Karin Kukkonen
Literature makes you feel, and it can get you thinking, too. But how do you move from signs on a page to thoughts and feelings? And why does fiction sometimes feel more real than a world around us? My name is Karin Kukkonen, and together with my colleagues from the Literature, Cognition and Emotions Project, LCE for short, we will discuss these and other questions in the coming weeks. Today's guest is Sarah Bro Trasmundi, who is LCE researcher and also Associate Professor of Cognitive Ethnography at University of Southern Denmark. Sarah, thank you for joining us today.
Sarah Bro Trasmundi
Thank you for inviting me.
Karin Kukkonen
You're an Associate Professor of Cognitive Ethnography, which means that you're someone who studies in principle everything concerning human beings and how they live together. And out of all the human activities that one could study, you chose literature and reading. What does make literature and reading special to you?
Sarah Bro Trasmundi
Yeah, I think there's a story to why I came into reading and literature. And, as you mentioned, it's a privilege to be able to study everything that human beings are doing and how they make sense. And, I'm very inspired also by social anthropology, and especially Tim Ingold who said, I think, he defined anthropology as something like philosophy with people in it. And I think it's really nice.
Karin Kukkonen
Not ideas, but people.
Sarah Bro Trasmundi
Yeah, exactly. Yeah. And that whole empirical side to study what people are actually doing together. And I've been moving around different domains, and studied many, many aspects of how humans make sense and live their lives. And for a long time I thought – coming also from embodied cognition – I thought that embodied cognition was really good at explaining how people made sense in these domains, where there were lots of interaction, lots of activity and significant movements, and perhaps less good at – or less interested in – these fields, where higher cognition was present. And I was thinking, it's interesting, since narrative plays such a huge role in our lives, and has done for so long time, that little was said empirically about how people read, for instance. So, coming from different domains and being a cognitive ethnographer, I was interested in studying exactly what are people actually doing. I mean, how are they making sense as they engage with literature. And especially, in relation to these aspects that were less clear empirically, like imagination and mindwandering, and these feelings, – that you also said in the introduction – what are people actually feeling and doing? And there are lots of theories about that, but less empirical stuff to deal with. And I thought, as an ethnographer you must be able to dig a little bit around that, and learn from how people are doing reading, for instance. So – yeah.
Karin Kukkonen
So to come back to the not ideas, but people... of course we have an ideal reader, I guess, in our minds – that there is this cultural model...
Sarah Bro Trasmundi
Yeah.
Karin Kukkonen
... That in order to be a good reader, you're engrossed in the book, you're sitting still, you're not lifting your gaze from the page. However, I guess, once you replace the ideal reader with the people – or the people who are actually reading a text – a lot of that changes, doesn't it?
Sarah Bro Trasmundi
The ideal reader is an ideal, but I also think it's the wrong ideal of a reader, that we have, and I think that's due to simply lack of evidence of what's going on as people read. So there are these ideas of the ideal reader as you present here, that it's about a silent activity, it's a mental activity of decoding symbolic information in a text.
Karin Kukkonen
It sounds very abstract.
Sarah Bro Trasmundi
Yeah, it does. And the real empirical reader, that we observe, is far from that picture.
Karin Kukkonen
So what do they do?
Sarah Bro Trasmundi
Yeah, they do lots of things. So first of all, it's also interesting to.... Does it even make sense to talk about an ideal reader – and what is it in that case? For me, I'm interested in those aspects that have to do with quality reading, how we can take control and how we can manage our reading activities. And then, we looked at what are people actually doing? Who are those who feel joy when they read? Who are those readers that are more imaginative, or more creative, or more critical as they engage with literature? And it has to do with the degree of control of the strategies you imply. So there might be the same mechanisms involved in reading, but the tricks and the strategies you use are very different. So, some of the readers were very good at controlling the pace, for instance. What we observed, in some of the video data we have, is that they would take breaks during readings. So, breaks are something that I'm super interested in, because I think there's so much stuff that goes on there, that is still under-explored empirically. And they were able to more freely use different kinds of strategies, depending on what they wanted from the text. So the ideal reader is one that can control what he or she wants to do, whereas we see that others are extremely constrained by social, cultural expectations of what they're supposed to do with the text – and they would conform to a very fixated reading strategy, for instance. Taking all the notes, trying to understand every word on the page, be less radical and bold in their reading, for instance. So, I think that one thing we could see was that it was messy. It wasn't silent at all. It was extremely embodied. But of course, the embodiment is very different from other kinds of activities. So these small scale differences, that you can observe, are significant or crucial and needs to be unpacked empirically, I think. And then, what we also saw was that the ideal reader doesn't really make sense, because you can't maintain one specific reading mode or trajectory. I mean, people will switch in and out of different modes. It's extremely exhausting and takes a lot of effort to be imaginative throughout such a long reading, for instance. So you won't be able to engage in that kind of reading for a long time. So people were adapting very much towards their level of motivation, and emotions, and stuff like that. So... There were variations that were crucial. And it's not like you are just one kind of reader. And then, of course, what we also observed was that different readers read differently, too. So depending on who you are, where you come from and the personality, and also, of course...
