Introduction
Interpretations of the role of literature in language learning have their roots in understanding of the nature of language, the nature of culture, the nature of education and the consequent relationships between the three. All four books considered here reflect a continuing movement away from the unitary view of language and culture which often resulted in the restriction of literature education to teacher-led transmission of authorised opinions on an established canon of authors, towards a more pluralistic worldview, in which literature is regarded as a form of social practice, and cultural relativism is both acknowledged and accommodated in the classroom, whether literary texts are treated as objects of study in their own right or used as materials to promote language learning. Each of the books has a different perspective. Hall's Literature in language education is a form of handbook for students and scholars who are ‘keen to extend their research experience’ (p. x). As such it has a clearly-defined research agenda but this is underpinned by a comprehensive overview of current theoretical and methodological perspectives on all aspects of literature use in English language classrooms. In contrast, Paran's Literature in language teaching and learning aims to bring together case studies which ‘lend themselves to pre- and in-service teacher education’ (p. vii). It consequently includes a group of papers which show how classroom practice has developed to accommodate a broader range of texts, techniques and pedagogical goals. While Hall and Paran focus on teaching, both Watson & Zyngier and Carter concentrate on text analysis. Somewhat misleadingly in view of the academic expertise on display in it, Literature and stylistics for language learners sets itself up as ‘a readable and usable book . . . for teachers and learners . . . and those who just want to read about how texts work’ (p. x). In fact the book has a strong bias towards university teaching and, for that context, shows how the place of language within literature studies is made clear when stylistic analysis is introduced into the classroom. Lastly, there is Carter's Language and creativity, which, although not directly concerned with the position of literature in the language classroom, is in many respects a development of previous work explicitly designed for the use of teachers (e.g. Brumfit & Carter Reference Brumfit and Carter1986; Carter & Long Reference Carter and Long1990; Carter & McRae Reference Carter and McRae1996). In it Carter demonstrates the pervasiveness of creativity in language more clearly than ever before, drawing on a range of sources to show how linguistic characteristics typically associated with literary texts also occur frequently in everyday talk.
Overview
Because of the book's thematic breadth and Hall's impressive grasp of a diverse field, Literature in language education makes a good starting-point for discussion. It is divided into three sections, each consisting of three chapters. The first section is an overview of literature teaching and learning with chapters on the relationship between literary and non-literary language, the use of literature in language education, and the ways in which literature can be read. Both L1 and L2 educational contexts are considered, the former primarily from a UK perspective. The second section is an exploration of research in language, literature and education. In its first chapter, stylistics and corpus linguistics are dealt with, somewhat superficially; in the second, L1 and L2 educational perspectives are explored with attention to curriculum development and assessment; and in the third, research into reading is examined in depth, with coverage of reader response theory and cognitive approaches, as well as extensive reading programmes for L2 learners and the relationship between the reading of literary and non-literary texts. The final section of the book is dedicated to the encouragement of further research: in its first chapter, through an overview of research methods which have been found effective; in the second, through general advice on how to set up a research project; and in the third, through detailed lists of resources including journals, websites and professional organisations. Hall's book is so crammed with information that it could almost function as a work of reference. To help the reader navigate a route through the detail, and in line with the series format, it includes constant signposting of topics and sub-topics both through numerous headings and sub-headings and through text boxes in which concepts are summarised, gists extracted or examples provided. There is also a glossary of methodological and stylistic terms, and comprehensive author and subject indexes. Despite, or perhaps because of, this careful signposting, the text can feel fragmented and difficult to process. There is also a risk that the level of detail makes the book, on the one hand, too densely argued for the novice researcher, on the other, too superficial to be of use to established language professionals. Hall compensates for this by developing a narrative thread constructed around the expression of his own opinions and preferences. He makes these clear throughout, flagging up his belief that literary texts are ‘best studied against the background of other texts, and all texts [are] socially situated’ (p. 1), substantiating his arguments with reference to the work of cultural theorists and illustrating how they can be expressed in the classroom by drawing on his understanding of developments in language teaching methodology.
