Affordances of Merleau-Ponty’s Phenomenology: Dialogic Reading in a Chinese University

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Abstract

This proposal presents a phenomenological study of dialogic reading instruction in a sophomore English course at a Chinese university, using Merleau-Ponty’s framework to explore reading as an embodied, temporal, and relational experience. Drawing on his concepts of time, alterity, body, and world, the study examines how students’ engagement with texts is shaped by perception, intersubjectivity, and context. Participation is viewed not as linear but as fluid and situated, emerging through bodily presence and mutual attunement. Dialogic moments are interpreted as co-constructed encounters between readers and texts, mediated by others and environment. This ontological lens challenges dominant cognitive models and offers a grounded, theoretical framework for rethinking reading instruction in multilingual, exam-driven contexts where lived experience is often overlooked.

Authors

• Clara Lee Brown, The University of Tennessee - Knoxville

• Rong Li, Dalian University of Technology

• Joff P.N. Bradley, Teikyo University