Studies on research in reading and libraries: Approaches and results from several countries [Reprint 2017 ed.] 9783111417493, 9783598221712

Citation preview

Beiträge zur Bibliothekstheorie und Bibliotheksgeschichte Band 3

Contributions to Library Theory and Library History Volume 3

Herausgegeben von/Edited by Paul Kaegbein · Peter Vodosek · Peter Zahn

Studies on Research in Reading and Libraries Approaches and Results from Several Countries Edited on behalf of the IFLA Round Table on Research in Reading by Paul Kaegbein, Bryan Luckham and Valeria Stelmach

K G · Saur München · London · New York · Paris 1991

HERAUSGEBER DER REIHE/EDITORS O F THE SERIES P r o f e s s o r Dr. Paul K a e g b e i n L e h r s t u h l f u r B i b l i o t h e k s w i s s e n s c h a f t d e r Universität zu Köln P r o f e s s o r Dr. Peter Vodosek F a c h h o c h s c h u l e f ü r B i b l i o t h e k s w e s e n Stuttgart P r o f e s s o r Dr. Peter Z a h n Institut f ü r B i b l i o t h e k s w i s s e n s c h a f t und B i b l i o t h e k a r a u s b i l d u n g der Freien Universität Berlin

C I P - T i t e l a u f n a h m e d e r D e u t s c h e n Bibliothek S t u d i e s on research in r e a d i n g a n d l i b r a r i e s : a p p r o a c h e s and results f r o m several c o u n t r i e s / ed. on behalf of the I F L A R o u n d Table on R e s e a r c h in R e a d i n g by Paul K a e g b e i n ... M ü n c h e n ; L o n d o n ; N e w York ; Paris : Saur, 1991 ( C o n t r i b u t i o n s to library theory and library history ; Vol. 3) ISBN 3-598-22171-1 N E : K a e g b e i n . Paul [Hrsg.j; Beiträge zur B i b l i o t h e k s t h e o r i e und Β iblioiheksgesch ichte

G e d r u c k t auf s ä u r e f r e i e m Papier Alle R e c h t e v o r b e h a l t e n / All Rights Strictly R e s e r v e d Κ. G . S a u r Verlag, M ü n c h e n 1991 Part of R e e d International P.L.C. Printed in the Federal R e p u b l i c of G e r m a n y Jede Art von Verfielfältigung o h n e E r l a u b n i s des Verlags ist unzulässig Druck: Weihert-Druck, Darmstadt Binden: Thomas-Buchbinderei, Augsburg ISBN 3-598-22171-1

ν

Contents

Preface

I. Theoretical

VII

problems

Methods in reading research by Robert Escarpit

(France) . .

1

Theoretical and methodological problems of research on reading habits. Remarks, proposals, postulates by Janusz Ankudowicz (Poland)

17

Problems connected with the issue of reading competence. Perspectives of the reading public typology by Andrzej Robert Zielihski (Poland)

39

The model of studies on the history of readership by Janusz Kostecki (Poland)

59

II. General experiences at national level Books and mass media. Competition and interaction by Valeria Stelmach (Soviet Union)

95

Adult reading habits by Martin Kling (USA)

103

Changes in reading habits and library use in Hungary by Ferene Gereben (Hungary)

121

The structure of Hungarian library users' literary experience by Zoltàn Balogh and Istvàn Kamaràs (Hungary) ... 135 Reading in India. Issues for research by Surendra P. Agrawal (India)

163

Some reading research in Australia in the 1980's by Edward R. Reid-Smith (Australia) 171 The study of reading activity in the context of Australian libraries by Geoffrey G. Allen and F. C. Andrew Exon (Australia) 183 Sociologie de la lecture et des usages en bibliothèque. Quelques recherches récentes en France par Martine Poulain (France)

199

Die Schriftreform in der Türkei und ihre kulturellen Folgen von Meral Alpay (Türkei)

215

VI

III. Public

library

problems

How constant are the readers? by Bryan Kingdom)

Luckham

(United

225

Libraries and communication. The library and book in relation to other media of communication by Robert C. Usher243 wood (United Kingdom) Social structure, book reading and the function of public libraries. Effects of selectivity of social structure on the quality and quantity of book reading and the use of public libraries by Pertti Vakkari (Finland) 259

Addresses of authors

283

VII

Preface

The Round Table on Research in Reading is one of the newer networks within the International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions, having been established at Tampere, Finland in 1985. Round Tables are a means to facilitate collaboration and stimulate action between libraries and other interested professionals outside the annual congresses of the parent body. This Round Table unites practising

librarians,

academics and researchers in seminars and empirical

investiga-

tions . The present volume includes a selection of papers given at international meetings of the Round Table itself and of those most actively involved since 1980. Three areas are covered. The section on questions of theory, method and definition draws on the insights of Robert Escarpit (France) who pioneered many developments in this field from the 1950's. He is joined by three Polish colleagues, Janusz Ankudowicz, Andrzej ZieliAski and Janusz Kostecki from the National Library, Warsaw where the Books and Readers Institute has over a number of years developed crucial analytical concepts to guide subsequent

investigations.

Work in six countries is represented in the section on experiences at national level. Valeria Stelmach

(Soviet Union)

reports on relationships between book and other media usages. Martin Kling

(USA) analyses research procedures in his coun-

try. Ferenc Gereben looks at changes in reading and library behaviour over two decades in Hungary. The team of Zoltán Balogh and István Kamarás, also from Hungary, examine adult reading patterns and subject and title preferences from a large scale survey.

Vili Surendra Agrawal indicates the interest and research priorities for reading studies in India. Edward Reid-Smith

(Austra-

lia) looks at some recent research there on reading whilst his colleagues, Geoffrey Allen and Andy Exon consider such studies in their relevance to library practice. Martine Poulain (France) looks at reading research priorities and contrasting traditions, including some issues of censorship, as they have affected libraries in her country, and how today libraries are responding to needs of the casual reader and using new technology. Meral Alpay has produced an interesting account of the impact of the reform of the script and the adoption of the latin in twentieth century Turkey and how it affected literacy and reading. In the third section on the way libraries have had to cope with changes in reading behaviour, Bryan Luckham (UK) traces a century's development of reading preferences using public library records. Bob Usherwood, also UK, asks how conceptions of the public library's objectives are changing whilst Pertti Vakkari (Finland) produces evidence of changing use of libraries and reading patterns. Bridging the gap often perceived between theory and practice, these papers provide an overview of current international thinking and indicate future directions for constructive research. The editors are most indebted to Antje Marx and Susanne Schlösser who were engaged very much in bringing the text of these papers into a shape suitable for reproduction.

Studies on Research in Reading and Libraries Approaches and Results from Several Countries

1

METHODS IN READING RESEARCH Robert

Escarpit

In any language, reading is a tricky word covering an extremely elusive concept. It may mean the mere act of deciphering a text or the infinitely more complex process of producing a meaning out of it. It may refer to an act of communication pointing to a social relationship which may be part of a cultural behaviour, in which case its study inevitably

includes

that of the whole institutional network of all systems, organizations and agencies which are the channels and media of such a communication. As part of a cultural behaviour, it may also implicate the cultural policy of a government or of a political institution. On the other hand, reading cannot be conceived without the existence of the printed book which is an artefact manufactured and sold on a market, so that a reader is also a consumer, which implies a number of consequences and gives to reading an economical status. We could go on thus counting and recounting all the avenues which the word reading opens to the mind. That would only serve to make the maze more intricate and puzzling. An easier and more sensible approach, however rudimentary, is to take stock of the methods available and use them in the fields where they are likely to give the best results. Rule of the thumb syntheses will have to be made now and then, but we must take care of not being over-ambitious. No global understanding of the reading phenomenon will be reached without a lot of patience and hard work. The handiest set of methods offered to us are the quantitative methods. To them applies the generic term of bibliometrics, now currently used in several countries and especially in France.

2

Bibliometrics imply that something is measured, and certainly, if I look back twenty five years and try to recall what was the main motivation which launched me on the trail of what I then called the sociology of literature, I must recognize that it was the desire to measure things instead of simply making impressionistic comments about literary works. There is no doubt I was trying to make myself secure. Literary scholars of my generation surely felt insecure when the whole fabric of French historical positivism and of German Literaturwissenschaft seemed to crumble. The old English phrase "safety in numbers" has more than one meaning. I was seeking

intellectual

safety in numbers, i.e. in quantification and measurement. The truth is - as I soon found out - that the ground was even more slippery in the quantitative approach than in conventional

li-

terary criticism. The first question which arises is: what are we going to measure? Obviously, the easiest thing to measure is book production. That is what most scholars did, and some of my colleagues accomplished a remarkable statistical achievement in studying the book production in centuries past, thus laying the foundations of historical

bibllometrics.

But then it soon appeared to me that a secondary and much tougher question arose: what are we to consider as a book unit? Should it be the single copy or should it be the title? There is no obvious numerical relationship between both, inasmuch as you cannot compare the size of editions in the case of a highly elaborate poem or essay and that of a popular novel. For a while I personally admitted as a working hypothesis that title measurement allows an assessment of the intellectual production in a given country, while copy measurement gives a clue to reading activity. Quite a lot of investigation has been conducted according to such a hypothesis. The results have sometimes proved disappointing if not actually misleading. Nevertheless, even when the investigators, for economical reasons, mistook book-consumption for actual reading, such attempts have yielded a wealth of information. Much of the work accomplished by UNESCO in the sixties and the seventies with the Book Development Programme, has been based on the assumption that copy circu-

3 lation was a good indicator of reading habits in a given country. However unreliable the official statistics may sometimes be, the indication is valid in the case of developing countries where only rough estimates of an incipient phenomenon can be made. The situation is infinitely more complicated in a highly developed country where the channels of book distribution are numerous and varied. Obviously, the best observation post to get measurements on reading is where captive readers are counted and checked, which means the libraries. The problem is that twenty years ago few libraries cared to gather such data and that even now quite a number of them are unable to do so. Some of the bigger national or scientific

libraries kept re-

cords, sometimes in a rather careless and desultory way. What brought a change was the appearance of rational

library man-

agement and particularly the computerization of

1ibrarianship

practice. By and by, librarians who traditionna1ly had been more interested in storing and preserving books than in meeting the needs of the readers, became more and more conscious of their responsibilities as agents of communication through the printed word and, beyond that, through the document. Two lines of research were thus opened, one toward better library management through the provision of the readers' needs, the other toward better and more efficient documentation services. In our team, in Bordeaux, we are concerned with both those approaches. One of my younger colleagues, who is a budding hope of computerized bibliometrics, wrote last year a remarkable thesis on the use of mathematical models for reading provision in a scientific

library. Another one, who is

an excellent documental ist, has been working for several years on computerized documentation. In fact, one of our three basic programmes is the study of the dissemination of scientific and technical

knowledge.