Although much of the research which he discusses involves practising teachers as either initiators or participants, or both, Hall's purpose is not to provide a toolkit for practitioners. Paran's Literature in language teaching and learning is very different. It has an overtly practical agenda and consists of a series of reports of classroom experiences which are often animated, always individual and, in most cases, packed with helpful advice and imaginative ideas. Although some of Paran's eleven contributors indicate the theoretical basis for their classroom practice, the main emphasis is on the goal of providing advice for teachers. Authors are guided in this by the standardised structure to which all the papers conform, each including sections labelled ‘Context’, ‘Description of the course’, ‘Distinguishing features’ and ‘Practical ideas’. These headings do not result in complete uniformity as no two authors interpret them in exactly the same way; indeed, there is something for every type of literature teacher in this collection. This diversity of interest exists in several dimensions. First, although almost all contributors discuss English language texts, they work in a geographically wide range of teaching environments (one in Africa, two in Asia, six in Europe and two in North America); second, contributors are based in different types of institution (primary, secondary and tertiary, privately run and state funded) with a variety of educational goals (teaching of business English, literature degrees, EFL and ESL); third, in the courses which they describe, contributors make use not only of established literary forms but also of genres such as popular autobiographies (Tatiana Gordon, Joan Zaleski & Debra Goodman) and children's rhymes (Stuart McNicholls). There is also one paper (Milena Vodičkova) in which text-free literature teaching is described. Although there is no interconnection between the papers, there is a helpful general subject index which facilitates cross-referencing. As is perhaps inevitable in a collection of this type, some contributions are stronger than others. However, all manage to address issues of general concern which are placed in context in Paran's succinct introductory chapter. This is both a pointer to the content of the case studies which follow and a condensation of the problems and challenges which, in Paran's view, currently face foreign language educators who are either teaching or making use of literature in their classrooms. He makes a familiar plea for recognition of the value of literature in language teaching, particularly in general methodology textbooks and training courses, and also calls for a more inclusive choice of texts, a more holistic approach to learning, literature and culture, and greater openness to the choice of methodologies and mediating means which are available. Like Hall, Paran recognises that there is a need to find ways to consolidate the position of literature in the language classroom through research and presents the chosen case studies as a step in this direction.
In the range of teaching situations which are represented in it, Paran's volume is extremely eclectic. Although Watson & Zyngier's Literature and stylistics for language learners is centred almost exclusively on L1 and L2 university teaching, it too covers teaching situations on several continents with papers from Brazil, Germany, Hungary and Israel as well as the UK and the US, where the majority of authors are based. The collection is organised thematically, beginning with a two-paper section in which theoretical considerations are addressed and ending with three papers which report research into the effects of stylistic teaching methods. Between, there are three sections organised under the headings ‘New approaches’, ‘Corpus linguistics’ and ‘Grammar and discourse’. Text analysis is foregrounded in most of the nine papers in these sections but they otherwise show little uniformity except in length. Thus, some contributors focus on individual language items, standard (e.g. David Gugin on pseudo-clefts) and non-standard (e.g. Paul Simpson on Hiberno-English emphatic tags), others on textual features (e.g. John McRae on narrative voice) others on interpretive frameworks (e.g. Judit Zerkowitz on Grice's Maxims), and still others explore ways in which teaching contexts can be improved during the implementation of a stylistics agenda (e.g. Mick Short, Beatrix Busse & Patricia Plumer on web-based teaching). Although Literature and stylistics for language learners is introduced by an author's preface, this does not aim to be anything more than a summary of the individual papers. Watson & Zygnier do not provide a considered overview of pedagogical stylistic theory, nor do they try to fit the selected papers into a particular framework. What they do give the reader is a set of examples of the application of stylistic methods in real-world teaching situations produced, in the main, by members of an A-list of practitioners, who are able to pass on the benefits of their varied experiences of dealing with both students and texts. The book should not therefore be regarded as a general introduction to the theory and practice of pedagogical stylistics but rather as a sample book, which gives a taste of what stylistic analysis can bring to the literary education table, furnishing ideas for language teachers even in papers which describe L1 undergraduate teaching.
