Den talande bokens poetik - Doria

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produced three short stories as talking books, which were used in the empirical
research. Engström had the idea that talking books for young adults with mild
mental retardation did not have to differ so much from talking books produced
for listeners without mild mental retardation. His ideas were controversial and
differed from those expressed by many special educators within Easy-to-Read
publishing houses (see, for example, Centrum för lättläst, LL, 2001), who think
that talking books for the mentally handicapped should be read very slowly, very
clearly, dramatized more than ordinary talking books, and with sound effects
that could make it easier to understand and follow the narrator. Monica
Reichenberg (2003, 2008), who also has discussed Easy-to-Read-texts in her
research, states that many Easy-to-Read books are not easy to understand. She
thinks that if you peel away “everything that gives the text a life” (Reichenberg
2008, 47, my translation) it will become boring and it will be almost impossible
to ask reference questions to the reader or listener. Answering reference
questions presupposes that the reader or listener can reflect upon on and read
between the lines, which will not succeed if the text is too peeled off.
Chapter 1 discusses the difference between reading for usefulness and reading
for pleasure. Talking books seem to have been used within special education to
promote phonological awareness, encoding of words and increasing vocabulary.
But there is hardly any research about listening to fiction through talking books
or audio books. The writer of this dissertation found this somewhat surprising
since being able to read fiction was considered to be a democratic and cultural
right already in 1948 when the United Nations made a declaration of human
rights. The research project reported in this dissertation explored how two
different groups of young adult listeners received three short stories that were
performed in different ways.
The concept “poetic” in the title for the project was borrowed from Aristotle
(1977) and was used as a metaphor meant to catch the didactic idea in the talking
book: The art of making a good piece of art, a good recording. The problem
formulation in the thesis is anchored pedagogically: How should listening to a
talking book be mediated in order to give the learners the best opportunities to
learn? Learning in this context means opportunities for a deep understanding of
existential themes in the fiction.
The purpose of the research project The poetics of the talking book was defined
as contributing to the knowledge about patterns of understanding in young
adults’ reception of fiction, which they listen to through audio books. The
problem explored was: How do different groups of listeners receive fictive text
presented as a talking book with variations regarding use of voice, engagement
and sound effects? The problem formulation rendered four specific research
questions:
1. What patterns can be identified in the listeners’ answers regarding story
structure and cognitive content in a comparative perspective comprising
different reading styles in the taped versions of the text?