Argumentation

, 23:531 | Cite as

Making Connections: Categorisations and Particularisations in Students’ Literary Argument

Article
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Abstract

This article investigates how students reason and argue to make sense of fictional literature. Excerpts from students’ talk are analysed using the concepts categorisation, particularisation and recontextualisation, and interpreted from a socio-cultural, dialogical perspective. The analyses show that the students’ arguments oscillate between personal experience and the novel, and between categorising and particularising perspectives. The subject relevance of talk that lies between everyday and scientific talk, and between personal and analytic readings, is revealed. The bridging of different readings, different language practices, and different learning contexts is discussed.

Keywords

Reasoning Arguing Upper secondary school Literary analysis Peer interaction 
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Notes

Acknowledgments

This project is financed by the Department of Teacher Education and School Development at the University of Oslo. I especially want to thank my supervisors Frøydis Hertzberg and Sten Ludvigsen for guidance and comments. Thanks also to Andreas Lund, David Middleton and the participants of the PhD programme “Learning, Communication and ICT” at the Faculty of Education, for constructive comments. I am particularly grateful to the teacher and the students who let me into their classroom and trusted me to use their material.

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Copyright information

© Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2009

Authors and Affiliations

  1. 1.Department of Teacher Education and School DevelopmentUniversity of OsloOsloNorway

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