The trouble is that only part of the library network is open to such investigations. There is comparatively

little trouble

in gathering quantitative data about big public libraries. It is much more difficult to cope with the smaller

libraries

which are not equipped to keep record of the information needed. In the Bordeaux area, for instance, which represents

4

slightly over half a million inhabitants, there is a score of main or branch libraries belonging to the public network and about the same amount of libraries controlled by townships. Those and the libraries belonging to the Universities network do yield, although sometimes reluctantly, a certain amount of information. But we know that at least three quarters of library reading is done through libraries in manufactures and offices or small libraries managed by all kinds of associations. We have identified about a hundred of these, but we are quite sure to be very far from an exhaustive census. The result is that most of the numerical data we get refer to scientific, technical or at least didactic reading, and we arp not all aure th»»y apply to the various kinds of literary reading. There are many more ways of using statistics and mathematical models in the study of reading, but they all boil down to the same problem: how to get workable data. That is one of the reasons why I personally very soon turned toward another methodological approach which combines field surveys with a very cautious use of statistics. In such methods the center of interest is no longer the book unit, but the reader himself, a fact which obviously points to a behavioural study. The problem then is no longer book circulation or consumption, but reading habits. My first experiment in that field dates back to 1962. It probably was one of the most disappointing failures I experienced in my scientific career, but at the same time it was one of the most enlightening and enriching adventures to which it has been given me to survive. The French army gave us the opportunity of introducing a questionnaire on reading habits into the tests to which young recruits were submitted at the Limoges induction centre. 4816 forms including 78 questions were filled by the recruits. We coded them on punched cards and fed them to a computer which in due course vomitted several tons of paper which are still safely and uselessly stored in the cellar of our

laboratory.

After several years of fumbling and rummaging through that inordinate heap of data, we managed to produce a small ninety page pamphlet which is not altogether meaningless, but which

5 falls far short from mapping out, as we had hoped, the reading habits of the recruits. The experiment, however, taught us that no survey of that kind can be conducted without a previous definition of the variables involved. Besides it confirmed a suspicion which we had long harboured, which is that self-testimony about reading habits is even more misleading than about sexual habits. Dr Kinsey certainly ran a better chance than we did. We learnt to be prudent. Truth to say, other investigators were less wary than we came to be. Since that time, in France only, twelve major surveys have been conducted by various agencies and organizations more or less along the same lines. Some of the results were more acceptable than ours thanks to the improvement in sampling techniques and in computer technology. But at the same time quite a number of misrepresentations were aired and widely publicized, giving birth to a number of mythical stereotypes. For instance during the seventies many press articles, making use of the simplified results of one of those surveys, spread the alarming news that two Frenchmen out of three never opened a book, until a fresh simplification of the results of another survey reassured the country by announcing that the trend had been reversed and that the French people were becoming literate. In fact, practically nothing had actually happened between the two surveys, expect a very slow evolution for the better comparable to that of other countries. But both surveys had missed the really significant fact during that period, which was a substantial change in juvenile readership. One of the reasons why the methods derived from the Gallup poll system do not work satisfactorily in the case of reading habits (admitting they do work in other fields), is that no sampling is possible when the behavioural patterns are as varied and as individual as they are when man meets book. Such a system rests on the assumption that the readers as a body form mass, i.e. a comparatively homogeneous aggregate in which the variables are few in number, so that when a man says "I read quite a lot", or "I like this kind of books", or "I have so many books in my house", he always means approximately comparable things. Such an assumption is entirely erroneous. The

6 same statement may have hundreds or even thousands of different meanings. When the survey is based on a very thorough set of interviews, it is quite current to find entirely contradictory statements. For instance a person will answer that he or she reads a book to rest after a tiresome day's work, and a few minutes later he or she will state just as readily that one of the reasons for not reading enough is that he or she feels too tired on coming home after the day's work. That particular contradiction is easily disposed of through a careful examination of the other answers: one will perceive which of the two statements is a cultural attitude and which is an affective response. Others are harder to crack. In any case, no st.at i Bt ica 1 approach will permit a valid interpretation. This has to be made case by case, person by person. If a survey is necessary, it will have to be prepared by a long and patient work on case histories. Two methodological conclusions may be drawn from the preceding remarks. The first one is that any research based on questionnaires or interviews and involving self-testimony must be accompanied by a careful objective observation of the actual behaviour of the persons studied. For instance, before questioning the readers of a library, it is a good idea to spend a few days or a few weeks observing them individually, noting how they choose their books, what kind of books they borrow, how they handle them, what comments they make, and so on, and so forth. Among the objective data which must be gathered before any interpretation is attempted and even before any questioning is done, language stands foremost. All people do not use the same language where books are concerned. When a person says "I have read this book", it may mean that he has painstakingly deciphered the text without getting much sense out of it, or that he has leafed through it, or that he has long pored over it, or that he has rushed through it to get more quickly to the end of the story, or that he has lingered and dreamt over some passages, ignoring the rest, in fact it may mean anything, including that he has never read the book at all but kept it by his bedside long enough to believe he has read it after seeing the film drawn from it on television. And then the word "to read" is an easy word. Things become

7 much more complicated when the statements or comments involve an appreciation, an evaluation or a judgement. Who can say what a man hae in mind when he says that book is "good" or "bad"? It ie probably easier to say which reader is "good" or "bad", or rather which kind of reading is productive and which is not. This leads us to our second conclusion. In fact, more than a conclusion, it is an introduction. My experience is that nobody can long study reading habits without entering the field of study of reading mechanisms. When I use the word mechanism, it does not imply any mechanistic view of the reading process. On the contrary, I have been convinced for years that the act of reading is an act of communication, which implies a production of information both from the writer and from the reader. As Jean-Paul Sartre wrote in 194Θ, "the work of the mind is born from the conjugated effort of the writer and of the reader". One of the basic facts about the production of information is that it needs the presence of at least one human brain. We are thus led to consider the act of reading first and foremost as a psychological process, then, inasmuch as it implies an intercourse between a writer and any number of readers as well as an interaction between readers in an environment, we are led to consider it as a sociological procees. That is one of the reasons why we called the scientific field which we were exploring the psycho-sociology of reading. That does not mean that the methods of psychology, of sociology and Bocio-psychology are to be crudely applied to the study of the reading process. Year after year, we have been led to discover that all communication phenomena need specific methods and that much was to be learnt from the emerging sciencee of information and communication. But, even then, there was some danger in getting involved with theories which had been elaborated from the observation of the so-called "mass-media". It is a fact that communication awareness has arisen first in the late thirties and more generally in the fifties from the impact of radio and television. It is also a fact that the first really water-tight theory of

8 information was an outcome of the spread of telecommunications and of computer technology. The written word is much older than that and, thanks to printing, its massification has begun five centuries ago. So that the problem which we had to confront was how to analyze and explain a very old thing in brand new terme and with brand new reasonings. It was not an easy thing to do. An aura of hallowness and even mysticism had long surrounded literature and I knew by experience it was almost sacrilegious to apply to it materialistic patterns as I had tried to do in my little old Sociology of Literature when I deliberately used economic patterns. I did it deliberately because I wanted to ahock my contemporaries into awareness of what seemed to me a necessary dimension of the literary phenomenon to be explored. One always can do with a little bit of intellectual terrorism. But then, terrorism is a double-edged weapon. There are always people ready to overdo things and to outterrorize the terrorist. I'd like to tell here a little anecdote which seems to me extremely instructive. Way back in 1965, I wrote a satirical novel entitled Le Littbratron which was translated into English as The Novel Computer and in German as Die

Nortmaschine.

It was quite a fictitious story, but as a raw material I used some of the research we were actually conducting in my institute. The whole idea was the preposterous invention of a computer able to read, digest books and produce fresh books on demand. It was called the littèratron in French, the Lit'omat in English and the Samolitchik

in Russian. I wanted to ri-

dicule the people who thought or wanted to make believe that writing and reading could be entirely mechanized. The fact is that quite a number of actual attempte were made to apply my would-be invention by scientific people who took it seriously. Even now, in the University of Aix-Marseilles, there is a lo~ gotron which seems to be working satisfactorily along that line. Fortunately the young colleagues who built it and handle it are sensible enough to know that the ability of their machine is limited to such elementary, yet useful, performances as word or phrase coining for technological purposes. But when

9 their research was casually mentionned on a television programme, they were astounded by the anont of mail they received from people who wanted to know where they could buy or hire such a wonderful writing and reading machine! At the turn of the seventies, I had learnt to be more cautious. I discovered that I could not cope with such a complex phenomenon as reading simply with the conventional methods of psychology and sociology. The keyword was communication and I turned toward the emerging sciences of information and communication. When I say emerging I do not mean that any useful work had been done until then. On the contrary quite a number of avenues had been explored, including information storage and retrieval, readability, cultural leisure, 1ibrarianship, literacy. The most formidable array of theories lay in the new-fangled semiology or semiotics derived from a new and rather hermetic wording of the old formalist phraseology. There was not one science of information and communication: there were many, much too many. When one tried to apply them to reading, the very phenomenon seemed to vanish in a cloud of contradictions and misapprehensions. One sometimes wondered if any such thing as a reader actually existed as an identifiable entity. It did exist, however, although I have heard some hardcore semioticians regret it bitterly. They could do without readers. I couldn't. I was thus led to elaborate not really a full-size theory of information and communication, but a number of theoretical approaches which could be applicable to reading. The first approach deals with the nature of the information produced in any process of communication. The mathematical theory of Claude Shannon tells us what an information is from a purely quantitative viewpoint. Roughly speaking, it is an occurrence perceived by an observer and which had for him, before being perceived, a certain degree of probability; the higher the probability, the lower the information value of the occurrence. That applies as well to single signs as to elaborate messages, but it also applies to any kind of occurence, even if they have no more meaning than their mere existence and contain no message. Shannon insists on the fact that he is not interested in meaning.

