Teaching Culture Through Literature

Teaching Culture Through Literature: A Reader Response Approach

Leila Bellour

Introduction

• Cultural hybridity and the openness of cultural frontiers.

• Cultural implications of literature via reader response approach.– Develop awareness of the target language culture.– Through experience and cultural knowledge.– A transaction/interaction between the reader and

the text.

1. Literature and culture

• What is literature and culture?– Literature as a tool to understanding culture.

• The critics;– Servenaz Khatib

• Generous resource of written materials ( literature texts).• The existence of fundamental and general themes (literary elements).• The presence of the potential to be related to by readers and to be

associated with personal thoughts, emotions, experiences (Reader Response Approach).

• The genuine authenticity of it and the vivid illustration of the lifestyles, cultures, beliefs and behaviours of people of the target society ( culture).

– Jeanne Connell• Aesthetic role and instrumental role.

– Freda Mishan• Literature and culture as reciprocal one.

– T.S Elliot• Preserving culture through literary language.

– Yamuna Kachru and Larry E.Smith• Means of understanding the nature of the foreign language• A valuable source of sociocultural knowledge (via cultural themes and

patterns of verbal interactions).

– Louise Rosenblatt• Improving multicultural understanding, value people’s background.

– Ezra Pound• Medium for communicate with another culture (to recognize the

difference, the right of differences to exist, and the interest in finding things different).

Relate content of reading to own context and teaching experience by describing how you can use the strategies or ideas for teaching purposes.

• Merging local and foreign storytelling culture.– Example: Rumpelstiltskin retold in Wayang Kulit .

• Do brainstorming activities of what title of the text means to students – how does it relates to them.– Example: Rumplestiltkin- Grimm Brothersi tenggang’s homecoming by Muhd Hj. Salleh

Discuss the challenges you might face in implementing those strategies or ideas.

• Activity does not appeal to the students.• Students’ background (proficiency, experience

and general knowledge).• Time constraint- setting up, students’

readiness and the completion of activity.

Elaborate on how the content of thereading impacts upon your professional development.

• Teachers need to have and also encourage students to realize the importance of acknowledging, appreciating, understanding and respecting other cultures as well.

• A preparation to the real world experience – Ezra Pound

READER-RESPONSE APPROACH

TO TEACHINGLITERATURE

ENTICES STUDENTS

• TO RESPOND TO THE TEXT• GIVE VENT TO PENT UP EMOTIONS & IDEAS• PROMOTES PERSONAL INVOLVEMENT• MEANING CONSTRUCTED DURING READING

IT IS LEARNER-CENTERED APPROACH

• THE READER GENERATES MEANING• NO FIXED MEANINGS• NUMEROUS INTERPRETATIONS• READER CONSTRUCTS MEANING IN READING

PROCESS

STANLEY FISH SAYS

• THE READER RESPONSE IS NOT • TO THE MEANING

IT IS THE MEANING

ROSENBLATT SAYSON ROLE OF READER

• SEEKS TO ENGAGE READER IN INTELLECTUAL COGITATION

• IN THE ACT OF READING, STUDENTS MAKE CONNECTIONS BETWEEN TEXT AND CULTURAL CONTEXT

• LITERATURE IS A MEANS OF AFFIRMING ONE’S CULTURAL IDENTITY.

KHATIB SAYS

• LANGUAGE LEARNERS EXPOSED TO RRA VIEW READING ENGLISH AS :

• PLEASURABLE• THOUGHT-PROVOKING• THEIR HORIZON BROADENED• PROMOTE SELF-EXPRESSION• STUDENTS MAKE CONNECTIONS BETWEEN

TEXT & CULTURAL CONTEXT

READING

• ELICITS STUDENTS’ INTELLECTUAL RESPONSES• ENABLES THEM TO CONSTRUCT CERTAIN ATTITUDE TOWARDS THE CULTURAL KNOWLEDGE WHICH THE TEXT CONVEYS.

TEACHING EXPERIENCE

• THE POEM ‘ I WONDER’My students relate it to their experience in wondering

many things in life. They are able to relate to the poem as they faced the same situation.. that adults usually are dismissive when children ask questions..

When the teacher shows them the video of the song“I wonder”, they were highly engaged in the lesson

and immediately give response to teacher’s questions

TEACHER’S RESPONSE

• When students talk about their lives -when they have so many questions about things around them.

• Teacher encourages them to talk and never really say that they are wrong…

• Teacher prompts students when they are at a loss of words when they express themselves

• Teacher draws them to communicate and speak up, give their ideas and relate to their life.

2.1 The Use Of The Reader's Cultural Background

• According to Iser - The reader's identity is a part and parcel of the interpretative process and it serves as an incentive for a more valid interpretative.

• According to Rosenblatt's -Literary text will cease to be evocative if it has no relevance to the reader's experience and background. The quality of our literary experience depends not only the text offered by the author but also on the relevance of past experiences and present interests that the reader brings to it.

