Lit Matters Winter 2015, Volume 1, Issue 2

Editors
Michael Pronko, Meiji Gakuin University
Myles Chilton, Nihon University

Editorial Board
Steve Clark, Tokyo University
Akiyoshi Suzuki, Nagasaki University
Barnaby Ralph, Seikei University
Ashley Squires, New Economic School
John Rippey, The University of Shiga Prefecture
Patrick McCoy, Meiji University
Hugh Nicoll, Miyazaki Municipal University
John Dorsey, Rikkyo University
A. Robert Lee, Nihon University (emeritus)

Lit Matters website address: www.liberlit.com/litmatters

PDF layout by FormattingExperts.com

Contents
Introduction
Michael Pronko . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1

Literary Media Theory Adapted to Improve Media Literacy

Neil Matthew Addison and Richard John Walker . . . 5

For A Culturally Situated Pedagogy:

Academic Literacy and the English-Medium Literature Course
Christopher J. Armstrong and Anthony Piccolo . . . . 45

Becoming-literature: Deleuze and the Craquelure

Jof P.N. Bradley . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79

An Overview of English-language Literature Study in Japan

Susan Burton . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 112

The Co-operative Muse

Andrew Fitzsimons . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 143

Language, Pictures, Sounds:

the Many Lives of “Little Red Riding Hood”
Melissa Kennedy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 178

Reader Response Theory and Cross-Cultural Explorations:

The short iction of Lapcharoensap, Bezmozgis, and Li
Mario Leto . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 196
 Introduction

The writers/teachers/researchers whose works are included in

the second issue of Lit Matters make important claims about
learning with complex, challenging texts. The articles included
here show that approaches to teaching, thinking and working
with texts difer as widely as the types of texts do. What lies
at the center of these articles, and comes through strongly in
each, is the dedication to teaching in meaningful, passionate and
thoughtful ways that are enhanced by classroom experience, re-
searched propositions and extensive reading and thinking.
What brings these articles together is not just the relec-
tion on experience and the connection to other research, but
a belief—a conident belief—that literary texts matter a very
great deal. Literary texts matter to students, who only get one
shot at their university studies, and to teachers, who develop
methods of working with texts through experience with the root
basics of the classroom—people and words. What stands out
from this collection is how research, theory, ideas and experi-
ence connect. The writers here have spent time in the classroom,
in the library and in their own thoughts, not to mention on the
keyboard, to bring together a full, rounded view of what is es-
sential.

1
 Their articles make clear how important the connection is
between research and teaching for studying complex texts in
complex ways. In other ields, it might be possible to com-
pletely separate the interactive experience of a classroom from
the individualized experience of reading and research. But in
literature, and the humanities in general, an integrated, holistic
approach, one that combines all facets of a teacher’s work, is
the best and perhaps only approach. Bringing together teaching
and researching, rather than leaving them as separate realms, is
a strength in each of the articles here.
The work presented in the second issue of Lit Matters also
reveals how closely connected is the experience or reading and
studying literature with the actions and reactions of living in the
world. Many of the articles in this issue look not just to teaching
new ways of reading, thinking or discussing, but of better uti-
lizing the “natural” ways of experiencing the world. Stories and
symbols are so common to human experience that they often go
unidentiied and unarticulated. Considering their centrality to
human experience, many academic approaches seem a diversion
from life, not conluent with it.
The distinction between and separation of those two areas
becomes increasingly insupportable in light of the ideas these
writers present. What is learned in the literary classroom be-
comes not just relevant, but essential for living, feeling and ex-
periencing the world. That integration has always been a central
goal for humanities, literary studies and the serious reading of
complex texts. All of the writers here search for—and discover—
meaningful ways to bring the “reading” of the world into the
classroom. And at the same time, they ind ways to take what

2
is learned in the classroom back out to the “real world.” They
lose the quote marks and bring reading and reality together.
The central importance of narrative organization and
metaphoric thought is also central to the arguments of the
writers in this issue. That will come as no surprise, perhaps, but
the ways these writers enhance students’ understanding of nar-
rative methods and igurative processes is important to consider
and understand. These writers show the centrality of narra-
tive and metaphor to the learning of a second language, the
development of critical thinking, and the expanding of creative
processes. These higher-order—and one might argue, deeply
human—skills seem increasingly ignored in the educational
system in Japan, where literary study is often relegated to lan-
guage study, biographical reportage, or spoken communicative
competence.
What students need instead, these writers argue, is the ability
to articulate complex ideas in productive, interesting and mean-
ingful ways, and to be able to process concepts, patterns and
forms of expression that do not conform to industrial textbook
templates. For the most part, such standard textbooks ofer only
deracinated language and inconsequential exercises, producing,
inevitably, only supericial results. The articles in Lit Matters ex-
plain ways of using challenging texts in demanding ways that
produce genuine and long-lasting results.
Recently in Japan, the humanities have come under attack
from conservative forces in government and society. Many uni-
versities seem all too willing to comply by downgrading the hu-
manities, emphasizing numerical-based testing and defunding
courses of study that develop critical and creative thinking. That
trend is unfortunate, especially in this day and age when fresh

3
ideas and a broader view of the world are more important than
ever before. The articles here, taken in that broader context,
ofer positive answers to those trends.
From a social perspective, Japanese society needs broad-
minded, creative thinkers, and from an individual point of
view, students need to expand the range of their thinking and
deepen their understanding of the world. The articles in this
issue have found ways to fulill those needs. All of the teach-
ers/researchers/writers/thinkers in this issue of Lit Matters push
towards a stronger view of literary research and teaching that
Japanese society, and indeed every society, needs now more
than ever.

—Michael Pronko

4
 Literary Media Theory Adapted to
Improve Media Literacy
Neil Matthew Addison and Richard John Walker

Abstract
This paper outlines research conducted on a sophomore content-based
Media English course taught at two private universities in Japan. The
genesis of the course was informed by the belief that, as Western culture
has saturated global media environments, attempting to bring an analy-
sis of media into the Japanese classroom was of paramount importance.
Because literary texts can provide authentic cultural enrichment, whilst
training the mind and sensibility, the instructors strove to teach ideas
from literary texts and critical theories. Through the use of thinkers such
as McLuhan, Hall, Freud, and Wordsworth, ideas were scafolded to al-
low for critical light to be cast upon recent trends in diferent media, such
as music, movies, social networking and corporate news reportage. The
study was also informed by a desire to see students utilize modern me-
dia and technology for creative, course-based means and also as a vehi-
cle to input critical, substantial response. Efectiveness of the course is
assessed through triangulated research data which encompasses i) evalu-
ation of student questionnaire responses, ii) examinations of vocabulary
comprehension data and iii) assessment of essay vocabulary usage and
frequency. The paper concludes with a discussion that outlines plans for
further course improvement and research.

5
1. Introduction: Cultural Materials in the EFL Classroom
The role of cultural and textual materials in the EFL classroom
is at the center of an ongoing pedagogic debate amongst theo-
rists and practitioners. Literature has been advocated by many
second language teachers as a rich source of authentic cultural
material which presents students with the opportunity to un-
derstand how the English language is used in a variety of spe-
ciic environments, and Cruz notes that “what authors like Irving
Welsh, Joseph Conrad or Mark Twain have in common is that
their literary works reconstruct the way language is spoken in
certain geopolitical contexts” (3). Authentic texts can also aford
students the chance to understand culture at a deeper, more sat-
isfyingly complex level, and Brumit argues that this is because
great literature presents “the complexity, subtlety, richness –
and indeed uniqueness – of each human experience, expressed
through metaphor and the working of the human imagination”
(91). Access to such perceptions and understandings in a sec-
ond language might well be a worthwhile target, especially for
undergraduates in English literature departments.
However, others note with concern the diiculties that non-
native learners of English face whilst studying literary texts in
the classroom. Such a concern is best explained by Waring,
who observed that if a learner cannot comprehend the mean-
ing of authentic texts then “the text is noise and frustrational …
and not instructional but interfering with instruction” (1). Cer-
tainly, many students experience reading comprehension prob-
lems when moving between basic decoding into luency stages,
and Gabb, cited in Alyousef, identiies a number of obstacles to
this, including the problem of limited vocabulary and lack of
textual background knowledge (150). There is also the issue of

6
cultural schemas obfuscating understanding of authentic litera-
ture and EFL materials. Owing to diiculties in penetrating for-
eign schema, learners often imbibe cultural information accord-
ing to “the schematic knowledge associated with their mother
tongue” (Widdowson 110), which can enforce a situation where
learners unfamiliar with the cultural contexts of EFL materials
or authentic literary texts “experience problems in processing
English systemic data” (Hedge and Whitney 53). This may be
because, as Lisz has reported (6), “there is frequent criticism
over inherent social and cultural biases … and stereotyping” in
EFL texts while Gray has argued that the culture in such texts
possesses a political and neo-liberal undercurrent. Some practi-
tioners argue, therefore, that teachers should avoid teaching cul-
ture altogether, due to its hegemonic properties (Torikai), while
others argue that culture instead needs to be taught at a deeper
level to achieve wider competence (Kramsch 1). Culture is con-
tained within even the most daily of phrasings and the deeper it
is taught the more cognizant our students become of the range
of cultures on this earth.
Outside of the classroom, however, students studying En-
glish are regularly interacting with Internet transmitted main-
stream foreign media culture (Dieterle, Dede and Schrier) such
as news, music, movies and blogs through their laptops and
iPhones, making debates regarding the inclusion of culture and
indeed literature in the classroom appear somewhat dated and
redundant. Language acquisition cannot be easily separated
from cultural acquisition (Buttjes 55-56), and it is the belief of
this paper that since culture cannot be easily avoided in contem-
porary English study encouraging a critical approach will more
fully engage learners in such content (Byram 16), therefore po-

7
tentially afording them chance to understand other cultures and
indeed their own at a more profound level. Thus, if Japanese
students of English are being saturated with authentic Western
media culture, it seems to be of importance that they should be
taught to interact with it more critically and rigorously. This
study will irstly discuss how Internet transmitted media cul-
ture creates problems which often prevents such critical inter-
actions before detailing how a university-taught blended learn-
ing course which scafolded literary media theory with the use
of a weblog was employed to facilitate a more media literate
student understanding of foreign cultural materials.

2. The Issue of Internet Transmitted Media Culture

Whilst the classroom employment of cultural and literary con-
tent is discussed and debated by EFL practitioners, outside of the
classroom students communicate, imbibe and interact with in-
formation in ‘neomillenial’ learning styles that originate outside
the classroom (Dieterle, Dede and Schrier). The increased access
to the Internet transmits cultural values and has efected signif-
icant behavioral changes in our students. Indisputably, this has
often conveyed beneits to students’ lives, with online mediums,
such as social networking sites, blogs and handheld devices, af-
fording methods of English communication and the creation of
knowledge (McLoughin and Lee 64) that have been utilized by
enthusiastic CALL orientated teachers. Nevertheless, whilst lan-
guage teachers and researchers place emphasis on the positive
aspects of regular Internet use, less time is allocated to discuss
the potentially negative aspects of time online. There are impor-
tant questions to consider that concern how the Internet trans-
mits and transforms cultures, and whilst theorists outside the

8
world of EFL (Carr; Herman and Chomsky; Kahneman) have ad-
dressed these concerns, this has rarely occurred in the EFL/ESP
ield.
As a medium, the Internet, whilst transmitting educational
opportunities, skills, and new possibilities to students, has also
had negative impacts on human behavior and the brain. Carr
cited research by neuroscientist Gary Small, which centered on
how digital technology can efect rapid and profound alterations
to our brains (Carr 120). Small’s research with Vorgen revealed
key diferences in brain activity between book readers and ex-
perienced Internet users. While book readers showed consid-
erably more activity in areas associated with language, memory
and visual processing, experienced Net users displayed extensive
activity in areas associated with decision making and problem
solving (Carr 121-122), leading to Carr’s postulation that the
act of evaluating and navigating when online, coupled with the
impact of leeting sensory stimuli, redirects mental resources,
disengaging us from full attention and the act of deep reading
and thinking.
Furthermore, the Internet, through providing constant visual
stimulation, also reduces moments of inactivity and unstruc-
tured, spontaneous thought. Whilst the avoidance of boredom
may well be perceived positively by our students, enduring mo-
ments of inactivity are important as during these moments away
from the screen our minds are able to concentrate (Sigman 14)
leading to focus and creativity. Yet literary greats from myr-
iad cultures have long since written of the importance of self-
imposed seclusion: As William Wordsworth observed, sense im-
pressions could be recalled and crystallized in moments of po-
etic imagination when they lash “upon that inward eye, which

9
is the bliss of solitude” (Wordsworth 282). Enjoying “the bliss of
solitude” to employ “the inward eye” is increasingly diicult for
the modern student to experience; the Internet delivering con-
stant temptations to excite and stimulate, nullifying relective
capacities. Russian Joseph Brodsky, in noting the importance
of boredom, claimed it a crucial tool of creativity, noting that
“(b)oredom is your window,” “Once this window opens, don’t
try to shut it; on the contrary, throw it wide open” (11). Further-
more, Kenko Yoshida’s 14th century Japanese classic, Tsurezure-
gusa (Essays in Idleness), also reminds us that inactivity gifts
us opportunities to think, whilst making us face new terrains
creatively. These leeting moments, hard enough to realize in
Yoshida’s day, have been reduced further in a computer culture
obsessed with speed and eiciency. Whilst our students may al-
low their minds to wander online, the pixilated images emitting
outward from their screens are far removed from those images
that emerge from calm, inward contemplation. Although the po-
tential beneits gained from such online expediency are numer-
ous, our desire for students to use technology creatively, rather
than passively, made us reconsider our aims. Therefore the need
to promote and develop inner critical relection in students ap-
pears highly commensurate with their successfully imbibing and
interacting with Western culture (or indeed any culture) more
rigorously and critically.

3. Considering A Critical Thinking Approach in EFL Classes

Critical thinking in education was long considered the domain of
irst language teaching, leading researchers such as Atkinson to
question whether critical thinking might even be inappropriate
in some other language contexts, such as EFL, particularly for

10
students from speciic cultures within Asia that do not appear
to prioritize individualistic thinking. Kubota countered this by
claiming that critical thinking is a universal skill that is not the
preserve of western cultural thought, whilst several EFL prac-
titioners (Davidson; Stapleton; Day) stated categorically that
Asian students found little diiculty thinking critically in En-
glish. Furthermore, other researchers maintained that critical
thinking should be an important component of EFL. For exam-
ple, Kramsch argued that achieving cultural competence was
an important requirement of English language luency, and that
this required engaging with culture critically and rigorously. In
order to facilitate such an approach, promoting critical think-
ing towards cultural materials found in an EFL or ESP class
would involve a consideration of cognitive processes, such as
Bloom’s study on cognitive processing skills and the movement
from lower-order to higher order processing skills. While much
pre-tertiary and tertiary education concentrates on teaching that
aims at lower-order processing (remembering, applying and un-
derstanding), a critical thinking approach toward cultural con-
tent would necessitate higher order processes of analysis, eval-
uation and critique.

4. Designing a Media Speciic CLIL Course

It was the aim of this research project to construct and estab-
lish a unique course that cast a critical eye upon cultural con-
tent based materials speciically related to aspects of media cul-
ture. As students frequently imbibe Western culture outside of
the classroom we strove to encourage students to apply a crit-
ical approach towards cultural content in various media. The-
oretically, we were inluenced by readings in Shaules, Itoh and

11
Sanae’s media focused EFL text, Fish in Water, but wished to de-
velop multi-media materials on similar topics to seize student at-
tention and activate a higher order of cognitive processing. Our
approach was instead guided by the Content and Language Inte-
grated Learning (CLIL) teaching rubric, which was employed as
a framework to help shape the critical thinking aims of our con-
tent based curriculum. Emerging in the mid-1990s within a Eu-
ropean pre-tertiary context, (Marsh, Maljers and Hartlia,) by the
late 1990s such courses began to appear in Japan (Murphey),
and gradually became established due to instructors and institu-
tions who wished to concentrate on content. In scafolding crit-
ical perceptions of culture, the methodology of CLIL has distinct
advantages for both EFL teachers and students. CLIL courses al-
low students to study subjects in a foreign language which they
have already developed familiarity and interest in through their
mother tongue, and when classroom activities move from com-
fortable to challenging questions, teaching may be scafolded
towards the promotion of deeper thought in English.
Authentic or semi-authentic materials can therefore be uti-
lized towards the speciic needs of learners, as there are plenty
of usable English language media products, such as Harry Pot-
ter or Twilight which are popular with students. While consum-
ing such movies, students utilize lower order thinking skills but
such modern pop culture classics may be used as a springboard
towards deeper channels of thought to confront authentic issues
in our students’ lives. Not only does this allow us to employ pop-
ular culture as a bridge towards academic topics, it also allays
Freirean concerns regarding the dangers of becoming top down
promoters of western media without critique. Paolo Freire, in
Pedagogy of the Oppressed, referred to a banking model of educa-

12
tion, whereby students are considered empty vessels to be illed
with prescribed knowledge, as opposed to being co-creators of
knowledge. In seeking to avoid this teaching paradigm, we
sought to increase opportunities for critical perceptions of me-
dia through interlinked topics that covered a complete semester.
Moreover, in promoting a critical approach towards these top-
ics we were intent to refer to key media related literary texts
and theories that we deemed relevant to critiquing the media.
These textual ideas were discretely scafolded through the em-
ployment of carefully chosen classroom materials.

4.1. Selecting Literary Texts to Advance Critical Perception

of Media
We therefore sought to teach contemporary Western media cul-
ture through the employment of cultural content-based materi-
als that were scafolded and mediated to students. It was felt
that small selections of literary texts would complement and
deepen our students’ understanding of course ideas. Our pur-
suit was not new: Carter and Long in Teaching Literature held
that literature in the EFL syllabus can bring linguistic, cultural
and self-development, whilst Parkinson and Reid Thomas (9-11)
state that literary texts are well placed to convey genuine, au-
thentic cultural enrichment whilst training the mind and sensi-
bility. Brumit also maintains that such texts present “a refusal
to oversimplify … the teaching of literature (and which can) …
be seen as a means of introducing learners to … a serious view
of the world” (92). With these ideas in mind, literary texts were
employed within our Media English course as part of a themat-
ically mediated approach which encompassed audio-visual me-
dia and simpliied handouts to aid comprehension and encour-

13
age a critical response. Scafolded adaptations of texts by Freud,
McLuhan, Hall, and Chomsky were employed to cast a critical
light upon recent trends in music, movies, social networking and
corporate news reportage.

4.2. The Course Curriculum

As the course was designed to promote analysis and criticism
to aspects of the media, classes were decided to be theme-based
with an emphasis upon stimulating in-class conversation, discus-
sion and inally analysis. The theme based structure contained
weekly subjects such as advertising, beauty and gender, music
and movies. Critical theory, scafolded literature and selections
of authentic text introduced at the midway point in the class, af-
ter students had already become engaged in the discussion topic.
The course was taught over 14 weeks of the Spring-Summer
2012 semester, with a inal week allocated for the course exami-
nation. The ideas of diferent igures such as Marshall McLuhan,
Stuart Hall, William Wordsworth, John Pilger, Aldous Huxley,
Neil Postman, Edward Bernays, Sigmund Freud, Noam Chom-
sky, Edward Said, Mary Wollstonecraft, Naomi Wolf, and Stan-
ley Milgram were explicated and then applied to contemporary
media issues. A full syllabus of the Spring-Summer semester can
be located in appendix 1 (page 38), while handouts used in les-
son 2 (The Medium is the Message) and lesson 7 (Advertising in
the Media) can be found in appendixes 2 (page 39) and 3 (page
40). Speciic examples of how three theories were taught are
shown in section 5 (page 18).

4.3. Characteristics of the Teachers and Learners

Both teachers had previously been engaged in research in aca-
demic speaking courses as well as Media English with third and

14
fourth year seniors. In this study, our learners were also third
and fourth year seniors from the English Language departments
enrolled at two private universities. Together, 33 students en-
rolled in the course for diferent reasons. Resultantly there was
no way of foreknowing the median expectation of the class, and
this made our decision to go without a textbook a practical one;
the teachers not wishing to saddle the students with a textbook
too far above or below the median level of the class.

4.4. Teaching Approaches in the Classroom

The scafolding of media related textual ideas centered upon
the employment of four speciic types of teaching materials: vo-
cabulary and reading activities, audiovisual materials, and the
design and implementation of a course weblog. First, primacy
was placed upon teaching textually speciic vocabulary to stu-
dents. Our vocabulary selection was concerned with teaching
speciic words we felt best helped scafold the theoretical texts
and ideas used in the course, and, as it was felt that using an aca-
demic word list would be too general for this purpose, no cor-
pora were employed. We instead focused on scafolding words
and terms employed by those writers we were attempting to ex-
plicate. Taking especial care to explicate complex ideas in more
comprehensible ways, we were guided by Byram, Gribkova and
Starkey’s “Developing the Intercultural Dimension in Language
Teaching”, a critical and cross-cultural approach that advocates
the employment of key terms and vocabulary to help learners
talk about cultural diversity. One important contribution to an
intellectual perspective is the employment of vocabulary that
aids learners in talking about cultural diversity, and Byram,
Gribkova and Starkey argue that this can include terms such as

15
“human rights; equality; dignity; gender; bias; prejudice; stereo-
type; racism; ethnic minority; and the names of ethnic groups”
(16).
Media English classes are likely to cover such diverse topics
of discussion, being the type of topics required to bring Japanese
students into global topics of debate. A more problematic task,
however, is ensuring that students have the ability to employ
the vocabulary that explains key topic concepts. We therefore
decided upon 70 content speciic words to promote understand-
ing of key issues related to the class content, with an aim to
improve the quality of in-class discussion. The vocabulary we
taught was comprised of both commonly used words and meta-
vocabulary such as categories; in scafolding the media concepts
of Stuart Hall for example we taught the terms ‘representation’,
‘encoding’ and ‘decoding’. We distributed weekly vocabulary
sheets, containing ive words each, which were further compli-
mented by classroom gap ill exercises, word searches, and mul-
tiple choice exercises, and in doing this we aimed to scafold the
students’ critical appreciation of the subject matter.
In addition to these interactive tasks, students were also
given in-class reading activities. These included the simple ap-
proach of giving students papers that contained short pieces
of information, but with accompanying illustrations that ex-
plained, in clear simple English, the ideas and concepts that un-
derpinned class content. Examples from lesson 2 (The Medium
is the Message) and lesson 7 (Advertising in the media) can be
located in appendixes 2 (page 39) and 3 (page 40). Speciic au-
diovisual materials, such as movie clips, pop videos, and short
excerpts from documentaries were chosen to further explicate
these ideas and concepts. These materials were used sparingly,

16
and were shown for short periods of time to reduce the pos-
sibility of comprehension problems, whilst pre-viewing ques-
tions (such as simple what/when/who/where/why questions)
allowed for an easy entry into each video topic.

4.5. The Course Website: A Blended Approach

Our content curriculum was reliant upon a specially tailored
website, which was an integral part of the course. This was
created to supply students with extra curricula reading materi-
als and vocabulary PDF iles to improve course comprehension,
and functioning as a quasi-content e-textbook. Our decision to
proceed with the weblog was informed by several claims made
on behalf of e-textbooks that they are the educational format of
the future. Cunningham, Dufy, and Knuth claimed back in 1992
that textbooks look forlorn in comparison to the dazzle and wiz-
ardry of emerging hypermedia systems, whilst student response
data taken from Northwest Missouri University indicated that
56.25 percent of students considered e-textbooks more conve-
nient for accessing and retrieving information (Rickman et al.).
It was therefore decided to create a website with reading ma-
terial tailored to what we intuitively (and correctly) felt was
generally the students’ mean level of comprehension, giving stu-
dents online access to ideas and vocabulary which they would
be able to access both before and after each class. The con-
tent taught in the class was uploaded onto the course website
in advance of the following week’s class, and overall 14 entries,
matching the total number of classes taught during the semester,
were uploaded onto the blog site. This weekly online content
would cover the content-based theme to be discussed and, when
appropriate, expressions and instruction employed to aid criti-

17
cal thinking were interpolated into the blog text. Furthermore,
the weekly course vocabulary sheets were placed on PDF iles
and embedded into each week’s blog entry. By continuously
recycling words in class, this allowed us to improve the like-
lihood of students remembering speciic terms that would aid
them in approaching, discussing and hopefully engaging criti-
cally with the course content. Students were required to read
the text of each week’s entry, and study the vocabulary, before
posting their response to a question at the foot of the blog. In
doing this they were better prepared for a vocabulary test that
we mandated to students.

5. Theoretical and Literary Concepts Taught in the Class

As stated above, we taught theoretical concepts that were asso-
ciated with key thinkers in our course. Lesson content detailing
three of these media concepts will be briely explained below:

5.1. The Medium is the Message

Teaching for this concept comprised two classes, with the the-
ory of a medium being a message called upon in the teaching of
concepts later in the course. It began with an initial brainstorm-
ing about the meaning of media and was followed by an explo-
ration about the message of speciic media. This was made eas-
ier through the use of Marshall McLuhan’s theoretical tool: the
tetrad (McLuhan and Powers). The tetrad is a theoretical device
which when visually portrayed allow students to consider the
efects of a single medium on society. We chose the ubiquitous
iPhone to explore the four ‘efects’ of the tetrad on a medium:
what it enhances, makes obsolete, retrieves and reverses within
developments and trends in humanity and society. Following

18
this, we later used a communicative act (see appendix 2 on page
39) to compound the message of a medium by asking students
to role play the act of inviting someone to a restaurant. We used
three media: a mobile phone, the Instant Messenger Service on
Facebook and face to face communication. Upon completion of
the activity, students considered the following questions:
a. What were you looking at?
b. What distractions were there?
c. How could you control the privacy of this act?
d. How did the language change with each medium?

This deceptively simple series of activities aforded students the

opportunity to relect upon the message of each medium. To
regard light or a wheel as a medium was a surprise to students
at irst but it opened up their minds to a fuller contemplation of
the meaning of diferent media – what they occlude, what they
open-up, what they resurrect.

5.2. Representation in the News

Students were given speciic examples of how the news media
can subtly represent the news through dramatic visual tech-
niques and rhetorical devices. In the irst class students studied
and discussed dramatic techniques used in ilms such as light-
ing, sound efects, camera angles, CGI, facial gestures and voice
intonation. In the second class students were required to study
how these techniques were used to represent real events more
dramatically in news reporting, and this understanding was
deepened through the mediated scafolding of Stuart Hall’s con-
ceptual ideas ‘representation’, ‘encoding’ and ‘decoding’ (Hall)
which were explicated by teaching key vocabulary and distribut-
ing a simpliied reading sheet. Following this, students were

19
shown a series of news reports and were encouraged to iden-
tify examples of rhetorical encoding by drawing stylistic paral-
lels between these clips and the movie styles they had earlier
viewed. The students then viewed the 2009 BBC news video
“BBC Weekend News with Mishal Husain” and were requested
to identify speciic words that were rhetorically emphasized, or
encoded, by the newscaster. After this the class discussed why
speciic facial gestures and intonation were employed with spe-
ciic words, and, in a inal discussion, the students relected
on whether representation in the media potentially compro-
mised objective news reporting, and to what extent this poten-
tially shaped or inluenced the viewer’s comprehension of world
events.

5.3. The Unconscious Mind in Advertising

The object of this class was to illustrate how speciic techniques
underpinned by the psychoanalytical ideas of Sigmund Freud
are employed in modern advertising to sell products to con-
sumers. Students were shown a TGI Friday’s commercial en-
titled “The Simpsons – Commercial – T.G.I Fridays – Homer
Simpson (11-93)” in which the animated character Homer Simp-
son’s consumption choices are inluenced by his television. The
diference between the words ‘need’ and ‘want’ were then il-
lustrated by the teacher through distributing a handout which
compared everyday commodities such as water and ice-cream
(see appendix 3 on page 40), and the students were then invited
in pairs to brainstorm and list things that they needed in their
lives, and things that they wanted, whilst also discussing the
diferences between them. After circulating a simpliied read-
ing sheet to more fully elucidate Freud’s notion of an uncon-

20
scious ‘id’ and conscious ‘ego’, (appendix 3 on page 40) stu-
dents were required to connect these concepts with the things
they had earlier identiied as needing and wanting. Next, picto-
rial examples of old magazine adverts were employed in tandem
with a short gap ill exercise (appendix 3 on page 40) to illus-
trate how these Freud’s concepts were employed in advertising
by public relations expert Edward Bernays (Amos and Haglund
1) to target customer wants and unconscious desires. The hand-
out contained a photographic example of Bernays’ pioneering
advertisement for cigarettes, in which he attempted to target
speciic women’s groups, such as the Sufragettes. By showing
speciic YouTube video examples of commercials, it was then
possible to illustrate how these ideas are still used in modern
advertising to sell products, and then students were placed into
groups to discuss whether these commercials targeted the con-
scious or unconscious mind. For example, students were shown
two diferent examples of Gillette commercials from two dif-
ferent time periods; “Gillette Super Speed Razor Commercial
(1956)” and “Gilette M3 Ad (2006).” Whilst the more recent
commercial placed emphasis on fantasy based imagery such as
fast cars and beautiful women, the older commercial centered
its focus purely on the razor’s functionality as a shaving device.
Finally, students were required to discuss whether the Japanese
advertising industry sells them things they need or things they
want, and were asked to brainstorm potential good points and
bad points regarding this.

6. Course Evaluation and Assessment 2012

Our 2012-13 Media English course was informed by the appli-
cation of a rigorous vocabulary program and further compli-

21
mented by the addition of a vocabulary centered website en-
titled Media Post (http://mediapost2012.blogspot.jp) which it
was hoped would aid student course comprehension and there-
fore garner high scoring response data. However, whilst satis-
factory student response data was desirable, we wished to sub-
ject our course to a broad suite of evaluation measures. We
therefore decided to employ a triangulated set of evaluation cri-
teria to more vigorously evaluate the success of our 2012 Media
English course: Vocabulary testing, student written corpora, and
student questionnaire response data.

6.1. Vocabulary Testing

Over the course of the Spring-Summer semester we mandated
two vocabulary exams that tested the 33 students on their com-
prehension of the 70 content speciic words. The irst test was
given in early June 2012 to the students from our two classes. It
covered 40 words that had been uploaded onto the blog site and
saw students choose one correct deinition out of four choices.
The second test was administered in late July 2012, and covered
the last 30 words. This allowed us to record and check student
acquisition of vocabulary from the course. While the object of
the study was not to improve student vocabulary knowledge,
it was strongly felt that if students could acquire a reasonable
knowledge of the meta-vocabulary needed to discuss content-
speciic terms this would aid their overall ability to engage crit-
ically with such concepts in English. Testing the students’ course
vocabulary knowledge might therefore prove beneicial for two
reasons: Firstly, the practice of studying for a test might moti-
vate them to better memorize such terms, and secondly in testing

22
the students we might begin to better ascertain how well they
understood the ideas behind them.

6.2. Student Written Corpora

While assessing student language acquisition was important, we
wished to avoid relying purely on assessing students’ multiple
choice language scores, in which language is tested passively.
Hunston notes that one role that corpora can play in language
testing is by allowing a measurement of typicality of the mate-
rials used (205) and we aimed to quantify students’ productive
ability through an assessment of written essay corpora. Students
were mandated an end of semester essay, in which they were re-
quested to type a 200 hundred word essay on the importance of
two/three media types of their choice. These essays were sent to
us by email, and subjected to examination by the text-handling
package Wordsmith Tools. Whilst our collection of written cor-
pora was small, Millar notes that DIY corpus creation can be
carried out quickly through the creation of a small corpus based
on a class assignment (69), and that such specialized corpora can
provide information about more speciic types of language use,
such as for academic or professional purposes. The irst assess-
ment criterion was a word frequency list, which would provide
us with words in alphabetical and frequency order. The second
assessment criterion was to evaluate how speciic acquired vo-
cabulary was employed in concordance with other lexical items.
Concordance analysis can give the teacher a better under-
standing of how students are using that particular feature (Mil-
lar 66). Word frequency and concordance analysis can there-
fore be employed to see how the phrases and words learnt by
the students are actually being used productively. It was there-

23
fore hoped that this approach would allow us to better ana-
lyze student critical perception and utilization of content vo-
cabulary. In view of Berber-Sardinha’s observation that a ref-
erence corpus must be between two to ten times as large (12),
we sought a small reference corpus of essays by Japanese stu-
dents from which we could compare our own student corpus.
We decided to use essays written by Japanese students from
the newly compiled, and fortuitously accessible, ICNALE corpus.
Through using Wordsmith’s Key Word facility, we were able to
discover the words which best characterize our student corpus,
and whether the students were using any of the critical meta-
vocabulary (such as using the term ‘representation’ to discuss
media news reportage, for example) when writing about media
terms and ideas. The role of the ICNALE corpus was therefore
to provide background data for our comparative purposes.

6.3. Questionnaire Methodology and Distribution

Similarly to previous research conducted by the instructors, it
was felt that by measuring the students’ attitudes towards the
overall instruction of the media course, a useful barometer of the
efectiveness of the approach could be established. We elected
to employ a Likert-style questionnaire for the fourteen closed
questions (see appendix 5 on page 42) so that students would
give a clear positive or negative choice from the four choices.
Students could therefore answer with a strong or mild ‘positive’
or ‘negative’ response. One example question is given below:

Example close-ended question from the questionnaire:

1) How interesting were the lesson topics?
a) interesting b) okay c) uninteresting d) boring

24
 In the above example, ‘interesting’ was assigned a score of
4 points and ‘okay’ a score of 3. These were the two ‘positive’
responses. ‘Uninteresting’ was given a score of 2, and ‘boring’
a score of 1. These were the two ‘negative’ responses. The as-
signing of more points for a positive score was applied to all
of the fourteen Likert style questions. Participants who chose
a four point response for each question would score a maximum
of 44 points. With 33 participants, the maximum score for each
question was 132 points.
Overall, our questionnaire featured 14 questions. In particu-
lar, students were asked to assess the question handouts and vo-
cabulary (Questions 5, 6, 7, 8), the importance of video clips and
visual media in aiding comprehension (Qs 9, 10, 11), the use-
fulness of the course weblog in acquiring the course vocabulary
and content comprehension (Qs 12, 13, 14) whilst also measur-
ing their overall comprehension of the theories and ideas intro-
duced during the classes (Q2). After students were in receipt of
their vocabulary exam results, the course evaluation question-
naire was distributed in both instructors’ classes. The results of
the questionnaire are given in appendix 4 (page 41). The re-
sults highlight the ‘mean’ score, the ‘standard deviation’ score
(SD) and the ‘range’ of each answer.

