that 
must themselves be understood partialy through ?analysis of their formal properties?. 
The ?busines of culture? is not elsewhere. The above sentiments result, it sems to me, 
  330/379   
not from a conviction that strugle for meaning takes place only ?around? texts (were that 
the case, they would surely not have ben comited to writing), but from a (half) 
recognition of the point made in Chapter 2, ie. that literary works do not realy 
comunicate anything. I hope that the current chapter has demonstrated the ned for 
textual analysis as a tool in reception study, provided that such analysis is caried out in 
order to reconstruct the ?predicament? (McDonald 1997, discussed in Chapters 1 and 2) 
of reader discourse (and thereby to contribute to an understanding of the predicament of 
the work received) rather than under the aegis of a post-New Critical aproach. 
5. Conclusion: is that al there is? 
5.1 The problem of iner experience 
the inner experience of ordinary readers may always elude us. But we should at 
least be able to reconstruct a good deal of the social context of reading. 
Darnton 1990:131-132 
Darnton?s observation on inner experience and social context expreses a continuing 
anxiety with regard to the scope and limitations of reception study, and one that this 
disertation wil have done litle to soothe. An anecdote of reading, for example, might 
promise a view onto inner experience, but the last chapter has made of it something 
more like a painting than a window. One remedy, toyed with throughout this disertation 
and suggested by theories of rhetorical psychology, would be to view public discourse 
on reading as a determinant of inner experience. A second, which has likewise been 
toyed with, would be to view inner experience as modeled on public discourse. The 
reason that I have done no more than toy with these ideas is that they are speculative. 
  331/379   
A third remedy would be to reject the treatment of subjective, private experience as the 
sine qua non of reading and other forms of textual consumption: to shrug our shoulders 
at what Heather Jackson unapologeticaly cals ?the ever-elusive holy grail of the 
historian of reading? (2005:251). Cavalo and Chartier?s (1999[1995]:3) vision for a 
?comprehensive history of reading and readers?, for example, requires that we ?consider 
the ?world of the text? as a world of objects, forms, and rituals whose conventions and 
devices bear meaning but also constrain its construction?: a history of objects, forms, 
and rituals, and of an action (reading) that takes place in relation to them has no 
particular need for speculation about unknowable mental states. As we saw in Chapters 
1 and 2, Ron Scollon (1998) discusses contemporary news media in terms of the 
potential for interpersonal interaction that their consumption creates, and, to some 
extent, this disertation has done the same for literary texts; Perti Alasuutari (1992:579-
580) similarly treats television programes of al types as shared points of reference 
that, much like ?incidents on the stret?, serve as ?topics to talk about and examples from 
which we can reflect on our own lives and values?: an approach that also finds paralels 
here. To read or hear what people have writen or said about reading and about texts is to 
observe them going about the busines of being the people that they are. The social, 
then, is more than context, and should not be thought the poor cousin of inner 
experience, depending for our atentions on the promise of an introduction. 
One might even go so far as to argue that it is strange for the inacesability of inner 
experience to be posed as a problem at al. The objection is never raised against political 
history that it gives no aces to the inner experience of the signatories of the Magna 
Carta; economics does not tel us what it fels like to be a stockbroker or a debt slave. 
Perhaps there stil lurks the notion that, somewhere in the brain of each of Milton?s 
sevententh century readers was a sevententh century equivalent of each twenty-first 
  332/379   
century profesor?s ?reading? of Paradise Lost, and that these could in principle be 
compared, point for point.
140
 It is an ilusion. The academic ?reading? of a text is itself a 
text, and if we are to compare it with anything from the past, then that must also be a 
text. But woe betide us if, in making that comparison, we fail to atend to the textuality 
of either. 
Much the same goes for the study of contemporary reading. It makes no sense to wonder 
what is the ?average? reader?s ?interpretation? of The Satanic Verses, The Lord of the 
Rings, or, indeed, the lyrics to ?Memory?, because interpretation is not something that 
crystalises in the mind and waits only to be x-rayed (or pased). Interpretation is 
something that we do (or do not do) in diverse contexts and for diverse reasons, and, 
consequently, in diverse ways ? including when we compose that kind of text or 
utterance that is, in a contemporary academic context, refered to as an interpretation. 
The researcher?s only comparative advantage when studying contemporary readers is 
that he or she can prompt them to produce interpretations: but (as we saw in Chapter 1) 
this is to induce them to cary out an activity that, otherwise, they might not have 
indulged in: it does not trigger a sort of ?scren dump? of independent mental proceses. 
And that is why this disertation turns, again and again, to study discourse. But stil, the 
question presents itself: Is that all there is? 
5.2 The limitations of this study, and what those limits leave us 
Briefly, no. 
Although I have presented this disertation as a clearing-up of theoretical problems 
before empirical work can begin, it has left some fairly sizable stones unturned in its 
                                                