Karin Kukkonen
So there is a personality involved in reading?
Sarah Bro Trasmundi
Yeah, yeah. I think there are layers involved – very often the conversation is confused, or mistaken, by the level of argumentation, I think. So, we are talking about reading – in some sense – as a very general skill where specific mechanisms...
Karin Kukkonen
Which you learn in school.
Sarah Bro Trasmundi
Exactly. Yeah. And in some sense, it's extremely predictable, and you can talk about reading as a general competence. But then again, there's a different layer, where you can say that people are also very different – and neuroscience also back up that claim – that different areas are involved. And people are imaginative, and some are less imaginative when they read. Some are very task oriented, and others are better at taking in information in other ways. So, you have a personality that also impact – and it's not like there's one personality that is good, and one that is bad – exactly how to exploit, in the best particular way, to achieve what you want the reading activity. And that has to do with how you control, and the freedom you have, in the reading situation, I think.
Karin Kukkonen
Yeah. So you were talking about strategy. You talk about control. Where does the embodiment come in? Because that's also something that you stressed about the reading process, that it's actually something that involves more than just the eyes.
Sarah Bro Trasmundi
Yeah, exactly. And I think... So, a strategy for me is a whole, bodied... that is embodiment. So, you can see different strategies in...
Karin Kukkonen
Can you explain, or maybe give an example of what that looks like?
Sarah Bro Trasmundi
So for instance, you can see that – we had a case where people were reading the same text, and some people were extremely frustrated when problems occurred. And there were different ways to engage with that kind of problem, that emerged in the reading. So, some people would just try to escape that, and pace would change so they would read faster, and others would slow down, for instance. And what you could see in the facial expressions – they were kind of reflecting and engaging in this kind of critical thinking. And you can also see, in terms of the imagination, for instance, that some people would just get through the text. And every time there was something that caught their attention, they would close down that path so that they could go on, and then go back to what they thought they were supposed to do. Whereas others would be much more... They would fixate, for instance, trying to close down information from the environment, trying to reduce the sensitivity to a very specific process, that was going on.
Karin Kukkonen
How do you do that?
Sarah Bro Trasmundi
Well, that's – I don't know. But we can see that people are... When we talk to them, they would say that they would try to hold their attention. They would try to fixate, and they would try not to take in information from the environment, something that embodied cognition, and all research coming from that field, have tried to for a long time – to show exactly how we draw on information in the environment, and how we adapt to the environment. And of course, they still do that, but in a significantly different way, by trying to fixate their body, trying to not get information in, and control that flow of information in different ways. So fixation is something that, for instance, in school has been interpreted, I think – that's my hypothesis – as inability to concentrate or focus and move forward, or keep flow and fluency, and all these kind of things, skills that we want them to be good at.
Karin Kukkonen
As a part of the ideal reader.
Sarah Bro Trasmundi
Exactly, yeah. And what we could see then, is that sometimes, when these self-initiated changes in their reading behavior occurred, it had to do with some sort of critical, reflective, imaginative stuff, which we still do not know exactly what it is, but it seemed to be correlating with joy and more immersive kind of reading. So when you talk about the ideal reader, I think also that something that many people struggle with today is exactly getting down or getting calm, and getting into a reading place that is much slower, where you can actually think, where you can be creative and imaginative. So for me, one ideal – at least in my research – is to encourage people to take control over the reading processes, in the sense that they can allow themselves to explore other aspects of reading, than that they have been trained to, so to speak. So, going beyond the skill and the functional into the more aesthetic and explorative.