Watson & Zyngier warmly acknowledge the influence of Ron Carter, who introduces their book in a short foreword. Although his Language and creativity does not engage directly with the theme of literature in language teaching and learning, it has been included in this review because it provides a rationale for some of the assumptions underlying the other three texts, notably a) that literary texts make both valid and viable materials for classroom use and b) that they are not categorically distinct from other forms of language but exist at different points on a cline of literariness/non-literariness. To support this latter view, Carter draws on the Nottingham CANCODE corpus, a five-million-word computerised database which includes transcriptions of recordings made in a variety of settings in the UK and Ireland, using numerous examples to provide evidence of the systematic ways in which everyday language is permeated by linguistic devices and techniques more commonly associated with literary texts. Carter not only demonstrates how ‘common talk’ is creative but when and where it is likely to become so and in the voices of which speakers. This is a fully referenced and historically situated academic text but one which is written in a style which is extremely accessible and enlivened by numerous illustrations from a wide range of text types. In successive chapters organised under the headings ‘Backgrounds and theories’, ‘Forms and functions’ and ‘Contexts and variations’, Carter in turn explores the nature of verbal creativity and its cultural and psychological roots; patterns of linguistic embellishment and inventiveness in both individuals and groups, including detailed analysis of metaphor, metonym, idiom and hyperbole; and the relationship between creative language use and social context, with extension of the findings to non-CANCODE data from groups such as code-switching multilingual speakers, Internet chat room users and psychotherapists. Although Carter concentrates on qualitative analysis of well-chosen examples, in his final chapter there is some useful quantitative mapping of the relationship between creativity and interactional context, which confirms the intuition that creative language use is more common in informal and intimate settings or when collaborative tasks and discussions are being carried out. In addition, there is a demonstration based on the incidence of creativity in the use of -y and -ish suffixes of how the core vocabulary of English acts as ‘a semantic and cultural base for creative extension and derivation’ among different speaker groups (p. 222).
Discussion
Carter concludes his book by briefly considering the implications of his findings for the language classroom, suggesting that his demonstration of the creativity inherent in everyday forms of talk will support attempts ‘to establish stronger bridges between literature and language teaching’ (p. 213). He does not make light of the difficulty which such bridge-building might involve, pointing out that in an educational climate in which the aim of equipping L2 learners with the language needed to achieve transactional goals has been in the ascendant, there has been neglect of the area in which literary materials come into their own, namely, the development of learners' capacity to represent their social and cultural selves in the target language. In making these observations, Carter aligns himself with the foundational work of Kramsch (Reference Kramsch1993) and her account of the cultural journey which L2 learners must undertake both outside and inside the classroom as they pursue their studies. Hall too makes reference to the work of Kramsch and adopts the view that the language classroom is an independent ‘small cultural’ site (Holliday Reference Holliday1999), where learners are engaged in a process of identity negotiation, while Paran, without direct mention of theorists such as Kramsch, argues for sensitivity to cultural variation both in the choice of literature materials and the manner in which they are taught. Perhaps as a result of these relativist perspectives on both language and culture, the questions which preoccupy Hall and the contributors to Paran's collection no longer cluster, as such questions once did, round the goal of justifying the position of literature as a feature of language learning (see e.g. Paran Reference Paran2000). Instead there is concern to establish how contemporary views on language and culture can best be reflected in the classroom, whether through changes to the literature syllabus, methodological flexibility, the use of stylistic analysis or the exploitation of new technologies.