7. Discussion of Results

7.1. Discussion of Vocabulary Test Results

Pleasingly, our students scored a combined mean score of 77%
for the irst semester, which suggested that our students had ac-
quired content speciic vocabulary and phrases from our course.
It also suggested that vocabulary inputted onto the blogs was

25
a factor in promoting vocabulary acquisition. This did not neces-
sarily mean that they understood the course theories and ideas;
thus we requested students to answer a question on their under-
standing of course content.

7.2. Discussion of Corpus of Student Writing

In using the ICNALE corpus as a comparison to our own stu-
dent corpus, we were able to uncover a selection of key words
produced by our students. In total, our corpus contained 551
diferent types of words compared to 4,424 in our ICNALE ref-
erence corpus of writings by Japanese students. The Key Word
function in Wordsmith allowed us to uncover unusually frequent
(and infrequent) words in our corpus compared to ICNALE, and
fuels the below discussion, which centers on words taught in our
course.

7.2.1. Media/Medium/Message/McLuhan
Perhaps unexpectedly, the word ‘media’ was the most key con-
tent word in our corpus. While the word ‘media’ appeared only
once in the ICNALE corpus, it appeared 207 times in our own
corpus collection. Employing Wordsmith’s concordance facil-
ity, we also learnt that students used the patterns ‘in the media’
and also ‘importance studying media’. Furthermore, the concord
facility highlighted several interesting sentence collocations, il-
lustrating how, within six words left or right of the headword
‘media’, students employed speciically taught course vocabu-
lary such as ‘beauty myth’, ‘enhance’, ‘representation’, ‘decode’,
and ‘passive.’ More speciically, by expanding the search to ‘me-
dia/medium/medias’, we discovered 234 entries. Within these
entries, we discovered that ‘medium is the message’ occurred

26
11 times in a word cluster and that ‘Marshall McLuhan’ was
mentioned 8 times.

7.2.2. Advertising/Freud
The word ‘advertising’ occurred 39 times, whilst the word ‘po-
litical’ collocated with it 10 times. By expanding the search
to ‘ad/advertising/advertisement/CM’, we discovered 82 en-
tries, which collocated with a selection of other content related
words, which were taught as part of the course vocabulary se-
lection. Linked to these word classes are juxtaposing references
to the unconscious and conscious mind: unconscious appears
8 times, 7 times in a collocational relationship with ‘mind.’ Sim-
ilarly, ‘brand’ appeared 21 times and collocated with ‘corporate’
18 times and ‘global’ 12 times.

7.2.3. Representation/Hall
Although Hall was not referred to in the corpus, reference to
ideas used in the class were discovered in the form of ‘represent’
(14 times), which collocated with ‘news’ 7 times.

7.3. Discussion of Questionnaire Response Data

Overall, the combined student response data garnered from the
questionnaire was highly positive (see appendix 4 on page 41),
and question number 1 demonstrated that students were inter-
ested in the lesson topics, scoring a mean value of 3.69. It
can therefore be concluded that electing to introduce Japanese
university students to complex analytical ideas in English need
not alienate them, and, furthermore, with careful planning and
a mediated approach these ideas can be made interesting and
stimulating. Our blended methods, such as class reading hand-
outs, audiovisual materials, and the course website also scored

27
highly. Signiicantly, we discovered the course website to be
perceived as highly positive in terms of learning vocabulary.
This response scored a mean value of 3.90, which was the high-
est rating in our table of results, whilst students also rated the
website’s usefulness in understanding course topics with a fairly
positive 3.33. Moreover, students also demonstrated a positive
response towards the topic discussion papers distributed in class,
rating a mean score of 3.75, whilst students rated the usefulness
of course reading handouts, which explicated course ideas, and
vocabulary worksheets, which further facilitated comprehen-
sion of these ideas, with fairly positive mean scores of 3.39 and
3.30 respectively. The students demonstrated an overwhelm-
ingly positive response towards the course audio-visual materi-
als, rating question number 9 a mean score of 3.93, and Canning-
Wilson suggests that students enjoy learning language through
the use of videos, due to the embedded nature of visual cues
within the medium (2). Students also rated the usefulness and
appropriateness of course videos in terms of understanding the
course topics highly, scoring a mean rating of 3.72.
Unsurprisingly, our data thus illustrated that the use of vi-
sual media, set in the context of a media studies class, proved
to be overwhelmingly popular with students. However, despite
our methods and approaches scoring highly, question number 2,
which concerned the students’ critical comprehension of course
theories and ideas, scored a fairly low mean value of 2.84. We
believed that this low response rating occurred due to the chal-
lenging nature of the topics in the course, and that this can, as
noted by Dornyei, also be attributed to the phenomenon of stu-
dents providing less than accurate responses when asked for di-
rect assessments of ability and progression (8). Whilst 13 of the

28
14 questions required the students to assess our teaching meth-
ods and approaches, question number 2 necessitated the stu-
dents assessing themselves, and Young, cited in Ohata, observed
than student anxiety and negativity can arise through “a lack
of self conidence in language proiciency and their perceived
lack of knowledge about the class subjects they were studying”
(14). Therefore, lack of self conidence in the target language
was perhaps a signiicant factor in lower student self assessment
scores regarding content comprehension. We believed this oc-
curred due to the challenging nature of the topics in the course,
and, as noted by Dornyei, students providing less than accurate
responses when asked for direct self-assessments (p.8).

8. Conclusion
In summary, our triangulated data demonstrated that the over-
all student response to the CLIL based Media course was very
positive. Firstly, in terms of quantitative assessment, our stu-
dents rated 13 out of the 14 questions with a mean score of 3
or over. Of particular note, the students rated the course ideas,
which were explicated from complex literary texts, as being in-
teresting (3.69), illustrating that such text based ideas can be
employed with Japanese students. Secondly, by achieving a rea-
sonably high average vocabulary test score of 77% our students
indicated that they had understood and acquired much of the
content speciic vocabulary from our course, further vindicating
our decision to input these words onto the course blog. Thirdly,
keyword comparisons and concord analysis undertaken on stu-
dent essays illustrated how much of this vocabulary was em-
ployed in their media related writings, especially in conjunction
with words related to textual ideas which had been scafolded

29
during the course. Therefore, our suite of classroom and we-
blog based methods and approaches were mainly vindicated by
the students’ responses to them. However, this positive feed-
back data was tempered by the disappointing results of question
number 2, which focused on students’ critical comprehension of
course theories and ideas such as representation. This question
produced a far lower student response score, implying that the
authors will need to strive to improve and simplify class mate-
rials and handouts further to aid even stronger student under-
standing of textual ideas and content.
In light of the poor response to question 2 the study can
therefore only be considered a partial success, as despite the
stated importance of our students’ developing a more critical
approach we didn’t focus on teaching any speciic critical think-
ing strategies, preferring instead to explicate the critical view-
points expressed by the texts and materials themselves. An
approach such as Chamot and Malley’s (1996) Cognitive Aca-
demic Language Learning Approach (CALLA), however, might
serve as a future signpost in developing future teaching path-
ways. CALLA contains three inter-related components that can
act as a guideline when writing courses for EFL students, with
focus placed upon 1. high-priority topics (for students in a par-
ticular context), 2. a focus upon academic development through
the teaching of content, and 3. explicit instruction in learning
strategies that help foster a better understanding of content. Cul-
tivating such techniques in tandem with scafolding the critical
viewpoints contained within literary media may therefore be the
next step in engendering a truly critical approach to culture.
Furthermore, future research projects which strive to ad-
vance student perception of media related literary texts should

30
consider Young and Ohata’s observations regarding student lan-
guage anxiety. Such a future research project should therefore
strive to equip students with a clearer sense of their language
progress, which, it is to be hoped, they would equate with their
overall course progress. An important goal of a future project
should therefore seek to distribute course questionnaires at the
beginning of the second semester, after students have already
received their semester 1 vocabulary results and essay grades.
Supplying students with the results of these examination crite-
ria would hopefully give them a more clearly deined sense of
their own language progress, and enhance their conidence in
writing about and explaining these course ideas productively,
which may then allow them to both respond to question num-
ber 2 with greater conidence than before, whilst also empower-
ing them with renewed vigor and optimism in approaching text
based ideas positively.

31
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37
Appendix 1. Spring-Summer Syllabus
Week 1: Course Introduction
Week 2: The Medium is the Message: The ideas of Marshall
McLuhan
Week 3: Movies and Dramatic Styles: Rhetorical techniques in
ilm narrative
Week 4: Representation in the TV News: The ideas of Stuart
Hall
Week 5: The Global Village: William Wordsworth & “The World
is Too Much with Us”
Week 6: Global Corporate Brands: John Pilger & The New Rulers
of the World
Week 7: Advertising in the Media: The ideas of Sigmund Freud
and Edward Bernays
Week 8: Student Presentation Activity
Week 9: Political Advertising Campaigns: The ideas of Noam
Chomsky
Week 10: Television & Virtual Reality: The ideas of Aldous
Huxley and Neil Postman
Week 11: National Media Stereotypes: The ideas of Edward
Said
Week 12: The Protest Message of Music: From Mozart’s Mar-
riage of Figaro to Punk Rock
Week 13: Gender & Beauty in the Media: The ideas of Mary
Wollstonecraft and Naomi Wolf
Week 14: Role Models and Reality TV: The Milgram Experi-
ment – Then & Now

38
Appendix 2. Example Handouts used in
Week 2: The Medium is the Message
PDF ile of handouts used in Week 2 can be downloaded from
Lit Matters website at www.liberlit.com/litmatters/wp-content/
uploads/2016/03/issue2-appendix2.pdf.

39
Appendix 3. Example Handouts used in
Week 7: Advertising in the Media
PDF ile of handouts used in Week 7 can be downloaded from
Lit Matters website at www.liberlit.com/litmatters/wp-content/
uploads/2016/03/issue2-appendix3.pdf.

40
Appendix 4. Final Mean Ratings of Students’
Attitudes

Course Topics Mean SD Range

1) How interesting were the lesson topics? 3.69 0.57 2

2) How well did you understand and think critically about the course theories and ideas, such as media representation (dramatic techniques)? 2.84 0.75 2
3) How clearly did the teacher explain the topics in each lesson? 3.63 0.48 1
4) How did the instructor engage you? How often did he/she ask you questions and encourage you to give your opinions? 3.00 0.79 2

Course Materials Mean SD Range

5) How interesting were the student discussion papers that your teacher handed you? 3.75 0.43 1
6) Did the student discussion paper topics make you want to talk with your fellow students about them? 3.18 0.39 1
7) How did the course information and ideas handouts help your understanding of the lesson topics? 3.39 0.70 2
8) How did the gap ill and vocabulary worksheets help your understanding of the lesson topic? 3.30 0.63 2

Course Video Mean SD Range

9) What was your opinion of the video clips used? 3.93 0.24 1
10) How did the use of videos in class help your understanding of the lesson topic? 3.72 0.45 1
11) Did the video clips make you want to talk with your fellow students about them? 3.42 0.66 3

Course Website Mean SD Range

12) How clear and easy was it to understand? 3.51 0.50 1

13) How useful was the website in helping you to understand the course topics? 3.33 0.64 2
14) How useful was the website in helping you to understand the course vocabulary? 3.90 0.72 2

41
Appendix 5. Media Questionnaire
Course Topics
1) How interesting were the lesson topics?
a) interesting b) okay c) uninteresting d) boring

2) How well did you understand the course theories and ideas,
such as media representation (dramatic techniques)?
a) very easy to understand b) quite easy to understand
c) a little diicult to understand d) diicult to understand

3) How clearly did the teacher explain the topics in the lesson?
a) very clearly b) clearly c) not clearly d) very unclearly

4) How did the instructor engage you? How often did he/she
ask you questions and encourage you to give your opinions?
a) always b) often c) sometimes d) rarely

Course Materials
5) How interesting were the student discussion papers that your
teacher handed you?
a) interesting b) okay c) uninteresting d) boring

6) Did the student discussion paper topics make you want to talk
with your fellow students about them?
a) yes deinitely b) yes, a little c) not really d) deinitely not

7) How did the course information and ideas handouts help your
understanding of the lesson topic?
a) very useful b) useful c) a little useful d) not useful

8) How did the gap ill and vocabulary worksheets help your
understanding of the lesson topic?
a) very useful b) useful c) a little useful d) not useful

42
Course Videos
9) What was your opinion of the video clips used?
a) interesting b) okay c) uninteresting d) boring

10) How did the use of videos in class help your understanding
of the lesson topic?
a) very useful b) useful c) a little useful d) not useful

11) Did the video clips make you want to talk with your fellow
students about them?
a) yes deinitely b) yes, a little c) not really d) deinitely not

The Course Website

12) How clear and easy was it to understand?
a) very clear b) quite clear c) not very clear
d) very diicult to understand

13) How useful was the website in helping you to understand

the course topics?
a) very useful b) useful c) a little useful d) not useful

14) How useful was the website in helping you to learn the
course vocabulary
a) very useful b) useful c) a little useful d) not useful

43
Neil Addison was born in the U.K and is associate professor in the De-
partment of Literature and Culture in English at Tokyo Woman’s Chris-
tian University. His research interests include 19th century British lit-
erature such as Hardy and Dickens, and the work of the cultural the-
orist Pierre Bourdieu. He is also interested in the historical reception
and contemporary use of English literature in Japanese pedagogy.

Richard Walker teaches at Reitaku University and Meiji Gakuin Uni-

versity. Graduating from Aston University’s MSc course in TESOL, he
has worked in Japanese universities for over a decade, in which time
he has undertaken research on blended learning, CLIL, and the culture-
bound role of laughter in conversation. Current writing includes an
EFL textbook on academic skills, and a Music and Culture textbook
which uses musical ‘events’ to investigate content-based themes. Cur-
rent research includes the implementation of paper-based and screen-
based Extensive Reading programs for EFL students, and the use of
short stories in Writing courses for non-literature-based English Lan-
guage majors.

44
 For A Culturally Situated Pedagogy:
Academic Literacy and the
English-Medium Literature Course
Christopher J. Armstrong and Anthony Piccolo

Abstract
This essay explores some of the pedagogical issues surrounding the teach-
ing of literature in foreign-language contexts. Sharing the concerns of
genre theorists (Johns, Swales, Paltridge and others), who have contended
that communicative and learner-centered approaches have not well served
the development of academic literacies, the essay begins with an assess-
ment of the discourse and methods of ESL/EFL teaching before focusing
on two issues of importance: (1) the role of culture in and around the
literary text and (2) the extension of the learner-centered, communicative
curriculum to include a basic set of “subject-speciic literacies” appropri-
ate to academic literary studies. Part I discusses how the EFL teaching of
literature with its learner-centered, communicative curriculum has often
played out as a repudiation of traditional forms associated with the cul-
ture and disciplinary norms of academic study. Arguing that EFL literature
approaches are a helpful starting point for both specialists and language
professionals, Part II explores the problems and the possibilities of the
so-called cultural model of EFL literature teaching. Part III addresses the
shortfall of academic and speciic analytical skills identiied in Part I, de-

45
scribing the implementation of an introductory undergraduate course on
American poetry and iction.

Despite dire warnings of an end to reading culture, the banish-

ing of humanistic studies at university, and the death of litera-
ture altogether, much has been written over the last few decades
about the value of literary education, even in the most practi-
cal quarters of English as Second Language English as a Foreign
Language (EFL) teaching. At the same time, there is ample evi-
dence of a renewed interest in literature teaching among a glob-
ally dispersed and culturally diverse formation of practitioners,
both in literature and language teaching, with calls for innova-
tion and new approaches that suit particular social, cultural and
institutional arrangements and a greatly expanded range of lit-
eratures in English. Our essay represents a mere beginning to
the challenges posed by this global, multicultural, postcolonial
moment of literary study, by exploring some of the pedagogi-
cal issues surrounding literature taught in foreign-language con-
texts. Drawing on our training in literary studies, our interests
in English for Academic Purposes (EAP) and academic literacy
as well as our experience teaching literature in the Japanese uni-
versity, we attempt to model a curriculum that accommodates
and extends the EFL approach to literature. Our essay begins by
ofering an assessment of the discourse and methods of ESL/EFL
literature teaching, before focusing on two issues of importance
raised by our assessment: (1) the role of culture in and around
the literary text and (2) the extension of the learner-centered,
communicative curriculum to include a basic set of “subject-
speciic literacies” (Machen-Horarik 19-20) appropriate to aca-
demic literary studies.

46
 Part I reviews the approaches that have dominated the dis-
course (if not also the classroom practice) of the EFL teaching
of literature. With its learner-centered, communicative curricu-
lum, the discourse has often played out as a repudiation of tradi-
tional forms associated with the culture and disciplinary norms
of academic study, including literature (the lecture, the critical
essay) in favour of approaches centering on language acquisi-
tion (motivation, personal response, authentic language and cul-
ture, textual linguistic features, varieties of writing). We argue
that while constituting a decidedly reductive notion of literary
study – the mere “use” or “exploiting” of literature as an au-
thentic language resource in the classroom – EFL approaches
are a helpful starting point for both specialists and language
professionals teaching literature. Part II takes up the so-called
cultural model of EFL literature teaching, exploring both the
problems and the possibilities of this approach, including the
relative importance of literary competence over cultural com-
petence and the possibilities of greater accessibility in the selec-
tion of non-native authors writing in English. These approaches
ofer not only an induction into the speciic conventions of lit-
erary forms but also the ways in which these forms are both
rooted in speciic cultures and evolve and change in diferent
cultural contexts. Part III addresses the shortfall of academic
and speciic literary analytical skills identiied in Part I, describ-
ing the implementation of an introductory undergraduate course
on American poetry and iction. While the course attempts
to accommodate both student-centered and more traditional
teacher-centered formats, implementation follows a genre-based
approach to the development of academic skills, including the

47
use of models and the regular practice of analytical text types as
a prelude to the writing of a literary essay.
From the point of view of pedagogy, our essay shares the
concerns of genre theorists (Johns, Swales, Paltridge and others)
who have contended that communicative and learner-centered
approaches to language teaching have not well served the de-
velopment of students’ academic literacy. However, we do not
mean to suggest that academically beneicial content has been
absent from EFL approaches nor that there is no place for com-
municative approaches in academic-oriented study (see Guse
2011). Rather, we want to argue that the methods associated
with communicative language teaching (CLT), with its relative
neglect of accuracy, form, disciplinary conventions, are largely
inadequate. Indeed, as scholars of literacy have pointed out,
the issue is a general failing of university education, pointing
out that still widely popular process-oriented approach toward
to L1 writing leaves students inadequately prepared for “subject-
speciic” work in English (Paltridge 58; Johns, Text 13). In
the Japanese context in which we teach, key Ministry of Edu-
cation policy documents have, since the late 1980s, called for
greater communicative competence as objectives for secondary
and post-secondary education (Nishino and Watanabe 133-34).
And while the teaching of English and the study of literary texts
continues, in large measure, to follow procedures laid down
in the venerable grammar-translation method, communicative
language teaching (or a commodiied version of it promoted
through private language schools) stands to make signiicant
gains. This situation has created a number of obstacles that
shape student attitudes and teacher responses. Most salient per-
haps are undue emphases on nativeness and oral communica-

48
tive competence (or eikaiwa) in CLT and an arbitrary division
between skills and content. To this development in our own
context, the essay argues for a pedagogy of literary studies as
a subset of a broader project of teaching what Johns calls a “soci-
oliterate” approach, which includes a focus on “texts, roles, and
contexts” (Text 14, 19). We seek an EFL curriculum in which
literature, like other elements of a humanities education, serves
to motivate language learners and provide personal enrichment,
developing their communicative skills in a professional, aca-
demic register and opening up a view of the processing and pro-
duction of knowledge as a social act.

I. Situating literature and EFL studies

As scholars of literature are well aware, the last quarter of the
twentieth century has witnessed sweeping changes in the na-
ture, procedures, and scope of literary education. Cultural stud-
ies, feminist literary studies, and postcolonial studies, to name
a few, have held out the possibility of a truly globalized, multi-
cultural curriculum centered on the English-speaking world. Lit-
tle more than a decade after these new currents in literary stud-
ies, the World Englishes movement (Bolton and Kachru 2006)
began a shift of attention away from the English-language cen-
ters of Britain and America – “the inner circle” of English – to
the outer and expanding circles, primarily in Asia and Africa,
where a variety of “Englishes” plays a vital role in artistic and
commercial life. More recently, researchers in critical applied
linguistics have explored the cultural impact of English and
(neo)colonialism around the globe, in which, according to some,
English-language teaching, past and present, has igured promi-
nently (Phillipson 1992; Pennycook 1995, 1998). These critical

49
and decentering forces, as well as the great cultural and institu-
tional diversity in which the reading, writing, and study of lit-
erature in English now take place, rule out any universal meth-
ods and approaches. A glance at the locations of contributors to
EFL literature debates reveals a wide provenance of voices, from
across Asia, the Middle East, southern and eastern Europe, and
Latin America, pointing up the globalized scope of the teaching
of literatures in English. In such an educational environment,
we remain by turns hopeful and sceptical of the possibility of “a
consistent methodology for presentation [of literature] to non-
native speakers” (Long 42). What is certain is that teachers must
take account of particular social, cultural and institutional ar-
rangements in the places where they work.
Yet despite this diversity, it remains true that professionals
whose primary training is in TESOL have, for the most part,
dominated the question of literature’s role in the classroom, and
EFL-oriented approaches have occupied the center of the dis-
course. One result is that discussions have frequently revolved
around advocating the “use” and “exploitation” of literature in
a language-focused, communicative syllabus. Justiications vary
but, in the main, three predominate: (1) greater communica-
tive competence and linguistic knowledge, (2) the cultivation of
individual response and/or personal growth, (3) and increased
cultural understanding. Alan Maley and Alan Duf usefully sum-
marize the oft-repeated beneits of literature study in The Inward
Ear: Poetry in the Language Classroom (1989), citing such authen-
tic and literary-speciic qualities as universality, non-triviality,
motivation, ambiguity and interaction, personal relevance, and
memorability, among others (8-11).

50
 Indeed, according to a wide range of language-teaching pro-
fessionals, the most important and practical of use for literature
in the EFL classroom is as an authentic language resource. In her
popular Literature and Language Teaching, now in its 22nd print-
ing, Gillian Lazar notes that such a “language-based approach”
to literary texts ofers “a wide range of styles and registers” that
can facilitate discussion through their capacity for multiple in-
terpretations and broach “genuinely interesting and motivating
topics to explore in the classroom” (27). The main guide in this
approach is linguistic analysis, or stylistics, which aims to fos-
ter greater understanding of the language in general as well as
provide students with the tools to make “meaningful interpre-
tations of the text” (Lazar 31). Widdowson, for example, ofers
a stylistic approach to literature in which students engaged in
the study of the language system of English are exposed to “the
actual business of communication” (80). Through comparative
examination of literary texts alongside examples of conventional
usage, EFL students come to an understanding of “the particu-
lar character of literature itself” (Widdowson 80). Following on
such early works as Geofrey N. Leech’s A Linguistic Guide to En-
glish Poetry (1969) and Widdowson’s Stylistics and the Teaching
of Literature (1975), a number of useful books are available to
the literature teacher, books which have the virtue of providing
a common terminology to both the language teaching profes-
sional and the literature teacher, while also setting many of the
observations of traditional literary analysis on a more solid ana-
lytical foundation. These include Short’s Exploring the Language
of Plays, Poems and Prose (1996) and Leech and Short’s Style in
Fiction (second edition, 2007). As beneicial as this approach
may be to both student and teacher – especially its potential to

51
open up a discussion of the “literariness” of the literary text –
we believe that, without attention to personal response and cul-
tural context, such approaches run the risk of a dry formalism.
Indeed, Widdowson’s neo-formalism, in which the literary work
is a creative, individual response to the world, neglects the text’s
situatedness in social and cultural contexts of origin – not to
mention to the diverse ways in which texts can be taken up
across cultures.
After the language-focused syllabus, the most frequently ad-
vocated EFL approach to the literary text is the personal en-
richment approach, or “the personal growth model” (Savvidou).
Here, students bring their personal experiences and emotional
responses to communicative settings, in particular, to group dis-
cussions, thereby entwining language acquisition with the study
of literature and the development of the intellectual and emo-
tional dimensions of personality (Lazar 24). In this vein, Michael
N. Long advocates the development of “response” as the central
rationale for introducing literature to non-native speakers (42).
Long’s approach does not rule out attention to language issues,
in particular, he recommends teacher-generated questions that
lead to an understanding of “the reason for a particular combi-
nation of words, and an appreciation of their special quality”
(45). Yet while largely condemning the “traditional” lecture
based approach to academic literary studies – although Long
does concede that short lectures are the most efective means for
delivering “additional information” (54) – the approach seems
to be nonetheless teacher-centered. More importantly, Long’s
notion of “response” places little emphasis on form, insisting on
the exclusion of any attention to critical and speciically aca-
demic tasks (43). Long’s point about the uni-directional nature

52
of the lecture format is well-taken, as is his insistence that lec-
tures be “short and relevant, and with close reference to the text
in terms which learners can understand” (54-55). However, the
form remains central to academic culture. And while a growing
number of EAP-styled textbooks are now available to help de-
velop student strategies around the form, the lecture can hardly
be said to incapable of renovation, as we discuss below.
In recognition of the obvious fact that language does not ex-
ist in a cultural vacuum, the EFL discourse on the uses of liter-
ature has frequently enlisted literature as a key cultural artifact
for deepening linguistic understanding. Carter and Long call
this approach “the cultural model” of literature teaching. Lazar
contends that “there are strong arguments for saying that ex-
posing students to literature from other cultures is an enriching
and exciting way of increasing their awareness of diferent val-
ues, beliefs, social structures and so on” (62). She points out
that this “literature as content” approach, while perhaps best
practiced by the literary scholar, is by no means the literature
professional’s preserve, and may involve the language teacher
in one or more of the following: the development of compe-
tence in literary analysis, knowledge of literary forms, and the
history of literature’s development within a particular national
tradition, not to mention the exploration of the social, cultural
and political contexts from which a text emerges. These are
crucial issues which we would like to address in detail below,
and the model itself is closest to the professional ideal in which
we are invested as teachers trained in literary studies. For the
moment, we address the more controversial aspects of the “cul-
tural model,” namely, its frequent association with the much
maligned “traditional” approach to the teaching of literature.

53
 Advocates for the use of literature in the EFL classroom typ-
ically begin by lamenting the inadequacy of “traditional” teach-
ing approaches, approaches that are for the most part traced to
the cultural model identiied above. Though acknowledging the
beneits of teaching English literature “as a cultural subject” in
foreign language contexts, Widdowson considers the literature
as culture approach reductive of the nature of literary discourse,
dealing in “factual data” in the manner of historical, anthro-
pological and sociological studies – and reducing literary dis-
course to “conventional statement about ordinary reality” (78-
79). More pointedly, Maley and Duf complain that “all too of-
ten [the teaching of literature in foreign language programmes]
has survived in a traditional mould which is no longer conso-
nant with the rapid changes which have taken place in main-
stream Language Teaching. The emphasis remains on the use
of texts for commentary and analysis – or merely for illustra-
tion” (6). For Ramani and Al-Mekhlai, the teaching of literature
stands indicted of being “teacher-centred and teacher-directed,”
with “literary texts being presented to students through lectures,
summaries and paraphrases, with little or no involvement of
students in understanding and appreciating those texts on their
own.” This approach, they argue, “minimize[s] learner involve-
ment, engagement and participation, and undermines the value
of learners’ responses to literature as readers in their own right,
resulting in frustration and a lack of interest and motivation on
the part of learners.”
Our responses to these claims are mixed. On the one hand,
we recognize the need for a curriculum that not only stimulates
student interest in literature but also delivers on the humanist
promise of personal enrichment. Likewise, it is crucial that texts

54
and supporting materials be geared to students’ levels and inter-
ests at the same time as they challenge students to move beyond
a plethora of conventionally themed – and equally tedious, in
our opinion – language-learning materials, towards a more so-
phisticated level of academic and professional language skills.
We share Lazar’s insistence that teachers must necessarily draw
on all three approaches – language-based, personal enrichment,
and cultural or content based models – in order to ensure that
“students become enjoyably involved in using literature in the
classroom” (43). Likewise, we share the view of Lazar and oth-
ers that literature provides various kinds of motivation, allows
access to culture schemata, augments language acquisition and
language awareness, develops interpretive and critical thinking
skills, and fosters emotional response and intellectual develop-
ment (Lazar 15-19). Yet from the foregoing criticisms of “tradi-
tional” methods by Widdowson, Maley and Duf, and others,
we would like to separate what is merely a species of com-
plaint about bad teaching, wherever it may occur, from what
might proitably inform a sound pedagogy in the EFL literature
classroom. This exploration is taken up below in part II, where
we discuss the role of culture in the literature classroom, and
in part III, where we outline a course in American literature
that attempts to develop discipline-speciic literacies through
a genre-based approach. To anticipate our argument, however,
we believe that an efective course will be a limited “subject”
(Widdowson 2, 71-85) in literary studies that is academically
oriented and discipline-speciic, with a focus not merely on de-
veloping general language skills but also on written and spoken
luency in academic genres.

55
II. Teaching Literature and/as “Culture”
In any discussion of English-instruction literature courses in EFL
contexts, questions regarding the place of culture in matters
such as curriculum design and text selection will be unavoidable
given that literary texts are products of particular places and
times. For example, in reference to British literature, Sivakumar
Sivasubramaniam writes: “Reading the texts of [writers such as
Shakespeare, Wordsworth, Shelley, and Dickens] is considered
an important part of English culture” (256). One of the bene-
its of literary study, then, may be becoming well versed in the
nuances of a text’s cultural origin. On the other hand, consider-
ing the experience of reading literature in English from an EFL
student’s perspective, Truong Thi My Van notes that in addi-
tion to the linguistic challenge, “other things that make litera-
ture diicult are the historical, social, and political references
that add complexity for non-English speakers” (3). Thus, EFL
students reading literature in English may ind themselves pre-
sented with something of a catch-22: a lack of familiarity with
cultural aspects inherent in a text will hinder its comprehen-
sion; yet, that essential familiarity may only result from a sus-
tained, deep reading of literature. As teachers of literature in
English to non-native learners of English, we are fully aware of
the challenges presented to students when they encounter a text
in which the embedded cultural references and values are often
signiicantly diferent (indeed, literally “foreign”) to their own
cultural background.
In comparison, for the English language teacher, culture may
be viewed as one of many pedagogical aspects of the EFL class-
room and can be taught, if so desired, through any number
of possible media: newspapers, magazines, letters, song lyrics,

56
television and movies. If literature is taught in the language
classroom, it is almost always seen as a means for acquiring lin-
guistic and cultural competence. Those writing about the teach-
ing of literature in the EFL classroom, typically write, as we
have seen, about its use. As Joyce Merrill Valdes observes in
“Culture in Literature,” “The statement that literature may be
used to teach culture is probably so widely accepted as to be al-
most a cliché …. It is simply accepted as a given that literature
is a viable component of second language programs at the ap-
propriate level and that one of the major functions of literature
is to serve as medium to transmit the culture of the people who
speak the language in which it is written” (137). For Valdes,
literature is not simply one of many vehicles for imparting cul-
tural information; literature is, in her words, “culture in action”
(137).
Furthermore, Valdes makes a distinction between literature
and other non literary “readings” (among which she counts the
shortened, simpliied “graded reader” versions of authentic liter-
ary texts) noting that various “readings” have valid and valuable
uses in EFL instruction; the purpose, approach, and experience
of reading, though, is essentially diferent from that with a liter-
ary text. Although the central issue in “Culture and Literature”
is the efectiveness of learning about culture through reading
literature, Valdes speaks to the concerns of literature teachers
when she notes that when teaching a university-level course ti-
tled “American Life Through Literature” for non-native learners,
although the students learn about American culture, “the aim of
the course [is] to teach literature for the same reasons that litera-
ture is taught to sophomore native speakers of English …” (139).
This fairly well sums up our approach as teachers of literature in

57
English in Japan to EFL students. Our methods and classroom
procedures with a given literary text may difer somewhat from
how we would teach it to a class of native speakers, but our aim
would be the same (with the secondary aim of raising cultural
competence).
Clearly, for the teacher of English-medium literature courses,
the relation between text and culture impacts directly on how
and what he or she teaches. Two issues at the forefront of the
discussion are the primary focus of a literature course and the
choice of the texts themselves. As mentioned above, literary
texts are often taught in language courses for their linguistic
beneits and for the tangential purpose of introducing to stu-
dents the culture of the focus language with the pedagogical
justiication that the acquired cultural knowledge will enhance
the learning of the target language. Although proponents claim
that “studying literature enables us to understand the foreign
culture more clearly,” Christopher Brumit and Ronald Carter
argue in “Literature and Education” that “the role of literature
in either language or culture courses should be a minor one”
as the “status of the texts themselves is very diicult to deine
for most non-native speaking teachers, as well as for learners”
(25). Brumit and Carter point out further that “it is unhelp-
ful to view literary texts as either naturalistic pictures of British
or American life, for purposes of cultural study, or as examples
of the best use of the English language, for language courses”
(25). As we shall see, this is more of a concern for a language
teacher using literature than for a literature teacher teaching
literature. The ambiguity or irony inherent in a text will most
likely not be viewed equally in a language course and in a lit-
erature course. What may be seen as a hindrance in the one

58
(an unnecessary complication and impediment to comprehen-
sion for the EFL learner focusing on the more literal aspects of
language acquisition), will be valued in the other as an asset (an
opportunity and context for dealing with literary aspect of a text
such as point of view and tone).
The “non-standard” aspect of literary language is an issue
we discuss elsewhere; here, though, our concern is with the re-
lation between literature and culture. In this context we agree
that it is “unhelpful” to view a literary text as a clear and ac-
curate window into culture. Literary concerns such as narra-
tive point of view and irony complicate the reading of a text
as strictly a cultural artifact. The diiculties arise, we would
argue, when literary texts are used for non-literary purposes.
While acknowledging the value and purpose of language and
culture courses, we also argue that they are diferent from those
of a literature course. To put it succinctly, as mentioned above,
we are engaged in “teaching” literature rather than “using” or
“exploiting” it as a means to other ends. Although it is almost
always valuable to integrate historical and cultural content into
the literature curriculum, it will be of an ancillary rather than
primary concern. Our focus is on literary competency rather
than the study of history or culture per se. In other words, for
our purposes, cultural knowledge may inform the reading of lit-
erature, but we do not read literature solely to accrue cultural
knowledge. To quote Valdes once again: “An understanding
of literature depends upon discernment of the values inherent,
but not necessarily speciically expressed, in the work” (138).
As Valdes explains, if a student understands the high value that
American culture places on “individual independence” or “com-
petition and fair play” and can infer when and how these are

59
present in an American work of iction, he or she will read the
text with better comprehension and appreciation.
A second issue concerning the relation of culture to English-
instruction literature courses is the selection of the text itself, or,
more precisely, the selection of the author. The teaching of liter-
ary works by non-native writers of English literature (e.g., R. K.
Narayan, Chinua Achebe, V.S. Naipal) is advocated by many as
a way of providing students with a more culturally comfortable
relation to the text. In this context, it should be noted that “non-
native” refers not to English-speaking/writing ability, but to
country of origin. Writers such as Narayan, Achebe, and Naipaul
wrote in English and are “non-native” only in a limited sense of
not having been born in England or the United States. In a post-
colonial environment of “world Englishes,” though, being a na-
tive speaker/writer of English is no longer limited by national
boundaries. A literary text in English by a non-native writer
would, arguably, be more accessible and appropriate for the EFL
classroom. After all, the students (and non-native teacher) can
relate to the text by sharing an experience with English simi-
lar with that of the author. For example, literature in English
by non-native users may “manifest a cultural context that an
ESL/EFL learner can identify with” while also demonstrating
how “the English language has been extended, modiied and
elaborated” (O’Sullivan). A non-native English text may also
“give students a substantial introduction to non-canonical texts”
(Mohammadzadeh, qtd. in Ramani and Al-Mekhlai). A com-
mon theme among proponents of works by non-native writers
is the dual beneits of the texts: cultural accessibility and an
awareness of the extended borders of literature in English.