Karin Kukkonen
I guess, becoming a fully rounded reader is what it sounds like?
Sarah Bro Trasmundi
Yeah. I think that's exactly the key, that there are many ways in which you can read, and it's about knowing how you can exploit the whole situation as best as possible, in terms of what you want. And some things you should encourage people to want, perhaps, because these skills are critical. And we are becoming perhaps less good at keeping concentration – or concentration span – and critical thinking... and basically all the stuff, that we want societies to be built on.
Karin Kukkonen
So there are new challenges for, I guess, both the study and the teaching of reading?
Sarah Bro Trasmundi
Yeah, definitely. I think they go together. So, all the models of reading, that we have, of course impact education and cultural understanding of what reading is, and how it should be trained – and what we gain from it.
Karin Kukkonen
I mean, you've been talking about reading in pretty general terms now, but I – do I read? You write that this means, to a significant extent, also reading literature... and not just reading informational texts for the purpose of being able to give a little summary of what you've read.
Sarah Bro Trasmundi
Absolutely. I think... So, I'm not a literary scholar and I know a little about literature. I think imagination and stories are fascinating, but for me, it's easy to say that genre is less important, in that sense. I think it's extremely important in other senses, but in that sense, imagination is always working, and it does so in all kinds of texts – and, of course, even in academic texts. Being imaginative might be very valuable, where it might be very easy, or not very easy, but it might be easier for people to engage in these imaginative worlds when they read fiction, for instance. And I think it's a skill that applies across genres, and should be trained, because it has to do with meaning-making more generally.
Karin Kukkonen
Yeah. So, just to push that point a little bit – because I feel like it – would mean that actually they should read lots and lots of literature in school, because it's easier to engage exactly in these imaginative dimensions of reading, which will then also come in very handy with the more with nonfiction texts?
Sarah Bro Trasmundi
I would be inclined to say no. Because I don't think it's about the quantity. And I think, the downside of just reading and reading and reading is that you take away the joy of reading, and it becomes this mechanic skill. And it becomes about the quantity. I think it's great if you love to read, that you can read all the stuff you want. I think, to engage in these processes... It's not necessarily about just reading a lot, it's about giving the process quality. And I think we have so little knowledge about what goes on as people read, because we are always talking to people afterwards, asking them about their experiences...
Karin Kukkonen
... what they remember.
Sarah Bro Trasmundi
Exactly. Yeah, and what they think they did. And of course, what you do is you make an analysis and you reduce processes to fixed points and results. So people would easily talk about what they remember, or reduce sensitivity to a kind of emotion they had, or something like that. And it's very often – what we can see –very far away from what actually went on. And the points in the reading process, they emphasize – are obvious, I mean – and less interesting in terms of, I mean, what we can see throughout the whole reading trajectory. So I think it's more about being good at timing, and, in terms of taking a teacher's perspective, to be in the process when people read and be present there. I think that's crucial. And of course, the more you read, you will train that skill. But I think there is a misunderstood focus on just reading.
Karin Kukkonen
Yeah, no, that's not what I meant.
Sarah Bro Trasmundi
No, no – Yeah.
Karin Kukkonen
But really, there is something in reading literature that sort of carries you...
Sarah Bro Trasmundi
Absolutely. Yeah.
Karin Kukkonen
... towards this – exactly – imaginative use, having a certain sort of space to manoeuvre in a textual world, that I guess you wouldn't have with a nonfiction text, I think.
Sarah Bro Trasmundi
Can I just say a little bit about that? Because I think that's super interesting, and I think that's what literature can do: It gives you a timeout from many of the social interactions. So, when you engage with people, and you think together with people or interact together with people, you can't, because there's other people involved. You can't control the pace and you can't control what goes on, in the same way as you can engage with that material. And you can't, I mean, reading is fascinating, because you can stop. And you can pause. And you can insert these breaks, and you can go back, and you can go for it. I mean, there's this time travel dimension in reading, where you can overexaggerate things. You can play with things in a non-harmful way, and explore things in a non-harmful way, that are completely different from other kinds of interactions. And it gives you that kind of pause control, that you don't have. And everything goes so fast in real life and then it's it. And I think that's something that's fascinating about literature. And that's, you know, again, across genres, you can do that in all kinds of text, hard problems that you deal with in academia, or a universe you find interesting and fascinating in fiction. So, I think that's really a unique moment that we can create.