10 Of course, such a view may be very helpful if we aim to study only the mechanical aspect of reading, that is the deciphering of the characters and the spelling out of the words. But obviously, meaning is essential to reading. Only one observer is necessary to obtain information in the shannonian sense. At least a writer and a reader are necessary in the case of reading. When we toss a coin, we get shannonian information, but reading is something more than just guessing which letter or word are going to turn up next. Now, when a human observer perceives an occurence, while he may be interested in what is news to him, he certainly is also interested in what it means to him, in the relationship it has with his own historical situation, on the influence it may have on his mental balance and on his physical environment. In other words, the occurence must not only be news, but it must also be relevant. Relevancy value is much harder to evaluate than probability value but is just as important and probably more. In the case of reading, relevancy hints to an effort from the reader to integrate the messages he receives from the writer to the inner and outer world he controls, and particularly to his linguistic competence. To take a very elementary example, if a reader meets a new word he has never read or heard, and consequently which he did not expect, that word will have a very high probabilistic information value for him, but it will not have any meaning until he gives it a relevancy value by integrating it to his own language practice. That is how vocabulary acquisition works through reading, especially for new adult readers and children. We may infer from that fact that no thorough knowledge of the reading process can be acquired without the help of socio-1inguistics and ethno-linguistics, that is without both a social and historical approach of the language phenomenon. But still, that leaves us at a rather low level of performance. Reading is not simply producing meaning out of words. It is a purposeful act integrated to the whole psychological, sociological, political, economical strategy of the individual. Casual and purposeless reading is not actual reading, even if the purpose is evasion from everyday realities. There is always a purpose in reading, an effect to be obtained, a

11 stake to be won. That leads us to define a third kind of informational value, which I call stake value. It is rather easy to illustrate it with a very eimple example. Let us take the case of a man who throwe a dice to find out who is going to pay for the drinks, and the case of a man who is playing Russian roulette with a six-shooter. The information which both get has exactly the same probabilistic value: one chance out of six. In both cases the information is thoroughly relevant, but the stake is not the same: money on the one hand, life on the other. What is then the stake of reading? What is to be gained or lost by reading? The question opens new vistas to research. The motivations of the reader, both conscious and unconscious are now in question. Those motivations may first be approached by the way of the study of attitudes. Is there only one or are there several reading attitudes? The threefold nature of the written text seems to point to the second surmise. A text is first of all a graphic image which is explored by the eyes and affords a number of stimuli to which the mind reacts. Then a text is the encoding of an oral speech which is decoded by a rather complex process of scanning which allows to reproduce the phonetic sequences, even if they are not pronounced aloud. Those phonetic sequences work in two ways: first, as sounds, they afford another set of stimuli with the corresponding responses, second, as the embodiment of a discourse, they afford a meaning whose coherence is reconstructed by the reader thanks to his shortterm memory, so that the information they yield is submitted to the relevancy induced by the arrangement of the words and their chronological order. But besides being a graphic image and the encoding of an oral speech, a text is, last but not least, a document, i.e. a set of information expressed by a language of stable traces on a stable support, which means that all the data it contains are synchronically available to the reader whose scanning is an entirely free exploration. Although writing, thanks to its linearity and conventional orientation, suggests a scanning of the lines by the eyes much similar to the scanning of the groove of a record by the needle, we now know that actual

12

reading works in quite another way: the eye does not run smoothly along the lines, but it stops every half a second or so to gather in one lump of sense chunks of three to five words at a speed which more or less corresponds to 20 bits per second, i.e. about one half of the capacity of the human brain. The remaining capacity is used by a much more rapid flickering of the eye acerosa the page and sometimes, with the help of the hand, across the preceding pages. Some of the chunks of words, during that flickering, are read twice or three times over, compared with other chunks, redistributed, reorganized, until the reader is sure to get what information he wants. Such a complicated process is obvious when we look up a word or a definition in a dictionary, when we try to find a name in a directory or when we consult a train schedule, but it also exists in any kind of reading, including literary reading. It is an active and critical process by which the reader builds up for himself a relevant knowledge from the data afforded by the text. The pattern we may deduce from those observations is rather complicated. To simplify things, let us say we have on the one hand a "projective" reading in which the reader calls up visual or pseudo-auditive stimuli from the text and responds to them, and on the other hand an "objective" reading in which the reader works out relevant informations from the data contained in the text. In each of those cases, the reading activity may be either a free, critical and purposeful exploration or a so to speak a captive scanning. All this is, for the time being, mere guesswork or, at best, sets of working hypotheses. We do need quite a lot of hard experimental research to infirm or confirm them. All we can say, is that there seem to be two main trends in the readers' attitude and that they seem to point to two different sets of motivations. One, we could call the "literary" motivation, and it would correspond to a domination of the projective attitude. The other, we could call the "didactic" motivation, and it would correspond to a domination of the objective attitude. But of couree such distinctions are much too clear cut and logical to be satisfactory. One of the dreams I have pursued

13 in my career has been to discover some kind of experiment in which the categories I just mentioned could be worked in as hypotheses without impairing the global specificity of the reading process. Perhaps I could mention an attempt we have made in Bordeaux some two years ago. The results were not altogether discouraging, but they have not warranted until now a full fledged experiment for which financial meane are sadly lacking. This lack of money, by the way, shows that, in my opinion the authorities which might finance such projects are barking up the wrong tree and asking the wrong kind of questions. The reason is perhaps they are afraid of the answers we might find. The first thing we did was to select a text which was to have a number of very definite characteristics. It had to be a literary text including a narrative and a number of informational data. It must be written in a clear and straightforward style, but present a number of logical, syntactic and lexical difficulties. It must be rather short - at most six hundred words, which means four to five minutes' reading - and yet form a coherent whole without any editing or abbreviating. Last but not least, it had to be a little known text which the subjects of the experiment were not likely to have read before, and at the same time it had to be the work of a good and recognized writer. Such a text was not easy to find. In the end, we chose a humorous short story by Alphonse Allais written in 1890. We had it printed very clearly in average type. After careful pretesting, we found that the average reading time ranged between 3 minutes 40 seconds and 4 minutes 15 seconds. We then made a sample of 31 readers with a proportion of 15 men to 16 women. Quite deliberately, we decided, at that preliminary stage of the experiment to eliminate a number of variables. All the readers belonged to the age-group 25 to 50 and to the socio-cultural stratum of intellectual and technical workers, ranging from a hospital nurse to a university lecturer. The standard procedure was the following. The operator, a young lady from our laboratory, turned up with a tape recorder

14 ready for a full hour's recording, which she switched on immediately on arriving. The first part of the interview which lasted a quarter of an hour was a standard questionnaire on Bocio-cultural identification and background and on cultural habits, not particularly centered on reading. Then the operator flashed the printed pages and asked courteously: "Would you mind reading this?". While the reading went on, the tape recorder recorded all comments, exclamations and the like, while the operator noted the gestures like leafing back over to the first page, going again over a paragraph, and particularly she noted the time of reading. When the subject had finished reading and handed over the printed text, a third phase began. It took the form of a free conversation, the operator inviting any comments from the subject, but orienting little by little the dialogue toward a literary appreciation of the text, trying to find out whether the subject was able to identify the author (who, of course, was not mentioned), the period of writing, the literary genre and to explain if and why he or she had been interested or assumed. That conversation lasted exactly fifteen minutes, a delay which we had found from previous experiments, sufficient to eliminate short-term memory items. Then the operator suddenly, but nevertheless courteously asked: "Would you mind telling me the story you have just read?". In a few cases, the subject refused, saying he had forgotten, and the answer was duly recorded. In most cases, he told his own story as remembered from the text and that too was recorded. Additional comments were also recorded. The whole interview lasted about 45 minutes. We then had five corpuses on which to work: 1. The text itself. 2. The stories reconstructed by the various readers. 3. The answers to the first questionnaire. 4. The recording of the conversation. 5. The objective observations by the operator. The first thing to do was to analyse and compare the text and the reconstructed stories. We did that by distinguishing three kinds of items: 1. Structural items which were indispensable to the coherence of the text as a story.

15 2. Circumstantial items, such as names, dates, colours or background details. 3. Discursive items which were particularly notable phrases or words which bore the mark of the author's style. It was then rather easy to establish a typology of the readers' responses by seeing which items they had kept, which they had modified and which they had eliminated. Then, thanks to the questionnaire, it was possible to link up the various types with other data and variables. But the most interesting part of the research was when we compared the reconstruction of the text with the comments and with the objective behaviour observed by the operator. In one case, a lady said the text was absurd and uninteresting and that she had read it quite quickly and cursorily. Now, the observations told us she had spent more than twice the average time in reading and that she had twice leafed over to the first page. The answer was to be found in the fact that she had kept from the story only one structural item which had a very direct bearing on her personal situation. A few readers with a good ear had kept quite a number of discursive items but had practically eliminated the actual story. Others had done the same, but had reconstructed quite another story which told about them perhaps more than we cared to know. An engineer, probably accustomed to writing and reading accurate technical reports, gave us an almost perfect structural and discursive reconstruction, but eliminated all circumstantial items. But perhaps the most tricky answer of all was that of the university lecturer, a literature scholar, who first tried to smell out the snare, to guess (unsuccessfully, I am afraid) the name of the author and then worded his own reconstruction according to what he thought the reading of a profeesor should be. I cannot say we can draw conclusions from such a small-size experiment, but, at least, we have tried out there a synthetic method which might probably yield interesting results if practiced on a bigger scale with adequate means. We probably shall never be able to say what exactly is reading, but we shall certainly be able to say how people behave when they read, what it means to them, what they expect from it.

16 If only we had that knowledge, we should be able to turn toward the powers that be, economical or political, and tell them the kind of reading people need, what it may cost and what it may yield, in short what the stake value of reading is likely to be. We already know that reading is one of the doors to freedom. It remains now to patiently forge, file down and fit the latchkey which will open that particular door for all men, women and children in the world.

17

THEORETICAL AND METHODOLOGICAL PROBLEMS OF RESEARCH ON READING HABITS Remarks, proposals, postulates Januaz

Ankudowicz

"Years of strenuous effort of collecting data on various aspects of public life have convinced us that we have advanced little beyond that which is contained in the works of fathers of scientific sociology - Marx, Weber and Durkheim, and we know more and more about less and less".! Toutes proportions gardées, the above-quoted opinion can be referred to the situation in the Btudy of reading habits. The remarks and postulates put forward in this text are derived from a not very inspiring conviction that the theoretical foundations of those studies are not clearly defined, their construction is not perspicuous and does not guarantee fruitful knowledge. Perhaps it is not necessary to convince anyone who is engaged in studying the phenomena arising in the course of public circulation of a book that there is a need or even necessity to make and, subsequently, to use of theoretical foundations. The realization of those needs and necessities is manifested most frequently by declarations and not strictly obeyed rules in research. The causes of that situation are certainly numerous, the most essential ones, however, seem to be the following: lack of sufficiently profound methodological reflection, evaluations of the cognition process, vagueness of concepts used in investigations, imprecision of ontological assumptions and - at times - limited researcher's competence. These matters are also interrelated with failure in laying out a distinct direction (or directions) of sections aimed at the synthesis of facts and phenomena observed during investigations .