60
 An exclusive focus on non-native texts may be more of a con-
cern in a language course than in a literature course. In liter-
ature courses there are many good reasons to choose texts by
non-native writers of English, and no good reasons not to out-
side of the boundaries inherent in the course description (e.g.,
nineteenth-century British poetry, modern American drama).
Works by non-native writers would not be excluded from a lit-
erature curriculum and may even provide the focus of a partic-
ular course. For the teaching of literature in English, though,
an exclusive reliance on non-native writers would be a needless
restriction. Cultural familiarity with a text has its beneits, but
the “strangeness” of the unfamiliar has its attractions, too. Fur-
thermore, with the rise of cultural and post-colonial approaches
in literary studies, as discussed above, along with the World En-
glishes movement’s calling attention to writers of literature in
English from countries outside the “inner-circle” of Britain and
America, the appearance of “non-native” writers on an “English”
literature course syllabus is no longer a rarity.
As teachers of literature, although we believe in the primacy
of the literary quality of the text over its cultural signiicance
(the text is not simply a vehicle for conveying cultural refer-
ences), we also recognize cultural knowledge as useful and even
necessary for comprehending the literary text at hand. Along
with grammatical and literary competence, a kind of “cultural”
competence is also necessary to enable students to navigate to
meaningful comprehension of a literary text. Again, however,
our approach in a literature course is diferent from that of a cul-
ture course: the possession of cultural knowledge may certainly
enhance the reading of literature but literature is not read pri-
marily as a means to understand culture.

61
 Furthermore, what we mean by culture is by necessity some-
what imprecise. Under its umbrella, culture can cover items
ranging from historical events to material artifacts. Lazar, in
a discussion of “Reading Literature Cross-culturally,” provides
not a strict deinition of “culture” but, rather, a fairly inclu-
sive (but not exhaustive) list of “cultural aspects to consider
when using literary texts” from such divergent categories as:
objects or products; social structures, roles and relationships;
customs, rituals, traditions, and festivals; beliefs, values, and
superstitions; political, historic and economic background; in-
stitutions; taboos; genre. Regarding her own list of “cultural as-
pects,” Lazar asks, “Would you like to add anything to the list”
(65-66)? Every teacher’s description of culture or list of cultural
aspects will difer slightly; however, we may agree that an in-
ternalization or intuitive understanding of Lazar’s catalogue of
cultural aspects might constitute what we could consider “cul-
tural competence.”
Lazar warns, though, that “the teaching of culture in the lan-
guage classroom could prove controversial” (66). At one ex-
treme is the approach of the language teacher using literature
as a resource whose aim is “to teach language, not culture” and
who, therefore, should select literary texts which are “culturally
universal or, at least, culturally neutral.” The other position
is the teacher who feels it is his or her responsibility to help
students understand the “linguistic features in a literary text”
which may impede their comprehension (65-66). Our position
is clearly closer to the second example. As stated above, we
realize that an awareness of the cultural aspects of a text will
enable students to comprehend better. To reinterpret the irst
example, our aim is to teach literature, not culture. Though, as

62
to a culturally universal or neutral text, if such a thing actually
exists (which is highly unlikely), it would most likely be too dull
to be worth reading.
Our goal, then, is not to provide the simplest text possible to
ease the challenge of comprehension but to help students bring
to the text cultural knowledge which will enable them to bet-
ter comprehend what they read. It may be helpful to think of
cultural aspects as diegetic (within the world of the text) or non-
diegetic (outside the world of the text). Diegetic aspects may
include historical and social events which are present in the nar-
rative. A knowledge of prohibition or popular songs and dances
of the 1920s is certainly helpful when reading The Great Gatsby.
Non-diegetic aspects would include information such as the bi-
ography of the author. Details of the life of F. Scott Fitzgerald,
for example, may provide insight into the creation and develop-
ment of the character of Jay Gatsby. Other cultural aspects are
related to the history and genres of literature itself. Depending
on the course, students may need to have an understanding of
the history and conventions of romanticism or modernism. If we
are reading Wordsworth’s “Lines Composed upon Westminster
Bridge” or Basho’s “furu ike ya,” knowledge of the poetic and
rhetorical structure of a sonnet or a haiku will add to our ability
to understand and appreciate the poem.
As with grammatical and literary competence, students bring
to class varying degrees of cultural competence depending on
their own experiences. As teachers, though, we have a number
of methods available to help students acquire or increase the
cultural competence needed to successfully comprehend a par-
ticular text. Sometimes the most eicient and direct method of
conveying the necessary information is a class lecture. In some

63
classes we may assign our students to selected research topics re-
lated to the text. And at other times we may engage our students
in a variety of in-class activities aimed at raising cultural aware-
ness (Lazar, again, refers to such activities as “personalizing,”
“making cultural comparisons,” and “making associations”). Fi-
nally, as with the acquiring of greater linguistic competence,
the more experience students have with literature in another
language (in this case, English), the better acquainted they be-
come with the respective culture; which, in turn, enables them
to navigate through increasingly challenging texts successfully.
Students may discover or infer the cultural knowledge they need
to make sense of the text while in the process of making sense
of the text. Although this rather paradoxical cycle (or, ideally,
an upward spiral) is by no means easy, it is certainly not hope-
less. Like the speaker in Roethke’s poem, “The Waking,” stu-
dents may learn by going where they have to go.
The interplay between the literary text and the surround-
ing culture (the “literary text embedded in the culture”) can be
seen, for example, in a course titled Introduction to Poetry in
English. This is a one-semester course designed for 2nd -year En-
glish majors and takes a generic approach to the reading of po-
etry in English. Rather than a historical or national approach
(e.g., 19th -century American; Modern British) poems are cho-
sen rather randomly from a wide selection of poetry (British,
American, Irish; ranging from the 16th through the 20th century;
involving a variety of topics and forms). Since this is an English-
medium literature course in a Japanese university EFL program,
we are also aware of the ever-present and ongoing focus on
developing English-language competency. Students, therefore,
keep a weekly reading journal, write an in-class midterm and

64
inal essay, and do a fair amount of memorizing and reciting of
poetry (one-third of the course grade) in order to improve their
ability at literary analysis and in general English skills.
Essentially, the course looks at the conventions and methods
of poetry as a genre and, in the words of the poet John Ciardi,
is concerned with “how a poem means.” Students are intro-
duced to elements of poetry such as form and structure, rhyme
patterns, rhythm and meter, sound, igurative uses of language,
and so on. All of this is, of course, merely a means to an end –
reading, appreciating, and understanding a poem as a literary
work of art. This focus on literary competency, however, does
not negate the possibility of literature providing a “window”
into culture or of cultural literacy enhancing literary analysis.
Take, for example, two poems on the “Introduction to Poetry in
English” syllabus, “The Forge” and “Requiem for the Croppies,”
both by the Irish poet Seamus Heaney. The central igure in “The
Forge” is a blacksmith plying a trade on the verge of becoming
irrelevant in the modern world. Looking out from the forge to
the facing street, the blacksmith “recalls a clatter / Of hoofs
where traic is [now] lashing in rows” and then, with a kind of
stoic pride, he returns to his forge to “beat real iron out, to work
the bellows.” Except for knowing what a blacksmith or an anvil
is (which is really more a question of linguistic rather than cul-
tural knowledge), the poem can be read and understood without
much additional cultural or historical background. In contrast,
“Requiem for the Croppies” is a topical poem with a speciic his-
torical reference to the failed 1798 rebellion against the British
by Irish nationalists. Without some knowledge of Ireland’s colo-
nial past under British rule, the reader can grasp only a general
sense of the conlict described in the poem (“Until … on Vinegar

65
Hill … the inal conclave. / Terraced thousands died, shaking
scythes at cannon.”) rather than its full power and emotional
impact. In this case, a short lecture by the instructor would most
efectively and eiciently convey the necessary cultural and his-
torical knowledge while maintaining the primacy of the literary
content in an English-medium EFL course.

III. Developing Academic Literacies in an American Litera-

ture Class
What follows turns from a focus on questions of culture in and
around texts and genres to a discussion of course implementa-
tion, providing an outline of two semesters of an undergraduate
course on American literature – modern poetry and iction. Our
implementation of the skills component of the curriculum fol-
lows a genre-based approach, which lays emphasis on the use of
models and the regular practice of analytical text types as a pre-
lude to the writing of a literary essay. This focus aims to provide
the basic orientation to academic literary study as an evidence-
based form of discourse where both an understanding of the
nature of literary communication and the requirement of dis-
playing cultural competence constitute important complemen-
tary goals. The curriculum set out here will undoubtedly appear
both ambitious and ideal. Ambitious since we have endeavored
to integrate skills and content in a single course in recognition
of the reality that an English-medium literature class may not
supported by a language program that does more than cultivate
basic communicative skills. Likewise the curriculum proposed
here is ideal by virtue of the fact that its primary aim is inte-
grate communicative EFL approaches with academic content-
based instruction. Our discussion of the questions of text se-

66
lection above is but one facet of the more general problem of
how disciplinary notions of the literary canon, literary history
and the speciic nature of literary language are negotiated in
any given ofering of a “subject” (Widdowson 2, 71-85) in spe-
ciic cultural and institutional settings. Below a further set of
limitations and choices will be explored.
Both semesters of the American literature course are con-
ined to exploring works written in the twentieth century. Ac-
cessibility of language and content is a key reason for the lim-
itation on period. Moreover, the need to explore the texts in
adequate context, as discussed below, plays a role in the pace of
the course and therefore dictates restriction of focus. The genre
focus allows extended exposure to a particular literary form.
However, approaches to poetry and iction will vary not only
in regard to issues of form but also in regard to the possibilities
they hold out for exploration of literary and cultural context. In-
deed, the poetry course, in which it is possible to cover an entire
century of literary history with its changes of style and subject
matter, also lends itself to a fairly satisfactory and broad explo-
ration of the contemporary cultural context. This text-context
organization is also employed in the iction course. However,
the scope is more strictly limited: a single text and decade of
American literature, namely, Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby and
the 1920s. Thus, we propose as one model of syllabus design
a course in which relatively short forms allow a more expansive
exploration of both genre and cultural context while long forms
receive extended attention for both formal complexity and his-
torical timeframe.
Both courses are designed to accommodate student-centered
and more traditional teacher-centered formats, with the primary

67
goal of fostering students’ academic literacy through regular
practice of key text types and a foray into the literary essay
genre. Three broad approaches are practiced in the poetry and
iction classes, with a view to developing communicative, per-
sonal response as well as academic competency in general and
speciically literary terms. These approaches are (1) formal-
analytical, (2) biographical, and (3) contextual, introduced in
the sequence outlined above, with assessment organized around
three main classroom and homework tasks: (1) weekly journal
writing as preparation for (2) weekly classroom discussions of
assign texts or chapters, and (3) a short literary essay, analyt-
ical or thematic in nature. In the iction course, a fourth task
is added: a group research project on historical and cultural
themes of the 1920s.
Through weekly journal responses, students develop their
analytical skills by focusing on a speciic analytical text type.
Unlike Long’s notion of response cited above, the task is a struc-
tured one in which both spoken and written responses involve
demonstration of analytical competence. The journal requires
students not only to focus on analysis of assigned texts but also to
pay attention to form, entailing speciic descriptive and analyti-
cal moves germane to literary study, namely, a close attention to
the textual source with the integration of quotations accompa-
nied by line or page references and commentary. Models of the
structured journal entry are distributed to students before the
irst assignment is due, and the need for claims to be grounded
in textual evidence is repeated throughout the course. Alongside
each of the paragraph journal entries in the notebooks, students
are required to keep a record of group discussions. In addition,
as part of their class preparation, students are encouraged to list

68
vocabulary and make translations of passages as aids to compre-
hension. Thus – as students are informed in the course syllabus –
the notebook is a record of their work throughout the semester.
It is collected by the instructor regularly and weighted signii-
cantly in the inal course assessment, between 30% and 50% of
the inal grade.
Skills developed through the journal are also tested. A mid-
semester test focuses on basic critical terms (schemes and tropes,
elements of iction). But students must also prepare an answer to
one of the previously assigned discussion questions demonstrat-
ing of their use of the analytical text type. Review of needed
forms for the writing task are also addressed. A discussion of
ways of framing topic sentences for speciic kinds of analytical
paragraphs as well as methods of internal cohesion and organi-
zation are discussed in class as preparation. Students may use
only an outline, a dictionary, and a copy of their text on the test.
An incentive to further communicative classroom exchanges is
provided by giving students an opportunity to discuss their an-
swers with classmates just prior to the test.
The written product of the formal-analytical task forms the
content for small group discussions which take place relatively
independent of the instructor. However, the instructor circu-
lates throughout the class asking students about their progress,
listening in, and answering questions. Needless to say, the tar-
get language will be the desirable one for the group discussion
sessions (the required one for interactions with the instructor)
but lexibility is important. Students’ native language should
be accepted in the negotiation of diicult concepts, and the use
of students’ translation notes should be encouraged. Whatever
the instructor’s level of ability in Japanese language, he or she

69
might proitably take the role of curious onlooker, soliciting stu-
dents’ input on matters of translation. As for students’ use of the
target language, whether they feel comfortable “talking about”
what they have written or merely reading what they have com-
posed at home will depend on their levels, personal inclinations,
and preferred communication styles.
While the students themselves are engaged in developing an-
alytical writing and discussion skills, the instructor is in large
part (but not exclusively) responsible for delivering the bio-
graphical and contextual dimensions of the course in a lecture
format. As our previous arguments have made clear, this tradi-
tional classroom form remains integral to the academic culture
into which EFL students are inducted. As cited above, Long dis-
parages the form at the same time as he admits its efectiveness,
while Durant argues that the lecture provides an opportunity
for presenting “a model of individual interpretation or critical
thought” (151). A pedagogical approach to the lecture is, in
the very least, an essay in itself. Needless to say a few basic
guidelines are possible here: namely, that lecture duration, vo-
cabulary, and supporting materials be appropriate to students’
levels. However, even the challenges presented by lectures can
be mitigated in a collaborative environment. Post-lecture ac-
tivities – small-group focused – can not only ill in the gaps of
comprehension for weaker students but also facilitate further
practice of student-centered discussion skills. Lecture discus-
sion questions can be taken up in group discussion, questions
that ask students to consider possible connections between the
lives of the writers and the works themselves. Similarly, lec-
tures that focus on historical and cultural contexts ask students
to consider a text’s relation to its culture of origin. Biographical

70
and cultural issues will vary in importance according to writer,
period and movement, and students’ exploration of the connec-
tions between text, biography, and context can be addressed in
speciic terms through follow-up lecture or wrap-up segments:
biographical exploration of poems of Robert Lowell, Anne Sex-
ton and Sylvia Plath will lead to background on confessional
poetry while a poem such Paul Laurence Dunbar’s “We Wear
the Mask” – which might appears on a irst reading to be lack-
ing in historical and cultural speciicity – can be read anew once
the context of Jim Crow laws and etiquette in the post-Civil War
period is understood. Ideally, each classroom session balances
student-centered discussion and lecture, yet circumstances may
dictate otherwise. EFL students should be made aware of these
dimensions of academic culture as well as norms of behaviour
during such sessions. If lecture questions are linked to assess-
ment in the form quizzes or inals, further incentive can be pro-
vided. In any case, depending on class-size, seating arrange-
ment, and class composition, the lecture may be far from a one-
way transmission of information.
The literary essay assignment, the inal task of the class, ex-
tends and elaborates the students’ work in the journals and in
their group discussions. Having written and revised paragraph-
length passages in particular analytical text types dealing with
character analysis, setting, plot summary, or explication of igu-
rative language, and having enriched their vocabulary and lu-
ency through discussion and note-taking, students move on to
practice a formal academic genre. Topics are distributed mid-
way through the course, and a portion of class time is devoted
in the second half of the semester to dealing with the various
rhetorical and organizational issues that students will face in

71
the essay. While students will have prior experience in academic
writing, making the discussion of essay elements review and re-
inforcement, discussion and workshop activities for the essay at
hand seek to orient students toward the speciic demands of the
genre. Essay topics range from basic analytical tasks (charac-
ter analysis, for example) to the more thematic and contextual,
thus providing options students of various levels and interests.
The language and content of the essay prompts are one guide
to expectations, and these deserve explanation by the instructor
in his or her capacity as intermediary between students and the
discourse community of readers and scholars. How has a given
work been framed in critical accounts? How has the text been
seen to address particular issues of its day? An evaluation grid
that is used in the assessment of the irst draft is also distributed
to students and discussed; the grid breaks the essay down into
main sections and states objectives for each, providing further
hints about required moves in an acceptable piece of writing.
At this stage, the rhetorical requirements of the introduc-
tion, the necessity of a serious and compelling claim in a the-
sis statement, the use of relevant biographical and contextual
information, and the proper documentation of textual and sec-
ondary sources come front and center. One or more models of
the essay genre are distributed in class and the relevant elements
and moves in the essay are discussed, including the use of spe-
ciic text types (problem-solution, narrative, analysis, illustra-
tion, cause and efect). The extra classroom time allocated to
essay issues can intrude on both discussion and lecture of the
course content. However, discussion can remain an important
element as students working on common texts, themes, or ap-
proaches are grouped together for consultation. These sessions

72
can be broken down into speciic tasks, for example, a group
discussion of the strengths and weaknesses of students’ thesis
statements. They can also engage issues of practicality, serious-
ness, and interest of claims and approaches. While there is little
doubt that some texts, both long and short forms, will vary in
their capacity to link to cultural contexts, such contexts – his-
torical, social, and cultural – can prove efective in helping stu-
dents at diferent stages of their encounters with literary works:
the framing moves required in the introduction, for example,
can facilitated by reference to context, a point that casts ear-
lier cited claims about the cultural model as reductive in a new
light. Indeed, while the literary essay is surely an exploration
of a work’s linguistic, rhetorical, and cultural complexity, it is
also an exercise in speciication and reduction. Thus, we believe
that culture, or what EFL professionals refer to as the cultural
model of literature teaching, occupies an important place – al-
though not a dominant one – in situating literature, not only in
relation to issues around course design, pace, and text selection
but also in relation to the development of students’ academic
literacy, through work with text types and conventional essay
genres. Clearly, the instructor has at his or her disposal myr-
iad classroom formats, teaching methods, classroom tasks, and
projects and written assignments from which to choose in order
to achieve these ends.

Conclusion
In this essay, we have sought to explore approaches to the teach-
ing of literature in EFL contexts, taking the discourse on litera-
ture and language teaching as a point of departure. With their
explicit focus on issues of language, motivation, and culture,

73
learner-centered EFL approaches have much to ofer the litera-
ture specialist. Our discussion has examined some of the peda-
gogical implications of these approaches for the English-medium
literature course, in particular the “cultural model” of literature
teaching. Framing the literary text in terms of its culture of ori-
gin while also conceiving the text as “culture in action” well
represents the interplay of text and context that the teacher of
literature seeks to promote. For the student, an awareness of
cultural contexts can provide insight and intelligibility at key
moments of his or her encounter with literary texts while not
forfeiting attention to speciically literary qualities.
Yet if our discussion of literature in EFL teaching has led
us to recognize numerous pedagogical beneits, it has also
prompted us to highlight some of the shortcomings of EFL mod-
els. The learner-centered, communicative biases of these models
do not address discipline-speciic competencies nor do these ap-
proaches promote a recognition of the multiple intersections of
social and cultural forces in classroom practice. Our teaching
is determined to a great extent by local social and cultural sit-
uations, not only those of a particular time and place but also
a location within the speciic culture of a community of read-
ers and researchers. In practical terms, this necessitates a focus
on genre, which according to Johns, entails “complex oral or
written responses by speakers or writers to the demands of a so-
cial context” (Genre 3). Thus, we have paid attention to activi-
ties that promote competence in spoken and written discipline-
speciic text types and genres, in addition to the more learner-
centred modes of response. Moreover, we believe that so-called
traditional approaches such as the lecture must continue to play
an important role in the English-medium academic classroom;

74
not merely because it is an efective means of knowledge transfer
but because, ideally, the lecturer acts as intermediary between
students and a community of practice, providing a model of soci-
oliteracy that stands to beneit them in their future professional
development. As for the lecture form itself, there is ample evi-
dence that it is capable of innovation. Indeed, we believe that
within this basic framework for the developing academic liter-
acy there is much room for innovation; however, it will require
the teacher’s response to social, cultural and institutional con-
ditions.

75
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Christopher J. Armstrong is director of the Program in British and

American Cultural Studies in the College of World Englishes at Chukyo
University, Nagoya, Japan, where he teaches Canadian and American
literary and cultural studies. His research and teaching interests in-
clude materials development and English for Academic Purposes as
well as contemporary literature and ilm as relections of regional and
multicultural themes in North America.

Anthony Piccolo received his B.A. in English from Gonzaga Univer-

sity and his M.A. in English from Saint Louis University. He has been
teaching literature in English at Japanese universities for nineteen
years. Prior to coming to Japan, he taught in the American Studies
Program and in the American English Institute at the University of
Oregon. He currently teaches in the Language Center at Kinjo Gakuin
University in Nagoya. In tandem with content-based English educa-
tion, his research and teaching interests include modern American and
postcolonial literature.

78
 Becoming-literature:
Deleuze and the Craquelure
Jof P.N. Bradley

Abstract
Zigzagging across literacy, the literary and literature, breakthrough and
breakdown, cracking times and the crack-up, processes of becoming,
transformation and dead-ends, I endeavour to introduce the ‘image’ of
literature developed by French philosopher Gilles Deleuze (1925-1995).
As we shall see, reading and writing literature will be considered a ques-
tion of transformation or becoming – a fragmentary process, always in the
midst of things, and importantly, destined for a missing people, for those
‘yet to come’ as Paul Klee and Franz Kafka are want to say. The point
to be made is that teaching transformation or indeed the transformation
of teaching ought not to be construed as a militant pursuit by sad peda-
gogues, a dogmatic indoctrination thrust upon pre-formed identities, but
rather a curious happening – in-between – part of process of creative, in-
volution or entangling … a becoming other for the other: transformation
as a futural orientation.

Zigzagging across literacy, the literary and literature, break-

through and breakdown, cracking times and the crack-up, pro-
cesses of becoming, transformation and dead-ends, I endeav-
our to introduce the “image” of literature developed by French

79
philosopher Gilles Deleuze (1925-1995). As we shall see, read-
ing and writing literature will be considered a question of trans-
formation or becoming – a fragmentary process, always hap-
hazardly in the midst of things, and importantly, destined for “a
missing people,” for those “yet to come” as Paul Klee and Franz
Kafka are wont to say. The point to be made is that teaching
transformation or indeed the transformation of teaching ought
not to be construed as the sole preserve, or militant pursuit, of
sad pedagogues, as a dogmatic indoctrination thrust upon pre-
formed identities, but rather a curious happening – serendipi-
tous even – in-between – part of a process of creative involution
or entangling, forming a block of sensation on which its own
lines of experimentation run “between” the terms in play and
beneath assignable relations – a-parallel evolution, a becoming
other for the other: transformation and experiment as a futural
orientation – a line of light without destination or inclination.
Where this creativity or transformation begins or ends is brack-
eted from the outset to avoid dogmatic determination or insis-
tence. Why? Like children’s play, the love of literature – how
machinic bodily desire airms the joy of reading and writing –
means the impossibility of forecasting how things will work out,
for good or worse.
Hence, we shall refrain from declaring that some becomings
are more preferable than others. For some this a perilous ethi-
cal gambit but for others it is a risk worth taking. Against the
familiar retort “Grow up! There is only one model for reading and
writing. And it is the one I decree!” perhaps it is better to pause
for relection when challenged – in my view unethically and
fascistically – to choose between the becomings which emerge
from reading the sacred texts of this or that literature or those

80
becomings which take on a real material and machinic order
during “play.” This is a question of the innocence of becoming
and amor fati. The trajectory of this paper therefore suggests –
through a stark reading of schizoanalysis1 – that it is only in
pushing through or accelerating delirium or schizophrenia qua
process that creativity can become unleashed from repetitive,
immiserating cycles of commodiication, consumption and ex-
change.
Let’s start with three quotes which will serve as guides for
the paper. The irst two are by Deleuze. The irst reads: “The
ultimate aim of literature is to set free, in the delirium, this cre-
ation of a health or this invention of a people, that is, a possi-
bility of life” (Essays 4). The second: “Learning a foreign lan-
guage means composing the singular points of one’s own body
or one’s own language with those of another shape or element,
which tears us apart but also propels us into a hitherto unknown
and unheard-of world of problems. To what are we dedicated if
not to those problems which demand the very transformation of
our body and our language” (Diference 241)? The irst makes
a direct link between health and literature and “the people to
come.” The second says learning is founded in and through what
is beautifully described as a “voluptuous apprenticeship of the
senses” (Cole, “Matter” 4). From this point of view, and con-
cerning the image of thought as such, the learning process qua
semiotic inquiry takes place “in and through the unconscious”
(Deleuze, Diference 165) because only that can be considered
the true engine of desire. The third quote is from Bernd Her-
zogenrath, Professor of American Studies at the University of
Frankfurt, who in discussing the ilms of David Lynch argues:

81
 There is an almost “ethical imperative” to devote time and
energy exactly to such works of art that challenge and sub-
vert the “mainstream” (of thought), that experiment with
other than the established ways of seeing, thinking, and
feeling. (199)

From these quotes certain observations can be derived, one of

which is that “we” – as privileged deliverers of truth – teach not to
“liberate” wretched, repressed souls but to create and transform
ourselves and others through an embodied, afective pedagogy.
This view is derived from a schizoanalysis of the unconscious,
which, contra the dogmatic and caricatured readings of the psy-
choanalysis of Freud and Lacan, has little truck with pre-formed
structures or outcomes. But this perspective, while sharing the
intellectual genealogy of schizoanalysis, also attempts to think
afresh the material problems facing young people in our con-
temporary age.
Through the prism of Multiple Literacy Theory (MLT) devel-
oped by the singular and collective works of Masny and Cole –
the so-called “third way” between New Literacy Studies and
multiliteracies – I shall outline the intensive rather than extensive
nature of reading literature, undertaking an applied Deleuzian-
ism in the ield of education, to account for the conception of
reading and writing as processual, transformative and indeed de-
territorializing – described elsewhere as “the breaking up of or-
der, boundaries and form to produce movement and growth”
(Sutton, Deleuze Reframed). Taking inspiration from Deleuze’s
transformational pragmatics (Semetsky, “Deleuze” 220), which
combines the work of John Dewey and Paulo Freire, the en-
counter with the event of reading is an uncanny and experi-

82
mental one, that is to say, a singularity. Intensive or machinic
reading assesses how texts work, what they produce, “for me”
or “for us,” akin to what the English poet and novelist Malcolm
Lowry says of his own work: “it’s anything you want it to be,
so long as it works” (qtd. in Deleuze and Guattari, Anti-Oedipus
119). Of course, while reading is a fundamental component of
learning and education, reading is taken here as less to do with
esoteric, philological exercises obsessed with signiiers and sig-
niieds, and more to do with an opening to the world rather than
a dogmatic representation of it. Otherwise put in the words of
Deleuze, it is like extracting from texts a power, a revolutionary
force.
Perhaps there are two ways of reading a book. The irst one
searches for essential and stable subjectivities, the interiority of
the author and so on. The other is interested in experimental
perspectives. This point of view considers the book as “a little
non-signifying machine” (Deleuze, Negotiations 8) – text as part
of a wider extra-textual vitalist practice. One picks up a book
and discovers how one can connect with it machinically, how
one can hook up with one’s life-world, immediate environs, ex-
istential comportment. If nothing is produced, so be it, one tries
another. Thinking the book as part of a wider, complex set of as-
semblages that continuously connect, bifurcate, combine leads
to a more emergent pedagogy. There is nothing to explain, un-
derstand, or interpret; it is more a matter of simply plugging
into an electric circuit. It is a question of what works, and the
work which must be done together as a praxis of thought. This
second, intensive way of reading difers from the irst as it ques-
tions how a book operates hydro-dynamically, which is to say
that writing and reading become a low or “delicious lux” as D.

83
H. Lawrence insists. Writing enters into relations of “current,
counter-current, and eddy with other lows” (Deleuze, Negotia-
tions 8). Writing and literature are afairs of becoming (devenir),
uninished, always in process and in situ, a metamorphosis, as
Deleuze says. Why? Because, as Deleuze insists, l’ecriture itself
is metamorphosis.
Similarly, we could describe the intensive way of teaching in
terms of a contact with the outside. This intensive format is “a
low meeting other lows, one machine among others” (Deleuze,
Negotiations 9). If reading through experimentation and afec-
tivity is embroiled in the maelstrom of life – amidst events that
are alien from the stiling prose, and idle, pious talk sometimes
found in imperial edicts – the reader may extract joys and afects
and, for Deleuze, this transformative reading is airmative, joy-
ous, in love with life – after all, what else is there?
Although a philosopher by trade, Deleuze was passionate
about this experimentation with thought and the love of teach-
ing. On the subject of his own classes, he says his seminars were
akin to “moving matter” like music, “with each group taking
from it what suits them at the time” (qtd. in Dosse 354). Tak-
ing a slightly skew-whif view regarding the notion of intensity,
and, like what T. S. Eliot says of genuine poetry – that is to say,
it communicates before it is understood – Deleuze says there is no
diiculty of understanding the ideas in books because “concepts
are exactly like sounds, colours or images” (Deleuze and Parnet
10); they are intensities which either suit or do not. The reader
simply takes from the encounter what enhances his or her every-
day materiality. And through the micrological and impercepti-
ble comportment of the body, what is afected can be a spring
in one’s step, a change in worldview. What is incorporated then

84
is what enlivens, what embraces the secret of joie de vivre. This
way of reading grants the book the ontological equivalence of
art, a record, play, ilm or TV show. Literature in the form of
ilm or philosophy is a distinct embodied thought process. In
this radical democracy of objects, the pragmatic question per-
tains less to signiicance or place in the pantheon, and more to
how literature works, what thoughts or feelings manifest – what
sensations and perceptions interact with the body – or what
transforms – often imperceptibly. Perhaps we can put the point
thus: Writing does not emanate from the self-assertion of a ra-
tionally ordained, pre-fabricated, shrink-wrapped subject, but
rather involves its eviction and dissolution. It is thus a process
of emptying out the “I,” “opening it up to possible encounters
with a number of afective outsides” as Rosi Braidotti says (qtd.
in Parr 310). Explaining the point, Braidotti says: “Writing is an
orientation; it is a skill that consists in developing a compass of
the cognitive, afective, and ethical kind. It is quite simply an ap-
prenticeship in the art of conceptual and perceptual colouring”
(qtd. in Parr 311). On this very point, Deleuze would interject
to insist that “great” writing and aesthetics whence wedded in
a variety of domains, can go beyond the world of the everyday:
The great aesthetic igures of thought and the novel but also
of painting, sculpture, and music produce afects that sur-
pass ordinary afections and perceptions, just as concepts go
beyond everyday opinions.
(Deleuze and Guattari, What is Philosophy? 65)

The great novelist is thus an artist who invents “unknown or

unrecognized afects and brings them to light as the becoming of
his characters” (Deleuze and Guattari, What is Philosophy? 174).