Karin Kukkonen
Something else, that I read in your articles, is the matter not just of 'push the pause button', but also the question of aisthesis – so, which links to the aesthetic, which of course... I mean, literature has a certain ambition to give you an aesthetic experience, but you're talking about that in a very particular sense, aren't you?
Sarah Bro Trasmundi
Yeah, I think I am. So it's an overall human sensibility, so to speak, and it has to do with previous ways of seeing and tasting and touching and smelling, and so on and so forth. And I think – Stephen Cowley and I – we were trying to take that concept into reading, trying to show exactly how aisthesis has to do with controlling... I mean, how it is a kind of saccading and moving, and how it has to do with these aspects that aren't reduced to the functional or the hedonic. So, how people actually bring life into text. And I think it's because these models of reading has exactly taken away the reader, basically, from the reading. So it has been this mechanical skill of just deducing information. And this, again, mechanical skill that everyone could be trained in – we want to bring back sensibility and how human beings, of flesh and blood, actually have a history, and how that history matters for their interpretation or their engagement with text. So, bringing that again – into a theory of reading – complicates things.
Karin Kukkonen
I imagine it is.
Sarah Bro Trasmundi
Yeah. But it also gives us, I mean, that kind of... People read for many purposes also, and how you can... I mean, think of how you read, or how you're reading experiences are very different when you read in different languages, for instance. So there's this layer of sensibility that is crucial for why we read at all, I think. It's not just, I mean, to get information. And it has been reduced. It might have been touched in different theories also within literature, I think, but empirically it's almost underexplored. I would say it's difficult, of course, to touch about that. But basically, you should look at what people are doing – and then it's like, it's sitting right there and it's so obvious and significant and important to people. And they have really good explanations, and all of them emphasize that reading is just so much more than getting information. And that's what they hate – that's reading for information only. And they are also frustrated when they can't really use their own experience in the reading processes. So there's something there that would, if we understand that better, would also give us better students, better readers in general, I think.
Karin Kukkonen
And I guess it would also give us a better picture of what it actually means to to read.
Sarah Bro Trasmundi
Yeah, absolutely.
Karin Kukkonen
I mean, you were talking a little bit earlier about, you know, the more long term perspective on this. There is something in education. But then, I mean, as a reader, you're not reading all the time.
Sarah Bro Trasmundi
No.
Karin Kukkonen
You do have to eat and sleep once in a while. But I think, I mean, I would like to hear what you think about that dimension of being a reader. As a reader, you have a sort of biography – that, yeah, there is a sort of a whole wall of books behind you, that you've inhabited at some point or another.
Sarah Bro Trasmundi
I think that's, again, one of the things that haven't been studied. Because it hasn't been a traditional focus to study reading and readers in modern society, from this ethnographic point of view. Because, I mean, what is there to observe, if people are just sitting still doing nothing? It wouldn't really be that interesting. And what we did was that we started to follow people over time, so over years, to see how they actually not just are readers, but also how they become readers over time. And of course, it has to do with things that go on in their lives. And I mean, as you mentioned, did they live in a home where there were books all over the place? Did their mom and dad read stories to them? And, I mean, how is their engagement with narratives, basically, in general? So that's, of course, very important. But it's not just the, again, the ontogenetic aspect of that kind of person. It's just as interesting to see how the socio- cultural dimension also really impact – and much more strongly than I thought, actually. I thought people had much more freedom.
Karin Kukkonen
Can you give an example for that socio-cultural...?
Sarah Bro Trasmundi
There was this one girl who said, 'I hate to read, I loved to read before, but now I hate it, and I struggle so much with it'. And she was what we would call an expert reader. So you could read all kinds of text. But it was such a struggle, and we couldn't really figure, why is that? And it's because she thought that it was such a constraint to read for the purpose that she was supposed to understand every word in the text – and memorize everything. And she said, that every time I have an idea, I have to say, Oh, it's not for now – I have to do this. And you can see that... how initially, there are these interests and moments that would generate – what we expect to be creative, in some sense, or critical or whatever – their own personal stance that might be very useful in terms of motivation, but also understanding. And they are very good at learning to reduce that, and close down these moments during their reading. And that's only something you can see, when you actually observe their actual reading as they prepare the reading. So, you can see how she would start, and then she would say hm – and go back again. And then, we start to ask when these moments occurred – so, what happens? 'Well, now is not the time for me to do that'. And that's, of course, exactly... You can just almost envision the teacher saying, 'No, that's not what you're supposed to do now. Now you have to focus and do that'. So it's so strongly, just subconsciously, working through their embodied behavior in reading, that they just, you know, their attention is simply reduced from that kind of socio-cultural expectation, so to speak.