18

Undoubtedly we are at the beginning of perhaps, the permanent process of creating the theory of studying reading habits; the process in which analysis and evaluation of the hitherto works is as essential as preparing the program of procedures for the future. It is indispensable to ask fundamental questions and give clear answers as possible, so that one could obtain such results in research which will make it possible to attain truly valuable knowledge about the investigated section of reality. It is thus necessary to tentatively sum up the theoretical foundations which are valid for this study. The conviction of the pragmatic sense of such actions is most important. The question is not whether we search for justifications of autonomy of our research; we do not create a new branch of science but we tend to formulate possibly distinct rules of effective research procedure. It will be thus proper to look at the conditions of creating such a specialization. The first condition results from transformations occuring in the appearance of culture. A change in the forms of circulation of cultural products in a society and their greater availability have brought about expansion and differentiation of the circle of receivers of thoee products. Those circles are in many respects heterogeneous, anonymous and dispersed; they are also characterized by different ways of participation in culture, hence in literary culture. The subsequent condition is a growing conviction among sociologists, literary critics and aestheticians that knowledge about culture itself will be very limited without systematic researches on the reception of cultural products, and that neglecting the problems of reception means avoidance of quite significant issues. And finally, the third condition which results from the tendencies to specialization prevailing in science. This tendency can be regarded as a favourable phenomenon - on the condition, however, that those processes are at the same time integrational tendencies - of which the most important seems to be the one aimed at constructing a unifying theory. Realization of the status of research on reading habits ought to be tantamount to the definition of a scientific context, i. e. indication of certain possibilities and rules of

19 constructing a theory. Before this essential issue is discussed, I would like to point to some fundamental conditions which must be fulfilled prior to any research undertaken. Namely, in studying some section of surrounding reality, we ought to aim at its description and explanation.

Both these

terms do not produce significant misunderstandings in colloquial usage but it should be noted what meanings these terms are given by methodologists of sociology. "Scientific description is [ . . . ] an indication of essential and characteristic features of any given object (phenomen, event)". If any description is to be regarded as scientific, it ought to fulfil the conditions of logical adequacy

(indication of unambiguous

properties of an object and veriflability of those properties) and empirical adequacyyl

(real possession

of indicated propel—

ties). We speak of scientific explanation when a fact being explained or a regularity are derived from other assertions existing in science. Scientific explanation ought to fulfil the condition of logical adequacy (e. g. the implication relation must exist between the statement being explained and the explanatory one) and the conditions of empirical adequacy (explanatory sentences must be true) As has been said earlier, we tend to formulate a theory in order to achieve an opportunity of integrating the results of numerous detailed empirical researches, a possibility of synthetiaing the knowledge of the state of reading habits. Before one can say that research on reading habits has a relatively clear and coherent theory, it is necessary, apart from many important actions, to discuss some issues. The first issue to be dealt with appears to be the very concept of theory. It is well known from the experience of sociology how this concept is ambiguous. Quoted earlier, Piotr Sztompka, distinguishes over twenty ways of understanding the concept "theory". It is sometimes regarded as opposition to practice, empiricism, concrete, knowledge, but it is also used - in the opinion of the quoted author - inappropriately as a synonym of the history of social ideas, social philosophy, conceptual scheme, etc. Structuralists being interested in the properties of elements of statements and relations between

20

statements comprehend the concept of theory in a different way than the advocates of functional approach who ask: "For what does a theory serve?". In accordance with the above-presented opinion about descriptive and explanatory aims of reasearch and due to the advantages to be discussed later, the functional approach to the understanding of theory seems to be most useful to us. Piotr Sztompka gives the following characterization of such an approach : "1. (...] theory denotes every set of assertions which provides explanation of facts or empirical relationships [...] 2. Secondly, [...] theory denotes every Bet of assertions which provides explanation of general laws, formulated earlier. [...] Every theory conceived in this way contains [...] as indispensable elements not only statements which are traditionally referred to as theoretical ones, descriptive, diagnostic statements. Description of social phenomena is considered as an indispensable constituent of sociological theory. [...] Functional definitions give relative sense to the concept of theory. (...) Thus neither theory 'in general' nor explanation 'in general' exist. There exist only the theory of 'something' and, likewise, only explanation of 'something'."·* Acceptance of validity of descriptive statements and nongeneralized assertions in a theory does not mean, however, that a theory can be made up only of that kind of statements. Despite numerous controversies between methodologists, some conditions and properties of theory are not objects of contention. Once more I shall refer to the quoted author who states: "Between these extremes there is, however, a region of relative consent in respect of fundamental structural features of a theory. The three basic intuitions seem to be: a) generality - conceived differently after all (nomological generality or generality in respect of scope), b) conditionality - interpreted differently (substantially as stating about relationships or formally as a conditional mood),

21 c) syatematicness

in respect of contente of logic (semantic or

syntactic unity)".* In drawing attention to the problems of the concept of theory and related implications, I hope that this issue is of highest importance: it initiates the process of formulating a theory. I do not touch upon such matters as possibilités and rules of constructing statements and principles of their typology, systematization, etc., not because I consider them to be less important but because that they go beyond the scope of this text (ample literature is available in this respect). On the other hand, it is worth while considering to some extent the possible sources from which we can draw in a more or lese correct way not only inspirations but also data useful for constructing a systematic set of statements. Actually, three spheres of experience can be indicated, in which I expect to find some desired materials: A) Experience contained in the historical tradition of that specialization. Retrospection is accompanied by a conviction that some proposals concerning formulations, conceptual categories, interpretations and construction of theoretical systems are not to be discarded. Reinterpretation of those proposals seem to be useful. B) Critical evaluation of the theoretical foundations of the present-day research on reading habits. The problem lies here not only in revealing and evaluating the theoretical assumptions regarded as a basis conceptualization but in statements being consequently formulated. C) Experience from other branches of science with which we related through some common object of research or through similar theoretical consciousness. That experience can stimulate statements, hypotheses and conceptual categories. ad A) Speaking about 90 years of the development of research on reading habits in Poland, we realize that attempts of very different qualities were made throughout that period - from quite simple and random check-ups aimed at obtaining material for a newspaper notice to diagnostic soundings. It ought to be remembered that in the 18th number of "Glos" (Voice) from 1890 Antoni Potocki und Zygmunt Waeilewski published an article entitled "Concerning popular reading habits". In the following

22 issue of that weekly Miecysfaw Brzezifteki published a questionnaire concerning folk publications: "What and how our folk reads", which was directed to educated rural intelligentsia. The occurence of those two researches is significant for two reasons. Firstly, they are manifestations of such social and cultural processes whose scale and character require not only intuitive analyses but properly organized identifications and researches as well. The "publicistic" stage of reflection on reading habits is a manifestation of the expansion of the social limits of book circulation, differentiation of the reading public, increase of new categories of readers with poor reading experience. However, due to those transformations, new phenomena conte into existence, new facte and questions arise to which science has not yet given satisfactory answers. Secondly, realization of the new features and indications of the social existence of a literary work take a parallel shape but those problems were not undertaken by the research of that time. Such questions as: who reads? and what? and the problems which the differentiation of reception, become significant. From such a situation reports are derived about the spread of reading habits, information about books being read and their availability. The data are fragmentary and random, they were obtained in non-systematic researches being inspired by individuals and opinions. Nevertheless, they are significant as an expression of the need for collecting factographic materials, reflections on the phenomena related to readers and reading habits based on the relatively exact information. In the period between the two World Mars research on reading habits was not limited only to individual initiatives and random searches but became more institutionalised. Helena Radli/iska conducted seminars on the theory of reading habits at the Free Polish University late in the 30s. Aniela Mikucka published a work presenting systematically the theoretical foundations of research on reading habits^. The range of problems then investigated was relatively vast: differentiation of availability of books among various social groups, reading habite among different professional categories (effectiveness, preferences), reception of the trivial literature, interrelation between the book's lay-out and the spread

23

of reading, etc. The groups of problems under investigation, their selection, distribution of emphasis were determined by the needs of cultural and educational work. The materials being assembled were regarded as evidence of certain phenomena, e. g. public attitude towards the book, accessibility of the text, and as an empirical baeis for programming organizational actions in this sphere. Although it is fairly easy to delimit the fields of interest shared by the contemporary researchers, it is rather difficult to describe their theoretical and methodological assumptions. The conceptual apparatus, being little developed, as a rule, for use in some concrete investigations, was related to the concepts of Nicolas Λ. Rubakin, Walter Hofmann and to the German and American psychology. Most frequently that relation was in the form of casual and fragmentary references without logical implications. In other words, the theoretical plane of empirical research on reading habits being carried out in the interwar period was characterized neither by great cohesion nor as a consequence in obeying general rules. As regards the evaluation of the research carried out in that period, the following remarks and conclusions can be formulated : - non-systematic empirical data concerning different aspects of reading habits failed to give their complete representation; - research procedures were not elaborated precisely and moreover the conceptual apparatus was not consequently made use of; - principles of research procedures were not concretized and made sufficiently clear; - in conclusions of researches descriptive statements were formulated, their validity being restricted to concrete cases under investigations. I do not intend to depreciate the values of those researches by pointing out some of their drawbacks. I am only intent on showing that the past experience has not provided us with ready-made answers to the fundamental questions - many issues are still to be solved.

24 ad Β) In the postwar period interest in the problems of the functioning of books in society has significantly increased in a redoubled sense: the range of problems investigated has been expanded and the research experience has been intensified and differentiated. This is closely related to the development of various kinds of research on culture, on the processes of social transformations. The book, reading and literary communication are interesting for the representatives of several sciences which are concerned with these problems in various degrees. In the vast and differentiated stream of research of the problems related to the functioning of books in a society are not always most crucial issues. They are to be found in the context of research on the structure of leisure activities, cultural entertainment of different social categories, reflections on the methodology of various humanistic sciences. Fairly numerous data was collected, researches produced highly diversified information (details being interesting but not always essential), descriptions of truly general facts and regularities being frequently followed by ambitious efforts of including them in some comprehensive theoretical eystems. An attempt to give a general and schematic evaluation of the existing information produced from the research enables us to point to the fields of more intensive research and the one which is expected to draw intensified interest. 1. On the grounds of various investigations it is possible to trace the circulation of books in a society. The number of the reading public on a nation-wide scale as well as within professional categories was approximately determined by the determination of the social extent of the book circulation. In other words, it was possible to describe some social areas in which literary communication existe. The investigations pointed to the differentiation of the reading public in respect of social characteristics, frequency of contacts with books and frequent preferences among readers. The place of books was described in mass communication media and the role of books in comparison to the other media was characterized. All those descriptions are quantitative, revealing proportional dimensions of the readers and - therefore - the significance of various forms of participation in culture. Another

25 stream of research on the social differentiation of qualitative aspects of participation in culture, i. e. preferences of a particular reading content is much less developed. 2. Investigations described those characteristics which distinguish the reading public from other receptors of culture. It was found that although the reading public forms a minority in each community, it is distinguishable thanks to a syndrome of particular features: greater receptivity and openness to the influence of culture. Contacts with culture are also associated with more active social attitudes. These statements permit one to assume - in some investigations - that reading is an indication of the level of participation in culture. Furthermore, other characteristics (low education, low professional qualifications, etc.) were distinguished - due to them reading is a similar form of participation in culture; the set of opposite features is a cause of a situation when reading is regarded as a particular form of behaviour, being differently motivated. 3. The fundamental and simplest conditions of the book circulation and readers' activity were characterized. Simplest condition, i. e. because generally and most frequently they were searched for in the socio-demographic features; much more seldom were investigated relations to cultural and social experiences, as well as the level of cultural competence. There were no attempts, however, to focus the investigations on the problems related to the role of books in the system of human values. 4. Numerous data were assembled as regards the main trends of the distribution of books and the main ways of access to books. Although there is a need to bring up-to-date information on that matter, we know about the public and private libraries, about their sizes and content enough to be able to evaluate the significance of those forms of the distribution of books in a society and to realize the social scale of the phenomenon. Moreover, data was collected about different aspects of acquiring books in bookshops. The results of various investigations reveal a particular role of various types of libraries giving books on loan.