85
Humming ritornellos
Becoming-literature can be described as a ritornello or refrain;
one hums it in a collective agencement of enunciation as one
becomes-otherwise, in that moment of imperceptible metamor-
phosis. This becoming-otherwise is what the philosophers also
call becoming-nomadic, a desire of the self as a process of trans-
formation, a desire for qualitative transformations as Braidotti
claims. The reader draws short-term ritornellos from the literary
canon to make intensive reading an experience of diference – an
uncanny encounter as the event never passes where one thinks,
nor along the prescribed paths one assumes are right. In A Thou-
sand Plateaus, Deleuze and Félix Guattari describe the refrain –
which they claim is their own fully-ledged philosophical con-
cept – thus: “The refrain moves in the direction of the territorial
assemblage and lodges itself there or leaves … We call a refrain
any aggregate of matters of expression that draws a territory and
develops into territorial motifs and landscapes” (Young, Genosko,
and Watson 254-255). Explaining the importance of the concept
for Deleuze and Guattari’s philosophy, Deleuze, in answer to the
question “do you think you have created any concepts?” posed
by Didier Eribon in an interview entitled “We Invented the Ri-
tornello,” responds: “How about the ritornello? We formulated
a concept of the ritornello in philosophy” (Two Regimes 381).
And in an essay “On Philosophy,” Deleuze continues: “We tried
to make the ritornello one of our main concepts, relating it to
territory and Earth, the little and the great ritornello” (Negotia-
tions 137).
Like hairline fractures across molar aggregates of job, school,
family, sexuality, the ritornello is that little tune, “tra-la-la-la” –
sung when one moves in a territory. This is performed when

86
solace is sought in the dark or when one travels – again this
is about transformation and the problem of deterritorialization
(one can stand or sit still to do this); it is about understanding
what one becomes when one reads – what powers are intensi-
ied.
Taken another way, and for our purposes here, refrains are
at work when students read and think. Let me try to explain
this with an example from Leander and Boldt’s research on
youth multiliteracies. In the case of Lee, a 10-year-old Japanese
American boy, in love with manga, martial arts, all things
Japanese, we can say this from a Deleuze-inspired literacy per-
spective: What Lee desires is not reducible to reductive, dog-
matic, standardized, psychoanalytic formulae, as in the desire
for a fetishized object like a Japanese sword – that is to say, the
desire for possession of its phallic hardness, gleaming destruc-
tiveness, its cold aesthetic; rather it is desired as a partial object
in a composition of desire. He desires in aggregate. His desire
lows in and across assemblages (agencement). His becoming-
Japanese is a constructivism, a desire engineered. His aggre-
gate of desire is one of manga reading, kimono wearing, kanji
writing, video game playing, Japanese speaking, the martial arts
body, the lying kick, samisen music, the mysterious other, the
Far East as a world so very far away yet constructed in his own
territory or milieu. In terms of place, time, and movement, Lee
is becoming-literature, becoming-manga – his joy one of body,
movement, the production of sensation, the unfolding of possi-
bility. Think about irst watching Karate Kid (1984): how many
of us did the famous crane kick for years afterwards? Think
about watching Karate Kid with your irst girlfriend, or perform-
ing a whole repertoire of popular refrains in the school play-

87
ground – “Paint, the fence!”, “Wax on wax of, wax on wax of.”
Mimicking heavily accented Japanese-inlected English – “No
such thing as bad student, only bad teacher.” Or in another time
and place, through the Japanese TV series of the 1970s Saiyuki,
derived from the original Chinese classic, Hsiyu-chi, penned in
the 16th century – dubbed and broadcast as Monkey Magic in the
UK. Think about becoming-Monkey and the refrains which en-
sue – “Primal chaos ruled the Worlds before Monkey. Monkey
was born of time, of Heaven and Earth, of Sun and Moon, out of
a stone egg” – “The nature of Monkey is irrepressible!” – both
etched indelibly in the collective memory.
Can we not say, then, that afect and pedagogy are part of
the same assemblage; that the “the materiality of change, the act
of learning” is identical with the passage between bodies which
afect one another? If so, and in a not altogether and manifestly
nutty sense, children are Spinozists because their bodies are
made up of afective relations which occupy planes of becoming,
desire and creativity. Borrowing language from Deleuze and
Guattari, Leander and Boldt make the case for a non-text-centric
approach, which rejects the “over-rationalization of youth en-
gagement in texts” and instead explores the diferent experi-
enced sensations; in other words, how individuals feel “difer-
ently, read diferently, experience [themselves] or the narrative
diferently” (36). As Leander and Boldt say, the rhizomatic el-
ement in learning pertains to the ongoing present, “forming re-
lations and connections across signs, objects, and bodies in of-
ten unexpected ways” (26). And as Jacobs insists in Reimagining
Multiliteracies, because the design element focus of the New Lon-
don Group,2 for example, appears to exclude notions of move-
ment and surprise, it is Leander and Boldt’s work which instead

88
homes in on the individual in a state of becoming or lux. In-
deed, what matters for Leander and Boldt is to utilize materials
in a composition of desire, to consider luidity and indetermi-
nacy as a key element in any epiphany moment in the class-
room, to “recognize diference, surprise, and unfolding that fol-
low along paths that are not rational or linear or obviously crit-
ical or political” (43-44), to airm notions of imagination, play,
and the unknown itself.

The student of literature

Just as Lee in Leander and Boldt’s study becomes other when
he reads manga, adorns a kimono, when he lails his arms and
legs to emulate the imagined balletic movement of the ighting
samurai, the same could be said of the Japanese university stu-
dent or students from overseas living in Tokyo, all in love with
literature – with foreign languages and peoples, smells, tastes,
sonic matter, the lows of exotic cities. With book in hand, the
student of literature frequents cafes, listens to the jazz of John
Coltrane or the songs of the Beatles, shops for retro clothes –
perhaps even adorns a black French beret, afects a Liverpool
accent, sits sullen in empty parks freezing to death waiting for
something to happen, walks and walks in the pouring rain along-
side the Chuo line entranced by the lyrics of Radiohead, dreams
of romance in all manner of strange couplings; inally “kops of”
or falls in love – dances, reads more and more, learns more and
more, enjoys more and more. “Yeah! This is what it is about!” –
he or she might say once the afected cool exterior crumbles.
Or in another assemblage of desire and with refrains to orien-
tate becoming otherwise, he or she may assume the manner-
isms, proclivities, the gait and afectations of lonely and her-

89
metic characters that, for example, slowly and majestically take
shape in a good Murakami Haruki novel. So here is youth in
movement and experimentation: playful, expressionistic – oper-
able and embedded in a collective assemblage of enunciation –
a real transformation. Moving amid afective intensities – with
friends, strangers, colleagues, teachers and lovers, the student
makes a conjunctive circuit of desire – book AND song AND lan-
guage AND weather AND milieu AND dream – an ethology and
ecology of learning, a virtual chaosmos. In-between and amid
this is a becoming-literature – a kind of foreign language within
language – a “vector of deterritorialization” – where lands and
cultures are sold, autochthonic territories are left behind to em-
brace imaginary worlds that undermine ancient regimes and
strata. Everything is up for grabs because a new earth beckons!
Here reading literature is an engineering problem – a question of
how to hook together sign machines of desire and fantasy with
other concrete, immanent assemblages – productively. Tra-la-
la-la – to give life life.
There is another model also. One where the refrain turns
out badly – exhausts itself even. This is the refrain which resists
becoming-otherwise, which reterritorializes on the familiar, the
safe, the striated order of formalized rules and obligations. This
is the refrain which dare not desire otherwise or embark on the
unknown. It is found, for example, in French writer and social
critic Azouz Begag’s work (1989; 2007) on Algerian immigrant
communities in Lyon, France. Begag discerns a strong sense of
resistance to becoming-French. Immigrants, retaining a ixed
way of doing things from their homeland, construct a simulacra
of what they have left behind. To ward of the existential anxiety
and alienation of being away from home, desire turns to nostal-

90
gia and withdraws. A false feeling of security is gained through
ictional spaces of cable TV programs imported from home. Soap
operas act as a reterritorializing literature (Conley, Spatial Ecolo-
gies). Desire turns to rust or rot (rouiller). Foreign teachers from
predominantly rich countries in Japan may at times follow this
model – a ixed way of life, a simulacra of the homeland. Think
of the ex-pat lifestyle, resistance to local languages, to the habits
and ways of life of the other; conformity with stereotypes which
may serve the purpose of linguistic and cultural hegemony and
the preservation of their own dominant lingua franca. One makes
a territory of imported TV shows, Skype, SNS – to ward of the
possibility of becoming otherwise. The antidote or refrain to this
is perhaps Žižekian and optimistic in inspiration. In the docu-
mentary entitled “The Possibility of Hope” which accompanies
the ilm Children of Men (2006), Slavoj Žižek says that one must
be set adrift, from land or identity, to renew or become other-
wise. One must cut ties, from all securities and safe havens. In
other words, if there is no sanctuary, one must negotiate the
spatium of intensive desire. Discussing the concept of the boat
and relecting on the ecological crisis facing mankind, Žižek sug-
gests the boat is an adequate metaphor to describe the current
state of being for vast swathes of humanity. As he says:
We must really accept how we are rootless. This is, for me,
the meaning of this wonderful metaphor, boat. Boat is the
solution; “boat,” in the sense of, you accept rootless, free
loating. You cannot rely on anything. You know, it’s not
a return to land. Renewal means you cut your roots.
(qtd. in Children of Men)

91
If renewal means one must consider severing roots to one’s an-
cestral home, then homesickness is the lot of Dasein; we are in-
deed all adrift.

Committed teachers
Committed teachers, for Deleuze, are those who encourage their
students to participate along with them. We learn to swim or
learn a foreign language only through understanding practice
“as signs” – a semiotics. As Deleuze says: “Everything that
teaches us something emits signs; every act of learning is an
interpretation of signs or hieroglyphs” (Proust and Signs 4). Fur-
thermore, Deleuze outlines his paragon of the teacher. He says
that students learn little, almost nothing, from those who say
“do as I do.” Rather, it is better to listen to those teachers
who ask to “do with me,” whose practice emits heterogeneous
signs rather than proposes gestures to reproduce. From this per-
spective, while demonstrating what or how to do something the
teacher must also become other for the other. The class, for exam-
ple, is processually a becoming-other in relation to itself – de-
familiarizing, decentring, a transformatory force. If you want to
teach literature, you must decentre the classroom, you become other
for the other. This is something more than the translation of one
imperial code into another, but rather a corporeal and indeed
incorporeal transformation, an imperceptible moment of alter-
ity. This model critiques the pedagogical and one-dimensional
model of the relay of knowledge from bequeather to bequeathed
and contests the conventional model of the school teacher who
“poses” problems which the pupil must discover solutions. Such
a model imprisons each party, Deleuze says, as both are kept “in
a kind of slavery” (Deleuze, Bergsonism 15). Adopting a more

92
radical view, Deleuze goes on to say that freedom truly lies in
the power of students to decide and to constitute problems in
their own way.
In recent decades, attempts have been made to redeine the
learning of literacies in order to incorporate diferent under-
standings of plurality and the inluence of new technologies,
including multiliteracies. The main argument in this research
claims that young people engage in a multitude of social com-
munication practices that exceed the boundaries of simple text
encoding and decoding. Adding another dimension to this new
world of literacies is the work of Masny and Cole in Multiple
Literacies Theory. This Deleuzian-informed MLT contests pre-
ordained social, cultural, historical and physical assemblages.
Building on the work of Deleuze and Guattari, MLT views litera-
cies learning as a process of constant, indeterminate becoming –
a process of moving, extending, creating diference and difer-
ing literacies, where learning is taken as an immanent, uncon-
trollable, unpredictable process. The spectator’s luid creation
of meaning is part of this process. MLT is a paradigm of edu-
cational materialism, exploring dissonance, afect, assemblage,
and transversal creative processes (Bradley, “Materialism” 892-
903; Bradley and Cole, “Pea-and-Thimble Trick” 1-9), through
its examination of breakthroughs, breakdowns, and blockages
in literacies learning. Think about ilm, for example, as a kind
of playful reading of sense rather than absolute conclusiveness
of representation. Moreover, MLT helps to rethink the idea of
“translingual and transcultural competence” and the ability to
“operate between languages” (Gibaldi 3). Masny and Cole con-
tend that reading is construed as an immanent, intensive and

93
inherently interesting process, “a mapping of events of experi-
ences on diferent planes” (Mapping 78).3
MLT advocates such as Masny and Cole adopt an epistemol-
ogy without closure; theirs is more an ad hoc theory that tol-
erates experimentation and courts aporia. Distrustful of closed
systems of thought, MLT aims to engineer non-teleological fu-
tures, diferent methods of transformation. Such a practice
airms a journey into diference, an experience of embodied
transformation. This becoming-chaosmos – a composed chaos,
which James Joyce introduces in Finnegan’s Wake – cannot
be explained through orthodox subject/object relations. The
becoming-otaku of Japanese students (Bradley and Cole, “Pea-
and-Thimble Trick”), becoming-Canadian of immigrant com-
munities (Waterhouse, “Experiences of Multiple Literacies and
Peace”), resistance to becoming-Australian in Latino communi-
ties in Sydney (Cole, “Latino Families Becoming-Literate in Aus-
tralia”), Koreans attending English as a second language classes
in Australia (Masny, “Disrupting Ethnography through Rhizo-
analysis”), and the creativity in Michelangelo Antonioni’s work
(Beighton, “Lifelong Learning”) are some examples of research
which discloses how transformation occurs in unexpected ways.
This form of teaching is inherently political in the sense that it
explores those moments that create “ruptures and diferences,”
which lead the class, the project, the student or teacher to a new
site of learning and becoming. It is fundamentally concerned
with becoming and breakthrough and contests the blockages,
the dead ends of education. In this way, through thinking and
employing afective literacy, such a pedagogy may help formu-
late a new trajectory towards the transformation of culture and

94
the splitting and dispersion of false identities and binaries, ac-
cording to Braidotti.

Conjunctive syntheses – Deleuze AND Guattari AND literacy

AND literature AND … AND …
Lest we forget that to be radical is to grasp the thing in ques-
tion by the root, as Marx suggests. Let us return to one of the
guiding threads of this paper which is that the root is youth –
in Nietzsche’s parlance, the child as innocent becoming. Ex-
pressed in light of the concept of the rhizome in Deleuze’s work,
and with the root understood as youth as such – reading is less
about an invariant, totalising, or dogmatic representation – less
about closure and completeness – because the act of reading is
an immanent and never-ending process of becoming or trans-
formation or deterritorialization. Thinking beyond technology-
focussed approaches to multiliteracies, the Deleuze approach to
literacy and literature cares little for pre-established design or
outcomes. It thinks immanently as it relates and connects across
signs, objects, and bodies in undreamt of ways. Reading, to re-
peat, has two senses. One is the aforementioned orthodox mode
of interpretation. The other more radical as it courts a criti-
cal pedagogy through reading the self, world and the object of
analysis qua text. The self is text. It is an experiment with un-
certainty, complexity, the futural incalculability of systems and
the open-endedness of becoming.

Intermezzo and the crack (fêlure)

Discussing learning and its relation to afects, Semetsky in “The
Role of Intuition in Thinking and Learning” highlights the pos-
itive role the rupture or crack plays in the classroom. On this

95
point, she suggests that the breakdowns, crack-ups and frustra-
tions in the classroom are not always omens of failure and lines
of light that turn inward, implode or immolate, but may re-
mould subjectivity as afective events.

Hannibal: from crack to craquelure

During a post-mortem, in series 2, episode 2 of the TV series Han-
nibal, Hannibal, the arch-villain, standing in front of a grotesque
corpse full of striated lines and in full poetic mode, suggests the
presence of trace evidence in the craquelure, a word which de-
rives from the French craquelé. With the post-mortem expert
nonplussed, Hannibal explains that the craquelure is the crack
that appears on an oil painting as it dries and becomes rigid
with age. And importantly for our purposes, Hannibal notes
that cracks are not always weaknesses, as he says, “A life lived
accrues in the cracks.” Deleuze takes a slightly diferent line
and insists that art itself is a path between the cracks. As he
says: “There is no work of art that does not indicate an opening
for life, a path between the cracks” (Bogue 9). This is a voyage
which enjoins with the life that has amassed over time.

Baby, et up all her Spinoza?

Indeed, in an autobiographical essay “The Crack Up” (1936),
originally published in Esquire magazine, F. Scott Fitzgerald
traces his own death instinct and fall into alcoholism. We can
understand this sense of the crack as a matter of bodies and af-
fects. Fitzgerald ends the essay with an imagined conversation
with a character who speaks to him in the wise, Spinozist words
of a friend:

96
 So she said: “Listen. Suppose this wasn’t a crack in
you – suppose it was a crack in the Grand Canyon.”
“The crack’s in me,” I said heroically.
“Listen! The world only exists in your eyes – your
conception of it. You can make it as big or as small
as you want to. And you’re trying to be a little puny
individual. By God, if I ever cracked, I’d try to make
the world crack with me. Listen! The world only exists
through your apprehension of it, and so it’s much better
to say that it’s not you that’s cracked – it’s the Grand
Canyon.” (74)

The reply “Baby, et up all her Spinoza?” (74) leaps out of

the page because the crack is always a question of afect and
the capacity to be afected. Spinoza is central for Deleuze be-
cause of the timely questions “what can a body do?” and “of
what afects is it capable?” Indeed, in the 22nd series of The
Logic of Sense, entitled “Porcelain and Volcano,” Deleuze dis-
cusses how self-destruction comes out of left ield. Something
happens that shatters the image and sanctuary of a perfect life –
“looks, charm, riches, supericiality and lots of talent” – like “an
old plate or glass” (154). This is what he describes as the “ter-
rible tête-à-tête of the schizophrenic and the alcoholic” (154).
“The Crack-Up” is used by Deleuze to explain the three difer-
ent kinds of transition from one state or stage in life to another:
The irst are the large breaks: youth and adulthood, poverty and
wealth, illness and good health, success or failure in your job.
The second, the almost imperceptible cracks or subtle shifts of
feeling or attitude, sometimes insidious, which involve molec-
ular changes in the afective constitution of a person – so an

97
imperceptible rupture rather than a signifying break. Fitzgerald
asks: “Whatever could have happened for things to have come to
this” (Deleuze and Guattari, Thousand Plateaus 194)? The third
constitutes the abrupt and irreversible transitions through which
the individual becomes otherwise. This tripartite structure is
a matter of lines – lines of rigid segmentarity (molar breaks),
lines of supple segmentation (molecular cracks) and lines of
light or rupture (abstract, deadly yet teeming with intensity;
alive). Indeed, for Fitzgerald, and likewise Deleuze, all life is
a process of breaking down; Fitzgerald speaks of his own self-
immolation as something sodden and dark, of how an optimistic
young man experienced a “crack-up of all values” – a molecu-
lar crack which came all of a sudden changing everything and
nothing. Again as Fitzgerald says, the crack-up happens almost
without you knowing it but then comes suddenly indeed. Dis-
cussing his indebtedness to Fitzgerald, in Dialogues II Deleuze
says:
The great ruptures, the great oppositions, are always nego-
tiable; but not the little crack, the imperceptible ruptures,
which come from the south. We say “south” without attach-
ing any importance to this. We talk of the south in order
to mark a direction which is diferent from that of the line
of segments. But everyone has his south – it doesn’t matter
where it is – that is, his line of slope or light. (131-32)

In the work of Fitzgerald, Lawrence, Miller, Kerouac and simi-

lar ilk, Deleuze inds nothing but departure, becoming, passage,
leaping, a relationship with the outside. Such writers create “a
syntax that makes them pass into sensation that makes the stan-
dard language stammer, tremble, cry, or even sing” (Deleuze

98
and Guattari, What is Philosophy? 176). They contort language,
to “wrest the percept from perceptions, the afect from afec-
tions, the sensation from opinion” all for that “still-missing peo-
ple” (Deleuze and Guattari, What is Philosophy? 176). In summa:
they create an absolute deterritorialization or new Earth – one
might even say they write for a transvaluation of all values. Ex-
plaining this elsewhere, Deleuze and Guattari say the relation of
the crack to the rhizome is always a question of micropolitics:
This time, there are outbursts and crackings in the imma-
nence of a rhizome, rather than great movements and breaks
determined by the transcendence of a tree. This molecu-
lar line, more supple and disquieting, is not simply inter-
nal or personal: it also brings everything into play, but
on a diferent scale and in diferent forms, with segmenta-
tions of a diferent nature, rhizomatic instead of arborescent.
A micropolitics. (Thousand Plateaus 119)

Thinking the relation of signs, health and the crack, Deleuze in

Logic of Sense notes how the crack, despite the risks, is vital for
creativity. He writes: “If one asks why health does not suice,
why the crack is desirable, it is perhaps because only by means
of the crack and at its edges that thought occurs, that anything
that is good and great in humanity enters and exits through it,
in people ready to destroy themselves – better death than the
health which we are given” (182). Deleuze thinks literature and
the practice of writing are an orientation towards “a health yet
to come.” It is here that becoming and writing imply a resistance
to the present. The fabulating function of literature for Deleuze
implies that writing is concerned with health and the construc-
tion of a missing people. Putting the above remarks back in the

99
education context and thinking the crack-up in the classroom
and its relation to youth and transformation, Silvia M. Grinberg
explains:
It is no longer, then, a question of the indiference of these
young people and their unwillingness to learn, but of the com-
plexity of their desires, the hints of airmation as well as the
tensions that they express when they say “I want.” The ques-
tion … is to what degree … are they able to resist or transform
current forms of domination. (214-15)
Indeed, Grinberg continues: “A Deleuzian approach to the
study of the pedagogical apparatus as it is experienced in schools
on a daily basis means opening up a set of lines, of bifurcations
and ruptures; it means approaching multiple situations of col-
lapse and construction” (215).
So while the crack may indicate poor health, as it is the ac-
companying pain to the intensities one feels in a life held in per-
manent precarity. In Transpositions: On Nomadic Ethics, regard-
ing a discussion on the nomadic processes of transformation,
Braidotti, following Deleuze, maintains the point is to learn how
to refuse the sad passions which one feasts upon on “the crest
of the wave of cracking-up” (208). If one toils in “the long deep
crack” of life, the question is how to learn to ward of the sad af-
fects “of orchestrated demolition of the self” (Braidotti, Transpo-
sitions 213). In Braidotti’s essay “Airmation versus Vulnerabil-
ity: On Contemporary Ethical Debates,” she suggests that from
the experience and recovery from the crack up, what returns
is a new force of health, resistance, adaptability, even ethical
transformation, which is productive of diference. As she says,
“[p]aradoxically, it is those who have already cracked up a bit,
those who have sufered pain and injury, who are better placed

100
to take the lead in the process of ethical transformation …. They
know about endurance, adequate forces, and the importance of
Relations” (“Airmation” 156). For Deleuze, and indeed Niet-
zsche, the question is how to live in and on the surface of the
crack, to traverse it, delicately, like the tightrope walker, bal-
ancing as ever over the precipice, yet learning all the while how
to avoid headlong, hell-for-leather suicidal collapse and thus to
resist the perilous descent into nihilism and decadence.

Schizoanalysis/Metamodelling/Symptomatology
As Deleuze and Guattari’s schizoanalysis can be taken as a ques-
tion of metamodelling or symptomatology, according to Janell
Watson (in Diagrammatic Thought), D. H. Lawrence and Fitzger-
ald become important for Deleuze. Why? Because they think
diferently from psychoanalysis: they search for greatness and
its relation to health and illness.4 As a symptomatologist of his
age, Fitzgerald discloses the forces, modes of existence that ani-
mate or suppress the present state of things. While rejecting any
hope of forging a political project based on schizoanalysis on the
immediate horizon, Guattari nonetheless suggests practices to
sustain health while becoming-otherwise. In an interview with
Jacques Pain, he states: “Without pretending to promote a di-
dactic program, it is a matter of constituting networks and rhi-
zomes in order to escape the systems of modelization in which
we are entangled and which are in the process of completely
polluting us, head and heart” (Guattari Reader 132). This point
connects well with the aforementioned question of health and
illness and how the latter link up with the process of creation
and transformation through embodied and afective pedagogies.
This is taken up more recently by Ian Buchanan, Tim Matts and

101
Aidan Tynan in their introduction to Deleuze and the Schizoanal-
ysis of Literature, in which they stress the importance of transfor-
mation: “Schizoanalysis is itself a practice, but one that operates
alongside other practices in order to help us better understand –
and in some cases to challenge and transform – the relations
between theory and practice in any given ield” (4).

Finale
Yet, scepticism regarding the socially transformative nature of
play and becoming exposes an important problem for schizo-
analysis. The pessimism and the ease with which some dismiss
a crucial dimension of becoming otherwise is worth consider-
ing in greater detail because there is a lingering question as to
what extent schizoanalysis can diferentiate transformation from
creativity. The problem for schizoanalysis is how to build a re-
search paradigm which does not operate in vacuo but connects
with other practices to ensure enduring, and yes, even success-
ful, transformation. The dilemma has been explored recently
by Buchanan, who reaches a conclusion which is in sharp con-
tradistinction to Leander and Boldt’s study. Speaking at the Cri-
sis and Un/Making Sense – Art as Schizoanalysis symposium,
in New Delhi, India, in January, 2015, Buchanan argues that
the becoming-other by young people through technology (or in
play acting, as in the case of Lee) may well be creative but it is
not strictly speaking transformatory. He is clearly right to chal-
lenge the diference between the two but his conclusion appears
unduly pessimistic. In his keynote address, he argues:
Cultural critics who sing the song that popular culture and
all its new devices and toys are liberating are simply singing
from capitalism’s hymn sheet. I never kinda understood the

102
 idea you often hear in cultural studies that young girls watch-
ing Bufy and then going out and thinking Bufy is empow-
ering. I don’t buy that for a second. When you hear young
kids say I watched an episode of Bufy and then I hacked it
and cut it up and made my own version of Bufy so it is all
about me, I don’t think that is empowering either. It might
be creative but it is not empowering. It hasn’t changed their
social position in the world. I think we need to be pretty
careful about what we think of and understand by the idea
of empowering. Simply making a video is not empowering.
It is maybe creative but it hasn’t changed your social reality.
(Buchanan, “Introduction”)

While one can clearly see Buchanan’s point regarding the type
of lowest common denominator material that young people are
often exposed to – the kind painstakingly marketed and adver-
tised aggressively to them – and one should equally be cautious
at airming all forms of play as creative and/or transformatory,
there is nevertheless some ground for arguing that the matter at
hand is more complex than to draw a dogmatic distinction be-
tween the process of creativity and the point of transformation.
Buchanan’s treatment and scepticism here is striking because it
highlights the apparently diferent habituses of cultural critics
and education theorists. Why is it that education theorists such
as Masny and Cole and not cultural theorists such as Buchanan
are more optimistic about the ability for transformation? More-
over, one may also wonder why the division between creativity
and empowerment/transformation is dogmatically deined be-
cause one of the hallmarks of schizoanalysis is to zigzag across
the boundaries, to think the becoming between diferent terms.

103
Contra Buchanan, one might have some justiication for insisting
that if new forms of schizoanalysis are to have any lasting im-
pact and efect, the apparent incommensurability between these
two paradigms needs to be rethought and considered along-
side Deleuze’s concept of counter-efectuation. This notion will
surely help us to understand transformation as an event which
breaks loose from itself “as it is incarnated” (Spindler 261).
Why is it that at the very moment that schizoanalysis shows
the potential for breakthrough, its prophets and scribes con-
demn its revolutionary potential? If foreign language learning
is this abstract line of light and rupture, a clash and collision
of worldviews, if it can be described as the dumbfounding of
molar aggregates – a zigzag across job, family, class, national-
ity, sexuality – the extraction of a revolutionary force – then
perhaps we can say that this is the ultimate aim of literature,
that is to say, to engender new modes of health, the invention of
a people, a missing people, a minor language, a language within
language. Literature then is a writing for a readership in becom-
ing – “an oppressed, bastard, lower, anarchical, nomadic, irre-
mediably minor race” (Deleuze, Diference and Repetition 109).
It is the search for “a possibility of life” and a future people who
resist the intolerable, shame, and the present. And it is for them
that we teach and write in the hope that we may become them
someday.

104
Notes
1. Based on the materialist psychiatry of R.D. Laing, schizoanalysis
probes revolutionary breakthrough rather than psychological break-
down. The function of schizoanalysis is to engineer subjectivity qua
creative process, while also working on the metamodelling of systemic
malfunction. For Holland, schizoanalysis can be described as an “ex-
traordinary venture in experimental thinking and writing” (qtd. in
Deleuze and Guattari, Anti-Oedipus viii), or in the words of Deleuze
and Guattari themselves, at the end of Anti-Oedipus they write:
The task of schizoanalysis is that of learning what a subject’s de-
siring machines are, how they work, with what syntheses, what
bursts of energy, what constituent misires, with what lows, what
chains, and what becomings in each case. [And] this positive task
cannot be separated from indispensable destructions, the destruc-
tion of the molar aggregates, the structures and representations
that prevent the machine from functioning. (338)

2. Multiliteracies is widely linked with a group of scholars who formed

in 1996 to discuss the efects of technology on the learning process.
The members came to be known as the New London Group. The NLG
published a seminal article, “A Pedagogy of Multiliteracies” in the Har-
vard Educational Review, in which they made the connection between
the multiplicity of literacies present in learning contexts, and the wider
plane of social change. Their philosophy was to inform teachers of this
multiplicity of literacies and utilize diferent and innovative pedago-
gies that matched diverse learning options such as evolving technolog-
ical applications. Multiliteracies theory envisages language and other
modes of meaning as dynamic and unstable representations, subject
to constant redeinition by users as they function. The NLG addresses
how emergent meanings are generated online, in video captioning, in
interactive multimedia, in desktop publishing and so on.
The NLG’s philosophy states that the role of pedagogy is to de-
velop an “epistemology of pluralism.” The NLG analyses how global-

105
ization and technology impact upon literate practices and how literacy
teaching links up with issues such as local diversity and global con-
nectedness. The task ahead is to understand the interactions among
users of multiple languages and multiple Englishes, and communica-
tion patterns that seemingly transcend culture, community, and na-
tional boundaries.

3. For Masny, reading is the probing of how a text functions. Read-

ing here carries a heterodox sense of the uncanny, for that which is
untimely is a challenge to the already-thought. This form of Unheim-
lich points to the “fraying of language” (Spivak 181) and the limits
of “sense.” MLT asks after the afects produced and the connections
and collisions of worldview. Reading intensively therefore is a line of
light, of deterritorialization, a disruption in the territory one inhab-
its. Interested in the immanent process of afective becoming, MLT,
following Freire, traces the transformative efects produced in strange
encounters.

4. On this point, Deleuze compares his own repertoire of artists to

philosophers and claims their fragile, “little health” is a consequence
from viewing “something in life that is too much for anyone, too much
for themselves,” which, he says, has put on them “the quiet mark of
death” (What is Philosophy? 175).

106
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110
Watson, Janell. Guattari’s Diagrammatic Thought Writing Between Lacan
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Jof P.N. Bradley teaches in the faculty of foreign languages at Teikyo

University, Tokyo. Although born and bred in northern England, he is
a resident of Japan and applies his long-standing interest in schizoanal-
ysis, European philosophy and critical thought to the socio-economic,
political problems and mental ecologies afecting his students. He has
published articles in Japan, Taiwan, Australia, Europe, the UK, North
America and the Middle East on a variety of issues covering the otaku,
Kojeve, the Zerrissenheit of subjectivity, Virilio and Guattari.

111
 An Overview of English-language
Literature Study in Japan
Susan Burton

Abstract
This chapter aims to give an overview of the current uncertain state of
English-language literature teaching within tertiary education in Japan.
Interviews with Japanese and non-Japanese (native) literature lecturers
explain what is happening in classrooms, feedback from publishers indi-
cates what students are reading, and a small-scale survey of university
students reveals how they feel about English-language literature.

Introduction
With increasing emphasis on business English for economic re-
covery, and universities’ increasing reliance TOEIC and TOEFL
examinations to test proiciency, the current state of English-
language literature teaching within tertiary education in Japan
is seemingly a precarious one. To gauge the views of those
currently studying and working in the ield, I interviewed sev-
eral Japanese and native English-language literature lecturers,
talked with ELT publishers and carried out a small-scale sur-
vey of university students1 . Using respondents’ own words as
much as possible, I make three main points: that the teaching

112
of English-language literature in Japanese universities is in de-
cline; that the reason for this is the deterioration in students’
English-language ability and a dislike of traditional methods of
literature teaching; and inally that lecturers feel passionately
that English-language literature classes are a vital part of the lan-
guage curriculum and key to reversing Japan’s slide in English-
language skills. Whilst such a small-scale study is limited in
scope and depth, it is hoped that the data may provide a start-
ing point for a wider debate on the teaching of English-language
literature in Japan.
Over the past two decades there has been a decline in in-
terest in English-language literature and a subsequent closing of
English-language literature departments. As one literature lec-
turer notes:

There used to be many classes on American literature and English

literature but the name of literature does not attract the students
unfortunately … When I was a college student basically the depart-
ments where we could learn English were called ‘bungakubu’, al-
ways ‘bungakubu’, but now there are only a few universities that
have ‘bungakubu’. Most of the universities in Japan have changed
the name from ‘bungakubu’ to ‘eigogakubu’ or ‘gaikokugogakubu’,
more focused on language and communication, not literature. And
the number of classes about literature is getting smaller and smaller
and smaller. (Japanese lecturer)

Why does English literature no longer seem to ‘attract the

students’? There are several reasons for this. The irst is the one
most commonly cited by literature lecturers.