With regard to the first of these points, the evolution of attitudes to the literature syllabus is described in detail by Hall, who includes an interesting historical survey of the value systems underlying the idea of an established canon of English literature, also showing how we have arrived at the current position in which literature is no longer regarded as quite so ‘elitist, remote, deviant and not authentic’ (Gilroy & Parkinson Reference Gilroy and Parkinson1997: 213). Hall provides a rationale for efforts to take the literature syllabus beyond a restricted canon of ‘inner circle’ authors and texts (Kachru Reference Kachru, Quirk and Widdowson1985) while Paran gives examples of the choice not only of ‘outer circle’ texts written in a variety of postcolonial world Englishes but also of non-fiction and specialist genres such as detective fiction and writing for children, actively demonstrating the value of a transition to a more all-encompassing syllabus. Perhaps surprisingly, several of the papers included by Paran report the innovative work of foreign language specialists in universities, a context in which Hall finds that ‘literature is typically used in more traditional ways’ (p. 47). Thus, Stuart McNicholls explains how a course on children's literature builds up both the linguistic and literary competence of trainee English teachers in Spain through work with chants, picture books, fairy tales and contemporary stories; Ian Butler, who follows Carter in treating literature as discourse, describes the positive effect of using inner and outer circle, literary and non-literary texts in ESL classes at a university in South Africa; and Gordon, Zaleski & Goodman, show how teachers can be trained to help ESL learners to bridge the cultural gap which may separate them from the new communities into which they have moved, by encouraging them to reflect on autobiographical narratives relevant to their experience.
As far as methodology is concerned, the contemporary syllabus is found to sit more comfortably with a process-oriented approach, with the learner at its centre, than with a more traditional product-based style of teaching. Gordon et al. find theoretical support for this position in the work of a variety of scholars including Rosenblatt (Reference Rosenblatt1938), whose transactional reader response theory is also discussed by Hall. He suggests that Rosenblatt's methodology, which allows a place for ‘aesthetic’, experience-centred interpretations of literature as well as ‘efferent’, knowledge-centred ones, has made a major impact on L1 education in schools, noting the gulf between her advocacy of emotionally engaged personal responsiveness to texts and the purportedly neutral, value-free practical criticism which dominated English-medium university literature departments for many years. Paran also includes one paper which shows that personal response methods are being adopted by university teachers. This is the work of Nazan Tutaş, who turned to Rosenblatt's ideas when seeking an alternative to the teacher-led product-oriented methods still common in the context of ‘Teaching of English as Foreign Literature’ at the University of Selçuk in Turkey, where she works. Tutaş compared subjective responses to aesthetic and efferent teaching methods in two matched groups of students, finding a notable increase in involvement in classes and in readiness to engage with texts among those in the aesthetic group. Tutaş does not discuss the difficulty of achieving validity and reliability in this type of research, nor does she reveal whether improved motivation was matched by improved outcomes in subsequent assessments, but her work does demonstrate that there is movement away from traditional methods in foreign language literature courses as well as in language classrooms.
In his gloss on the work of Rosenblatt, Hall asks the important question of whether, as the aesthetic approach seems to assume, a literary text is open to all readers or whether literary reading demands specialist skills, going on to point out that the role of literature in the language classroom depends on which answer is given. Hall's own conclusion seems to be that reading capacity will always be unevenly distributed since it ‘amounts to much more than a decontextualised exercise of psycholinguistic “skills” and ‘involves a whole person, with an ongoing history and identity in construction’ (p. 158). He suggests that this is particularly true for L2 learners who, because they are struggling to achieve basic understanding, may ‘fall short of the “higher-order” form of comprehension which the reading of literature calls for in the form, for instance, of affective responses to foregrounded stylistic elements’ (p. 176). Seen from one perspective this can be read as a call for the matching of texts to capacities; seen from another, it is an implicit acknowledgement of the value of stylistic analysis, and Hall does indeed argue strongly for the place of stylistics in the language classroom in his contribution to Watson & Zyngier's collection. While admitting the lack of an established evidence base for the efficacy of such form-focused instruction as an aid to acquisition, he suggests that, in compensation, it can give learners a critical perspective which will enhance their intercultural competence, acting both as a stimulus to awareness-raising and a route to ‘appropriation’ and ‘participation’ (p. 3).