26

5. A most general description of the main trends in readers' preferences was also made. The fundamental areas of literature which attract the readers' attention were outlined in that way (however, frequently with little precision without more thorough analyses). Findings of that type serve to determine the social functions of different types of books. Methodological drawback in such treatment of the problems under investigations are too apparent. 6. Finally, attempts were made - in fact in a few investigations only - to find out and characterise the social conditions of the ways of reading literary works. Some fundamental differences of the readers' orientation towards the various strata and elements of a literary text were pointed out: characteristic limitations of comprehending the author's message, particularly its symbolical layer. Characteristic expectations and attitudes of being expressed by readers were revealed: search for definite motives, situations and conflicts. It was also found that there existed almost unsurpassable difficulty levels for some categories of readers that decide upon their reading-lists and reading experience. Reception problems, which I only touch upon, are poorly represented in empirical investigations. The value of a few works dealing with reception consists in the fact that they enable one to point out some essential problems worthy of more detailed study, however, they do not suggest complete answers and do not account for the mechanisms of reception of the reading content. After a brief and rather simplified presentation of the scope of problems undertaken in empirical investigations, concerning the functioning of books in a society, readers' preferences, reception of literary and non-literary texts, one can state that the field of research interests is undoubtedly vast and a great number of crucial statements have been formulated. There is no doubt, however, that a synthetic formulation of the problems related to reading habits is still a very difficult task to be accomplished. It is now evident that abundance of data in this respect is only formal since they lack cohesion. Cohesion consists not only in non-congruence of analytical categories adopted for research, not only in the fact that in numerous investigations statements are found to

27

be groundless and details are unessential, but in the fact that it is impossible to find a common plane of theoretical reference for many investigations. The language of analysis, concepts, terminology, research procedures, hypotheses have no common denominator, they do not refer to uniform or at least approximate theoretical categories. The main and most common fault in former research works is a failure to reveal essential and primary mechanisms shaping the facts and phenomena investigated despite the fact that significant formulations are made. Conclusions and the formulation of the descriptive statements or rather reports are a most common practice. Simplest relations are formulated; they tend to show rather co-occurrence of facts than causal nexus or interrelations of conditions. Only in a few works that I know are the theoretical frames clearly outlined, concepts and apparatus being selected purposefully and adequately. Along with the amassing of knowledge and research experience it·, becomes evident that "openness" of a literary work gives rise to certain problems which have not been systematically investigated until the present time. There is a growing conviction that investigations ought to be continued and improved thanks to which it would be feasible to give a general description of a complicated system called "a literary fact". It is essential to create such a theoretical plane which would give an opportunity of communication between specialists; a psychologist studying processes of understanding and remembering texts, a sociologist being concerned with the differentiation of cultural competence, a specialist in librarianship studying the causes of poor utilization of libraries for instance, a literary theorist who attempts to make a typology of functions of literary works. It seems that such a theoretical plane is feasible to make although I do not say that it is easy to combine such different phenomena and research tasks. The first step to make is perhaps to adopt an opinion that the same objects (phenomena) ought to be investigated from different angles. First of all it is necessary to gather empirical data and improve methodological reflection. ad C) Finally, the third of the above-listed spheres within which we are looking for theoretical and methodological indi-

28 catione. It is a common conviction among researchers that the object of research on reading habite is to be found on the area delimited by intersection of spheres of interests shared by several scientific disciplines. It is, however, either a superficial conviction manifested in the form of slogans, phrases and then its applicability as a controller of empirical perspective appears to be minimal or incoherent conviction, i. e. one which refers to different systems of thought neglecting necessary specifications and proofs. One can point to some characteristic ways of comprehending the relationships between research on reading habits and other branches of scientific research which possess more profound theoretical and methodological experience. The simplest situation and as it seems, fairly typical is to assert that union of the object of investigation and a possibility of theoretical and methodological reference bring research on reading habits closer to the theory of literature, sociology, psychology and librarianship. Assertions of that type are neither specified nor developed; they function as guidelines being so general that their theoretical applicability is null. One can hardly disagree with such formulations, but unless they are pointed out and the forms and the content of that interrelationship (similarities and differences in dealing with the object of investigation, techniques of collecting and principles of interpreting data), verified through research work, theee opinions cannot be regarded as a theoretical basis since they do not provide an empirical researcher of reading habits with concepts, analytical apparatus, assertions and hypotheses. Another but not opposite way of comprehending the interrelationship between research on reading habits and the abovementioned branches of research is to indicate some advantages of that research which can enrich sociological research on culture, expand the horizons of the study of literature; the resulte obtained can be made use of by an educator studying problems or attempting to reach some educational aims. Such a view cannot be discarded but at the same time it cannot be regarded as a fruitful one in creating theoretical and methodological foundations of research on reading habits. In

29 the approach which emphasizes utility of factography it is generally avoided to analyze possible advantages on the part of those sciences which are enriched or can be enriched thanks to research on reading habits. In this approach instrumental significance, the sense of euch research and its auxiliary function is being stressed, whereas considerations are not yet made on more complex relationships - possibilities of adaptation and transfer of assumptions or assertions functioning in those eciences. Sometimes it happens that the union of research on reading habits with other branches of the humanities ie reduced to the methodological links in the narrow sense of the concept, i. e. links related to those actions and rules which are helpful in collecting data and materials. It is said that research on reading habits is closely related to sociological considerations because they make use of the techniques and research apparatus developed by sociology: observation, questionnaire and interview, principles of population selection for investigation, etc. On the other hand, one can rarely find investigations which contain documented references to the system of sociological statements. In the similar manner the links between research on reading habits and psychology and pedagogy are described. It is to be noted that this perspective is useful to a limited degree, since being in the sphere of research and reflections, we gather the material correctly but we are unable to formulate the theory of research on reading habits, we are unable to make general statements, we are unable to indicate essential mechanisms and relationships governing the circulation of books in a society. In the above-presented remarks I tried to motivate a necessity to look for rules organizing research on reading habits, to justify their scientific identification which - in my opinion - ought to consist in the realization of the essence of the phenomena investigated and - furthermore in developing the research apparatus: network of concepts and terms of description and, finally, a set of theoretical statements. As I suggested, various kinds of experience do not bring unambiguous and exhaustive answers to the essential questions: what is the research on reading habits? or, in

30 other words, what does that research concern with and how can it be accomplished? how can researchers fulfil their tasks? I am trying to find answers to the questions presented, they are valid as elements of theory-making, through: 1. Formulating general or heuristic guidelines, i. e. to answer the question: what is to be investigated? In this respect they can assume the following forms: a. general frame definition which aims at delimitation of the field of research on reading habits. I should like to formulate this definition naming not problems but objects (phenomena, facts) under investigation. Such a procedure resulta from an assumption that reading habits as a type of man's behaviour (acts) can be regarded not as behaviour being accomplished for one's own "self", but it is a behaviour aimed at reaching different objectives situated outside an individual. Briefly speaking, an ontological feature of those acts is that reading habits are not developed continuously but rather continually. I shall add that I refer reading behaviour to other forms of behaviour like communicative or symbolical ones. b. proposals concerning a possibility of creating some notional scheme. 2. To realize the main objectives of research procedures. 3. To realize the problem of scientific contexts; it can be useful for the creation of the theory. Beginning to solve the issues outlined in this section, it is worth while presenting the general standpoint: research on reading habits is focused on literary and non-literary texts in the moment of their reception by readers. The problems related to the production of such texts constitute a further plane of our interest, not being directly investigated but observed, these problems are sometimes approached form the readers' perspective. We are interested in the rules and regularities of readers' decision formating and the ways of their accomplishment. For us the text is one of the elements of the set of factors conditioning an intention to read, to select and comprehend texts. Apart from that we are interested not in

31 individual unrecurring reading behaviour but in masa, recurring reading behaviour, determinants of its regularity and patterns of behaviour. Briefly, we are interested in ordinary reception and not in critical and professional ones. Finally, let us indicate the level on which opinions and hypotheses are formulated: it is a set of empirical data. We are not restricted to them, however, we tend to achieve "an empirical theory" consisting in "... such an orientation of empirical research that it should enable one to create a theory and restrict theoretical reflection to such an extent that it should never lose contact with empirical cognition"**. The definition of the object of research on reading habits can be made when we answer the questione concerning the research fields, the view of the object and its constituents and, further, the way we come to understand and generalize it. Surely, one cannot avoid simplifications. Nevertheless, such a procedure is justified by heuristic considerations. The statement that the object of empirical investigations of reading habits is a varied interrelation between a reader and a book can be self-evident and too simple. However, it ÌB only apparent obviousness; all groups of problems included in the object: reader-relation-book

are identified in research prac-

tice rather vaguely and with little precision. It is not selfevident or unambiguous how we define a reader, how we understand a book, how we can consider the relations mentioned. For instance, the theory of literature uses at least several ways of identifying a receiver of a literary work. There are several terms with different significations which serve to describe a reader, more frequently referred to as a receiver. Therefore, one can speak of a virtual reader, the term being an abstract construction signifying that and only that receiver who "existe" in text signals. One can also speak of a potential receiver, i. e. the one who is created by contemporary culture; this concept being used also to signify a possibility of social interaction of literature. However, research on reading habits is not much concerned with this trend. It is worth mentioning that apart from the above-cited terms there are others in the theory of literature and analyses orientated

32 towards the cognition of a literary work, e. 9. a represented reader, a fictional reader. In the situation of a rich variety of rather more or less precise concepts an adequate definition of a "reader" which occurs in research on reading habits seems indispensable. Without getting into details we can say that it is referred to as a real reader, observable in empirical investigation. We try to characterize him through description of his statue in social systems and his participation in culture. We are thus interested in his socio-demographical features, in his recognized and practised patterns of participating in culture, hie system of recognized and desired values or needs - they

are

in my opinion the main stimulators of reading behaviour -, his cultural competence, his place in the social sturcture, his public roles, standard and way of life. The concepts listed above, applicable in the description of real readers, perform a function of variables in the investigations to be used in the description of attitudes and patterns of reading behaviour, selection of books, readers' competence, ways and levels of reading texts. By means of such analyses and descriptions, we tend to reveal the real social, psycho-social and cultural factors conditioning the readers' behaviour, their relation to a book as a product of culture and his relation to a concrete content contained in a book. In describing the readers' behaviour we make use of the concepts taken from the language of sociology, social psychology and sociology of culture. Another source of notions, whose validity for the research on reading habits is recognized, is a semiotic analysis of culture, particularly of literary culture. We admit that when such terms are employed as: eemiotic object, text, code, message, communicative situation, etc., we do not exclude a possibility of entering a wider stream of pragmatically oriented research on culture. We realize, however, that the application of such terms can be accomplished mainly in relatively uniform descriptions. The more crucial objective, such as explanation, will be reached only when we create a set of statements with a high degree of generalization .