The main reason why studying English-language literature in English

is becoming less popular is that the English ability of students is be-

113
coming lower. That’s what almost all teachers teaching literature
point out, and I agree with this too. (Japanese lecturer)

No-one who has taught English in Japan for any length

of time can deny the deterioration in English-language ability
amongst Japanese students today. In 2011, the average score in
the IP TOEIC test (Test of English for International Communica-
tion) of Japanese university students was 445 out of 990. For
junior college students it was 396. The IIBC which administers
the test deines this level as, “Is capable of minimal communi-
cation in ordinary conversation”, and “Knowledge of vocabu-
lary, grammar and structure is generally inadequate”2 . TOEFL
iBT (internet-based) global test scores for the same year ranked
Japan 11th from the bottom out of 114 countries, just above
Java and Tajikistan. In Asia, Japan was third from the bottom
just above Laos and Cambodia. Japan’s mean score was 69 out
of 1203 . Internationally, the Japanese are becoming known as
the people who study English in junior and senior high school
for six years but say, “I’m sorry, I don’t know English”.
Additionally, ELT publishers note that graded readers, not
novels, are the most popular English-language books among
Japanese tertiary students. What then is the average English-
language student capable of reading? Oxford University Press’s
Top 30 graded reader best-sellers include eight readers at
Stage 1, seven at Stage 2, and seven at Stage 3. Stage 1 readers
are aimed at those with only 250-510 TOEIC. Stage 3 readers
are aimed at those with 410-750 TOEIC scores. Graded readers
go up to Stage 6, a level that is apparently beyond the ability of
the majority of Japanese university students these days. What

114
hope do they have of reading novels and short stories in their
original form?
Cengage note that their Foundation Reading Library is the
most popular series among high school and tertiary students, but
the Primary Classics Readers also sell well because the pictures
are ‘cute’ and the topics are familiar to students (The Three Lit-
tle Pigs, Hansel and Gretel, and Aladdin and the Lamp). These
ranges are aimed at students with TOEIC scores of up to 220
only. Many tertiary students are apparently not only reading
at the lowest levels but they are choosing texts with very basic
themes.
The academic decline of Japanese students in all subjects has
been blamed on MEXT’s yutori kyoiku (relaxed education) policy
from the late 1970’s. Whatever the reason, the result is that,
more than ever, most students are likely to struggle with all but
the shortest and simplest works of literature, and consequently
many choose to opt for other classes in which course credits are
easier to obtain.
The second reason why literature is no longer such a popular
choice with university students is that, right from junior high
school, students are taught reading in a way that puts them of
further literature study.

The number of literature departments is going down because litera-

ture is not attractive to students because literature in Japan is taught
as translation only. (Japanese lecturer)

Traditionally, reading has been taught utilizing the gram-

mar translation method (GTM), a deductive method of teaching
grammar rules and translating single sentences word-for-word
without consideration of other factors such as content, context

115
or considerations of theme. GTM classes are teacher-centered
and conducted in the students’ native language with little or no
emphasis on communication: listening, speaking or pronuncia-
tion. This method was originally developed in Prussia in the late
18th century to translate classical Greek and Latin texts not for
the purpose of speaking the languages, as they had by this point
become ‘dead’ languages, but for the purpose of developing logi-
cal thinking and intellectual rigor. From the Meiji period (1868-
1912), Japanese scholars adopted this method when, in order to
gain knowledge about Western cultures, they began to translate
Western books, and this method was continued in schools where
it was considered to be the best way to train students for reading
academic texts in university.
Since the 1970’s however, the Japanese Department of Edu-
cation, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT), aware
that such classes are not producing a suicient quantity of pro-
icient speakers, has been revising junior and high school cur-
ricula to place more emphasis on oral communication skills that
will give students a more ‘authentic’ English that is usable world-
wide. Consequently, the view now prevails that literary English
is neither practical nor ‘authentic’, and is therefore no longer
a good teaching resource.
But MEXT’s reforms have met with problems. The irst prob-
lem is that many teachers today were themselves schooled in the
grammar translation method. They continue to instruct in the
only way they know, indeed, it is not unknown for older teach-
ers to be unable to hold even a basic conversation in English. In
their defense however, they are continuing to do what students
actually require; they are teaching English not for communica-

116
tion but to pass written university entrance examinations. As
one high school English teacher notes4 :

Highly-ranked universities such as Todai or Kyoto University require

students to master between 5,000 and 6,000 words, which means
that we have no choice but to spend so much time teaching reading
and writing skills. If we didn’t do this, students would have great
diiculty reading their English textbooks and writing their thesis in
English after they entered university.

The Japanese education system is all about testing. After

the breakdown of the traditional hierarchical social system af-
ter the Second World War, Japan is now perceived to be a mer-
itocracy. From kindergarten through to university, students are
trained to pass tests, because passing tests leads to academic
success. In junior and senior high schools, and even more so in
cram schools, in spite of and in direct contradiction to MEXT’s
reforms, English-language education is directed towards pass-
ing written university entrance examinations that continue to
be based on the grammar translation method. Students spend
a lot of time preparing for these tests by reading and doing gram-
matical translations, sentence-by-sentence, word-by-word. Con-
sequently, the last thing they want to do when they enter uni-
versity is more of the same.

In Japan, they have such a bad image of literature and one of the
reasons is that when I was a college student almost all English liter-
ature classes were just translation, even the long stories. So, taking
one semester or even one year, what I did was just translate one
sentence by one sentence. We have never done something else like
‘think about the theme’. (Japanese lecturer)

117
 The third reason why literature does not attract students is
because they prefer to study this more ‘authentic’ English, to
master the four skills, to understand foreign movies, to read
tourist guides, to make friends with English-speaking foreign-
ers and, most importantly in this period of global recession, to
achieve a successful ‘international’ career.

They just don’t like reading. They want to learn to communicate,

how to speak, listening, whatever, they just don’t like to read. They
do a lot in high school and they don’t ind it interesting so that is the
main reason why they don’t want to take a literature course. And
universities know that. (Japanese lecturer)

Thus foreign language faculties – eigogakubu and gaikoku-

gogakubu – attract students in a way that literature faculties
do not. In Japan, English is increasingly being viewed solely
as a practical skill that must be ‘mastered’ for future employ-
ment. In 2012, Hiroshi Mikitani, the head of Rakuten, made
English its oicial in-house lingua-franca stating that it would
promote a rise in business performance and that Japanese busi-
nesses would only have themselves to blame if they failed to be-
come global leaders through their lack of English ability5 . Other
Japanese companies are following suit. Toyota, for instance, re-
quires its employees to achieve a TOEIC score of 600 in order
to qualify for a posting abroad. The mobile carrier Softbank
awards a bonus of one million Yen to employees who achieve
TOEIC 900. TOEIC is a popular testing method because it is
an examination, which tests business English; its scores can be
measured and related directly to the future economic health
of Japan. Studying a practical skill such as the English lan-
guage can be seen to produce measurable results, which improve

118
one’s – and one’s country’s – future economic success. It is part
of the government’s policy of ‘internationalization’. English has
become a commodity to be purchased and utilized.

When the students are interested in only learning practical English,

it is painful to teach. They are wedded to their thought that ‘prac-
tical English’ is the English you can both listen to and speak. And
[that] study should focus on a native speaker’s pronunciation, not
on reading. English is more like a ‘skill’ such as acrobatics or sports
than a study. (Japanese lecturer)

How are universities responding to this preference for lan-

guage over literature? In 1992, the number of 18-year-olds
peaked at 2.05 million. Today there are 1.3 million6 . There is
now a university place for every 18-year-old in Japan but since
around 53 per cent7 of Japan’s high school graduates go on to
university, this leaves some tertiary institutions struggling to ill
places. According to MEXT, about 46 per cent of Japan’s 595 pri-
vate universities (which rely on student tuition for 80 per cent
of their funding8 ) are missing their recruitment targets and over
40 per cent are in debt9 . Also, since 2006, funding at Japan’s
86 national universities has been cut by 1 per cent per year10 .
Whilst the higher-ranking institutions such as Tokyo continue
to attract students, many of those which rank further down the
scale must adapt or close. So Japanese universities today know
that they must ofer students what they want or they will go
elsewhere.

In the current period of falling student numbers due to the drop in

the birth-rate, universities need to do their utmost to attract stu-
dents. It has been noticeable that over the last few years many uni-
versities have changed the names of their faculties or departments,

119
often to include the words ‘global’ or ‘international’ to pull in the
students. (Japanese lecturer)

Struggling universities are closing their literature depart-

ments and reorganizing or renaming them to become more at-
tractive to students. The author’s own university has recently
undergone reorganization resulting in a new faculty named the
‘Global Careers Institute’. It ofers courses in global English,
business, marketing, management and sociology but no litera-
ture courses. Because what students and their parents want from
these new faculties are measurable results. Consequently, uni-
versities are seeking to become more results-based, in particu-
lar by raising students’ TOEIC scores year upon year. Literature
courses are not viewed as useful in raising these scores, and are
being cut in favor of more TOEIC classes.

Universities think it is just nonsense to deal with literature texts in

English classes because even after taking these classes, you can’t even
read a book or speak or listen to English. There’s no meaning so just
quit it. (Japanese lecturer)

Indeed, some universities are actively discouraging their lec-

turers from teaching literature classes.

Before coming [to this university] I was a part-time teacher at uni-

versities and I got a chance to teach English. And they said you can
teach anything so, ‘OK, I will use the short stories of Ernest Hem-
ingway’. And then they said ‘No, please do not use literature. You
can use movies, you can use culture, magazines, newspapers but not
stories’. (Japanese lecturer)

120
 It is worth noting that many part-time English-language
teachers in Japan are in fact literature lecturers, now struggling
to retrain as literature departments close.

Actually there are only about 20% of full-time teachers who can
teach literature in their class. They have to teach language or culture
so they don’t even get the chance to teach literature. That’s the fact
in Japan. (Japanese lecturer)

Universities are closing their literature departments because

they are no longer popular, and students are not interested in
reading because they think “it’s a bother” (see student survey
below). Does English-language literature have nothing to of-
fer the more practically-minded Japanese students of today?
In fact, English-language literature teachers vigorously defend
their subject and stress the absolute necessity for literature study
as a vital component in a well-rounded English linguistic and
cultural education.

In Japan, the Japanese study English in junior and senior high school
for a total of six years – roughly 630 hours. However, they don’t
understand how English-speaking people’s cultures are diferent. On
the contrary, it sometimes breeds ‘English Phobia’. But English lit-
erature can introduce students to a range of aspects, not only of the
English language but also of English culture. I always try to change
the idea of learning English just as a language system to communi-
cate. To read English-language literature is more fascinating and life-
enhancing than constant training or repetition of exercises to learn
a foreign language. Of utmost signiicance to read English-language
literature is to stir and develop the imaginations of the students. The
lack of imagination means that they don’t know how to feel sympa-

121
thy and respect for other people and that they are not even able to
love or respect each other. (Japanese lecturer)

Even MEXT itself does not deny the importance of some liter-
ature study. Becoming an English-language teacher in a school
continues to be a popular job for English-language graduates,
and a literature course is mandatory for getting a teacher’s li-
cense in Japan. This is often the only reason why language
departments continue to ofer literature courses, and the bare
minimum at that.

I have been teaching American literature for the past ive years. Ev-
ery year I have about 40 to 50 students and 70 per cent of my
students want to get a teacher’s license. That is the reason why they
take my class. (Japanese lecturer)

But what MEXT fails to understand is just how vital the study
of literature is in an English-language syllabus. As the lecturers
noted above, the teaching of English-language literature ofers
what more ‘authentic’, practical English-language study may
not. It promotes a deeper understanding of Anglophone cul-
tures, encourages opinion, sparks creativity, and ofers up En-
glish for enjoyment rather than simply a tool for passing tests,
obtaining credits and getting a job.

[Studying English-language literature is] very important for unless

they are able to do this, English is merely a ‘code’ to get a job …
English-language literature brings the essence of English language cul-
tures to light, allowing students to set of on a voyage of discovery
that adds to their intellectual life. Literature opens the door to the
iner points of Anglo-American culture that do not exist in, say, an
ETS examination; TOEIC and similar tests represent the dominance

122
of inance and the powers that have propelled globalization into the
world. In contrast, literature allows for less-heard voices but which
are more interesting and color our lives more than the world of ETS
‘teaching’ … A good book, or the act of encouraging our students to
read more literature is an act that promotes depth of understanding
of cultural issues and … themselves. (Native lecturer)

But English-language literature teachers must be aware of

their competition, because there are in fact three ways to study
Anglophone literature in Japan. The irst is the traditional gram-
mar translation method, as mentioned above.

They just translate, translate and then just know what is going on
and then after they understand ‘Oh, this is the story, this is how
things go’, then ‘OK, done!’, then move on to the next story. It’s so
mottanai for me. But that’s what even literature scholars actually
do. (Japanese lecturer)

If you take the irst method, students can read English in class, but
you can read at most two or three short stories in a semester because
of the limit of time. (Japanese lecturer)

The second method is to have the students read at home and

then use class time for a discussion of the work. The third is the
traditional lecture in which the students read at home in prepa-
ration for the class and then the lecturer discusses it whilst the
students take notes. The second and third methods, however,
are fundamentally diferent from the irst in that the students
don’t actually need to read in the English language.

For the teachers of these two types, the most important thing is if
they know the storyline for a discussion or to understand what the

123
teacher will explain, not whether they have read in English or not …
They do make the students buy a book in English and tell them to
read in English in advance. But they know most students don’t, but
just read its translation. The teachers, nevertheless, don’t force them
to read English any more as long as the students know the story
itself. Considering that both the students’ discussion and the teacher’s
explanation are mostly done in Japanese in class, I would say that
the students can get credits even though they don’t actually read or
speak English so much. (Japanese lecturer)

The second and third methods are much more attractive to

students because they don’t require a high level of English abil-
ity, something which, referring to the average TOEIC and TOEFL
scores (above), they may struggle to achieve. Why spend an en-
tire semester reading one or two short stores in English when
you can cover a writer’s entire body of work in Japanese and
still get the credits for it? Consequently, it is these two meth-
ods that are gaining ground in literature study today. As Mary S,
a university lecturer specializing in American literature, notes11 :

I found out I was laboring under wrong assumptions one day when
I walked down the corridor and heard a colleague, who taught lit-
erature, teaching his class in Japanese … so I started walking the
corridors and listening to American and British literature classes, es-
pecially. All of them were taught in Japanese, with the occasional
reading of the original text, which was immediately translated into
Japanese.

Another lecturer gives reasons for this approach.

Many teachers of English-language literature would rather choose

a literary text depending on the signiicance of the story (socially,

124
culturally, historically and theoretically) than the students’ English
levels. This tendency is strong especially for the bungakubu facul-
ties since ‘bungaku originally means ‘literature’ not ‘language’ …
Of course, it would be great if students study English-language lit-
erature in English, but it’s actually diicult because of their English
ability. The teachers are always asked to choose which to give up:
giving up having students read English, or giving up reading many
stories of a certain author and era to interpret them deeply and
comprehensively. (Japanese lecturer)

There you have it. These days, many lecturers must make
the diicult choice to emphasize the study of literature in the
English-language and accept that student numbers will fall, or
relegate the study of English-language texts to a secondary po-
sition in favor of emphasizing the importance of enjoying liter-
ature for its own sake. This may horrify English-language lec-
turers but it should be remembered that, within western tertiary
education, many countries’ novels are read only in their trans-
lated forms. How many literature students worldwide have read
‘The Brothers Karamazov’ in the original Russian? Have you?
For those teachers – both native and non-native – who con-
tinue to teach English-language literature in English, the key
to a successful class and hopefully to a return in popularity of
English-language literature classes is in the teaching methodol-
ogy.

We don’t really have one good method of how to teach literature

so some literature scholars have been struggling to make some good
method that we can share, so if we do this, we have this method we
can teach more eiciently. But we don’t have any good method so
that is one of the reasons we just don’t know. As scholars we can

125
read a novel, we can write a paper on that but teaching literature is
a diferent thing. (Japanese lecturer)

Lecturers interviewed for this research stressed that there is

as yet no clear and accepted methodology for teaching English-
language literature in English in Japan. Yet the key to winning
students back to literature study is surely to bury the grammar
translation method once and for all and to ofer more active
classes that ire the students’ imaginations.

Conclusion
The continuing use in schools and universities of the grammar
translation method, the decline in English-language ability and
motivation among students, and the growing belief that English
is no more than a tool for economic advancement, are all factors
that are afecting English-language literature teaching in tertiary
education in Japan today. But as Ezra Pound notes, ‘Great litera-
ture is simply language charged with meaning to the utmost pos-
sible degree’. Language and literature are not opposite choices,
they complement each other and must be made available to stu-
dents as part of a comprehensive English education. Literature
lecturers must ight the side-lining of English-language literature
and seek to ofer classes which do away with outdated meth-
ods of instruction and instead attract students with a more ac-
tive teaching methodology which ires their imaginations and
launches students on that “voyage of discovery that adds to their
intellectual life”.

126
Notes
1. All interviews and survey responses have been anonymized.

2. TOEIC data retrieved from the TOEIC website at http://www.toeic.

or.jp/toeic_en/pdf/data/TOEIC_DAA2011.pdf

3. TOEFL data retrieved from www.ets.org/toefl

4. The Japan Times. “English teachers won’t be ready”. Norihiro Nose.

Last Updated: 12 August 2010. Date accessed: 24 February 2013.
<http://info.japantimes.co.jp/text/rc20100812a6.html>

5. The Asahi Shimbun. “Ready or not, Rakuten switching to English

as in-house language on July 2”. The Asahi Shimbun, Last Updated:
30 June 2012. Date accessed: 24 February 2013. <http://ajw.asahi.
com/article/economy/business/AJ201206300064>

6. The Guardian. “Falling numbers threaten Japanese universities”.

Jessica Shepherd. Last updated: 15 January 2008. Date accessed: 24
February 2013. <http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2008/jan/
15/internationaleducationnews.highereducation>

7. Figures on percentage of students advancing to university taken

from MEXT online statistics at: http://www.mext.go.jp/english/
statistics/. In 2009, 53.9 per cent of new graduates from high schools
went on to university.

8. The Guardian. “Falling numbers threaten Japanese universities”.

Jessica Shepherd. Last updated: 15 January 2008. Date accessed: 24
February 2013. <http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2008/jan/
15/internationaleducationnews.highereducation>

9. The Japan Times. “Demographic crisis leaves universities in i-

nancial bind”. David McNeill Chie Matsumoto. Last updated: 18
December 2009. Date accessed: 24 February 2013. <http://info.
japantimes.co.jp/text/nn20091218f1.html>

127
10. The Japan Times. “Universities feel the squeeze”. The Japan
Times. Last updated: 21 September 2010. Date accessed: 24
February 2013. <http://www.japantimes.co.jp/opinion/2010/09/
21/editorials/universities-feel-the-squeeze>

11. Bueno, Eva P, and Caesar, Terry. “I wouldn’t want anyone to know:
Native English Teaching in Japan”. Three Universities, No Position,
by Mary S. Tokyo. JPGS Press. Tokyo. 2003. Quotation taken from
page 124.

128
Appendix: Student Survey
What do students think about English-language literature?
I conducted a small informal internet survey to ind out. The
survey and a number of follow-up interviews were conducted
anonymously and consequently no personal or institutional
names will be cited. Nevertheless it should be noted that
surveyed institutions covered the range of the Hensachi rank-
ings from top to very near the bottom, and covered both lan-
guage/communication and literature majors. Having said this,
there were no perceived diferences in answers from language
or literature faculties.
The survey was originally sent out only in English but af-
ter noting the paucity of responses it was resent in English and
Japanese. It was answered in both languages. A representative
10 survey replies were selected and their answers are below.
Some students did not answer all the questions. All the stu-
dents took ‘reading’ classes. Six out of the ten students had also
taken specialized literature courses such as British or American
literature. Two students were specializing in literature for their
seminar and graduation theses. The TOIEC scores for the 10
respondents ranged from 540-895, with a mean score of 714,
which is considerably higher than the national average.

DO YOU LIKE READING ENGLISH-LANGUAGE LITERATURE?

• No, I don’t like it because I can’t understand a lot of the
meaning. I soon get tired when I read. (Student A, female,
21)
• I like it. Because the contents are interesting. (Student B,
female, 21)

129
• I like reading because it’s interesting and I can learn some-
thing new from reading. (Student C, male, 21)
• Yes, I do. When I read English-language literature, I call
to mind the beautiful scenery and cultures in foreign coun-
tries. It’s very interesting to me, so I like reading English-
language literature (Student D, female, 21)
• Yes, I like. Depending on the English-language book I read
I can know a lot of words and grammatical expressions.
(Student E, female, 22)
• It depends on the theme. (Student F, male, 22)
• No, I don’t like it, because it is diicult for me. (Student
G, female, 22)
• Not really because there are sometime diiculties to un-
derstand the eloquent sentences. I have never been taught
how to read novels in the L2. There are some diiculties
to read original text (I am talking about original novels not
revised versions for L2 learners like Penguin readers). But
I do like reading books about linguistics, which are rather
textbooks. (Student H male, 22)
• I like English, and I am majoring in English [of England]
literature at university. (Student I, female, 22)
• Yes, because I can learn new things. In the case of novels,
I want to read what the characters actually say in English
not in translation. (Student J, female, 23)

130
DO YOU THINK IT IS IMPORTANT TO READ ENGLISH-
LANGUAGE LITERATURE?
• Yes, for studying English it’s very important. Together
with reading ability, writing and listening ability im-
proves. (Student A, female, 21)
• I think it’s important. Because we can study about foreign
culture and customs. (Student B, female, 21)
• I don’t think reading is important for me because it’s just
for fun rather than study. However, reading helped me to
improve my reading skill and I got a higher TOEIC score
since I’ve been reading books. (Student C, male, 21)
• Yes, I do. Reading English-language literature is very good
for me because I can learn reading skills and a lot of cul-
tures in foreign countries. (Student D, female, 21)
• No, when studying English just reading is not necessary,
I think. (Student E, female, 22)
• I think it is, because literature usually has a lot of diicult
words and phrases you seldom use in your daily lives and
it helps broaden your vocabulary. (Student F, male, 22)
• Yes, reading English books gives us many new words. We
can study words and grammar. (Student G, female, 22)
• Yes, it is. It is sometimes translated wrongly. I have
taken an American Literature class that the students are
required to read in English (original language). We read
a short story, ‘The Wives of the Dead’ which was written
by Nathaniel Hawthorne. In the last paragraph, there are
some ‘she’ in the text, while the story is proceeding with
the two women. We discussed who the ‘she’ is in the para-

131
 graph. However, it is quite hard to translate it correctly
into the Japanese language, because this was even dii-
cult for native readers. Translations cannot make readers
deine its ambiguity sometimes. (Student H, male, 22)
• People have various interests, and for most people it isn’t
important. But because by reading English-language liter-
ature I can improve my English-language ability and learn
about diferent cultures and history, I think it is a good
thing. (Student I, female, 22)
• Translations (into Japanese) cannot convey the delicate
nuances. In order to understand what the writer wants to
say, I want to read the work in its original English. (Stu-
dent J, female, 23)

WHAT (IF ANYTHING) DO YOU READ?

• Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Babe, Tom Sawyer,
Moomin (Student A, female, 21)
• Alice in Wonderland (Student B, female, 21)
• I’ve read Darren Shan Volumes 1-7 since April and I’m
reading Darren Shan Volume 8. (Student C, male, 21)
• Charlotte’s Web, The House at Pooh Corner, Matilda,
George’s Marvelous Medicine, James and the Giant Peach.
(Student D, female, 21)
• I read Japanese novels. (Student E, female, 22)
• Seriously I’ve never read any English literature. I have
some easy reading books but I usually use the internet.
I mostly read English articles on the internet. (Student F,
male, 22)

132
 • I have read (literature) Cat in the Rain (Ernest Hem-
ingway), The Wives of the Dead (Nathaniel Hawthorn),
The Tell-Tale Heart’ (Edgar Allan Poe), Twilight, Re-
becca (Daphne Du Maurier), The Middle of Everywhere’
(Pipher), The Great Gatsby’ (F. Scott Fitzgerald). (Student
H, male, 22)
• Frankenstein, 1984, The Moonstone. (Student I, female,
22)
• Novels, reviews, newspaper articles. (Student J, female,
23)

DO YOU READ ENGLISH-LANGUAGE LITERATURE VOLUN-

TARILY OUTSIDE OF CLASS?
• I don’t. Because I really think it’s a bother. (Student A,
female, 21)
• No, I haven’t. (Student B, female, 21)
• Yes, I started reading to improve my English skill. Now
I enjoy reading. (Student C, male, 21)
• Yes, I do. I read some books in my home because I want
to master reading skill. (Student D, female, 21)
• No. (Student E, female, 22)
• No, because I want to read what I’m interested in. (Student
F, male 22)
• No, I don’t need to. (Student G, female, 22)
• Sometimes I do. One of my friends introduced me to one
book, which is called ‘The Middle of Everywhere’ (Pipher).
This is a non-iction that is about how immigrants acquire

133
 English language when they came to the United States.
I am still reading this. (Student H, male, 22)
• The reading I am assigned for literature class is my limit.
I don’t have time to read anything else. (Student I, female,
22)
• Because I am a slow reader, the reading assigned for liter-
ature class is my limit. (Student J, female, 23)

HAVE YOU LEARNED ANY INTERESTING OR USEFUL THINGS

FROM ENGLISH-LANGUAGE LITERATURE?
• No. (Student A, female, 21)
• Phonemes. (Student B, female, 21)
• I learned unknown words and expressions like ‘hunky-
dory’. (Student C, male, 21)
• The Tell-Tale Heart by Edgar Allan Poe. (Student D, fe-
male, 21)
• No. (Student E, female, 22)
• Never. (Student F, male, 22)
• No. Only new words and grammar. (Student G, female,
22)
• I really like the irst line of ‘The Great Gatsby’. I learnt this,
“Whenever you feel like criticizing any one,” he told me,
“just remember that all the people in this world haven’t
had the advantages that you’ve had”. (Student H, male,
22)

134
 • In Animal Farm, ‚allusion’ is very interesting. And the lack
of a happy ending made me think about society. (Student
J, female, 23)

DO YOU HAVE ANY PREFERENCE FOR ANY ENGLISH-

SPEAKING COUNTRY’S LITERATURE?
• English, American. Because they’re the English-speaking
countries. (Student A, female, 21)
• Not particularly. But because I don’t really read foreign
books I don’t know. (Student B, female, 21)
• No, I don’t. I haven’t read all of those kinds of literature,
so I don’t understand diferences or features among them.
(Student C, male, 21)
• No, I don’t. First of all, I have not read the literature of
various countries and I think that an English book is inter-
esting despite each country. (Student D, female, 21)
• No, because I hardly read foreign books. (Student E, fe-
male, 22)
• I prefer British English books so I wouldn’t like to read
American literature if I have to. (Student F, male, 22)
• No, I don’t read English books. (Student G, female, 22)
• American literature. It is interesting to see how the lives
were in the past from the old literature. Additionally
I sometimes feel diiculty to read British literature be-
cause of the vocabulary that is not familiar sometimes (to
L2 learners). (Student H, male, 22)
• I have only read English [of England] books so I can’t com-
pare. (Student I, female, 22)

135
 • English [of England] literature, because that is what I am
majoring in. (Student J, female, 23)

WHO (IF ANYONE) IS YOUR FAVOURITE ENGLISH-LANGUAGE

AUTHOR?
• I only know J K Rowling. (Student A, female, 21)
• J K Rowling. (Student B, female, 21)
• I don’t know much about authors but I may like Dan
Brown. (Student C, male, 21)
• No-one in particular. (Student D, female, 21)
• Alex Shearer. (Student E, female, 22)
• Nobody. (Student F, male, 22)
• Darren Shan. (Student G, female, 22)
• There is no author who I like. (Student H, male, 22)
• No-one in particular. (Student I, female, 22)
• No-one in particular. (Student J, female, 23)

DO YOU READ ANY ENGLISH-LANGUAGE LITERATURE

TRANSLATED INTO JAPANESE?
• Harry Potter, Da Vinci Code, Charlie and the Chocolate
Factory. (Student A, female, 21)
• Harry Potter, Alice in Wonderland, Alice through the
Looking Glass. (Student B, female, 21)
• Angels and Demons, The Da Vinci Code. (Student C, male,
21)
• No, I don’t. (Student D, female, 21)

136
 • Yes, Alex Shearer. (Student E, female, 22)
• No. (Student F, male, 22)
• Harry Potter, Darren Shan, Momo, Demonata. (Student G,
female, 22)
• Sometimes I read because I could not ind original text
from the library. The Birds (Daphne Du Maurier). (Stu-
dent H, male, 22)
• Peter Pan, Alice in Wonderland. (Student I, female, 22)
• Harry Potter, Frankenstein, The Fellowship of the Ring.
(Student J, female, 23)

WHAT (IF ANY) ARE YOUR THREE FAVOURITE NON-

JAPANESE BOOKS THAT YOU HAVE READ EITHER IN EN-
GLISH OR JAPANESE?
• Harry Potter, The Da Vinci Code, Charlie and the Choco-
late Factory. (Student A, female, 21)
• Harry Potter, Alice in Wonderland. (Student B, female,
21)
• Darren Shan, Angels and Demons, The Da Vinci Code.
(Student C, male, 21)
• Charlotte’s Web, Oliver Twist, A Christmas Carol. (Student
D, female, 21)
• The Great Blue Yonder. (Student E, female, 22)
• Nothing. (Student F, male, 22)
• Harry Potter, Darren Shan, Demonata. (Student G, female,
22)
• Rebecca, The Birds. (Student H, male, 22)

137
 • Peter and Wendy. (Student I, female, 22)
• Animal Farm, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Win-
nie the Pooh. (Student J, female, 23)

WHAT ARE YOUR CRITERIA FOR CHOOSING BOOKS?

• Popular books. Books that have been made into movies.
(Student A, female, 21)
• Popular books. Not thick books. (Student B, female, 21)
• I choose books which look interesting at least when
I choose fantasy books. (Student C, male, 21)
• I think book length and cover illustration are important
for me. (Student D, female, 21)
• Movie tie-in and book length. (Student E, female, 22)
• Content and price. (Student F, male, 22)
• Books which I know the story. (Student G, female, 22)
• Generally, movies’ original novels. Sometimes I read for
my upcoming experience. I took The Great Gatsby which
is written by a Minnesotan writer, because I was going
there. (Student H, male, 22)
• Teacher’s recommendation (for my seminar class and grad-
uation thesis theme). (Student I, female, 22)
• Teacher’s recommendation, movie tie-in, bestsellers,
books I have enjoyed reading in Japanese. (Student J,
female, 23)

138
DO YOU MAINLY BUY OR BORROW ENGLISH-LANGUAGE
BOOKS?
• Borrow. Because English-language books are expensive.
(Student B, female, 21)
• I usually buy because I always read books more than twice.
(Student C, male, 21)
• Sometimes I borrow English-language books because
I want to master reading. (Student D, female, 21)
• I prefer to borrow because obviously it doesn’t cost. (Stu-
dent F, male, 22)
• I borrow them. I read them only once. (Student G, female,
22)
• I mainly buy books. I prefer English-language books which
are for my reading skill, but those are not available in the
library frequently. (Student H, male, 22)

DO YOU BORROW ENGLISH-LANGUAGE BOOKS FROM YOUR

UNIVERSITY’S LIBRARY? IF YES, WHAT KINDS OF BOOKS AND
HOW MANY DO YOU BORROW A YEAR?
• About 20, mainly stories. (Student A, female, 21)
• I read books that I had to read for classes. But I also read
books that I can read by myself. (Student B, female, 21)
• I don’t remember but I have borrowed sometimes, not so
much. (Student C, male, 21)
• Yes, I do. I borrowed some books which are Penguin Read-
ers and other kinds. Maybe I borrow around 5 books per
year. (Student D, female, 21)

139
 • Yes, about 10 graded readers a year. (Student E, female,
22)
• Usually not. (Student F, male, 22)
• I used to borrow them for classes. They were movie books.
I used to borrow about 5 books or more. But no more.
(Student G, female, 22)
• I can’t remember but a lot. (Student H, male, 22)
• Report materials, reviews, novels etc. 4-6 per year. (Stu-
dent J, female, 23)

DO YOU READ JAPANESE-LANGUAGE BOOKS, MAGAZINES,

MANGA ETC?
• Young people’s manga, young women’s manga and novels.
(Student A, female, 21)
• I mainly read love stories, crime iction, and fashion mag-
azines: the Akagawa Jiro Series, ‚Colorful’ by Mori Eto,
‚Biyakuyaku’ by Higashino Keigo, ‚Mina’ magazine, and
‚Kimi ni Todoke’ manga. (Student B, female, 21)
• I read a lot of manga and some football magazines. (Stu-
dent C, male, 21)
• I sometimes read Japanese books. The kind are critical
essays and so on. Recently, I read a book about working.
(Student D, female, 21)
• I read novels and magazines. The novels are by Higashino
Keigo and Nonami Asa. The magazines are about fashion
and music. (Student E, female, 22)
• Nikkei Shimbun and some manga. (Student F, male, 22)

140
 • Manga, One Piece, Bleach, Gintama, Natsume-Yujincho,
Magazine Glamorous, Spur, Jump (Student G, female, 22)
• I do. I like reading new books, monographs, articles and
reportage. (Student H, male, 22)

WHO (IF ANYONE) IS YOUR FAVOURITE JAPANESE AUTHOR?

• Yoshida Shuichi. (Student A, female, 21)
• Mori Eto, Akagawa Jiro. (Student B, female, 21)
• No-one in particular. (Student C, male, 21)
• Kiyoshi Shigematu, Ira Ishida, Taizou Kato, Riku Onda
(Student D, female, 21)
• Higashino Keigo, Nonami Asa. (Student E, female, 22)
• Nobody. (Student F, male, 22)
• Ishii Shinji, Ishida Ira. (Student G, female, 22)
• There is no author who I like. (Student H, male, 22)
• No-one in particular. (Student I, female, 22)
• No-one in particular (Student J, female, 23)

DO YOU READ LITERATURE IN ANY OTHER LANGUAGE?

• Student B (female, 21) answered French.