Several contributors to Watson & Zyngier test the effects of stylistic analysis on learner development. Gugin seeks to demonstrate the truth of Stubbs' (Reference Stubbs2004) proposal that it may help to explain readers' reactions to texts by relating them to unconscious linguistic knowledge. In a clearly presented paper, he shows how analysis of pseudo-clefts, such as What all this means is that the old world is gone (p. 134), in Flannery O'Connor short stories expands ‘the unconscious linguistic and cultural knowledge (the schema) of university students in the Persian Gulf’ (p. 130). There is also support for stylistic methods in David Hanauer's report of a quasi-experimental study conducted in a high school in Tel-Aviv, which appears to confirm that ‘explicit instruction of literary patterns enhance students' abilities to use these patterns in independent interpretations’ (p. 179). However, to counterbalance these findings in favour of explicit analysis, Willie van Peer & Aikaterini Nousi report an experiment conducted among ESL learners in Munich, which unexpectedly revealed that by simply reading selected texts, notably those by German authors who advocated resistance to Nazism, without subsequent discussion or instruction, learners showed increased intercultural sensitivity, becoming aware that they held stereotypically negative views of German people. All three of the papers just described consider the use of stylistic instruction as a stimulus to some form of linguistic or cultural awareness. In contrast, Zyngier's own paper (with Olivia Fialho & Patricia do Prado Rios) describes research which tested its value as a tool for raising literary awareness by coding the levels of insight shown in entries to the learner diaries of Brazilian university students. The results were again positive, although the authors acknowledge that change was not steady and more research is needed.
It is interesting that such a need is felt to make the case for stylistic methods since it is apparent from Paran's more practice-oriented collection that they have already become part of the repertoire of many language teaching specialists. For instance, Patrick Rosenkjaer, working with undergraduates studying English in Japan, demonstrates how he integrates stylistic analysis into a task-based teaching approach, both to improve literary awareness and, showing more confidence than Hall in form-focused teaching, to develop L2 competence through ‘noticing’ (see Doughty & Williams Reference Doughty and Williams1998). His paper is a fine demonstration of how focus on text can give rise both to enhanced language skills and improved cultural awareness. Philip Minkoff's paper also makes a strong impact. He describes how he devised and ran a literature course in the extremely functional language teaching environment of a French graduate business school and, without any prior specialist training in the analysis of literature, engaged his students with a series of texts by writers as diverse as Shakespeare, the contemporary playwright Harold Pinter and the crime novelist P. D. James. Among the pluses of Minkoff's paper are the encouragement it provides for non-specialists who may wish to make use of literary texts but are afraid to do so, and his conclusion that the move away from a ‘teaching approach that uses texts as pretexts for comprehension and grammar exercises or for teaching culture’ towards understanding of the literariness of literary texts does bring added value (p. 57). Although their collection is dominated by studies of L1 university teaching, Watson & Zyngier also include several papers which describe the experiences of practitioners in foreign language classrooms. For example, in a description of his teaching of Shelley's ‘Ozymandias’, Peter Stockwell argues provocatively for the avoidance of a narrow language focus, while Zerkowitz advocates the use of simplified explanations of Grice's maxims in the EFL classroom in a paper which, ironically, is marred by a writing style which is rather difficult to process.
All the papers discussed in the preceding paragraph describe work in universities but, as Hanauer's paper shows, stylistic techniques have also reached other teaching contexts. Paran, for example, includes an account by Benedict Lin of the use of a systemic functional methodology with high school students in Singapore. In general though, it is more likely that stylistic approaches will be combined with a range of other teaching methods. This is particularly well exemplified by Natalie Hess, a seemingly exceptional teacher, who uses a familiar text, Joyce's short story ‘Eveline’, but creatively combines linguistic analysis with well-established communicative methodologies for intensive work with a mixed ability, mixed nationality group of ESL learners. Hess is typical of Paran's contributors in matching methodology to her situational needs. She appears to have the freedom to extend the teaching of one text over several sessions. Others, however, are less fortunate and their papers are a reminder that teachers tend to be subject to political, economic and social constraints, which have an impact on curricula, class sizes, levels of learner competence and the availability of teaching resources. Both Vodičkova and Isabel Martin, working respectively in the Czech Republic and Germany, give very personal accounts of their solutions to such problems, in the first case by adopting the language-light structured drama approach and in the second by making classes extremely learner-centred. Another solution is to make greater use of computer technology. Frits Schulte describes how the twin problem of language teacher shortages and learner apathy in Dutch schools is being addressed through innovative work with ‘digital learning objects’, thematically organised online packages consisting of, for example, literary texts, films and footage from news archives accompanied by exercises and instructions. Learners in participating schools are able to work independently on individual modules, which have the double advantage of being user-friendly for ‘digital children’ and advantageous to teacher educators because they are collaboratively constructed. Schulte makes it clear that extremely intensive preparation is needed to make these learning objects effective but this is a promising template and indicates how current technologies can enhance literature-based language learning. (This is also of course true of film, as shown in a paper by Rocio Montoro, and of language corpora, as explicated in papers by Donald Hardy and by Bill Louw, all three in Watson & Zyngier.)