• According to Robert Jauss - Meaning in a particular culture is determined by a set of rules and expectations. The student's reactions or responses to the cannot be insulated from their horizon of expectations and it does not merely change from one community to another ; it also alters with the passage of time.

A READER-RESPONSE APPROACH READING AS

A CROSSING OF CULTURAL BORDERS

READING AS A CROSSING OF CULTURAL BORDERS

• Readers of each culture have their own horizon of expectation.• Reading a literary text in a foreign language conjures up feelings

of estrangement and of cultural distinctiveness..• Understanding author’s language and the text’s multiple shades

of meaning requires student to investigate into the horizon of the target culture..

• Reader generates a meaning that befits his experience and background, however, he absorbs some of the unfamiliar things he finds in the text.

• As oppose to ‘localising’ text to fit readers’ culture.


• According to Iser:• Reading enables us to absorb an unfamiliar experience

into our personal world.• By reading, readers come to relate to some characters.• According to Satre:• The character’s substance is the reader’s borrowed

passions […] the writer appeals to the reader's freedom to collaborate.


• According to Iser:• The reader needs to transcend the familiar world to

understand, to experience, and to be involved in the unfamiliar one.

• However,• Literary text acts as a mirror, it is only be leaving behind the

familiar world of his experience that the reader can truly participate in the adventure the literary text offers him.

• Readers must be willing to embrace the new experience through what he is reading, get out of his comfort zone of familiarity.


• In the interpretative process, reader is in contact with new culture, the incorporation of the unfamiliar into our range of experience, the process of absorbing the unfamiliar is identification of the reader with what he reads.

• According to E.D. Hirsch• Culture is not innate, but rather acquired. Flexibility and

fluidity of cultures make it possible for readers to assimilate cultural aspects, which are incompatible with their own.

READING AS A CROSSING OF CULTURAL BORDERSRelate content of reading to own context and teaching experience by describing how you can use the strategies or ideas for teaching purposes.

• Foreign setting.Poems – Jamaica (Nature)

• Foreign concept – doppelganger (How I Met Myself).• Focus on similarities vs Focus on differences.• Which has stronger appeal? • Take into consideration students have different ‘baggage’ of

schemata, background, experience, learning.• Understand how universal issues are dealt with differently in

various locality (pre-marital sex (Quiet Eyes), broken family (Catch…).

• Put yourself in the character's place – Hot seating.



• Crossing cultural borders not just between texts from different countries.

• Crossing cultural borders in a multicultural, multi racial country like Malaysia, texts focus on a different ethnic group.

• Peranakan culture & customs (Monsoon History).• Allusion to character in Malay legend ( si tanggang’s homecoming).• Poverty & village lifestyle (In the Midst of Hardship).


Discuss the challenges you might facein implementing those strategies or ideas.

• Time constraint (background research, how long does it take for ideas, concepts to crystalise in student’s mind etc.

• Discussion of taboo topics – suicide, sex etc. (how far are we allowed to go?).

• Changing the stubborn exam-oriented mindset (why bother if it’s not in the exam?).


Elaborate on how the content of the reading impacts upon your professional development.

• To be more meticulous, considerate in the selection of text.• To appreciate students’ response / effort.• To better facilitate students in understanding and

appreciating the texts. • To design activities which will appeal to students, challenge

them.• To create students who are not ethnocentric, but appreciate

diversity.

2.3 Interpretation as an act of Transaction/Interaction

Literary texts helps students decrypt (to decode) and explore the underlying cultural rules of the author with his experience in reading.

Since reading brings together the experience of the author and the reader, it follows that meaning is located in the in-between thus permits a dialogue between cultures.

Rosenblatt points out that in the act of reading, the double opposition reader/text (author) undergoes a process of deconstruction.

Hence, the meeting of the reader and the text brings meaning into life based on his own past experiences with life and literature, his own concerns, anxieties, and aspirations.

("Literature: The Reader's Role"304-05)

For Iser,the literary work has two poles, which we might call the artistic, and the aesthetic:

• An aesthetic reading helps students make connections between the text and their own cultural context, as well as consider the influence that the literary work and the target language have on their own identity.

• As for cultural insight, an aesthetic reading conveys the notion of “transaction” that Rosenblatt defines;

It opens the door for students to increase their knowledge of the target culture as they can contemplate and critically comment on people’s way of life, values, attitudes, and beliefs. The inclusion of literature and culture, however, must follow a pedagogic model, like those proposed by Rosenblatt.

• The strengths and limitations of using the ideas, activities and strategies suggested for your students

S - Provoke discussion and suggestion. - Adopt elements from another culture or vice

versa.

L - some cultures are not suitable. - Approach or Process use in teaching certain cultures.

Example: Novel- Step By Wicked Step Theme: FamilyThere are many different types of families in these books. Compare the family situations of Richard, Claudia and Collins.• How [does] each character’s family (or lack of

family) affect her/his life? • Who do you think are the strongest figures?• How [does] each of the main characters feel about

her/his family?• What does “family” mean to you?