DID YOU READ ENGLISH-LANGUAGE LITERATURE IN JUNIOR

OR SENIOR HIGH SCHOOL?
• No. (Student A, female, 21)
• No. (Student B, female, 21)
• I don’t remember. (Student C, male, 21)

141
 • Yes, I did. I read Anne of Green Gables, Charlotte’s
Web, Uncle Tom’s Cabin, Jean Christophe, Oliver Twist,
A Christmas Carol, The Secret Garden, Harry Potter Series
(1, 2, 3), Mary Poppins and so on (in Japanese). (Student
D, female, 21)
• No. (Student E, female, 22)
• Yes, graded readers back in high school. (Student F, male,
22)
• No. (Student G, female, 22)
• Yes, I did sometimes. I used to read the Frog and Toad
series in English sometimes in my elementary and junior
high school days. (Student H, male, 22)
• No. (Student I, female, 22)
• In high school. (Student J, female, 23)

Dr. Susan K. Burton was an associate professor at Nagoya University

of Commerce and Business from 2003-2009 and Bunkyo Gakuin Uni-
versity from 2009-2013. She holds an MA in creative writing from the
University of East Anglia and a DPhil in history from the University of
Sussex. She is the co-author of Itakura, Burton, Onohara, Introduction
to British Cultural Studies through Movies, Shohakusha, 2008, and Oku-
mura, Burton, Itakura, Introduction to American Cultural Studies through
Movies, Shohakusha, 2007. She is currently completing a PhD in Cre-
ative Writing at the University of East Anglia.

142
 The Co-operative Muse1
Andrew Fitzsimons

Abstract
Over the last thirty years much of the emphasis in literary critical dis-
course has been on the social processes behind canon formation. Theoret-
ical viewpoints informed by feminism, post-colonialism, as well as the rise
of cultural studies, have altered the kinds of engagement with literature
demanded from within and by academic institutions. These re-readings
and questionings of what are considered socially derived criteria of “liter-
ary excellence” have placed the literature teacher in a re-conigured posi-
tion within the channels societies have established for the dissemination
and discussion of literary works.
What are the implications for the classroom of this questioning of the
“canonical” and of institutional judgements? What are the implications
for the Japanese classroom in which it is required to impart to students
a sense of the (cultural and social) values that inform the writings chosen
for them to study? How can and how do literary texts inform our ap-
proach to the class itself? These are the questions I address in the course
of this essay, which is based on the experience of teaching a class, within
the context of a course on post-war British poetry, on two writers, Lin-
ton Kwesi Johnson and Fred D’Aguiar, whose poems utilise dialect forms
of English. I will argue that texts in a variety of Englishes, that in their
linguistic being open up the question of what ‘standard’ means, how it is
formed, used and maintained, and which therefore in their very form ques-

143
tion the basis of value and authority, can have a pedagogic implication.
The texts chosen for a class inevitably inform the way the class proceeds.
Choosing a text which throws up such questions, a piece of language that
requires both students and teacher to engage in a co-operative process of
sense-making, places magisterial authority on hold, can radically inform
teaching habits, and the assumptions which underlie approaches to the
classroom and to literary texts. The poems of Johnson and D’Aguiar as
poems ofer essential insights into the processes behind canon formation.
I will argue that their work shows that poetry’s particular set of resources
and traditions not only allows for diversity of achievement but that the
resources and traditions of poetry itself has enabled the radical diference
of their experience to speak with such force.

Part 1
The role of the poetry specialist in the classroom, traditionally
conceived, is the interpretation of poetic works, and the cultiva-
tion of an appreciation of poetry’s aesthetic procedures. In this
context particular attention is usually paid to the poet’s use of
features of poetic form such as meter and rhyme. The main jus-
tiication for this approach to poetry, and indeed to literature
in general, is the moral and spiritual, though now more usu-
ally seen in terms of the social and cultural, educational value
placed upon the informing power of “great works.” The value
attached to poetry and literature, as well as the role of those
who profess literary texts, has over the last thirty years, how-
ever, been subject to a re-examination and questioning. John
Holloway’s Arnoldian belief that for criticism “the crucial opera-
tion … is to distinguish major works from minor” now seems not
simply, and not just, old-fashioned, but both “naïve and repre-
hensible” (Kermode 191) to a critical dispensation which places
such value-laden terms within historicized and relativized quo-

144
tation marks. The literary text has been re-situated by perspec-
tives which treat both author and work as a complex amalgam
of literary and extra-literary factors. Socio-political hegemony,
it is argued, rather than aesthetic achievement, is the ultimate
source for the traditional, privileged values attached to litera-
ture and literary study. The manufactured and rigorously main-
tained nature of this hierarchy has been examined and found
wanting for the past (and present) exclusion and downplaying
of the achievements of social elements marginalized by author-
itarian élites which have vested interests in subduing threats to
existing power structures. In this regard much feminist criti-
cism, for example, has been an efort to restore, and indeed in-
troduce, neglected women writers to what has become the focus
for much of recent critical energy: “the canon.”
“The canon” is that body of works in literature (and art, and
music) which, according to Harold Bloom’s grand formulation,
is “authoritative in our culture” (1). Less grandly “the canon”
signiies those texts teaching institutions require students to
study, and which scholars deem worthy of investigation. The
word derives from the Greek kanon, a reed. Reeds being straight
made them ideal for use as implements in measuring. Besides
needing to be straight, for other uses the kanon had to be inca-
pable of bending. In Greek, and later in Latin, the word “canon”
developed connotations to do with rules, standards and guide-
lines. These senses carry into our modern use of the term when
we remember that the word refers to a list of books regarded
as authoritative, most particularly with regard to the books of
the Bible. Once the Hebrews had set the limits as to what was
and was not to be regarded sacred scripture, the unassailable
authority of the books selected became itself one of the tenets

145
of belief. The moves to establish a canon of scriptures within
Christianity between the irst and fourth centuries C.E. derived
from the pressing need to deine what was normative within
a body of proliferating texts and therefore “provid[e] guidelines
for the ongoing life of the group” (Kee 573). In this process the
anonymous documents known as the gospels became attributed
to Matthew and John, disciples of Jesus, and Luke and Mark,
associates of the apostles, and thus carried the stamp of unas-
sailable authority. This element of self-conscious constructed-
ness and the role played by the need for social cohesion in the
process of Biblical canonization echoes current critical debates
about the literary canon. Indeed, Howard Clark Kee could be
writing of the literary canon when he states:
The judgments ofered about the authoritative status of these
early Christian writings were not based ultimately on schol-
arly decisions or ecclesiastical decrees but derived instead
from the functions these writings had been serving over
the centuries in the communities for whom they were pro-
duced …. The primary consideration in assembling the
canon, therefore, were the needs, the experience, and the
corporate judgments of the early Christian communities. The
decisions did not derive from objective criteria ofered by de-
tached observers. (573)

Though still with strong religious connotations the term “canon”

is now most frequently used as shorthand for the “literary
canon.” Put most simply, the literary canon refers to those works
and/or authors, in secular writings, that have consensual ap-
proval of literary critics. In its literary use the term has also
come to signify the veriied works of certain authors. For exam-

146
ple, the “Shakespeare canon” is comprised of the works scholars
attribute to William Shakespeare. Over the years cases have
made for the inclusion of certain other Elizabethan texts within
the Shakespeare canon. Similarly, some scholars have argued
for the deletion of texts attributed to Shakespeare but which,
it is claimed, are of dubious authenticity. Coming back to the
Greek origin of the word, we can see that the literary canon
is a measure or rule which determines the writings that qual-
ify for inclusion within a corpus of related texts. The “canon-
ical,” therefore, is a standard of achievement, or relation, by
which works are measured and by which a proliferation of texts
is judged. At it most basic, therefore, debate over the canon con-
cerns what gets in and what does not. Current debate, however,
has added the historical dimension: in the past what got in, and
why? What did not, and why?
The critical emphasis on the social processes behind canon
formation has particular relevance with regard to school curric-
ula. Reformists question the existence of socially and politically
uncontaminated aesthetic criteria and have pointed out that the
processes of creating a literary canon depend on the “corporate
judgments” of dominant ideologies that have, in the past, been
concurrently racist, patriarchal, imperialistic, ethnocentric, and
marginalizing. Rather than “literary excellence,” a complex set
of social, national and institutional variables deriving, as in the
biblical process, from the function these writings serve in the
community, establish what is the matter worthy of considera-
tion as “canonical.” The issue, critics of canon-formation argue,
is primarily one of power and control. Who gets to decide what
is considered worthy of dissemination and study, what “good”
and what “not so good”? Theoretical viewpoints informed by

147
feminism, post-colonialism, as well as the rise of what is called
“cultural studies,” have altered the kinds of engagement with
literature demanded from within and by academic institutions.
These re-readings and questionings of what are considered so-
cially derived criteria of literary excellence and achievement
have placed the literature teacher in a re-conigured position
within the channels societies have established for the dissemi-
nation and discussion of literary works.
In Japan the teaching of English language poetry most com-
monly takes place at University level in elective courses ofered
by the English faculty. The teacher is typically a highly-qualiied
non-native speaker specializing in the work of a particular pe-
riod, a particular poet, or poetry from a particular area within
the English-speaking world. What are the implications for the
classroom of this questioning of the canonical and of institu-
tional judgments? What are the implications for the Japanese
classroom in which it is required to impart to students a sense of
the (cultural and social) values that inform the writings chosen
for them to study? How can and how do literary texts inform our
approach to the class itself? These are the questions I want to
address in the course of this essay, which is based on the experi-
ence of teaching a class, within the context of a course on post-
war British poetry, on two black British writers Linton Kwesi
Johnson and Fred D’Aguiar. The essay will show how the work
of these poets brings to the fore questions concerning authori-
tative deinitions of literary excellence and the “literary” itself,
and also how their poems as poems ofer essential insights into
the processes behind canon formation. I will argue that the work
of these writers shows that poetry’s particular set of resources
and traditions not only allows for diversity of achievement but

148
that the resources and traditions of poetry itself has enabled the
radical diference of their experience to speak with such force.
First of all I would like to address the reasons for choosing
poems by these writers. This entails a brief overview of issues
which have come to inform debate about poetry over the last
thirty years.

Part 2
The course I was teaching was based on post-war British poetry.
For better or worse I decided on chronology as the most efec-
tive way of getting across a sense of both what was available
for investigation and also a sense of the period out of which
the poetry issued. There were obvious igures and what used
to be called “schools” that seemed to demand representation:
Philip Larkin, Thom Gunn and the Movement, Geofrey Hill,
Ted Hughes. This chronological sweep, however, raised many
questions: did poets as diferent as Larkin and Thom Gunn re-
ally belong to a “school” called “the Movement”? Were poets
as extravagantly complex as Ted Hughes and Geofrey Hill to be
deined by the time within which I placed them? What relation-
ship to society for poetry was I positing by this approach? Was
I forcing a thematic narrative on what, in fact, was a hetero-
geneous, discrete series of achievements which no single over-
arching view could adequately represent? What was I going to
do when it came to deciding on poets nearer to our own time?
Would I choose poets for their representative value or for literary
excellence, a value challenged by those who argue that canon-
ical decisions are, and always have been, based on the socially
and politically derived cultural needs of élites?

149
 The questions concerning text choice were beginning to give
me, of course, an insight into the critical questioning of the pro-
cesses of canon-formation. More signiicant, however, was the
insight into how the teacher is also part of the process of canon-
formation. Text-choice is a form of anthologizing which estab-
lishes for students what Daniel Corkery once called “the matter
worth coming upon” (15). For the student, with no input into or
insight into the choice-making process, the texts become a fait
accompli. On trust they attend to these texts as serious objects
for serious engagement, as the “best” of the potential texts avail-
able for selection. This, in microcosm, is in fact what has been
the case in literary studies since the foundation of English liter-
ature as a subject worthy of study at university level.2 Over the
last thirty years, however, since the rise of critical theory and
cultural studies, such “unexamined” approaches and opaque se-
lection procedures have become debatable.
When the Jews were establishing which of the assorted texts
within the Biblical tradition were to be considered authorita-
tive there was common agreement that the ive books of Moses,
known as the Torah, “provided the basic guidelines for Jewish
self-understanding” (Kee 568). However, there was diference
of opinion and argument concerning “some of the poetic and
prophetic documents” (Kee 568). It appears that there have
never been stable and absolute criteria nor a visible demarca-
tion line between what is worthy of inclusion and what is not,
whether in the formation of the Biblical or of the literary canon,
and the quest for such a line is chimerical. John Carey is being
pragmatic when he states “the pursuit of some secret ingredi-
ent that accounts for literary greatness is hardly a hopeful exer-
cise” (1). So how can, and how should, the teacher determine

150
which texts, out of the myriad possible texts to choose from, are
the “best” for students to study? Jonathan Culler argues that
teachers select, and have always selected, works that are repre-
sentative of something, perhaps a form (the sonnet, for instance),
a period (modern British poetry). It is within that context that
the “best” works are chosen. And “best” here can of course mean
the most representative. As Culler remarks “what has changed
is an interest in choosing works to represent a range of cultural
experiences as well as a range of literary forms” (50).
Theory, Culler believes, has helped to invigorate approaches
to literature, and by extension literature in the classroom, with
its expansion of “the range of questions to which literary works
can answer” (48). Rather than signaling the end and destruction
of the canon as Harold Bloom and other “canon-conservatives”
fear, the canon has never been so variously studied. “Canonical”
texts have become, in a sense, centrifugal forces:
cultural studies, with its insistence on studying literature as
one signifying practice among others, and on examining the
culture roles with which literature has been invested, can
intensify the study of literature as a complex intertextual
phenomenon. (Culler 48)

Thus Shakespeare is now “studied from every angle conceivable,

interpreted in feminist, Marxist, psychoanalytic, historicist, and
deconstructive vocabularies” (Culler 49). This is an encouraging
view, and relevant, but Culler does not, and does not want to,
engage in the question of how a literary “signifying practice” is
diferent in quality from other signifying practices. Is literature
diferent in kind from other forms of discourse? If it is not, then
why study it rather than other forms of discourse? Nor does he

151
engage with the question of how a teacher’s or a critic’s own
thematic preoccupations can force a narrative on what I called
earlier “a discrete series of achievements.” Harold Bloom fears
the reductive-ness of a critical or pedagogic emphasis on one or
other of the various perspectives that Culler believes have ex-
panded the canon. The complicated nature of the connection
between “expansion” in the canon and the growth of a cultural
studies which concerns itself with previously neglected writings
by marginalized groups has lead to the charge of compromised
literary standards. Inclusion within the canon comes now, crit-
ics like Bloom believe, by virtue of a “representative-ness” which
has lost sight of “literary excellence.”
Literary studies occupies now a position where it needs to re-
establish fundamentals concerning its own function and impor-
tance. The PMLA in 2002 devoted space to the question “Why
Major in Literature – What Do We Tell Our Students?” One of
its contributors, David F. Bell, chair of the Department of Ro-
mance Studies at Duke University, noted a professional turn-
ing away from engagement with literature “in any other con-
text than cultural studies,” a context in which, he maintains,
the poem or novel becomes “at most an illustration of an ide-
ological, historical, or theoretical theme, no diferent from any
other cultural manifestation” (487).3 The pluralist approach of
those who question the established canon has lead, Bloom and
Bell argue, to a situation where the study of literature for its
own autonomous qualities and pleasures has been abandoned
as suspect. John Carey’s description of the university situation
in Britain bears striking similarities to the American situation
outlined by Bell:

152
 [t]he study of English literature is considered insular and un-
chic, and is being progressively replaced by various brands
of “cultural studies” and critical theory. Since the 1960s, the
“canon” of acknowledged important authors has been un-
der attack, on the grounds that it represents an authoritarian
conspiracy, stiling dissident voices. (1)

Bloom’s counter-argument to what he calls “the School of Re-

sentment,” those critics who want to redress the imbalances in
the representative-ness of the canon, states that authors them-
selves rather than institutions determine canons. The canonical
he reads as a matter of inluence: writers engage with those
past texts from which they can learn, in a process of misreading
and re-interpretation which creates the extended body of works
which is the canon. Bloom believes that a canonical work has
special aesthetic qualities which distinguish it even from work
with which it shares an aesthetic family resemblance. Canon-
ical work outstrips the sternest critical attention and discrimi-
nation. No matter what the social processes that spawned the
literary canon, the works that have survived have survived the
test of centuries of high intellectual criticism. He admits that
“canonical criticism” can have “religiopolitical and socioeco-
nomic motivations” but literature itself has qualities which tran-
scend agenda and bias. To clinch the argument he gives this
example: “On all issues of religion, politics, society, and eco-
nomics, the Tory (Samuel) Johnson and the Radical Dissenter
(William) Hazlitt are totally opposed, but they praise Milton for
the same qualities” (197).
That there are inherent aesthetic qualities which distinguish
certain texts from others and which transcend social origins is

153
a view often termed “magisterial.” The word magisterial itself
goes somewhere near the heart of the matter. The dictionary
entry reads “Magisterial: Of, pertaining to, or beitting a master,
teacher, or someone qualiied to speak with authority; authoritative;
dictatorial; (of a person) invested with authority.” It derives from
the word Magisterium which like the word “canon” has ecclesias-
tical connotations. The challengers of the literary canon and its
formation whom Bloom characterizes as the “current apostles of
the ‘criticism and social change’ ” (197) are generally concerned
with the undue inluence that magisterial ideas of the canonical
hold over the interpretive communities which de facto maintain
the literary canon.
Much of the recent poetry produced in Britain, in particular
work produced since the 1970s, is a challenge to institutional
authority. A deep suspicion of both the magisterial and of the
control exerted by the Magisterium underlies much of the dis-
course within and about contemporary British literature. The
institutional is a disseminator, consciously and unconsciously,
of hegemonic, stultifying, repressive values, in the work of such
poets as Peter Reading, Carol Ann Dufy, Sean O’Brien, and Tony
Harrison. This can take the form of direct attack (Reading’s
Ukulele Music, Harrison’s v, for instance) but it is in the frequent
resort to demotic and to dialect forms that we ind the marks
of what Simon Armitage and Robert Crawford call a move to-
ward a “democratic voice” (xix). This poetry presents a chal-
lenge, irst of all at the most basic levels of language comprehen-
sion; and secondly, as a questioning of inherited, received no-
tions of a “standard” that would exclude “non-standard” voices
and experience from the literary high table. Seamus Heaney in
“Singing School” expresses the mixture of belligerent pride and

154
cultural cringe felt by these “barbarians” as they were beginning
to make the long walk towards the fortiied cultural centre:

I tried to write about the sycamores

And innovated a South Derry rhyme
With hushed and lulled full chimes for pushed and pulled
Those hobnailed boots from beyond the mountain
Were walking, by God, all over the ine
Lawns of elocution
(North 57-58, lines 26-30)

To those whose profession it is to teach and interpret literary

texts such work presents a fundamental questioning of pedagog-
ical procedures that privilege the magisterial authority of the
teacher. This relects the challenge to various forms of institu-
tional authority and elision that many of these poems describe.
A text like Linton Kwesi Johnson’s “Inglan is a Bitch,” which
details a West Indian immigrant’s struggles in the job market of
a Britain which places little value on his abilities, is an ironic
echo of the situation. The poem’s form, language, and also its
evocation of the inadequacies of magisterial authority, is a chal-
lenge to the teacher as a member of an authoritative interpretive
community with magisterial tendencies and traditions.
Which brings us to the question posed at the beginning of this
paper: what are the implications for the classroom of this ques-
tioning of the canonical and of institutional judgments? What
are the implications for the Japanese classroom in which we try
to impart to students a sense of the cultural and social discourses
that inform the writings chosen for them to study? In the con-
text of teaching English in Japan, the contemporary is unignor-

155
able. There is an absolute necessity on the part of teachers and
students to be aware of current usage. For those who teach liter-
ature the necessity of an awareness of the contemporary is less
immediately apparent. Indeed when we come to the contempo-
rary, problems arise. We come to work which has not endured,
which has not passed the critical scrutiny alluded to earlier as
one of the traditional marks of the canonical. Yet in the con-
text of discourse analysis, which seeks to analyse language at
the level of the sentence, one of the most compelling areas of
engagement is with literature. Contemporary literature’s rele-
vance to discussions of, for instance, race and the language of
power, needs little arguing for here. Yet confronted with con-
temporary work, particularly work in dialect where the linguis-
tic features may be less familiar, it would be understandable if
the teacher yielded to the temptation to ignore it in favour of
work over which more traditional kinds of teacherly authority
could be maintained. Texts in unfamiliar dialects, like the mix
of creole and Jamaican-English in “Inglan is a Bitch,” or indeed
texts for which there is little secondary material available, in
other words which has not accrued a certain literary credibility,
undermine the kind of teacherly authority that would demand
that the teacher be in total control of a work’s linguistic surface
and context. Yet perhaps there is a value in trying to assess how
these texts can usefully inform our approach to the classroom
itself.
Texts in a variety of Englishes, that in their linguistic be-
ing open up the question of what “standard” means, how it is
formed, used and maintained, and which therefore in their very
form question the basis of value and authority, can have a peda-
gogic implication. The texts chosen for a class inevitably inform

156
the way the class proceeds. Choosing a text which throws up
such questions, a piece of language that requires both students
and teacher to engage in a co-operative process of sense-making,
places magisterial authority on hold, can radically inform teach-
ing habits, and the assumptions which underlie approaches to
the classroom and to literary texts.

Part 3
“Inglan is a Bitch” was included in the anthology The New Poetry
(1993), an anthology which attempted, in the manner of other
polemical overviews of contemporary verse, to delineate and
establish a coherent narrative of the turns and tones of British
and Irish poetry of the 1980s and early 1990s. The poetry of
this period Hulse, Kennedy and Morley proclaimed in their in-
troduction, was “fresh in its attitudes, risk-taking in its address,
and plural in its forms and voices” (16). The poem was also in-
cluded in Armitage and Crawford’s The Penguin Book of Poetry
from Britain and Ireland Since 1945, an anthology that presented
a similarly optimistic view of the state of contemporary British
and Irish poetry. In their introduction, forthrightly entitled “The
Democratic Voice,” they set out what they considered the major
development in poetry after World War II:
Largely rejecting pontiical tones, poets in Britain and Ire-
land wrote as part of a shift toward post-imperial, pluralist
societies and communities. The notion of a hieratic voice of
authority (whether that of received pronunciation, the BBC,
the Irish Catholic priest, the Oxford don, or the patriarchal
male) was rejected, though poets’ voices were increasingly
part of the public sphere. (xxi)

157
As Justin Quinn, amongst others, has noted, however, one of the
peculiarities of both anthologies is not only how similar they are
in editorial line but also how similar are many of the supposedly
plural voices within their pages. Quinn’s conclusion?
The bottom line is that there isn’t really a plurality of poetic
cultures in Britain and Ireland at the present time, and the
homogeneity of the weaker recent poetry in this anthology
is evidence of that. What is diferent is the demographics
of the poets’ backgrounds: you don’t have to go to Oxford
(although it has to be admitted that it still helps), and you
don’t have to be white and male (positive disabilities these
days) if you want to make it. But such diversity has not
resulted in any great diversity in poetic style.

Armitage and Crawford are not the irst to credit the Butler Ed-
ucation Act of 1944 with the demographic change in the social
backgrounds making up the “poetic culture” of Britain. This act
“heralded and later schooled” (xx) both a previously disadvan-
taged source of poetic talent and a new audience. But the diver-
sity in background of poets does not necessarily, and indeed has
not, produced a plurality of poetic procedure. These poets uti-
lize the traditional resources of the medium in traditional ways.
The current period style par excellence, for instance, the dramatic
monologues of Carol Ann Dufy, has recognizable antecedents in
poems such as Robert Browning’s “My Last Duchess,” where the
speakers reveal to the audience truths about motives and ac-
tions which remain hidden to the speakers themselves. Quinn
inds the few examples of actual stylistic diversity in the use that
Scottish poets like W. N. Herbert and Kathleen Jamie put di-
alect to, and in the Black British poetry of, among others, John-

158
son and Fred D’Aguiar. There is the sense, then, that Johnson
and D’Aguiar are distinguished within their own generation and
within their own genre, are indeed becoming, or have become,
canonical. Johnson’s status was further acknowledged by the
inclusion of his selected poems Mi Revalueshanary Fren in the
Penguin Modern Classics list: the irst living English language
poet to be thus honored.4 The discussion surrounding Penguin’s
decision brought to the fore questions not only about the mer-
its and demerits of Johnson’s work but also about the issues of
canon-formation I have been discussing.
Reactions to the publication were varied and illuminating.
Carol Ann Dufy described it as “an inspired and inspirational
publishing moment” (Jaggi). The TLS diary pages wondered if
the inclusion of Johnson within “the circles of the immortals”
might appear to “some readers … a little premature” (Jaggi).
Much of the debate and the comments skirted around the ques-
tion of what is and is not canonical. When, for instance, is it
appropriate to make such a supposedly deinitive statement?
Johnson’s work throws up some provocative questions. One of
the most interesting reactions to the publication was Michael
Schmidt’s. In his PN Review editorial on the subject Schmidt
wrote of his appreciation of Johnson’s work, but made the point
that the qualities for which he admired the work were to do
with public performance, the orality of the pieces, rather than
for the “on-the-page” literary and poetic qualities that inclusion
in the Penguin Classics, he argued, warranted. Johnson’s work
in the textual context lacked “prosodic coherence and semantic
depth.” The performance of the work, he wrote, “compensates
efortlessly for a missing beat, an ineicient inversion, a short or
over-length line, which elides and inlects and saves us the efort

159
of interpretation.” The inclusion of Johnson he saw as a mark of
the patronizing tendency of a “largely white and liberal estab-
lishment,” co-opting in the name of tolerance work they do not
really understand, putting it into contexts that falsify its claims
to attention. Schmidt’s argument is based on genre and appro-
priate context, the page versus performance, boundary questions
which Johnson’s work both illuminates and blurs.
Schmidt reads Johnson’s inluence only in terms of “British
musical and performance culture.” Yet Fred D’Aguiar himself,
very much an “on-the-page” poet, has written of Johnson’s liter-
ary and social inluence, placing his work in the radical tradition
of Swift, Shelley and John Clare. “Dub poetry” is, he remarks,
the “most original poetic form to have emerged in the English
language in the last quarter century” (Jaggi). The distinction be-
tween the “literary” qualities of a text and on-stage performance
is, to others, artiicial and ghettoizing. The poet Lemn Sissay,
though not quite addressing Schmidt’s speciic point, responded
by making the general point that “If you are a black poet, the
literary establishment automatically decides that you must be
a performance poet” (Jaggi). The novelist and playwright Caryl
Phillips sees Johnson’s work as of fundamental importance to
the children of West Indian migrants to Britain. His was the
“irst crossover voice, who made it possible for a generation to
think of themselves as black and creative in literature, music,
the media” (Jaggi).5
Johnson was, in fact, born in Jamaica in 1952 in Chapelton,
a small town in the rural parish of Clarendon, and came to Lon-
don when he was eleven years old. The move to Britain was, as
for many black immigrants, a cause of much initial anxiety:

160
 My parents came to England and I was told to come over
at their request. At irst, it was traumatic because of the
hostility of racism and so on. But when you’re young, you
tend to adjust to new situations pretty quickly. So I adjusted
quickly and I’ve been settled here ever since.
(Johnson, Interview by Hargus)

He attended Tulse Hill secondary school and went on to Uni-

versity, graduating from Goldsmiths College, London with a de-
gree in Sociology. Johnson’s poetry and politics were initially
inluenced by American examples. The Souls of Black Folk by
W.E.B. DuBois, the African-American scholar, Johnson says “in-
spired me to write poetry.” The originating impulse for John-
son’s work is, he has also said, a desire to take issue with “a
culture of racism that’s been ingrained since the time of the
empire.” Living around Brixton, the centre of south London’s
Caribbean community, ensured that Johnson was close to many
of the pivotal and politicizing events of recent black British his-
tory – the Lewisham ire and the Brixton riots – both of which
feature prominently within his poetry and in his political ac-
tivism.
Johnson adapted the “toasting” of reggae DJs into the genre
that has subsequently become widely known as “dub poetry.”
“Dub” is a musical term, originally denoting an early form of
re-mixing, or sampling, where records were stripped to their
rhythm, and processed with electronic efects. A dub poem, ac-
cording to the Jamaican poet Oku Onuora, who is said to have
originated the use of the term for poetry, is one which “has
a built-in reggae rhythm – hence when the poem is read without
any reggae rhythm (so to speak) backing, one can distinctly hear

161
the reggae rhythm coming out of the poem” (qtd. in Doumerc).6
A dub poem, therefore, is built on a reggae rhythm even when
there is no musical accompaniment. Johnson, though uncom-
fortable with the term “dub,”7 does write, he has said, with an
imaginary bass-line throbbing behind the words as a propulsive
force.8
Johnson deliberately chose Jamaican Creole or patois9 as the
medium for his poetry. In this self-conscious use of idiom he was
inluenced by the work of Edward Kamau Braithwaite:
a revolution was started in Caribbean poetry by Edward
Brathwaite where he was trying to create a new aesthetic that
wasn’t based on the meter of English poetry, the iambic pen-
tameter. He incorporated the rhythms of Caribbean speech,
jazz rhythms, blues rhythms, calypso rhythms and so on. In
a sense, what I’ve been doing with reggae, what I call reggae
poetry is to consolidate that revolution that was started by
Brathwaite. (Johnson, Interview by Hargus)

What David Crystal writes of John Agard’s “Listen, Mr Oxford

Don,” could apply equally well to “Inglan is a Bitch” in that
both poems “illustrate the syllable-timed rhythm of Caribbean
speech” (344). The self-consciousness and the inventiveness of
Johnson’s idiom is also brought out in Crystal’s remarks about
the orthographic conundrum presented by Caribbean English:
The choice of a spelling system is one of the critical ques-
tions facing anyone who works with creole, or who wishes
to write in it. Some writers use spellings which are close to
Standard English (e.g., writing car as cah); others try to max-
imize the diferences between the two systems (e.g., writing
car as caa). (348)

162
Crystal remarks of Johnson’s orthography that it “captures the
accent of much Caribbean speech” (348). Interestingly, when
“Inglan is a Bitch” was introduced in class, none of the students
could place the variety of English the poem uses. They did not
realize, therefore, until the line “dem seh dat black man is very
lazy” in the ninth stanza, that the economic struggle the poem
evokes had a racial basis as well as an immediately recognizable
basis in issues of social class.

Part 4: What happened in class

The problem presented most immediately by the text of “Inglan
is a Bitch” was how to go about familiarizing ourselves with its
terms: its dialectal and orthographic diference from “standard”
forms:

W’en mi jus’ come to Landan toun

mi use to work pan di andahgroun
but workin’ pan di andahgroun
y’u don’t get i know your way aroun’
Inglan is a bitch
dere’s no escapin’ it
Inglan is a bitch
dere’s no runnin’ whey fram it
(1-8)

The loaded term “standard” in this speciic case came to

mean those forms the students had met in their previous studies.
Using prior knowledge of grammatical forms and vocabulary,
students were able to convert what was unfamiliar in the text
into sense-making units. In line four, for example, they could

163
make out that “i” was performing a function similar to the more
familiar “to,” and could identify slightly modiied items of com-
mon English vocabulary. Thus the line became “You don’t get to
know your way around.” This converting of the poem’s language
into familiar terms, in a way translating the text, used inferen-
tial and problem solving skills. The dictionary could not help
with discourse features, so students had to arrive at meaning by
using prior knowledge and general cognitive abilities. This led
to a very lively and engaged relationship with the text.
Sound, the orality of the text also became a key to under-
standing. As a way of approaching the meaning of individual
items the students (in groups of three) tested the words by pro-
nouncing them out loud to one another. The students would
then try to match the sound with a familiar item in their vocab-
ulary. In this process, taking the irst stanza as example, “Lan-
dan” became “London,” “andahgroun” became “underground,”
“facktri” became “factory.” In this way students also managed
to work out that the “Inglan” of the title (and refrain) was “Eng-
land.” Some items proved more diicult than others, of course.
“Pan,” in line two, caused a high degree of diiculty because, it
turned out, students were not familiar with the term “to work
upon …” The one student who did eventually recall the term
managed to re-phrase line two as “I used to work upon the un-
derground.”
There were occasional diferences of opinion concerning
words and also occasional “mis-translations.” Mis-translations
were due, most typically, for the reason mentioned above: an
unfamiliarity with the term whatever its variety of English. In
other words there was little in the language of the text that
would have troubled them overmuch had a knowledge of an-

164
other English form of the item been available. As another ex-
ample of this point, when they came to the term “wage packit”
(line 17) the students wanted to convert “packit” to “pocket” be-
ing unfamiliar with the term “wage packet.” As a complement to
this point, there were also occasions when the students wanted
to convert terms which had not, in fact, been “de-familiarized.”
For example, the term “tax racket” (line 18) found the students
trying to convert when there was no need. The diiculties that
the poem presented, therefore, were in its de-familiarization of
(potentially) familiar terms.
What the students were doing, in fact, was what any reader
not part of the linguistic community addressed by the poem
has to do, including native speakers of English. My own ex-
perience of reading the poem involved “translating” at points
where the dialect proved too unfamiliar. In the classroom con-
text this fact made for a number of insights and implications,
particularly with regard to issues of authority. In what might
be called the “traditional” literature classroom context, author-
ity can devolve to a number of diferent positions. The author’s
intention in writing a poem, despite Wimsatt and Beardsley’s
famous declaration that the “design or intention of the author
is neither available nor desirable as a standard for judging the
success of a work of literary art” (3) still remains a readerly
option. However, what Terry Eagleton calls “the process of con-
structing a ‘subject position’ for ourselves as readers” (120) can
enable a questioning and re-positioning of this recourse to un-
available authority, privileging instead the text itself in “its ma-
terial density as language” (121) as the only location of possible
authority.10 The language of “Inglan is a Bitch” brought to stu-
dents a heightened awareness of this issue. Whereas in previous

165
classes in the course there had been a number of questions and
remarks concerning what the poet “meant to say,” the “mate-
rial density” of Johnson’s poem seemed to remove students’ re-
course to such questioning. Paradoxically, however, and despite
the structuralist belief that an emphasis on linguistic material-
ity leads to an avoidance of “the naïve notion that a literary text
is just a kind of transcript of the living voice of a real man or
woman addressing us,” students took the voice of the poem to
be that of Johnson himself. Their initial responses also indicated
that they held the language of the poem to be the only linguistic
means at the author’s disposal and not a “literary” or “poetic”
idiom in the manner of, say, Ted Hughes or Dylan Thomas.
This was one of the most interesting aspects of their read-
ing, and a corollary of the debate about the ghettoizing of “non-
standard” speech and writing. In not seeing the language of the
poem as a chosen idiom, there seemed to be a number of unexam-
ined ideas about the social and cultural signiicance of the use of
dialect. A reading of Fred D’Aguiar’s poem “Letter From Mama
Dot”11 allowed this question to be more deeply addressed. The
poem’s second section begins:

You are a traveller to them.