The work described in these four books leaves little doubt that valuable research is being carried out into the role of literature studies in language classrooms. But of course there is always more to do. Paran sees a need above all for comparative research into learner experiences in the teaching contexts in which literature plays a part whereas Hall is concerned to establish how different research techniques, particularly qualitative ones, can help to answer questions about all aspects of the literature learning experience. One of the points on which they are agreed is the need for further research into modes of assessment of literature-based learning. Using a citation from Culler (Reference Culler and Schiff1977), Hall reminds readers that ‘[o]ur examinations are not designed merely to check whether [the student] has read and remembered certain books, but to test his or her progress as a reader of literature’ (p. 63). How best to achieve this has not yet been entirely understood and both Hall and Paran recommend that there is not only further research on testing, but also more investigation of how learners actually respond to literary texts during process-based instruction. There is also scope for further definition of the relationship between literary and non-literary texts. Carter's work has helped to blaze the trail and Language and creativity will facilitate further text comparison whether through exploration of patterns of collocation or of the links between the figurative language in literary texts and the metaphors we unconsciously follow in our daily lives (see Picken Reference Picken2007). However, despite the frequent references to his work in the books under review, there is limited evidence (e.g. the papers by Butler and Schulte) that Carter's contention that literariness is firmly embedded in common talk has yet been widely accepted. On the contrary, there probably continues to be more emphasis on the uniqueness of literature, as exemplified by Rosenkjaer's comments on the ideas in Widdowson's (Reference Widdowson1992) work on stylistics: ‘literary and non-literary texts are fundamentally different in purpose and in the use of language’ (Paran, p. 119).
Concluding remarks
From this brief review it will be apparent that the four books which have been discussed are complementary, with only a limited amount of overlap in their subject matter. All four share the limitation of concentrating almost exclusively on the position for English and none combines clear exposition of literary, pedagogical and stylistic theory with suggestions for language classroom practice in the way, for example, of Parkinson & Reid Thomas (Reference Parkinson and Reid Thomas2000). However, each should meet the needs of its target audience. In its ambitious synthesis of recent currents in both methodology and theory, Hall's Literature in language education is likely to remain a point of reference for scholars who are interested in the relationship between literature, culture, and language teaching for some time to come. Paran's collection of papers will be of particular value to teachers and teacher-trainers who wish to expand the range of texts and techniques which they can draw on when incorporating the use of literary texts into their language classrooms. Watson & Zyngier's volume should help to promote confidence in the value of stylistic analysis, above all among university-based teachers, whether the intended outcome is improved literary awareness, cultural competence or language improvement. Finally, as will have been apparent throughout this review, Carter's latest study of linguistic creativity, although not necessarily of direct value to language teachers, makes an impressive and enlightening addition to his list of publications on this theme and is likely to provide additional impetus for those who wish to integrate the study of literary and non-literary texts.
Heather Hewitt is a visiting lecturer in Linguistics and English Language and a Research Fellow in the School of Clinical Sciences and Community Health at the University of Edinburgh. She has taught literature courses and trained teachers in the use of literature in the language classroom at the University of Edinburgh Institute for Applied Language Studies. Her current research interests include pragmatic stylistics and communication in healthcare settings.