• Discuss how the content of your reading impacts upon your professional development.

I come to understand more clearlyhow certain cultural assumptions determine howwe "see" the world.Although without or from different cultures we

still can act towards any piece of writing

• Iser's theory of anti-dualistic- Theory of anti-dualistic; Reader 's thought

is replaced or occupied by author's thought.- The reader finds in the text things, which he accepts and assimilates but maintains own cultural identity.

• Students become aware of the similarities and differences between his own and author's culture.

• T.S. Eliot: In the relation of any two cultures, two forces : attraction and repulsion balance each other, only then unique culture will survive.

• Stanley Fish: "Interaction between the text, conceived of as a succession of words, and the developing response of the reader".

• Ferval Çubukçu asserts that: meaning is no longer seen to reside exclusively in the text. Meaning is the result from an encounter between the reader and the text, an encounter in which meaning is not so much discovered as it is created.

Evaluate the relevancy of the ideas, activities or strategies mentioned in the reading for your context. Provide reasons.

• To develop an awareness of the target language culture– A good example is Sonnet 18. – Students' understanding of summer is the most

beautiful season as compare to other seasons.– 'Shall I compare thee to the summer day?'

• Robert Jauss's concept of 'the horizon of expectation‘. – the reader comes to a deeper understanding of both

his own culture and socio-cultural context of the text.

Suggest ways in which the ideas, activities or strategies mentioned in the reading can be adapted/ adopted to meet your context. Give clear examples.

• Use teaching aids. – in the teaching of Sonnet 18, teachers have to

show pictures of four seasons.– Visual aids are helpful to illustrate to the students

that in temperate countries, summer is the most beautiful season and unlike Malaysia, students actually experience summer throughout the year and so they do not think of any difference that could bring about in the flowering season.

• Iser's theory states that the act of reading poem transgresses the quality of his culture. – Reading removes the established cultural boundaries

between the reader and the author.• T.S. Eliot says a very approximate idea: to

understand the culture is to understand the people. – The student will tend to identify himself so completely

with the people whom he studies.– The students become aware of the similarities and

differences between his own culture and that of the author.

– Example is the reading of Mr. Nobody in Form 1 poem.

Mr. Nobody

In He puts damp wood upon fire,That kettles cannot boil ;His are the feet that bring in mud,And all the carpets soil.The papers always are mislaid,Who had them last but he?There’s no one tosses them about But Mr. Nobody‘

• When the reader reads the novel, his mind will be preoccupied the thoughts of the author. He will focus on the theme which the author tries to put forward. His own individualistic shelf will become less obvious. (Rosenblatt, Iser's theory of reading ).

• The students will be able to put themselves in the shoes of the persona that is as mischievous as Mr. Nobody.

3. Teacher’s and student’s role

• Teacher must encourage students to make use of their background knowledge.

• Teacher facilitates reader-text transactions.• Traditional method: spoon feeding by teachers.– MCQ in exams -> students cannot express their own

interpretations• Rosenblatt – there is no single correct

interpretation (reference book answers).

• Traditional method- stifles student’s creativity and does not develop student’s critical thinking skills.• Teacher must tergiversate the old methods.• According to Çubukçu, • Reader-response criticism addresses issues

surrounding the students.• Students’ assumptions are NOT innate, culturally

acquired.• When assumptions are accepted, students gained

confidence.• Classroom becomes scene of expansion of ideas.

(cf Christenbury a community of meaning)

• Get rid of MCQ for literature (Good! Not in PT3, not in SPM).

• Students are encouraged to question & criticize.• Students should also deconstruct prejudices &

stereotypes found in texts.• According to Rosenblatt,• Readers need to be critical of assumptions found in

literary texts as experienced and also of the culturally acquired assumptions brought to the transaction.


• Minimize the use of reference books.• Guide students to arrive at plausible answer.• Roleplay.

Discuss the challenges you might face in implementing those strategies or ideas.

• Persuading students not to rely entirely on reference book answers.

• Convincing students their own interpretations are equally important and valid.

• Low proficiency impeding students’ interpretation of the text.

Elaborate on how the content of the reading impacts upon your professional development.

• Go beyond suggested answers in reference books• Designing exam questions that requires personal

interpretation and award marks fairly.• Do not penalise students if they show

disagreement in response.• Creating a culture of debate in class in discussing

literature texts.

Conclusion

• Reader’s response approach is a valid and adequate theory to teach culture.

• Make it an integral part of the literature class.• Students acquire cultural knowledge of the target community.• Students able to construct meaning in relation to their

cultural context.• Open dialogues between cultures and enables students to

cross cultural borders.• Students’ voice to express their personal responses to text is

heard.• This approach makes reading a joyful experience.

An Afterthought

It’s a world of laughter, a world of tearsIt’s a world of hopes and a world of fearsThere’s so much that we share That it’s time we’re aware

It’s a small world after all

Documents

Teaching Culture Through Literature