A West Indian working in England;
A Friday, Tonto, or Punkawallah;
Sponging of the state. Our languages
Remain pidgin, like our dark, third,
Underdeveloped, world.
(35-40)

166
 Interestingly students had no diiculty in seeing the “writer-
liness” of this text, which might be ascribed to D’Aguiar’s use
of a recognizable Standard English. Putting the language of
“Inglan is a Bitch” and the situation of the speaker of the poem
into this context enabled students to gain a sense of the so-
cial and cultural purpose and signiicance behind the choice of
a “non-standard” idiom. It also gave them an acute sense of
Johnson as a poet, as a self-conscious user of words and con-
structor of rhythms and rhymes. A series of questions put to the
text, which could also be put to other poems written in dialect,
had the efect of framing the poem’s engagement with the issue
of authority in ways that brought out the “literary” aspects of
the text as well as the socio-cultural. The students were asked
to consider in what ways “Inglan is a Bitch” could be considered
“traditional.” Then they were asked in what ways could it be
considered “radical.” Their responses indicated that they were
coming to an awareness of how the typical features of the or-
ganized nature of poetic utterance (the rhymes for example, the
chorus refrain) were being used in conjunction with the literary
use of “non-standard” language forms to make a socio-cultural
intervention.

Part 5: Conclusion

I ent have no gun

I ent have no knife
but mugging de Queen’s English
is the story of my life
(John Agard “Listen, Mr Oxford Don,” 1985)12

167
 Judging the unfolding achievements of contemporary writ-
ing involves a kind of canonical guessing. The literary quali-
ties of texts which consciously set about dismantling authorita-
tive deinitions of that very term illuminate fundamental ques-
tions concerning what “literature” and the “literary” are held to
mean at a given time, and how and why the deinitions change.
The teacher has to choose, within syllabus parameters and time
limits, and from within the set of questions that the course
or particular class is designed to address, the “best” texts for
course purposes. It is this idea of purpose that is crucial. If
texts have always been chosen for their representative-ness, and
representative-ness is no longer a matter of a de-contextualized,
a-historical “literary excellence,” then there is a need for a self-
conscious, argued, demonstrable way of making students aware
of what has happened in literary studies. Teachers need to be
aware, and make students aware, of how purpose informs read-
ings. Michel Pecheux’s “Mansholt report” has made us acutely
aware of how “framing” conditions the parameters of reading.13
The teacher’s reasons for choosing one poem rather than an-
other, and the fore-grounding of certain aspects of the poem at
the expense of others, is also therefore part, or should be part,
of a critical self-awareness and scrutiny in which such forms of
“editing” are made known to students. Whether we treat texts as
illustrations of social and cultural points, or as examples of “lit-
erary” language and form, or both, what is inevitably involved
in choosing texts for those purposes is discrimination between
texts which resemble each other, whether aesthetically (sonnet,
ballad, haiku) or socio-culturally (“Inglan is a Bitch” and “Let-
ter From Mama Dot”). This discrimination is similar, in kind
if not quality, to how a canon forms. The important points to

168
be stressed in the classroom are that text-choice, ways of read-
ing, and the canon itself, are the results of contested forces that
are still at work. With no decision-making central authority de-
ciding what is and is not canonical, authority can devolve to
whoever happens to be in a position to inluence choice of text
and how those texts are presented for reading, i.e., the teacher.
This makes it important for teachers to be conscious of their own
place in the dissemination, and indeed formation, of the literary
canon. Teachers make the processes behind the literary canon
known to their students by keeping alive such questions as What
do we teach? and Why do we teach it?
However, there is no gainsaying the fact that courses need
to, and do, present a narrative of the course topic and that there
is, as a consequence, the temptation to create “teachable lines
of succession” (Armitage and Crawford xxviii). The need for
teachability, and for lessons to be learned from classes can force
poetry into reductive moulds to illustrate chosen points. There
is also the danger that in choosing texts the teacher thematizes
personal preoccupations. Should a class or a course thematize
a teacher’s personal views? There is a need to give students ac-
cess to debates, and if the framing pressure, of which Pecheux’s
experiment has made us aware, is inevitably a part of engage-
ment with texts it is important that students are made aware
of this fact. Should teachers base text-choices on the discur-
sive possibilities of one text over another, how well it illustrates
certain points? Do we choose texts which are “representative”
in the sense that they redress imbalances in the demographic
make-up of, say, modern British poetry? In this scenario, when
there is a need for a woman poet, then Carol Ann Dufy, for
example, will “represent” women, Linton Kwesi Johnson “rep-

169
resent” blacks etc. The danger lies in making one voice speak
for all, regardless of how that voice is accented and individ-
ual. This form of “special pleading” is deleterious both to po-
etry and to the communities for whom these poets are suppos-
edly representative, not least because poets from the suppos-
edly uncomplicated “centre”14 have no such pressure placed on
them to “speak for the community.” Edward Said has criticized
that strand of criticism (Bloom’s “School of Resentment”) which
would, in redressing demographic imbalances, reject what it
considers “privileged,” and therefore suspect, writing from so-
called “dead white Males.” The canon debate was not, Said
writes, a “matter of replacing one set of authorities and dog-
mas with another, nor of substituting one center for another. It
was always a matter of opening and participating in a central
strand of intellectual and cultural efort” (qtd. in Hughes 113).
The nub of the problem is, of course, how to answer both
the claims of representative-ness and those of aesthetic achieve-
ment. Culler’s argument that representative-ness has always
formed the basis of how we choose texts is true, as is the aes-
thetic element in those same choices. Yet I would argue that
a choice that emphasises the strange autonomy of poetry’s dis-
course, and argues for the existence and relevance of that auton-
omy, must be part of what teachers of poetry believe. Part of the
answer to the problem of what Fred D’Aguiar calls “the disputed
canon” (D’Aguiar, Poetry Kit) is being aware of the problem.
Teachers of poetry need to be attentive to the qualities that or-
ganized utterance, and metrical evocation, can bring to material
that exists elsewhere in newspapers and political tracts. How is
a poem a poem and not a piece of journalism? Yet this is not
to say that teachers provide deinitive answers as to what does

170
and does not qualify as “poetic” or “canonical.” A multiplicity
of discourses are potentially available. For these discourses to
reveal themselves as claims upon students’ attention depends, as
in the “Mansholt report,” on the emphasis placed by the teacher
on the latent discourses available.
The pressure applied to poems in order to extract designated
themes out of them is, as Justin Quinn points out, one of the most
deleterious aspects of engagement with contemporary poetry. It
is deleterious, he argues, as it reduces poetry to other modes of
discourse such as critical or journalistic prose. Insisting on the
radical diference of poetry from other discourses, with its own
particular set of resources and traditions that make it much more
than a social by-product, results in an engagement which, rather
than avoiding the awful social facts of repression and injustice,
can lead instead to the acknowledgement of poetry regardless of
“subject matter, ideology, ethnicity, or gender” (Schmidt xxv).
This is what Thom Gunn calls the “spectrum” approach, which
can appreciate diversity of poetic achievement and at the same
time poetry’s commonality of resource. Far from attempting to
ignore the historical moment, or the social facts, this approach is
very much aware of the interventions that poetry can make into
the historical and social. This approach, according to Michael
Schmidt, “insists not on plurality but continuity, it suggests a re-
public of poetry rather than an irreconcilable anarchy of factions
or a severe state of canonical closures” (xxv).
The challengers view the formation of the canon as lawed.
The inherent quality of a piece is secondary, it is claimed, to
how a text serves the current cultural needs of hegemonic power.
However, poetry itself, the radically informing power of poetry’s
resources, has been used to iniltrate, to criticize, to undermine

171
the forces of hegemonic control. The disputed canon has been
re-examined by voices from within the communities from ex-
British colonies that have established themselves both in Britain,
and within the canon itself. Writers such as Derek Walcott, Ed-
ward Kamau Braithwaite have, because of the radical diference
of their experience, and through the efect and force of their
literary achievement, prompted a questioning and altered ap-
proach to what is and is not canonical. “Inglan is a Bitch” brings
to the fore the living quality of this continuing debate in a way
that the work of Philip Larkin, for instance, does not, or does
not explicitly. The poem, and Johnson’s work in general, are
importantly and immediately illuminating of questions concern-
ing the canon which are part of contemporary discussion about
the function of literature, and of how, as Robert Hughes writes,
if readers approach the work of women and blacks without
prejudice and without the sense of tiptoeing up on a special
case, our shared culture grows and rejoices. We learn how
other kinds of cultural consciousness can occupy the speak-
ing center of literary forms. (110)

172
Notes
1. A version of this essay, in Japanese translation, appeared in Teaching
and Learning English: Integrating Language and Culture, ed. Yoshifumi
Saito (Tokyo: University of Tokyo Press, 2003): 77-107.

2. See Terry Eagleton, Literary Theory (London: Basil Blackwell, 1983),

in particular Chapter Two “The Rise of English”. Brian Doyle writes:
“It needs to be noted that ‘the English language and literature’ as a ield
of semantic and practical activity did not simply arrive on the scene
from nowhere, full and complete. It had to be worked, constructed,
forged out of struggles between difering lived meanings and cultural
forms” (qtd. in Mills 25).

3. See also Harold Bloom: “The light from or repression of the aes-
thetic is endemic in our institutions of what still purport to be higher
education” (23).

4. At the time of its publication the only other living author on the
list was the Polish Nobel laureate, Czeslaw Milosz. The book has sub-
sequently been re-issued, with additional material and a new title:
Selected Poems (Penguin, 2006).

5. David Crystal, from the Cambridge Encyclopedia of the English Lan-

guage adds, “The children of Jamaicans now living in London (many
of whom have never been to the West Indies) speak very diferently
from their counterparts in the Caribbean” (344).

6. Johnson insists that it was he who, in 1975, coined the term “dub
poetry,” but was referring speciically to Jamaican reggae DJs and
their use of lyrics. “But then some years later in 1979, Oku Onuora
picked on it and popularized it as a term to describe the kind of poetry
he and Michael Smith, myself and Mutabaruka were writing. Initially
I described my style as reggae poetry.” Johnson interview, July 1998,
Black Music Reader.

7. Doumerc writes: Linton Kwesi Johnson has repeatedly stated that

the term “dub poetry” put poets “in a bag” and deined only one facet

173
of their work: “I think it’s putting you in a bag really. I just like to be
regarded as a poet who writes a particular type of poetry. I think it’s
dangerous to categorize you into this ‘dub poetry’ bag.”

8. “I always have a bass line at the back of my mind when I write”

(Jaggi).

9. “The [Caribbean] is chiely characterized by the use of vernacular

varieties known as creoles, some of which are the result of contact
with the English language. Traditionally, these have been viewed as
dialects of English, often referred to somewhat dismissively as ‘pa-
tois’ ” (Crystal 344).

10. See also Jonathan Culler, On Deconstruction: Theory and Criticism

After Structuralism (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1983), 246-7.

11. The second section of “Letter From Mama Dot” was included in
The New Poetry, 286.

12. Quoted in Crystal, 344.

13. In Pecheux’s experiment, dubbed the “Mansholt report,” students

were given a “middle-of-the-road” economics text to read. He told
one group that it was a right-wing text and the other that it was left-
wing. Each group read the text in accordance with the political fram-
ing Pecheux had given it. See Sara Mills, Discourse, 13.

14. Donald Davie has warned against complacent ideas about the con-
ditions and location of the supposedly self-satisied cultural centre: “In
books that go on about how the English have imposed their language
and their manners on other English speaking nations (Australian,
Canadian, Scottish and Welsh and Irish, others), what is striking is
how that Anglocentrism, allegedly located in London and Oxbridge
mostly, is supposed to be deeply satisfying to the English themselves”
(270).

174
Works Cited
Armitage, Simon and Robert Crawford. “Introduction: The Demo-
cratic Voice.” The Penguin Book of Poetry from Britain and Ireland
Since 1945. Eds. Simon Armitage and Robert Crawford. London:
Viking, 1998. xix-xxxii. Print.
Bell, David F. “A Moratorium on Suspicion.” PMLA 117.3 (2002).
487-90. Print.
Bloom, Harold. The Western Canon. New York: Harcourt Brace, 1994.
Print.
Corkery, Daniel. Synge and Anglo-Irish Literature. Cork: Cork Univer-
sity Press, 1931. Print.
Carey, John. “Return of the Heavyweights,” review of The Western
Canon by Harold Bloom, Sunday Times, 29 January 1995, Books
Section, 1. Print.
Crystal, David. Cambridge Encyclopedia of the English Language. New
York: Cambridge University Press, 2003. Print.
Culler, Jonathan. Literary Theory: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 2011. Print.
Culler, Jonathan. On Deconstruction: Theory and Criticism After Struc-
turalism. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1983. Print.
D’Aguiar, Fred. “Letter from Mama Dot.” An English Sampler: New and
Selected Poems. London: Chatto and Windus, 2001. 12-13. Print.
D’Aguiar, Fred. Interview by Ted Slade, 1999. The Poetry Kit. Web.
30 Jan. 2013.
Davie, Donald. With the Grain: Essays on Thomas Hardy and Modern
British Poetry. Manchester: Carcanet, 1998. Print.
Doumerc, Eric. “Jamaica’s irst dub poets.” niceup.com. Web. 30
Jan. 2013.

175
Eagleton, Terry. Literary Theory. London: Basil Blackwell, 1983.
Print.
Heaney, Seamus. North. London: Faber and Faber, 1975. Print.
Hughes, Robert. The Culture of Complaint. New York, Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1993. Print.
Hulse, Michael, David Kennedy and David Morley, eds. The New Po-
etry. Newcastle upon Tyne: Bloodaxe, 1993. Print.
Jaggi, Maya “The Guardian Proile: Linton Kwesi Johnson.” Guardian,
4 May 2002. Web. 29 Jan. 2013.
Johnson, Linton Kwesi. “Inglan is a Bitch.” Selected Poems. London:
Penguin, 2006. 39-41. Print.
Johnson, Linton Kwesi, Interview by Billy Bob Hargus (January1997),
Reggaelyrics Archive. Web. Jan 30, 2013.
Kee, Howard Clark. “The Formation of the Christian Community.”
The Cambridge Companion to the Bible. Cambridge: Cambridge Uni-
versity Press, 1997. 441-576. Print.
Kermode, Frank, “Literary Criticism: Old and New Styles.” F.W. Bate-
son Memorial Lecture. Essays in Criticism 51:2 (2001). 191-207.
Print.
Mills, Sara. Discourse. London: Routledge, 1997. Print.
Quinn, Justin. “Of Grids, Flux and the Patternless Expanse.” Rev.
of The Penguin Book of Poetry from Britain and Ireland Since 1945.
Eds. Simon Armitage and Robert Crawford; The Harvill Book of
Twentieth-Century Poetry in English. Ed. Michael Schmidt; Scanning
the Century: The Penguin Book of Twentieth Century in Poetry. Ed.
Peter Forbes. Contemporary Poetry Review. Web. 25 Jan. 2013.
Schmidt, Michael. Editorial, PN Review 145 28:5 (2002): 1. Print.
Schmidt, Michael. “Preface.” The Harvill Book of Twentieth-Century
Poetry in English. London: Harvill, 1999. xxv-xxvi. Print.

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Wimsatt, W.K. The Verbal Icon: Studies in the Meaning of Poetry. Lex-
ington: University of Kentucky Press, 1954. Print.

Andrew Fitzsimons is Professor in the Department of English Lan-

guage and Cultures at Gakushuin University, Tokyo. He is a graduate
of Trinity College Dublin, where he received a PhD in English Litera-
ture. His publications include The Sea of Disappointment: Thomas Kin-
sella’s Pursuit of the Real (Dublin: UCD Press, 2008); Thomas Kinsella:
Prose Occasions 1951-2006, ed. (Manchester: Carcanet, 2009). He has
also written on Shakespeare, Beckett, and Blake, as well as contempo-
rary Irish and British poetry. He is the author of two collections, What
the Sky Arranges (Isobar Press, 2013) and A Fire in the Head (Isobar
Press, 2014).

177
 Language, Pictures, Sounds:
the Many Lives of
“Little Red Riding Hood”
Melissa Kennedy

Abstract
The dual need for Japanese students to understand the English language
and comprehend the European storytelling tradition makes teaching liter-
ature a multi-faceted challenge. The subtleties of language use, particu-
larly literary imagery and stylistic devices that convey narrative perspec-
tive, dramatic tension, and mood, are often lost to the more functional
elements of comprehension. One way of making literature less daunting
is to use storylines that students are already familiar with. Thanks to the
popularity of adapting Western stories to manga and anime genres, as well
as the now ubiquitous Disney franchise, it is not too diicult to ind fa-
miliar stories, such as those from Shakespeare, American comic books and
fairy tales. The following paper ofers some practical strategies for teach-
ing two versions of the fairy tale “Little Red Riding Hood” based on my
own classes to English majors in a Japanese private university. The teach-
ing techniques and basics of literary imagery and image analysis described
in this example of a children’s picture book version and Roald Dahl’s nar-
rative poem from Revolting Rhymes can be applied to other stories in the
EFL literature classroom.

178
Introducing literature in classes of low language competence,
such as around the level of a TOEIC score of 400 or B1 interme-
diate level, is a particular challenge. How to hold students’ inter-
est in a story when their language level makes this a challenge?
How, indeed, to communicate the richness of literature in En-
glish to students whose main experience with the language thus
far is in language competency, driven by grammar, communica-
tive functions and proiciency tests such as TOEIC and TOEFL?
In the university at which I taught, the English curriculum in-
cluded a compulsory literature component, which included com-
pleting a certain number of graded reader novels at the various
levels. Students were further exposed to extracts from literary
texts in communicative methodology course books designed to
improve reading skills, where the dense texts were treated like
all other reading media, such as newspaper articles, emails and
brochures, accompanied by the same set of comprehension ex-
ercises. Whereas the communicative methodology common in
the EFL classroom is full of visual props to facilitate language
input, literature is always heavily text-centred. The diference
is clear, for example, when comparing the large and colourful
course textbooks, such as the Headway series, in which photos
and images play a signiicant role as explanations and prompts,
with the small and usually colourless graded readers, which in-
troduce students to classics of English iction and drama. The
Penguin Graded Readers, for example, have attractive coloured
covers but nothing more than a few black and white sketches
among the dense text inside.1 I ind such an approach to litera-
ture uninspiring as a teacher and I was frustrated that students
seemed to tackle literary texts with resolute determination to
complete tasks that had little to do with encouraging a love of

179
reading and a love of English literature. In my own literature
courses I took an approach from culture and media studies rather
than from literary studies in order to use images as the irst steps
towards text comprehension. Although I did not introduce any
theory or secondary reading to the classes, Molly Bang’s Picture
This: How Pictures Work (1991) may be understood as an intro-
ductory model of the social semiotics of visual media analysis.
Children’s picture books or illustrated stories can be useful
for teaching literature in the EFL context, perhaps because stu-
dents are already used to visual cues as learning support, in com-
municative methodology textbooks, and perhaps due to Japan’s
own rich tradition in the visual text form of manga.2 In order to
focus on images that support the text, I used a version of “Little
Red Riding Hood” adapted and illustrated by Mary Engelbreit in
Nursery Tales: A Treasury of Children’s Classics (2008). The text is
approximately 400 words long and corresponds to graded read-
ers of 200 head-word level. The text is written mostly in the
simple past tense, with direct speech and some repetition of key
words and phrases. These factors validate the usefulness of this
story for low- to intermediate-level learners, even though Engel-
breit’s main readership is native-English speaking pre-schoolers
(being read to) up to young children learning to read (around
8 years old). The basic techniques modelled with this text en-
sured a smooth transition to a much more diicult piece, Roald
Dahl’s rhyme-poem version, “Little Red Riding Hood and the
Wolf” from Revolting Rhymes. I was initially hesitant to use En-
gelbreit’s children’s book, as I was worried students might no
longer enjoy reading children’s books or that they would feel
they were being treated like children rather than as university
students. On the contrary, however, their response was over-

180
whelmingly positive. Not only were they keen to open the book
and pour over the pictures, they also began reading without
prompting and then read again aloud to each other, often trying
out diferent character voices and sounds.
It was particularly interesting to notice how they navigated
back and forth between the text and the images, which was an
invitation for me to introduce basic literary and cultural stud-
ies analytical tools to the images and text. The majority of EFL
communicative methodology textbooks approach reading texts
with a set pattern of pre-reading, skim reading, close reading,
and follow-up. As most students are familiar with pre-reading
techniques such as predicting content from an image or title,
and eliciting key vocabulary, the same technique can be applied
to picture books. The initial tasks of scanning the page layout
and pictures provide a solid lead-in to the text itself. Examples
include: identifying objects in the pictures to elicit vocabulary
which may appear in the text; identifying the characters and set-
tings; and predicting the plot trajectory. In a regular literature
class, attention to plot structure usually requires identifying the
text’s dramatic curve on which to plot the introduction, turn-
ing point, denouement, and resolution. Engelbreit’s text facili-
tated this diicult task by incorporating the story’s key moments
through its images. The irst and last picture were symmetrical,
depicting a safe and friendly “happy family” scene, while the
story’s climax featured a striking double-page image of the wolf
shouting “all the better to eat you with, my dear!” (54). Without
even reading the text, students were presented with the entire
story arc through its images.
The next step of image analysis is based on social semiotics,
in which at least two levels of signiication underpin an image’s

181
cultural connotations and its relationship to the text and to the
reader. Teachers can use the story’s images for character anal-
ysis by studying the personality connoted by each character’s
face, clothes and body language. Thus, Engelbreit’s Red Hood is
portrayed as a very young child, a homely igure with white
skin, rosy cheeks, brown hair, and wearing an old-fashioned
patchwork dress. The wolf, of course, visually contrasts with
Red Hood. It looks masculine with its (his?) thick dark pelt of
hair and is bigger than Red Hood. Big white teeth and a lolling
pink tongue complete the predatory connotation. Even so, En-
gelbreit’s wolf is much more cute and cuddly than it is often
portrayed. Character study is one of the foundations of literary
analysis, and the tendency for fairy tale characters to it certain
well-known and generally clear-cut archetypes (including inno-
cent children, wicked stepmothers, naïve peasants, and nasty
witches) makes the genre a useful starter to introducing char-
acter analysis. Students compared diferent portrayals of Red
Hood and the wolf in a selection of images and written char-
acter descriptions from diferent versions of the story, both in
visual genres and literary texts. Students discussed the chang-
ing meanings of Red Hood, comparing Engelbreit’s homely and
childish version with another common portrayal of the igure
as a blue-eyed blonde, often wearing a white or pink dress in-
dicating purity, innocence and a certain “angelic” quality. Our
interpretations of the book’s images was supported by reading
book reviews on Amazon, in which several readers praise En-
gelbreit’s stories for not frightening their children with nasty
characters and thus being suitable for bedtime reading. As one
example from the text, which is also mirrored in the images,
in Engelbreit’s version, grandmother and Red Hood “step out,

182
unharmed” from the wolf’s stomach, and the wolf runs away
in embarrassment: there is no death or violence in this story,
a stark contrast with its historical European origins.
As well as physical description, the page layout may also be
read semiotically, as images and their positions reveal the power
relations between the characters. This analysis works particu-
larly well on two central pages which illustrate Red Hood walk-
ing through the forest, followed by Red Hood meeting the wolf,
seen in igures one and two.

Figure one, p. 50.

183
 Figure two, p. 51.

In the former, three-quarters of the page is taken up by image

with only a strip of text at the bottom. The page is dominated
by the tall trees of the forest, coloured dark browns and greens.
Red Hood is a diminutive igure near the top of the page walk-
ing “towards” the reader along the path, which is correct from
a spatial point of view but which imparts the understanding of
her as small and surrounded by the menacingly dark forest. The
wolf stands in the image foreground, closer to the reader and
thus larger than the little girl. Standing in front of a tree, he is
in full view of the reader but hidden from Red Hood, a visual
technique that builds narrative suspense as the reader knows

184
more than the little girl, and can thus anticipate her surprise or
shock when she belatedly sees him. Although I did not teach
the formal literary qualities of the omniscient narrator and the
distance of the third-person narrative voice, this semiotic visual
analysis demonstrates narrative perspective by asking students
to think of their position as reader/viewer in relation to the vi-
sual action on the page.
The power relationship between the character duo of the in-
nocent girl as victim and the predatory wolf are visually enacted
both by positioning on the page and their body language. In
a reading text, this same dynamic would be conveyed with ad-
jectives and adverbs, while the narrative time frame requires
tricky grammatical structures to indicate three sets of action
happening simultaneously, following Red Hood, the wolf, and
Granny. On the second page, in which there is a more equal
volume of text and image, the text forms a path between two
pictures in the top left and bottom right corners, visually enact-
ing the girl’s voyage. In the upper part of the image, the wolf
stands behind Red Hood as she points out the way to her Grand-
mother’s house. As on the previous page, the reader has an om-
niscient overview, and can thus analyze the wolf’s motivations,
which are hidden to the little girl. The wolf’s eye is menacing,
and its grin is calculating, while its physically dominating size
and smug body language, in the crossed leg and hand on hip,
suggests both superiority and control of the situation, and thus
power over the little girl. The lower image is of the wolf knock-
ing on Granny’s door with the look of a conident trickster about
to rip of the unwitting old lady.
The textual bridge that separates the girl pointing out the
way to her Granny’s and the wolf knocking on her door repre-

185
sents consecutive steps in the story’s plot and character devel-
opment. In the irst paragraph, Red Hood points the way to her
grandmother’s house: “She knew she shouldn’t talk to strangers
but [the wolf] seemed perfectly friendly.” In the second para-
graph, the wolf reveals his true character: “the wolf igured
a weak old granny would make an easy meal,” and the page ends
with him knocking on her door and impersonating Red Hood’s
voice (51). The common literary trope by which characters are
revealed to be more complex than they at irst appear is here
literally illustrated. Analysis of these central illustrations aids
students in understanding characterization, which in turn gives
a context as well as makes memorable the more diicult words
and expressions in the text. The moral lesson by which children
are taught not to talk to strangers is compounded by the split
between surface appearances (the wolf “seemed” friendly) and
its underlying motivations (it “igured” Granny to be an easy
target). It is easy for teachers and students to skip over these
verbs, which do not propel the plot in any active way. How-
ever, the story’s meaning and characters’ actions in fact hinge
on them. Actually, these verbs do not usually appear in EFL
language books until late-Intermediate or Upper-Intermediate,
however they are basic in literature, and appear in level one
graded readers. As well as being necessary for characterization
of the naïve, innocent Red Hood and the calculating, schem-
ing baddie, the wolf, these words are also necessary for creat-
ing irony, another important literary device more or less miss-
ing from language-focused teaching material. Although the wolf
looks friendly and seems to be genuinely interested in Red Hood
and her family, he is really driven by ulterior motives of selish-
ness and greed. While it is diicult to pinpoint in literary text the

186
exact words that generate double meanings, the two depictions
of the wolf on these pages convey the concept clearly. Teacher
explanation of these words and concepts are thereby facilitated
by visual examples.
Teasing out all connections between illustration, charac-
terization, and text illuminates signiicant diferences between
learning language and literature. Teachers need to be aware of
the diferent targets of EFL communicative methodology course
books and a work of iction. They also need a diferent set of
teaching skills and learning tools to help students access the dif-
ferent layers of literature that convey meaning. Social semiotics
is one method that bridges the gap between EFL skills and liter-
ary reading skills, and between image and text. Another exercise
that helps bridge the gap between image and text is for students
to write captions, speech or thought bubbles for each picture.
This necessitates both eliciting vocabulary from the image and
inding the corresponding parts of the text, as the best captions
recycle words from the text which cues readers for new vocab-
ulary. Paying close attention to sentence structure, students are
encouraged to use adverbs and adjectives to describe the scene,
the character’s mood, or foreshadow plot action. For example,
the image on page ifty might be captioned “Little Red Riding
Hood set of through the dark woods, her basket of biscuits un-
der her arm,” or a thought bubble for the wolf’s image on the
following page might read “Yum! How sweet the silly girl will
taste!” Such captions also provide opportunities for word play,
from practicing stress patterns to experimenting with literary
sound devices and rhyme, such as the alliteration, assonance
and onomatopoeia in my captions, above. Throughout her book
Engelbreit illustrates the climactic scenes and famous one-liners

187
from each fairy tale. From “Jack and the Beanstalk” the infa-
mous “fee i fo fum, I smell the blood of an Englishman” (89)
demonstrates alliteration, while “I’ll huf and I’ll puf and I’ll
blow your house down” (32) from “The Three Little Pigs” con-
tains assonance and onomatopoeia.
The key phrase in “Little Red Riding Hood” is the wolf’s re-
frain “all the better to eat you with, my dear” (54). The page
where this appears is dominated by a close-up image of the
wolf’s head, with the phrase coming out of its mouth in capital
letters, as shown in igure three. In contrast to the other depic-
tions of the wolf in the story, usually of its whole body and in
relatively small scale, in this image the wolf’s head, side-on to
the reader, takes up three-quarters of the page, a mass of dark
hair with a yellow eye, lots of yellowish teeth, and lolling pink
tongue.
In the majority of my classes where students have read this
story aloud, they have shouted and growled this line without
any prompting or any explanation of the vocabulary. Further-
more, they always pinpoint this moment as the story’s climax,
thereby using the illustrations as signposts for the story’s struc-
ture. In this particular literature course, I spent considerable
time plotting story arc in order for students to complete a inal
assignment of creating their own creative story in a visual story-
board format. This page from Engelbreit’s fairy tale became the
model for conveying dramatic climax in both words and image.
Children’s books tend to be full of word plays, sound devices
of alliteration, assonance, onomatopoeia, rhyme and rhythm,
and literary imagery, in metaphor and simile. Engelbreit’s
story uses short sentences, appropriate for being read aloud to
small children, and the alliteration and assonance contribute to

188
 Figure three, p. 54.

a strong word-stress rhythm, particularly in the chant-like re-

peated sequences “all the better to see/hear/eat you with, my
dear.” Examples of onomatopoeia, including “growl,” “gulp,”
“knock,” and “chop” are also a useful introduction to this essen-
tial component of literary writing. However, for more extended
use of these literary devices, I turn to Roald Dahl’s rhyme-poem
version, “Little Red Riding Hood and the Wolf,” from Revolting
Rhymes (1982). This text also allows a comparison of storylines
and characterization with Engelbreit’s children’s version.
Although Dahl’s version of Red Hood is a much more dii-
cult text, students are immediately able to read it aloud to ind

189
rhyme, stress patterns and sound imagery thanks to their in-
troduction to these literary devices through Engelbreit’s story.
Poetry adds examples of strong rhythm to the alliteration and
assonance already encountered. As well as rhyming words, stu-
dents identify sound patterns and their impact on meaning or
mood, such as the line of one-syllable words “He ate her up in
one big bite,” which is emphatic, and the metric rhythm cre-
ated by multi-syllables, such as the iambic “Poor Grandmamma
was terriied.” The dense descriptions demanded of poetry, such
as “The sharp white teeth, the horrid grin” and “He sat there
watching her and smiled / He thought, I’m going to eat this
child” also pose less of a problem due to our previous empha-
sis on writing captions. My initial focus on sound in reading
aloud meant that the students were not confronted immediately
with a test of English comprehension, as is more conventional
in language learning. In my classes, the students recognized the
comic nature of Quentin Blake’s illustrations of Dahl’s Red Hood
and laughed out loud at the story’s sound efects when I read the
poem aloud (although they may have been laughing at me rather
than the poem).3 Thus they were able to enjoy the poem before
settling down to the much more mundane, hard work of close
reading and comprehension. These visual and aural features
also play a determining role in making Dahl’s Revolting Rhymes
loved by native-speaker children: remembering how a love of
literature is created in children can help in the EFL context, too
often weighed down by a seriousness of tone deemed appropri-
ately academic. Indeed, given Dahl’s diicult and creative use
of language, to focus irst on comprehension would most likely
be a daunting and of-putting task for the low-level language
learner.