33 Furthermore, since we are interested in a real reader and in the reader's universe, we see all causative factors, since we investigate his real decisions determined socially and culturally and by the texts likewise, as well as the readers' behaviour, then we must comply with the particular reader's system of orientation in the world of books when we look upon a literary or non-literary book, i. e. we ought to carry out our investigations with regard to "a humanistic coefficient". This means a well prepared procedure reconstruction of the seta of concepts and evaluations concerning books which are functioning in the consciousness of different categories of readers. Such a procedure should provide an explanation in which terms and by means of what set of notions a non-specialist perceives and identifies a book, distinguishes it from among other forms of communication, or whether and how he identifies various types of books. In this respect a question arises about gratificational values referred to books and presupposed by the reader. In order to determine and distinguish particular functional features of the book it is indispensable to organize investigation with regard to two planes of reference: for the book and other texte of culture functioning in a society; for the reader - social systems and psycho-social factors. Being unable to present in more detail the complexity of social, cultural, psychical, existential and literary interrelations in which a researcher approaches the book and its receiver, one must mention the way of looking upon the relations linking both main elements which determine the object of research on reading habits, and more precisely: about the typee of relations with which we have to do. Multiplicity and variety of those relations can be reduced to the three sets of problems. The first set would include problems which can be referred to as availability and contact. This refers on the one hand to the determination of the widest social frames of booke circulation and its range in different social categories, the number of the reading public, its structure and differentiation in respect of various features and factors, relevant as the terms of describing the reader; on the other hand this refers to the

34 sources and channels of the circulation of books in a society, the significance and functions organizing and participating in public loan of books, sources of information concerning books. The following questions are relevant for that set of phenoraenona: in what social frames, in what ways, due to what inspirations a contact: the book - its receiver is being accomplished? The next set of problems concerns readers' preferences.

This

refers to a description of particular book lists circles of readers of various types of books, a distinction of those book lists which attract the attention of different categories of readers. Penetration of that sphere of problems is to help formulate statements concerning the functioning of books and indicate those types of books which prevail in the readers' choice. And finally, the third set of problems - concerning situations in which a beginning is marked by a firm decision made by the reader and manifested by his choice of a book. These problems are related to text reception. They include a relatively wide set of phenomena: from the techniques of reading texts, distinguishing and identifying them to the understanding of texts and recognition of literary conventions, experiences and readers' expectations. One must admit that so far we have had neither enough empirical materials nor methodological experience to be used for better understanding of the problems. An approach to the phenomenon of reading books as intersubjective communication gives an opportunity of finding its real empirical place in the process of social circulation of symbolical messages, it enables one to speak about real social frames of its circulation, to point to a truly active mechanism of forming the reading public, readers' choices and reception of various texts. Generally the point is in research on reading habits to determine the real Bocial function or functions of the book or various types of books. I do not have a possibility of making a more profound study of the concept of function and functional analysis. The concept is understood ambiguously by researchers and thus provokes different forms of carrying out research.

35 I should like to mention at least the essential problems in this respect, I adopt the notion of function for the determination of "... consequences, results of particular relevance through indicating the system or more precisely a concrete state which is in some way produced, maintained or cancelled. The function of a certain element can be here referred to as its instrumental significance for producing, maintaining or cancelling a definite state in a system to which it belongs"^. Functional analyses - there are several types of them - use the terms "system", state of a "system", "element of a system". A system can be an individual or a community - therefore one can determine individual or social functions. The definition of a system or its state is a problem left for the researchers. For a functionally orientated research on the reading habits a book is an element that can affect the states of individual or mass consciousness, the system of requirements, etc. Research ought to indicate the regularities of occurence of those results: what in reference to whom and what? in what conditions? Of course, I mention here briefly the problem which is worthy of a separate and more systematic elaboration. A few more remarks in conclusion. If we assume that the main point of our interest is reading behaviour and that we look for the main determinants of those types of behaviour in the cultural and social status of the receiver of texts, then it means that we are more closely related to sociology than to the theory of literature as regards theoretical affinity. Thus, one must agree to the following statement: "Therefore, consequently, when we speak of a pragmatic dimension of sign analysis, we are unable to provide sociology with other theoretical perspectives from those which are inherent, because the problem of exchange of significations lies at the foundations of all sociological theories in overt or covert ways. On the other hand, a choice of a concrete symbolical interaction determines, in my opinion, the form and development of admissible statements about all social phenomena irrespective of the fact whether we deal with mass communication, interaction selecting behaviour of functioning of formalized institutions".8

36 What ought to be the course of making a theory in our branch? What is to be done first of all? I should like to suggest the following answers: 1. One roust make an effort to eystemise the hitherto statements, pointing out their structural and functional features . 2. In investigating detailed problems we ought to look for general statements, explaining the results of our considerations, in sociology or rather in the so-called behavioural sciences, including psychology, sociology and social psychology. It is very likely that in this way we shall be able to select a set of statements concerning reading behaviour. There ought to be a relation called cognitive accessibility between these two spheres. It means that a researcher should be informed to Borne degree, or orientated in the proposed perspective -, i. e. in a behaviour science . 3. The laet postulate is more detailed in character. It refers to a rigorous observation of research procedures. An evaluation of many works tells us how many methodological flaws they have and on account of that their cognitive value decreases . Is it poseible to indicate smaller areas in the above-presented perspective of research on reading habits or to suggest that they be more accessible for study? I should like to suggest that we draw attention - apart from behavioural sciences - to theories of values and theories of attitudes. Applicability of such a research perspective consists first of all in the fact that it includes investigations of individuals, social systems, cultural système and values. The conceptual apparatus used there comes from several neighbouring research disciplines which enables one to investigate and explain many aspects of human existence being manifested by his contacte with material reality, human communities, and also by his symbolical behaviour. The proposals and remarks presented in this text reflect some kind of needs in respect of research and are aimed at finding possibilities to fulfil them. If they are not adequately arranged, let the present writer be at least partly

37 excused on account of the earlier presented situation in research on reading habits which is mostly characterized by inapt solutions, intuitive evaluations, lack of cohesion ... Nevertheless, it seems that the most essential thing is to search for new solutions and realize the sense of those searches. This determines the scientific, cognitive and practical sense of research on reading habits.

References 1. P. Sztompka: O pojçciu teorii w socjologii. (On the Notion of Theories in Sociology). In: Studia Socjologiczne.

1971,

nr. 3, p. 20. 2. P. Sztompka: Metoda funkejonalna w socjologii i antropologa

epofecznej.

(The Functional Method in Sociology and So-

cial Anthropology). Wroclaw 1971, p. 158, 160. 3. P. Sztompka: O tak zwanych "wyjaénieniach funkejonalnych" w socjologii i antropologi! spofecznej. (On so-called "Functional Explanations" in Sociology and Social Anthropology). In: Studia Socjologiczne. 1968, nr. 3-4, p. 221. 4. P. Sztompka: O pojçciu teorii w socjologii. (On the Notion of Theories in Sociology), op. cit. p. 43. 5. A. Mikucka: Przedmiot, zakrea i metody bada h

czytelnictwa.

(Objects, Spheres and Methods of Reading Research). Warsaw 1938. 6. P. Sztompka: Teoria i wyjabnienie. (The Theory and Explanation). Warsaw 1973, p. 20. 7. P. Sztompka: O tak zwanych "wyjaânieniach funkejonalnych" ... (On so-called "Functional Explanations" ...). op. cit., p. 225. 8. A. Piotrowski: Koncepcje procesu komunikowania w socjologii. (Concepts of Communication Process in Sociology). In: Przeglqd Socjologiczny. 1979, v. XXXI/l, p. 142.

39

PROBLEMS CONNECTED WITH THE ISSUE OF READING COMPETENCE Perspectives of the reading public typology Andrzej Robert Zielihski

The following text stands as a supplement and development of the conception presented in other places among others during the session organized by the Institute of Literary Research of the Polish Academy of Sciences. In 1975 international empirical research covering reception of three Hungarian short stories was initiated; the Polish part of materials concerning the above research and the reception conditioning in particular was worked out in the Books and Readers Institute. Among others, a group of factors called reading competence was elaborated. We will adduce some of the results in the following text.^ The reading competence category which was derived from the empirical research and greatly modified on these grounds seems to indicate a certain possibility of public reading typology. I. The basic point of reference for consideration is the phenomenon connected with the relation between a literary text and the reader. This above-mentioned sphere is connected with reception. We have selected certain conditionings for investigation . Investigating readership in the perspectives of the general communication theory and accepting the simplest scheme of the comnunication act (that is: sender - message - recipient) we usually concentrate on the relations covering the last two parts of the scheme. We take an interest in the conditioning of those relations (accepting peculiarity of the message itself that i s peculiarity of conditionings stuck in the text as

40 such) and accepting peculiarity of the whole communication context too, we focus our particular attention on those features of the recipient which decide upon the quality aspect of the reception of literature. Admitting communication perspectives as the general context we treat a literary work as a kind of message directed towards a recipient. Discussing relations between text and reader we can make either the former or the latter a starting point in our considerations. Accepting here the latter point of view we will consider not the adventures of a literary text among various readers but the adventures of a recipient among various texts, as J. Lalewicz formulated it.^ We are not interested in an immanent analysis of the text itself as much as in the relations taking place between the text (as a message) and a recipient; the process of reception itself being a social phenomenon . Experts' opinions about reception (resulting from theoretical consideration and from observations of the professional literary circles) in the matter of the whole society are of the demand-wish character rather than of practical statements. Therefore we will analyze not the literary - critical or literary - theoretical interpretations, which are, of course, certain acts of reception, but phenomena taking place in various social-demographic categories of the readers not connected professionally with literature (acting occasionally as recipients of literature) and their way of reacting to a literary work which may be recognized only during empirical research when the investigator somehow reconstruct the act which he wishes to investigate upon and interferes in the intimate sphere of the reader-literary work contact. We will thus be interested in a common, not in critical reception. Having still in mind the fact that the evidence of the critical reception (reviews, articles and, to some extent, school handbooks and school canons concerning literature) influence shaping of the common reception, we will attempt to pick up (on the basis of empirical research) literature reception mechanisms taking place among average (or normal - according to J. Lalewicz*) readers.

