Classroom Storybook Reading as a Dialogic Speech Event

• In Event: Roundtable Session 12
  In Roundtable Session: Exploring Pedagogical Boundaries: Examining Issues of Instruction, Voice, and Peer Interactions of Students and Families

Abstract

In this paper, we utilize Mikhail Bakhtin's theories of speech genre, dialogicality, voice, and social languages to provide a framework for exploring the multiple dimensions of storybook read aloud events. In theoretical terms as a speech event, we discuss storybook reading and Bakhtin's terminology. From a Bakhtinian perspective, we analyzed a storybook reading activity in a kindergarten class, involving the reading aloud of In 1492 by Jean Marzollo. The teacher allows the voices of the children and echoes of social language to enter into her performance as the class participates in a dialogic relationship with the picture book.

Authors

• Cynthia B. Leung, University of South Florida St. Petersburg

• Susan V. Bennett, University of South Florida - St. Petersburg

• AnnMarie Alberton Gunn, University of South Florida - St. Petersburg