190
 Dahl’s fairy tales are strong in irony and satire, which he cre-
ates by a mocking self-awareness of the genre’s conventions. In
the case of Red Hood, students irst identify Dahl’s mockery of
the fairy tale through Blake’s illustrations. Direct comparison
with Engelbreit’s images illuminate Dahl’s breaking of fairy tale
stereotypes. In particular, the scrufy, conident teenage Red
Hood and the camp wolf, cross-dressing as Grandmother, play
with conventions by exaggeration. Consecutive images show
Red Hood conidently carrying her basket while the wolf looms
behind her like a dark shadow, then iring a gun, then wearing
a wolfskin cloak, which efectively sum up the story in pictures.
Each illustration can be captioned with a line from the poem,
which encourages students to irst broach the text with a closed
task that requires skim reading and gist understanding as they
search for the line that corresponds with each picture. Students
then read more closely for the poem’s departure from the con-
ventional story trajectory:

Then Little Red Riding Hood said, “But Grandma, what

a lovely great big furry coat you have on.”
“That’s wrong!” cried Wolf. “Have you forgot to
tell me what BIG TEETH I’ve got? Ah well, no matter
what you say, I’m going to eat you anyway.”
The small girl smiles. One eyelid lickers. She
whips a pistol from her knickers. She aims it at the
creature’s head And bang bang bang, she shoots him
dead.
(poetryarchive)

191
 Remembering the story’s key line, “All the better to eat you
with, my dear” already encountered in Engelbreit, the students
picked up on Dahl’s deviation, a close reading task that is con-
siderably facilitated by Dahl’s overt signals, when the wolf cries,
“That’s wrong!” and the capitalization of the key words in the
line “Have you forgot / To tell me what BIG TEETH I’ve got?”
Similarly, Red Hood’s proactive response, to which students are
alert thanks to Blake’s illustrations, creates a natural kind of
reading comprehension as students search for textual evidence
of a diferent characterization of the heroine. Dahl’s rejection of
the fairy tale character archetype of the naïve and innocent girl
could ofer further avenues for analysis and discussion, such as
of concepts of femininity and of gender roles and expectations.
While the two texts analyzed in this essay were written with
a children’s audience in mind, the analysis of fairy tales is any-
thing but a child’s game. Many scholarly articles and texts have
been written about the cultural and sociological function of fairy
tales, and close study of adaptations in diferent countries and
at diferent times makes the humble fairy tale fertile ground
for serious literary and cultural studies.4 The techniques intro-
duced in this essay are foundational to literary study, in sound
devices and imagery, and to culture and media studies, in at-
tention to social semiotics which may be applied to visual texts
including still images and ilm versions of the fairy tales. Ap-
plication of these analytical tools is almost endless in scope,
by no means restricted to children’s stories. Higher level stu-
dents can quickly move on to more challenging interpretations
of this (or any other) fairy tale, including early versions by the
Grimm Brothers5 and those in visual media, most recently in
the American serial Once Upon A Time (2011-). There is even

192
a Japanese version, Tokyo Red Hood (2003-2004), a vaguely hen-
tai, werewolf-inspired gore manga which features an aggressive
Red Hood character tracking down an elusive, eroticized “Mr
Wolf.” While students of English are surely interested in the dif-
ferences of language and culture, of which literature is a key
part, it is surely counterproductive to alienate students with
too-diicult and too-foreign texts. Just as fairy tales smuggle
cultural norms and moralising tales hidden in attractive pack-
aging, approaching literature through this children’s book genre
introduces students to key literary skills and techniques in a wel-
coming and familiar way.

193
Notes
1. Oxford University Press is currently publishing a new second edi-
tion (2011-) series of fairy tales Classics Series available at levels 1-4.
The books are well illustrated and adapted as plays, which signals
a departure from the old format of graded readers.

2. Comic books would also be a useful source for EFL. However, the
genre requires a diferent kind of analysis to the one ofered here,
which focuses on text-centred rather than image-centred media.

3. A recoding of Roald Dahl himself reading the text is available in the

online open resource poetryarchive.org.

4. See, for example, Ann Martin’s Red Riding Hood and the Wolf in
Bed: Modernism’s Fairy tales and Catherine Orenstein’s Little Red Riding
Hood Uncloaked: Evolution of a Fairy tale on common tropes studied in
the genre, including Romanticism and the gothic, motherhood, female
sexuality, masculine predation, coming-of-age stories, and morality
lessons.

5. 2012-2013 marks the 200th anniversary of the Grimm Brothers’ irst

collection of children’s tales, sparking academic and popular events in
Germany and elsewhere. In a short article for History Today, Richard
Cavendish outlines the changes in focus since the Grimm’s edition, for
example the contemporary softening of the cruelty, violence, wicked
parents and unhappy endings.

194
Works Cited
Bang, Molly. Picture This: How Pictures Work. New York: SeaStar
Books, 2000.
Cavendish, Richard. “The Publication of Grimm’s Fairy Tales”.
History Today, vol 62 issue 12, p. 8. Also available at
http://www.historytoday.com/richard-cavendish/publication-
grimm%E2%80%99s-fairy-tales (accessed 3 January 2013).
Dahl, Roald. “Little Red Riding Hood and the Wolf” Revolting Rhymes.
Illustrated by Quentin Blake. London: Jonathan Cape, 1982.
Also available at http://www.poetryarchive.org/poetryarchive/
singlePoem.do?poemId=7428 (accessed 3 January 2013).
Engelbreit, Mary. Nursery Tales: A Treasury of Children’s Classics. New
York: Harper Collins, 2008.
Martin, Ann. Red Riding Hood and the Wolf in Bed: Modernism’s Fairy
tales. Toronto: U of Toronto Press, 2006.
Orenstein, Catherine. Little Red Riding Hood Uncloaked: Evolution of
a Fairy tale. New York: Basic Books, 2002.
Tokyo Akazukin. Benkyo Tamaoki, Tokyo: Comic BIRZ, 2003-2004.
Available at http://www.mangahere.com/manga/tokyo_akazukin/
(last accessed 3 January 2013).

Melissa Kennedy lectures in English Literature, Culture and Media

studies at the University of Vienna. She has published on New Zealand
and Maori literature, including chapters in the MLA Approaches to
Teaching Australian and New Zealand Literature and in the Cambridge
History of New Zealand Literature, both forthcoming (2016). She works
on postcolonial, immigrant, and Indigenous literature, and has re-
cently completed a monograph, Postcolonial Economics: Reading In-
equality in Colonial, Neocolonial and Neoliberal Capitalism.

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 Reader Response Theory and
Cross-Cultural Explorations:
The short iction of Lapcharoensap,
Bezmozgis, and Li
Mario Leto

Introduction
In considering the approach of teaching literature in the second-
language classroom, the dichotomy of literature as subject and
literature as resource becomes less distinct. Literature as subject
involves the analysis of written work based on artistic merit.
Conversely, literature as resource tends to eschew the artistic el-
ements of the written word and instead seeks to utilize liter-
ature in other educational endeavors like second-language ac-
quisition. More often than not, second-language instructors are
likely to ind themselves crossing the boundary between the two:
Literature as a creative subject is likely to be combined with
literature as a resource for instruction on the more salient as-
pects of language like grammar and vocabulary. Within this
medley of subject-resource instruction also comes the oppor-
tunity to address non-linguistic/non-creative issues of culture

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and identity in the global community, a promising aspect of
language education for students at the tertiary level. As the
reader-response theorists Wolfgang Iser et al. are interested
in how texts afect readers and demand creative engagement
through interpretation, so it can be argued that the second-
language learner is similarly afected by literature, promoting
both a deeper understanding of the linguistic aspects of a text
and a subjective interpretation as relates culturally, politically,
and historically to the learner. As an application of literary the-
ory to classroom pedagogy, this paper irst looks at the reader-
response theory as pursued by Wolfgang Iser et al. and shows
how literature—as understood, interpreted, and creatively as-
similated by the reader—can be used to explore cross-cultural is-
sues and the values associated with both reader and text. The pa-
per then looks at a few studies on the use of reader-response the-
ory in the ELT classroom before ofering three speciic applica-
tions using three collections of short stories by three contempo-
rary writers—the Thai/American writer Rattawut Lapcharoen-
sap, the Latvian/Canadian writer David Bezmozgis, and the
Chinese/American writer Yiyun Li—to show how their cross-
cultural identities and the topics addressed in their writing al-
lows second-language students to elucidate and develop their
own world-views and cultural experiences as a fundamental part
of their language education.

Reader-Response Theory
Modern literary criticism and reader-response theory is gener-
ally thought to have begun in England in the early 20th cen-
tury with I.A. Richards, who, in 1929, conducted a pioneer-
ing poetry-interpretation experiment with Cambridge Univer-

197
sity students, attempting to show how readers interact with text
to establish meaning and understanding. About a decade later
and 5500 kilometers across the Atlantic Ocean, Louise Rosen-
blatt published Literature as Exploration, in which she introduced
her transactional theory of literature, which “centers … on the
reader’s contribution in the two-way, ‘transactional’ relationship
with the text” (Rosenblatt, The Reader ix). It wasn’t until the
1960s and 70s, though, that reader-response theory gained mo-
mentum as an established form of literary criticism, propelled
by the work of both American and European scholars, not least
of which were the critics Stanley Fish (1938-) and Wolfgang Iser
(1926-2007). For both Fish and Iser, “the text guides readers’
responses, so that reading enacts a continuous dialogue between
the shifting directions of a text and the shifting responses of
a reader” (Parker, How to Interpret Literature 281). But for all
they had in common, they also difered considerably with re-
gards to the exact role of the reader, the reading process, and
how best to deine and address other competing theories of lit-
erary criticism. Iser’s theory, it turns out, is the more compre-
hensive and generally applicable theory, and for this reason will
be examined in more detail in the following section.

Iser’s Reader-Response Theory

It could be argued that the very act of criticizing involves some
sort of response from the reader, that all literary critics are in
fact involved in reader-response, regardless of their stated the-
oretical perspectives. Robert D. Parker, in How to Interpret Lit-
erature, suggests that “[w]e might go so far as to say that there
is no separate category of ‘reader-response criticism,’ because
all criticism is reader-response criticism” (278). Nevertheless,

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the theory of literary criticism known as reader-response theory
gained a good deal of attention in the mid- to late-20th century
because of that very fact: all readers are in some way critics
and have an essential role to play in the reading process. “Most
of us feel intensely aware of ourselves as readers,” continues
Parker, “and so reader-response criticism can seem to speak di-
rectly to who we are and what we do” (278). Wolfgang Iser
understood this best as he laid the groundwork for his literary
theory of reader-response. For Iser, the act of reading involves
two main components: the text and the reader. The text he
refers to as the author’s “artistic” creation, and the reader as
the “esthetic” act of realization. “The convergence of text and
reader,” of artistic and esthetic, Iser claims, “brings the literary
work into existence” (The Reading Process 50). More important
than the components, though, is the process of reading, the inter-
action between the text and the reader, or, as Rosenblatt writes,
the ‘transactional’ relationship (The Reader ix). According to
Iser, the text ofers “a series of changing viewpoints” and nu-
merous “gaps” that the reader is obliged to ill (The Act of Read-
ing 68). The gaps are a result of the inherent characteristic of
limited communicative opportunity in the text-reader relation-
ship, and are thus prone to innumerably varying “realizations.”
As Elizabeth Freund explains in The Return of the Reader,
The text does not talk back to correct one’s misinterpreta-
tions; it cannot adapt, assert, defend itself or supplement its
fragmented codes … Since the gaps in a text can be illed in
many diferent ways[,] every text is potentially capable of
many diferent realizations and no reading can exhaust the
text’s full potential … For no two readers will the experience
be identical. (145-6)

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And so, in simpliied form, there exists the text—with its se-
ries of viewpoints and gaps to be illed—and the reader—who,
through the accumulation of viewpoints and the illing of gaps,
creates a unique esthetic realization. The next question, then,
is about how exactly the reader engages with the text to create
her or his own unique literary product.
For the reader, there exist the viewpoints of the text—the
varying still-frames of the motion picture at rest—and the in-
evitable gaps that occur from the limited text-reader relation-
ship. According to Iser, “As the reader uses the various perspec-
tives ofered him by the text in order to relate the patterns and
the ‘schematised views’ to one another, he sets the work in mo-
tion, and this very process results ultimately in the awakening
of responses within himself” (The Reading Process 51). And thus
begins the act of reading, the manipulation of viewpoints, the
illing of gaps, the remembering and anticipating, the adjust-
ments and alterations and modiications, until inally, when the
reading process has reached its end and the esthetic endeavor
has come to fruition, the reader is left with a unique literary
product, rarely experienced in the same way by two diferent
individuals. Added to this experience, then, are the text’s and
the reader’s socio-cultural perspectives, which are abruptly cast
together to prod and parry, at times a ierce contest of destruc-
tive potential, at other times a dance of creative cooperation. As
Freund writes, “The systems of perspectives in the novel or story
refer the reader to social or historical or cultural and aesthetic
aspects of reality and invite him to scrutinize them in a new
combination” (The Return of the Reader 146). Therefore, contin-
ues Iser, “[t]he manner in which the reader experiences the text
will relect his own disposition, and in this respect the literary

200
text acts as a kind of mirror … Thus the reader is forced to reveal
aspects of himself in order to experience a reality which is dif-
ferent from his own” (The Reading Process 57). In other words,
the reader uses his or her own socio-cultural perspectives to un-
derstand the socio-cultural perspectives presented in text, in the
process experiencing a “recalibration” of previous philosophies
and an awakening to new possibilities. “In brief,” says Freund,
“[reading] is an event of personal and social signiicance, an ex-
pansion of the self” (The Return of the Reader 147). This, then,
is our reader and the reading process, the process of discovery,
of self and others. This, then, is the university student, soon to
step onto the world stage, to join the cast of social networking
and cross-cultural communication in the drama of globalization
and international business. This, then, is literature and reader-
response theory in the second-language classroom.

Previous Studies
Numerous studies have been done on the use of literature in En-
glish language teaching (ELT), and on the use of Iser’s reader-
response theory in particular (see Oster, 1989; Davis, 1989;
Elliott, 1990; Hirvela, 1996; Carlisle, 2000). Most focus on
a speciic pedagogic application, outside of the typical linguistic
paradigm focused on communicative task-based learning, and
together they comprise an eclectic array of possibilities for the
ELT classroom. Not surprisingly, many also focus on the socio-
cultural aspects of text and reader and aim to exploit that feature
of the reading process for educational purposes. Judith Oster,
in her 1989 article Seeing With Diferent Eyes: Another View of
Literature in the ESL Class, focuses on writing and point-of-view
as a means to exploring literature and education. Oster explains

201
that “discussing literature … can help foster academic skills in
a way that minimizes the threat and encourages taking risks,
both in reading and writing” (88). Gajdusek expounds on this
theory:
We also want to teach our students habits of inquiry and
speculation, critical reasoning, and the conscious testing
of inferences or hypotheses … These techniques can then
be transferred to enrich the reading of expository texts
as well, and they will encourage dialogue, self-expression,
and problem-solving—in short, highly communicative ESL
classes. (Toward Wider Use 233)

James N. Davis, in The Act of Reading in the Foreign Language,

takes a slightly diferent approach to exploring the use of lit-
erature within the framework of Iserian principles. His study
incorporates three distinctive elements—a reading selection, an
analysis of reading performance, and a lesson plan based on the
previous two elements—and focuses on the cultural and linguis-
tic factors of text and reading, allowing students to “produce
their own individualized meaning from the text” (421). This,
he suggests, makes the foreign language “more meaningful” and
“acquisition more natural” (426). Roger Elliott, in Encouraging
reader-response to literature in ESL situations, explores the possi-
bilities that drama ofers: “particularly enjoyable” and efective
“as a conidence builder” [198]. He concludes that “students
need to feel involved in the language subjectively … to develop
a feeling for the language … to express their own thoughts and
feelings” (197). And, as a inal example of the work being done
in ELT and reader-response, Anthony Carlisle looks at the use
of reading logs as “a practical application of reader-response

202
theory in EFL literature teaching” (Reading logs 12), and con-
cludes that the students were “developing their own individ-
ual responses,” got more out of reading the literature, “gained
a clearer understanding of the ideas in the novels,” and im-
proved “their reading and writing skills” (Reading logs 18). The
employment of Iser’s reader-response theory to literature in the
ELT classroom thus seems to have a wide range of advantages
stemming from a diverse assortment of pedagogic applications:
The development of academic skills, improved communicative
abilities, conidence building, and the subjective expression of
thoughts and feelings. In the following sections, reader-response
theory will be applied to three short-story collections to show
how writers writing across cultures can both encourage the use
of English beyond the classroom and allow students the oppor-
tunity to explore their own cultural beliefs as the literature takes
them on a ictional trip across three continents and six cultures.

Three Writers
As a starting point for teachers considering the use of litera-
ture in their ELT classrooms, three writers, each with a pub-
lished collection of short stories, currently stand out as promis-
ing possibilities for an introductory literature class with a focus
on cross-cultural understanding: the Thai/American writer Rat-
tawut Lapcharoensap and his short story collection Sightseeing,
the Latvian/Canadian writer David Bezmozgis and his collec-
tion Natasha, and the Chinese/American writer Yiyun Li and her
collection A Thousand Years of Good Prayers. All three writers
share several notable qualities ideal for Iserian-based pedagogy,
not least of which is their own cross-cultural identities, which
in turn become manifest and even more pronounced in their

203
iction: The abrasion of two cultures so intimately entwined
provides ample energy for their artistic output, if not serving
as the sole reason for writing in the irst place. According to
Emma Larkin, Lapcharoensap once said in an interview that “he
wrote his stories partly out of a sense of frustration at the way
contemporary expatriate writers portray Thai people” (Lust in
Translation). In a review in The Nation, Aaron Thier notes that
Bezmozgis’s collection Natasha is “both a coming-of-age story
and an assimilation story—a story about becoming a Canadian-
Jewish adult in an atmosphere of cultural and linguistic confu-
sion …” And, as regards the work of Yiyun Li, from an article
in the Guardian, “her descriptions of Chinese people in America
powerfully evoke their sense of foreignness and disorientation”
(Rustin Yiyun Li). In fact, both Bezmozgis and Li have followed
up their debut collections with novels and more short stories in
which they continue to explore the idea of cross-cultural exis-
tence, of adjustment and assimilation, or, as Rustin points out
in the Guardian, “about people negotiating a path between the
two cultures” (Yiyun Li).
No less important is the status of all three writers as second-
language English speakers. Based on the limited biographical
information of each writer, Yiyun Li has had the more typi-
cal ESL experience: she was born and raised in Beijing and
then moved to the U.S. after graduating from Peking Univer-
sity. Rustin, from the Guardian article, points out that “Li’s spo-
ken English is luent, as you would expect from someone who
writes in her second language, although there are some of those
faintly idiosyncratic phrases, in her conversation and her prose,
that remind you she is not a native speaker” (Yiyun Li). David
Bezmozgis, on the other hand, was born in Latvia and moved

204
to Canada at age six, although, according to an interview in
the Paris Review, he grew up in a family that communicated
primarily in Russian (Irina Aleksander David Bezmozgis). Rat-
tawut Lapcharoensap, in more atypical fashion, was “born in
Chicago in 1979 … and raised and educated both in Bangkok
(1982-1987 and 1990-1995) and the U.S.” (Peters, A Sea of Sto-
ries 144). Their status as second-language English speakers, if
addressed and examined in the classroom, could deliver lasting
beneits for the students in the form of setting goals and main-
taining productive levels of integrative and instrumental moti-
vation: The desire to live in a diferent culture, to communicate
in an international environment, or to work with the English lan-
guage as the primary language of communication. As an island
nation, and in some respects, Japan is an insular environment,
and the idea of a second-language beyond the conines of the
academic classroom and the ubiquitous testing culture seems
implausible for many students (see Nagatomo, 2012; Seargeant,
2009). Lapcharoensap, Bezmozgis, and Li are successful exam-
ples of what can realistically be accomplished with a second-
language, and as such may serve as motivating role models for
the university language student.
One inal motive for using these three writers in particular is
the breadth of geography and culture that can be reached and ex-
plored through their work: China, Thailand, Latvia, Canada, the
United States, communism, Judaism, and several other coun-
tries and cultural attributes as they emerge in the tourist-laden
Thailand of Lapcharoensap’s iction. Weaving this multi-socio-
cultural tapestry with the more familiar institutions and organi-
zations of one’s primary culture afords, as Wolfgang Iser puts it,
“people of all ages and backgrounds the chance to enter other

205
worlds and so enrich their own lives” (Interdeterminacy 199).
The following sections will therefore ofer three distinct ped-
agogical applications, one for each collection, examining the
cross-cultural elements of the literature and their efect on the
students as they engage in Iserian activities of cultural explo-
ration.

Sightseeing: Details
Rattawut Lapcharoensap’s collection of short stories Sightsee-
ing is a rather explicit depiction of Thailand and the variety
of denizens that inhabit its subcultures. As the selectors of the
Whiting Foundation fellowship explain, “We like the access he
provides to a world we know nothing about … and the way he
manages to maintain an edgy tone without being of-putting or
overdoing it.” It is that “edgy tone” and explicit depiction that
make Lapcharoensap’s stories so accessible for a detailed reader-
response application. Every page, every paragraph, every line
in the stories provides an opportunity for cross-cultural explo-
ration and the examination of socio-cultural values; and so the
following application of Iserian reader-response is designed to
look at the particulars as they unfold throughout Lapcharoen-
sap’s narrative.
The collection begins with the story “Farangs,” the title alone
an opportune place to begin a discussion on the concepts of for-
eignness, foreigners, outsiders, stereotypes, and generalizations.
According to Oxford Dictionaries, farang means “[among Thais]
a European or other foreigner.” According to other sources,
it may be considered derogatory. Like most countries in the
world, Japan is adjusting to the age of globalization and the
need to internationalize in areas of business and education. As

206
with tourism, this inevitably involves the merging of cultures
and a reassessment of divisive terms like foreigner and outsider.
Playing on this concept of “otherness,” Lapcharoensap ofers his
readers a glimpse of themselves from the Thai point of view.
Here are a few select lines from the irst paragraph:
This is how we count the days. June: the Germans come
to the island—football cleats, big T-shirts, thick tongues—
speaking like spitting. July: the Italians, the French, the
British, the Americans … The French like … baring their
breasts. The British are here to work on their pasty com-
plexions, their penchant for hashish. Americans are the fat-
test, the stingiest of the bunch … August bring the Japanese.
Stay close to them. Never underestimate the power of the
yen. Everything’s cheap with imperial monies in hand and
they’re too polite to bargain … (1)

To employ such rich material in the ELT classroom, ask students,

as a pre-reading activity, to deine and consider the concept of
stereotyping. In doing so, consider the following questions for
initiating discussion:
1. When, why, and by whom does stereotyping occur?
2. Is stereotyping ever acceptable or escapable?
3. Does stereotyping occur in Japan?

Then ask the students to provide some examples of their own,

perhaps starting with some of the nationalities mentioned in the
irst paragraph of “Farangs,” and then later about nationalities
more immediate to their own reality—in Japan, this could in-
clude Chinese, Koreans, and Russians, for starters. Finally, ask
them to consider what stereotypes other nationalities have of the

207
Japanese. The idea here is to foster discussion and to engage the
students with the themes addressed in the literature. Students
are led to enter into what Iser calls “the paradoxical situation in
which the reader is forced to reveal aspects of himself in order
to experience a reality which is diferent from his own” (Iser
The Reading Process 57). As students inally begin reading the
story, the convergence of the artistic and the esthetic can begin.
A further set of questions may assist in this process:
1. Do you agree with the narrator’s stereotypes?
2. What overlaps are there with your own stereotypes, and
why might this be?
3. How do you feel about the narrator’s stereotype of
Japanese people?

After the opening paragraph, the story quickly develops into

a love story and exposes the diiculties of cross-cultural rela-
tionships, and so once again the teacher is presented with vari-
ous thematic options for engaging students in cross-cultural dis-
cussions and activities that force them to consider their own
cultural values as an underlying foundation from which to ex-
plore the cultural values ofered in the story. The remainder of
the stories in Sightseeing lacks the explicit cross-culture collision
of “Farangs,” but continues to provide opportunities for deep
cultural exploration: family, death, religion, military service,
poverty, alcohol and drugs, sex and prostitution. Lapcharoen-
sap, as noted previously, was himself tired of the inadequate and
distorted depictions of the Thai experience in expat literature,
and so set out to share his own understanding from a Thai point
of view and thus readjust the frame through which we view an
often-traveled part of the world. It might even be suggested

208
that Lapcharoensap had to irst experience the expat literature
of Thailand through an Iserian reader-response lens to consider
the discrepancies and how he might present his own perspec-
tive, thus ofering readers of his work the same opportunity. As
a inal note, this collection of the three is probably the most
accessible and engaging for the students; the themes are more
contemporary and critically explored, and the main characters
are consistently closer in age to that of the students.

Natasha: Underlying Themes

If Sightseeing is the most accessible collection, then David Bez-
mozgis’s Natasha is the least accessible of the three and was in-
cluded to show that, even with challenging texts and limited
engagement on the students’ part, a lot can be accomplished
using an Iserian framework. The stories revolve around a fam-
ily of Latvian/Russian immigrants to Canada and their attempts
to acclimate themselves to their new environment. The young
and aging protagonist in this Bildungsroman collection becomes
the primary voice for his family’s immigrant experience. His
youth and experiences in the mainstream school system allow
for elevated language skills and a growing knowledge of North
American culture and social conventions. Eccentric characters
of all ages are frequently encountered, and perspectives shift
with similar regularity. These constant shifts of literary device
sometimes pose a challenge for students and can potentially in-
hibit engagement. Focusing on the general, underlying themes
of the stories therefore seems a more realistic, productive ap-
proach than forcing a close critical reading of the text.
In one of the more complex stories in the collection, “Choyn-
ski,” four characters across ethnic and generational boundaries

209
interact through an intricate web of relationships that results in
three deaths and leaves the narrator by the end of the story dig-
ging through the snow in a cemetery, looking for his deceased
grandmother’s dentures, crying out her name in desperation.
One option for approaching this type of complicated narrative is
through a inal post-reading task that asks the students to con-
sider the story as a whole, disregarding the more subtle details
and plot complexities. Students could be asked to create a mul-
timodal depiction of both word and image. The objective of this
kind of task would be to allow students to focus their esthetic
energies on the central themes of the story as iltered through
their own perceptions. The following phrases were taken from
ive such thematic representations in past lessons:
1. I am Jewish. But I felt that I was following other laws.
2. Where is the goal of your life?
3. Fight an opposition. Fight a disease!
4. Who is it to have prayed to God. Who is it to have escaped
from God.
5. I and them. Is someone there?

From a focus on religion and god to loneliness and ambitions,

a wide variety of interpretations, while slightly idiosyncratic,
were displayed, some with surprisingly creative parallel struc-
tures and metaphorical expressions, and some with slightly con-
fusing philosophical meanderings. Number one was pulled di-
rectly from the text, but through a clever syntactic revision and
lexical reduction, reveals an acute understanding of language
and meaning as manifest in the compound-complex grammati-
cal structures of creative iction. The following two sentences
are the seed material from Bezmozgis’s original: “I had gone

210
to the cemetery even though my mother had forbidden it, and
even though Jewish law dictated that nobody was allowed at the
grave for a month. But I felt that I was following other laws”
(Bezmozgis Natasha 126). This kind of Iserian exploration could
then be followed with questions that engage the students with
their own creative process:
1. Why did you focus on God?
2. What does it mean to escape from God?
3. If this was about your own life, what diferent choices
would you have made?

In redirecting focus from the text to the students’ own creative

process, the roles have been reversed: The students are now au-
thors and so have participated in the creative process from the
perspective of the text. Regarding images and the symbolism of
death, students in the past have used gravestones with crosses
on them when, of the three characters that are dead or die by
the end of the story, two are Jewish and one appears to have
no religious interest or ailiation. This self-manifest idiosyn-
crasy is, according to Louise Rosenblatt in The Reader the Text
the Poem, the “symbolizing process.” She goes on to explain
that “the reader … inds it necessary to engage in a symbolic or
symbolizing process. He provides a context; this is drawn from
his own past experience, and depends on his own attitudes and
values” (emphasis in the original) (97-8). Of particular interest
in this situation is the students’ awareness of context without
the experience or knowledge to fulill the symbolizing process:
While their own values and experiences would be contextually
inappropriate, the students do indeed fulill the symbolizing pro-
cess by ofering their best judgment about the symbol of death

211
in Western society, a judgment most likely based on Western
pop culture. To explore this situation further, another set of
questions can be presented for discussion opportunities:
1. Why would the symbol of the cross be inappropriate in this
particular story?
2. What context did you consider when deciding to use the
cross as a symbol of death?
3. What would be the appropriate symbol of death for Ju-
daism?
4. How might the same mistake be made with Shintoism and
Buddhism?
5. What symbols of death are used in Japan?

For the young Japanese student, death in the West is symbol-

ized by gravestones and crosses, and so the reading, the under-
standing of Bezmozgis’s short story about Jewish immigrants,
falls into that same interpretation. The introduction and per-
petuation of that symbolism is a debate for another paper, but
the esthetic realization that results from the collision of text and
reader “attitudes and values” is unmistakable. Bezmozgis’s story
and the pedagogic application of it in the classroom ofer stu-
dents the opportunity to engage their own socio-cultural values
under the rubric of Iserian theory to explore and learn from sim-
ilar values in other areas of the world. According to Iser, one
must consider his or her own context and system of cultural val-
ues in order to engage with that of other cultures.

A Thousand Years of Good Prayers: Gaps

The inal collection of the three is A Thousand Years of Good
Prayers by Yiyun Li. Li was born two decades after the commu-

212
nist revolution, her father having fought on the side of the na-
tionalists and having had an antagonistic relationship with com-
munism. As a young student, she was around for the protests at
Tiananmen Square and understands the diiculties facing Chi-
nese people of all socio-economic levels. “I grew up in Beijing,”
Li says in an 2014 interview, “and like many people of my gen-
eration, had irst-hand experience with the Tiananmen Square
protest, the aftermath, and the government cover-up … The Bei-
jing where I grew up was a metropolis of villages … [And] peo-
ple in these villages … would know each other’s life intimately”
(Ciabattari “Yiyun Li Takes on Evil …”). Perhaps because of
this, she once stated in a 2009 interview at the University of
Iowa that she’s “interested in things around the center, not in
the center” (emphasis added) (Conversations), and in another in-
terview at Asymptote Journal she states, “I just like these very
little things in life that are also very profound” (Wigfall A Con-
versation). While a couple of her stories address the Chinese-
American immigrant experience, most are set in China and fol-
low her philosophy of “the minor character as a seed for imag-
ination” (yiyunli.com A Conversation). In following the “minor
character” and focusing on the “very little things,” Li’s prose
inevitably consists of deliberate narrative gaps, which seem to
magnify the Iserian principles of reader-response theory and so
present the challenge of illing those gaps through self-relection
and evaluation of one’s own socio-cultural values.
One of Li’s more memorable characters is that of Sansan
from the story “Love in the Marketplace.” Sansan is an En-
glish teacher in her hometown, single and scarred from a broken
promise of marriage by her childhood sweetheart, Tu, who ran
of to the U.S. and married a mutual friend. After several years

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abroad, Tu returns, divorced and ready to carry on with Sansan
where he left of. Sansan’s mother pleads with her to give him
another chance, but Sansan is not sure she is ready to marry the
man who betrayed and humiliated her, and the story ends with
the prospect of Sansan and Tu seeing each other again after their
prolonged estrangement. As a promising possibility for class-
room application—and taking a cue from Gillian Lazar (1993)
in Literature and Language Teaching—students could be asked to
imagine how the story might end (72), or how one scene might
segue into the next. Students could be asked to imagine the (un-
written) scene in which Sansan and Tu see each other again after
years of bitterness and separation, writing a dramatic dialogue
of the confrontation and presenting it in theatrical production in
front of the class. The goal, from an Iserian perspective, would
be to explore the situation from both the Chinese perspective
(the text) and the Japanese perspective (the self), taking into
account factors like age, gender, social conventions and familial
expectations. The focus would be on 1) how the students in-
terpret the situation, 2) how the students read the potential for
Sansan and Tu, and 3) how they ultimately understand these
socio-cultural processes. As Freund (1987) in The Return of the
Reader points out, reading within a framework of Iserian reader-
response “brings about a questioning and probing of the valid-
ity of received norms and systems” (147). In this way, students
are implicitly forced to consider issues like inidelity, marriage,
and gender, and how they prepare and act out their scenes re-
veals both the existence of the interpretation process and their
own individual interpretations resulting from that process. The
dramatic dialogue forces the students to engage more deeply
and emotionally with the literature, in the process forcing them

214
to engage more deeply with themselves and their own personal
socio-cultural beliefs. This process is yet another beneit of Iser’s
reader-response theory and is what L2 instructors can help stu-
dents to achieve through the reading of literature in English,
especially in literature like Li’s where unavoidable gaps in the
narrative force the reader to confront themselves in the process
of realizing the text.

Conclusion
Teaching literature in the second-language classroom has pro-
found beneits beyond the linguistic concerns of grammar and
vocabulary. Literature, as a form of art, has the potential to
transform how we think about our lives and the lives of those
around us, and one way of accessing that potential is through
the reader-response theory of Wolfgang Iser et al. While not
a strictly delineated form of criticism, reader-response theory
identiies the reader as a primary component of the reading pro-
cess, and proposes that the reader and text together “bring …
the literary work into existence” (The Reading Process 50). It is
through this interactive process that literature serves its primary
function of enabling the reader to relect on his or her own socio-
cultural values in assessing the socio-cultural values presented
in the literature, and from there to accept, reject, or reconsider
one’s perspective on the more pressing issues of contemporary
life. That interactive process, as has been shown, is realized
in a number of diferent ways depending on the literature, the
themes addressed, and the narrative structure. The three col-
lections introduced in this paper have hopefully been efective
in showing three distinct applications of Iser’s reader-response
theory that can then be used repeatedly, with variation, with

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any number of texts. And the beneits of all this occurring in
a second language follow the reasoning for a standard L2 class:
to better learn and use the language. Language serves the stu-
dents best when rooted in the exploration and communication
of one’s values and the values of other cultures; Language ofers
its full potential when used to compare, contrast, and readjust
the abundant socio-cultural perspectives in this shrinking world;
Language becomes most valuable when used to explore and ex-
press our own feelings and emotions, dreams and desires, fears
and hopes for the future. We would do well to doubt the eicacy
of any language learning program that fails to ofer any of these
beneits. For instructors in the ELT classroom to teach litera-
ture with an eye on Iserian reader-response theory, the beneits
for the students and their education, both in language and in
general, are signiicant indeed.

216
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Mario Leto is currently working at the University of Tsukuba in Japan

at the Center for Education of Global Communication. He has one
master’s degree in 20th -century American literature, another in ap-
plied linguistics, and is enrolled as a PhD student at the University
of Birmingham in the UK in the department of English Language and
Applied Linguistics. His research interests include literature, language
teaching, media, and food studies. His current research is on the de-
pictions of alternative diets in online media and on representations of
food in Native American literature.

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