Reading, Speaking, and Writing: Multidimensionality of Argumentation in Literary Reasoning

• In Event: 67.066 - Teaching and Learning of Argumentation and Argumentative Reading and Writing in the Academic Disciplines

Abstract

This paper examines the multidimensional nature of the knowledge required to engage in literary reasoning (e.g. epistemology, key concepts, ways of using language, strategies/heuristics, kinds of texts) despite the reader’s theoretical orientation (e.g. reader response, Black Aesthetic, feminist, etc.), with literary reasoning as a foundation for the construction of arguments based on analyses of literary texts. This intellective problem space is further complicated by the related but differential demands of constructing such arguments through reading and communicating such arguments orally and in writing. The paper then goes on to build on these propositions to articulate implications for what teachers need to know and what students need to be able to do to learn to construct such arguments. The data used to support these propositions come from syntheses of relevant literatures (literary theory and criticism, epistemology, cognition, human development, as well as foundational research in reading comprehension including reading across disciplines, expert-novice studies of comprehension, composition studies around argument) (Goldman et al., 2016; Hillocks, 1995; Hillocks & Ludlow, 1984; C. D. Lee, 2011; C.D. Lee, Goldman, Levine, & Magliano, 2016; C. D. Lee & Spratley, 2009; Toulmin, Rieke, & Janik, 1984). Data used to inform implications for teaching come from a four-year longitudinal study apprenticing high school students in literary analyses and argumentation that include videos of instruction, student work, and assessments of close transfer that ask students to construct literary arguments.

Author

• Carol D. Lee, Northwestern University