41 The reeearch covering reception of literature can be understood extremely broadly: beginning with the data registration of the "read - did not read", "enjoyed - did not enjoy" type, or various quantity information, and ending up on deepening of the quality research in determinants and the course of reception. So far in many empirical investigations the attention of experts has focused on the ways of contact between reader and book, on choicee and preferences, while the process of the quality relations between a reader and the book itself have hardly ever been the subject of interest. The matter of various interpretations has been usually left to the literary theoreticians and critics. It is a fact that scarce sociological investigations carried out on the above subject indicate that so-called mass-recipients usually reach as far as the plot level only without touching deeper layers and structures. The act of reading, however, does not mean a passive acceptance of the contents presented but constitutes a process during which every reader exploits different possibilities enclosed in the text-message, according to the scheme shaped by the author. The reader interprets, completes, adds, supplements and is emotionally engaged. It is just empirical status and description of the above processes (which investigate how people really read) that provides ue with much more data than hypothetically constructed models of how they should read. Considering our reading as an action we can deal with its functional and formal aspects as J. Lalewicz puts it.-* On the one hand we may ask: what does a reader do while reading? Here functions of our reading are discussed, for example: sense, aims, motivations and effects of reading. On the other hand we ask: what does a reader do with the text while reading? This question analyzes the mechanism of reading, that is to say actions performed on the text during the process of reading. As far ae the functional aspect of literature is concerned we would like to indicate (on the basis of the example) some experiences gained from the empirical investigations mentioned in the above introduction. Discussing reception of the three Hungarian short stories we distinguished its aspect called type of reception, which covered emotional engagement of readers. From the list of phrases (a very long one) there were to

42 select words which (according to them) would be the best to describe their emotional state after reading the short story (discovering a dominant was important here, not an index). Afterwards an attempt was made to fix types of recipients according ot the type of reception: investigating, emotional and entertaining types were distinguished for instance. Discussing this aspect of reception it seems necessary to point out one more a way of looking into those problems. It is possible to talk about this aspect of reading in terms of communication functions of the message. A. Kl'oskowska investigating on the common reception of ¿eromski's works singled out presenting, instrumental, aesthetic and expressing functions.** As far as the conditioning of this aspect of reception is concerned we would like to indicate this particular element which has been named accepted qualification

value of reader-

ship. We took it for granted that every human action (thus reading as well) is the result of aspirations or needs which make a reader's approach to literature in a certain way, which decide upon what the reader is looking for in a literary work. The requirements of the discussed investigations were proportions and statements concerning some of the motivation theory elements presented by J. Reykowski.^ Elements of the motivation theory employed in description and interpretation of the collected material were not supposed to explain the whole process of reading but interpret some of its aspects only. The process of motivation was understood as "the process of regulation which steers actions in such a way that they would lead towards reaching a definite point (aim)"**. If anything (e. g. a book - in our case) is to become useful for a man there has got to exist certain "motivational fusion" which may be reduced by a given object (a book). Besides the man has to be convinced that the object is able to reduce the tension. This particular ability of the object to reduce motivational tensions is called (by Reykowski) its gratification value. In our research that value marked the extent of the reader's expectances, it told us what he expected his reading to be like, and what his attitude towards literature was. Realizing difficulties connected with the analytical selection of certain aspects of the manyfold reception process of

43

the literary work and accepting existing ties among those aspects we would like to put the raain stress onto formal aspect of reception and turn your attention towards some conditionings connected with the reading seen in this perspective. In materials on reception of the Hungarian short stories worked out in the Institute of Book and Readership the reception was evaluated from several points of view.^ Depth of reception was pointed out to be the very aspect connected with formal approach to literature. Depth of reception was understood as the quantity of the text meanings acquired during the act of reading. Classification of the respondents was made on the basis of answers to open questions distinguishing respective levels of reception and thus:*·" I level: exact comprehending of meanings, summaries, paying attention to only presenting layer of the work II level: implicated meanings and the clearest symbols noticed III level: connections between the material read and selfexperience noticed; decoding more difficult symbols, accepting personal or social text appi ications IV level: ability to conclude and create generalizations, text meanings fully recognized.*·*· The above classification has some features of evaluation hierarchy. It should be clearly underlined that a literary text as a work of art admits any quantity of read-outs which (having been empirically stated) are all true. It does not mean, however, as A. KdOskowska noticed that "all means of reproduction [...] always and from all points of view have to be formed as being parallel excluding all from their education and hierarchy [...] All individual or group interpretations I9 are in a sense equally true but surely not equally good." A i From the point of view of the reader - an author who shapes schematic frames of reception, acts of reception, classified as "worse" (to our understanding) does not exploit totally all the possibilities of the text or explicitly distort and deform the meanings contained.

44 Independently of recognizing the individual reader's "right" towards his own way of reading it is possible and necessary to construct a certain interpretatory paradigm to which

individu-

al receptory constructions could be compared. We should differentiate here between estimation

(understood as comparisons

to other readings, placing in a scheme introduced by the reader) and evaluation

(understood as a comparison to only one

"true" reading of an expert on the basis: conformable - unconformable). An estimation of literature seems to be not only possible but necessary if we want to create an analytical scheme. As an example of such proceedings the research of common reception of "Wesele" ("The Wedding") can be p r e s e n t e d . ^ Three types of reconstruction were distinguished there: Type I

: persons being examined representing type I were mainly interested in the plot of marriage; their attention was concentrated on the reception of realistic background being more interesting and understandable

Type II : is characterized by persons' attitude towards symbolical plot Type III: directing towards formal angle Type IV : "correct" realization It was generally attempted to designate the character of contact with the work. A. KJoskowska writing about various interpretations of "Wesele" ("The Wedding") distinguished: ignorance, confusion and k n o w l e d g e . ^ As one more example of viewing phenomena connected with reception in a way interesting for us we would like to quote investigations over reception of contemporary literature carried out by the Cooperative for Sociology of Literature in Paris under J. Leenhardt in cooperation with the National

Institute

of Culture in B u d a p e s t . O n e of categories employed in the research concerning typical, concurring means of using the text in various readings was the category approximating our way of understanding the reception phenomena. The research ehowed an occurence of three main means of reading: 1. disposition to facte and events - a reading

following

strictly the plot, structure of narration and omitting deeper reasons (hidden or external to reality presented) for events taking place

45

2. a reading of the identification - emotional type based on the analysis of the heroes' characters, their mental motivation where identification with the character frequently takes place 3. a reading of the analytical-synthetic type: it is an overall formulation of the situation, action, mental motives, reasons and results. The above ways of viewing the literary reception cannot be, in our opinion, treated as the only ones or "full". We would like to point out a co-occurring (in various intensifications and formulations) formal aspect of reading. It should be pointed out that this aspect is related to that "face" of reception conditionings which ought to be investigated in the recipient's reading competences understood as knowledge and experience in the field of association with a literary work. A reader can be looked upon from the point of view of his social and demographical features such as age, education, profession, social status, etc. They influence in a way (in what way? - it is to be investigated) the shaping of knowledge and literary experience called here the reading competences which decide upon the ability of acceptance and interpretation. In particular they imply this aspect of reception which has been named the depth of reception. The decisive part in shaping of competences and thus reception can be assigned to levels and directions of education. Considering these categories as an univocal determinant, however, would be far too naive, regarding both theory (model) and practice (empirical). Generally all data of the statistical, social and demographical character can be treated only as introductory materials characterizing the reception-like aspect of the literary communication. Penetration of the reception process needs more thorough research, other kinds of data, construction of some categories explaining and "mediating".*·® J. SïawiAski introduced the notion of literary culture as a guiding system which makes it possible for a literary public (that is this part of eociety which is singled out by active participation in production and reception of literary works)

46 to communicate effectively through w o r k s . A c c o r d i n g to the author, isolating various levels of literary culture helps with certain stratification of recipients different from the one (made from a different point of view anyway) determinants of which are not directly connected with literary phenomena. Z. BokszaAski working on problems of cultural advancement araong the working class employed himself in phenomena directly connected with reading competences.^·® He noticed that shaping of new rules for division is nowadays accompanied by constant advance of cultural participation in the whole of contemporary society (accepted as a ratio for social differentiation). Intensified social mobility caused different lines of division for cultural levels among social groups and even within them. The lines cross each other and overstep borders. Searching for differences in cultural participation (and reasons for those differences) BokszaAski indicates just these cultural competence differences in a certain communication efficiency. In the above mentioned empirical investigation concerning reception of Hungarian short Btories, a stratification of respondents according to the singled out levels of reading competences wasrnade.^·®Among subjects of individual levels various categories of social and demographic representatives could be found (particular attention was turned towards differences in the level of education^"). A respondent's statue of education informs us only about what should his knowledge include, not about what really is present in his consciousness. Similarly, in selected types of reception representa11 tives of various educational categories could be found. In this case too, that social and demographic feature was not a univocal determinant. When we glanced at the results of reception from the point of view of the two categories (that is education and reading competences) it turned out that "unity of competences" establishes receptory behaviours more precisely than "unity of education" . The above conclusions conduced to constructing hypotheses stating that knowledge and reading experience are shaped not only in frames of institutionalized education but also through other factors, e. g: family and professional circles on one