140
 Se Gracia (200:48) for an example of this falacy. 
  333/379   
quest to acomplish this. I would like now to outline what I consider to be the major 
problem remaining, and to discuss (in brief) what might be required for its solution. In 
full consciousnes of the extent to which it is problematised by my previous arguments, 
I shal do this by reference to an anecdote of reading. Most problematicaly of al, it is (? 
la Pearce 1997) my own. 
In May 2008, I observed a reading group whose organiser read aloud to the 
group members. When she read from John Steinbeck?s The Pearl that particular 
pasage where Kino ses, as in a vision, his baby son, Coyotito, grown a few 
years older and ?siting at a litle desk in a school?, I struggled to hold back 
tears.
141
 
What am I doing by presenting this anecdote to you? Presenting myself as a particular 
kind of person ? yes, yes, we?ve been through al that. But forget for a moment that it?s 
me. There he was ? somebody, anybody ? not laying claim to a particular feling, but 
feling it and, far from laying claim to it, atempting to conceal it. How can we know, if 
the concealment was succesful? Fair enough, let?s ignore for a moment that it?s 
supposed to represent a concrete instance, a real situation. Let?s treat it as a hypothesis. 
Can we be sure that nobody, anywhere, has ever felt an emotion and yet, rather than 
performing it, concealed it? (As opposed to performing the concealment of an emotion, 
whether in the way that an actor might do when miicking the fighting back of tears, or 
in the way that I did when I included in my PhD disertation an anecdote about myself 
trying not to cry.) Can we be sure that this never happened when somebody was reading, 
or being read to? 
                                                
141
 I strugle again as I type this. 
  334/379   
I am being facetious, of course. We al know that this happens, just as we al know that 
we continue to fel even when there is nobody to perform our felings to, and just as we 
know that extremes of feling can make us forget the people around us. These things are 
not in doubt. 
So what, then, are we to do with these undoubted things? What are we to do with the 
idea that somebody might have been powerfully moved by that pasage from The Pearl? 
And what are we to do with the fact that we might even sem to have a fairly shrewd 
idea of why he was so moved? (Because of his own litle son, for example, or because of 
the humblenes of what was, after al, Kino?s most exalted dream, or because of the 
terible dramatic irony that is there to be perceived by anyone who has read the book 
before and knows how it ends). 
What we may do is this: just as we avoided the problem of metatheoretical regres by 
refusing to deny our research subjects the aim (amongst other aims) of trying to 
understand ? just as we the researchers try (amongst other things) to understand ? and in 
doing so admited them, so to speak, to our own level, so may we admit ourselves to 
theirs. If we can atempt to understand their atempts to understand the subjective 
experience of reading, then we too can presumably atempt (like them) to understand 
that experience ? and with similar tools, such as narative. 
What we cannot do is to treat that experience as an object, since it can be present to us 
only in the form of something other than itself, ie. a discursive representation (be it ever 
so conscientiously constructed). And this has certain consequences: I cannot, for 
example, expect anyone to treat the above anecdote as evidence for anything, and I 
would be a fool to treat my explanation of it as (even an atempt at) the description of a 
causal relationship betwen variables. We can speculate, and we can judge our 
  335/379   
speculations by what sems to us to be their plausibility, their reasonability, their 
humanity, etc ? and that is al (though it is much). 
6. Bibliography 
Abel, Jackie and Stokoe, Elizabeth H (1999). ? ?I take full responsibility, I take some 
responsibility, I?l take half of it but no more than that?: Princes Diana and the 
negotiation of blame in the ?Panorama? interview?. Discourse Studies 1(3):297-319. 
Akhtar, Shabbir (1989). Be careful with Muhammad: the Salman Rushdie affair. 
London: Belew. 
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