47 hand, on the other hand - participation in cultural life. Thus reading competences constitute a synthetic indicator which show ua current "disposition" of a reader towards reception; the way in which a competence is formed is a separate problem for research. Choosing reading competences for the main subject of our interest we indicate this element of description of the reading public which decides, in our opinion, about formal aspect of readers' behaviours. In one of his recent works R. Escarpit (quote W. Kalinow— Bki)2¿ í2 having distinguished informational and redundance cate2λ gories proves that it is not possible to qualify the informational potential of a given message independently of a recipient that ib of the way the recipient uses the message. Informational contents of the message will vary according to knowledge so far, experience of the recipient and to his previous contacts with similar messages. Escarpit proposes to replace the classical Lasswell's analysis of communication process scheme (who talks? what does he say? to whom? through what channel? with what effect?) by another: who receives and what? in what context? in what acts? what is his aim? Thus Escarpit stresses the fact that the real contents of a literary work can be measured only on the level of a recipient. Including individual elements of the literary text into categories of information or redundance must be compared relativistically to the reader's "cultural memory" because it is knowledge and experience of the recipient which decide about various interpretations of the same message granting different meanings. Thus knowledge and experience constitute various messages on the basis of the same text. We call upon these considerations here since from the point of view of reception the question of information and redundant elements of the message seems to be of primary importance. What is redundant in a given message and what is not decides the functional and formal character of the reception. The reading competence category of a recipient is indicated by the formal aspect of literary text - reader relation which

48 is connected with all possible variants in the structure of redundant elements of the message. Talking about receptory difficulties of a message fron this point of view the grade of potential redundance concerning the recipient is being understood. A text will be "easier" if it contains more redundant elements that is the elements present in the knowledge and experience of the recipient. II. The above proposed reading competence category will include the following components: - horizon of reading - preferences of reading - qualifications of reading Horizon of reading will be understood as knowledge in the field of literary accomplishments, authors and works; we should be interested in the width of the horizon and in liter9A ary orientation. The degree of orientation in variety and plentitude of messages offered (within literature) will be of great importance to us. It will stand for an indicator and a certificate of literary experience, conscious choice and the field of the reader'β grounds. Horizon of reading is shaped mainly within

Do not combine reading with other occupations

23

Always combine reading with other occupations

13

Often combine reading with other occupations

57

Read while travelling

20

Read and watch TV at the same time

19.2

Read and cook or do some other house work

15.1

Read at work

9

Read in queues

7

102 These figures reflect the way of life and style habits of our contemporaries who are always short of time and have to include reading in other forms of activities. Long ago it changed the system of book publication and created a new type of literature, convenient for simultaneous usage. There are other deep-going processes involved herein. We mean a changed attitude to reading. An important method of giving the people access to the innermost world of human culture in the past, reading now has been turning into an ordinary, accessory and unassuming occupation. As a result, books might lose their cultural traditions and their traditionally high prestige. Reading has not only been changing its form but has been turning into a quite new type of cultural activity. We shall add that the synthesized character of occupations make the comparable analysis of reading with other methods of spending free time extremely difficult. What is required are inter-disciplinary and cross-cultural elaborations in this field. It is evident that the system of mass media will also be qualitatively changed in the nearest future, and, therefore, new interpretations and content evaluations of this problem will be needed.

103

ADULT READING HABITS Martin

Purpose

and

Kling

Scope

The purpose of this paper is to: 1. Review the nature and extent of interest in adult reading habits as a field of

inquiry;

2. Highlight key findings on adult reading habits in the U.S.A. in relation to amount, types of reading habits and motivation that occur for reading, or not reading various types of materials; 3. Summarize relationships between adult reading habits, education, employment and socioeconomic status in the U.S.A.; 4. Identify problems and directions theory and research should take toward further understanding adult reading habits, attitudes and motivation. Adult

Reading

Habits

as a Field of

Inquiry

Gray and Monroe (1930) in reviewing results of both published and unpublished studies on reading interests and habits of adults noted that since 1900 more than 800 studies were reported. Most of these studies as well as related works resulted in a 150 item annotated

bibliography.

An examination of the Gray and Monroe (1930) bibliography reveals that 60% of the articles were published in educational journals, namely in School Journal Bulletin

and Society

and Elementary

School

and 12% of the articles appeared primarily in the of the American

Library

Association.

Master's

theses and government reports accounted for 10% and 7% of the references respectively. The remaining 11% of the references were divided among books for 5%, publishers for 3% and newspaper accounts for 3%.

104

Table 1: Classification of References for Reading Habits of Adults, 1930-1975* Code Area

1.00 General

No. Refer- Percent Cumulative ences Total Percent Total -

-

-

4

0.7

0.7

1.02 Reading in general

60

9.8

10.5

1.03 Reading and role of library

24

4.0

14.5

2.00 Historical background

25

4.1

18.6

3.00 Development fron children's to adult reading

45

7.4

26.0

1.01 Bibliographical works

4.00 Research into reading

-

-

-

4.01 Methodology of research

24

4.0

4.02 Reviews of research

45

7.4

37.4

5.00 Reading and other media

36

5.9

43.3

6.00 General surveys in the UK and USA

59

9.7

53.0

7.00 Surveys in other countries

-

-

30.0

-

7.01 Africa

10

1.6

54.6

7.02 Asia, the Pacific

18

3.0

57.6

7.03 Australia, New Zealand

4

0.7

58.3

7.04 Canada

3

0.5

58.8

7.05 Czechoslovakia

4

0.7

59.5 61.0

15

2.5

7.07 Germany, Austria, Switzerland

8

1.3

62.3

7.08 Hungary

2

0.3

62.6

7.09 Ireland

1

0.2

62.8

7.10 Italy

4

0.7

63.5

7.06 France

7.11 Middle East

4

0.7

64.2

7.12 Netherlands, Belgium

9

1.5

65.7

7.13 Poland

5

0.8

66.5

7.14 Rumania

2

0.3

66.8

7.15 Scandinavia, Iceland 7.16 South America

10

1.6

68.4

2

0.3

68.7

105

Table 1: Classification of References ... Part 2 Code Area

7.17 Spain

No. Refer- Percent Cumulative ences Percent Total Total 5

0.8

69.5

13

2.1

71.6

7.19 Yugoslavia

1

0.2

71.8

8.00 Surveys of special groups of readers

_

_

_

14

2.3

74.1

8.02 Teachers, student teachers 8. 03 Clergy

8

1.3

75.4

3

0.4

75.8

8.04 Librarians

5

0.8

76.6

8.05 Other professional and executive groups

8

1.3

77.8

8.06 Scientists, technologists

9

1.4

79.3

8.07 "Top people"

3

0.4

79.7

8.08 Religious denominations 8. 09 Countrymen

2

0.3

80.0

12

2.0

82.0

8.10 Soldiers, sailors

12

2.0

84.0

8.11 Working classes

7. 18 USSR

8. 01 Academies, students

17

2.8

86.8

8.12 The ill and handicapped

7

1.2

88.0

8.13 Prisoners

7

1.2

89.2

8.14 The elderly

5

0.8

90.0

19

3.1

93.1

7

1.2

94.3

8.15 Women 8.16 Miscellaneous 9.00 Newspapers and magazines

-

-

-

9.01 General

7

1.2

95.5

9.02 Surveys

22

3.6

99.1

Total References

609

:

* Adopted from Mann, M. The reading habita of adults. London: The British Library Board, 1977.

106

A review of the annotations indicates some of the following areas of concern between 1897-1927: 1. Children's interests in reading 2. Library services and readership 3. Reading interests of various groups: advertising executives, loggers, young workers, university students, gifted 4. Voluntary reading 5. Comparisons of local and state readership 6. Difference in reading between boys and girls, men and women More than 85% of the references or 128 cited by Gray and Monroe (1930) appeared between 1920-1927. Of the 128 references, 34% dealt directly with adult reading habits and interests . Forty seven years later, Mann (1977) compiled a selected annotated bibliography on the reading habits of adults which focused on the general public as readers. In developing the 609-item bibliography, Mann did not include the following: 1. Teaching of reading and problems related to adult literacy ; 2. Psychology of reading as it related to eye movements, legibility or the effect of reading on attitudes; 3. Books read or the history of book trade. Inevitably, however, much material dealt with books read, rather than the reader, as the records most available are best eellers, library borrowing and so forth. Table 1 above presents a breakdown of the references covered in the Mann bibliography. Relative interest in adult reading habits is derived from references dealing with various countries including surveys in Great Britain, U.S.A. and other countries which account for the bulk of the references, or 29% of the total. The second ranking area deals with special groups and accounts for a little over 22% of all references. The third highest ranking area is "general" with a bit over 14% of the total. The fourth

107 Table 2: Number of Articles on Adult Reading Habits and Interests, 1930-1975 Years

No. References

Percent

Cumulative Percent

1930-1934

23

3.8

1935-1939

48

8.0

11.8

1940-1944

29

4.8

16.6

1945-1949

36

6.0

22.6

1950-1954

53

8.8

31.4

1955-1959

83

13.8

45.2

1960-1964

94

15.7

60.9

1965-1969

112

18.7

79.6

1970-1974

114

19.0

98.6

1975-

8

1.3

99.9

Total

600

99.9

3.8

Figure 1: Information Network: Output Articles on Adult Reading Habits, 1930-1974

1 35-'39 ·*5-'49 '55-'S9 '65-'6?,„ '60-'6* '70-'7* •30-'3* '40-'« '50- '5A

Year of Publication

108

in »-« ι o m σι

α .ρ 3 Ό
1

3 m

>1 Ή -Η k| 1 u kl Β 4J kl kl ifl kl 3 SX 0 3 •Η o< J >1 >1 kl kl C Ό 0 1« kl kl 00

«

ki
1 —ι k! «J 4-1 kl ifl 3 OI

C 0 •H C •H CL O

0 >1 S L. Ifl >1 kl kl JQ 1« •Η kl J •û

•u c i) e

1 kl 1« kl .Δ •H J

41

«ι χ: •kl 0 •Η -Η Λ •Η Ο

>

>1 kl 1« U Λ •H A ij S X C 00 1« •H •H -H kl 0 a. Ifl k< V xi •H Ν kl •J 1« 4-1 J Í C u Ifl 4-1 0 00 •H •H (S .Q 00 •H O

—«

α α 3 03

η οο «

Ό C It

•

σ\

•

•

•H

»

U ζ s Ό

ιο S

•

«

•

o

τ

•

Ό kl 0 CI 41 a

c

0 •H 4J Ifl -H 0 0 00 00


1 < kl 1« JZ kl 4-1 J3 3 •H 0 J U1 O

fl kl

Λ

^

0 0

X s

kl 41 •H kl 3 0 υ

41 C 3

0 u 01 41 C S

O

o

a

«

a

ic

c 0 •H 4-1 ιβ 0 3 Ό U 4-1 3 Ό


00 rH

PÒ

r-· oo 00 fH

oo 00 ι

r» fN

PO

rH fN

«U

rH I

ov ι

PO

ve

fN m

t

H» Τ

rH fN

lf)

If) VO

vO

^

00 ON

r-

•H If) .H

o> fH

fN

ON o •H

fIf) rH