Karin Kukkonen
Yeah. Or they're given such a strong factory setting of strategy that they can't – or they don't allow themselves to...
Sarah Bro Trasmundi
Yeah, exactly. They simply close down all the interesting stuff. so it becomes this kind of, you know, prison for them. That's also another metaphor that some of them may explain. And it's like, well, they understand every word, so what is it exactly? But I think – what it comes down to is – that it's taking away the freedom of how they want to engage with the text. And then, of course, it gets extremely boring just to read for someone else, so to speak. Right. It's like, okay, so I just have to get through this and then move on. It's definitely not something that inspires them to think about what they're reading. Of course, that's a very simplistic, I mean, that's one person. But I was surprised to see it, and it actually happened quite a lot that people would learn to adapt to the norms and the rules and expectations of the system – or the factory, as you mentioned.
Karin Kukkonen
Yeah, you go and look at readers while they're reading, and then you also interview them – or you talk to them – about their reading. From that kind of approach, how could we explode the prison or undo the factory setting?
Sarah Bro Trasmundi
Now it's just speculation, because we're not there where we can say, this is the problem, this is what we should do. But of course, we can definitely see that there's something that people... The joy of reading kind of decreases over time. So initially in school they like to read, and then they enter the university. That's where we meet them, and then they hate to read. So that's perfect. And then there's the challenge, of course, to see, okay, how can we bring back the joy of reading? And also it relates to getting motivated – and getting the freedom back, also, to be a person that reads. One of the things, that we expect, is that exactly these breaks – that I mentioned earlier – correlate with at least the possibility for engaging in these imaginative processes. So one of the empirical settings we are creating right now, is a setting where we want to play with function of breaks, and try to manipulate breaks during reading – and try to train people to take breaks, for instance, just to see what happens if they slow down the pace. Because in the reading system – in Denmark at least, and I think that goes for many other European countries – they are testing more and more the efficiency and the pace with which students read, and all these things they measure are completely the opposite of what we see that scaffold imaginative processes. So we would start there and see, okay, we can see that breaks are crucial and something happens there – and then see, can we get a better picture of what happens in these processes? And then of course, that's one strategy, that's one embodied strategy to simply zone out or zoom out of the process, and exploit those breaks and moments... and there to play with that crazy little idea, that some people also mention they get, you know. It's like these immediate ideas that they upfront, that they think are irrelevant, but actually quite interesting if you go along. So in one study, we we asked them – when they happened, these breaks – what's going on now? And that could be everything, from a word that sounds funny or beautiful, or an idea they had. And when you had a conversation, a dialogue about it became quite interesting– where did it come from? Why did you think about that? And then suddenly, there was stuff there that also made them memorize the text better, or remember the text also a long time after, better. So there's something that's completely under-explored. And breaks –that's a starting point, and then let's see what happens.
Karin Kukkonen
Well, it's definitely the good news that it's perfectly okay to take a break and follow the little voice in your head, sometimes. One of the things that, I mean, looms large, I think, in any discussion of reading – attention – today is, of course, digitization. This feeling that we've somehow lost the ability to read properly, that there was a golden age of reading – and it was before the iPhone. How does your approach to reading, with the embodied angle, the aesthetics, this question of taking a break and pursuing imaginative paths... What can you say about digitization – or what new perspective might this offer on this problem?
Sarah Bro Trasmundi
I would be reluctant to have an opinion on whether I think it's good or bad, or stuff like that. But I mean, obviously, there are things that the analog book can do. I mean, there is a different kind of tactility and sensibility to that kind of material than digital devices. We can also see... Other people have, or my colleagues have researched in how you can create better economic spheres, because you bring your book in different...
Karin Kukkonen
Economic spheres?
Sarah Bro Trasmundi
Yeah. So, they will bring the books in places – in the bed and stuff like that. Whereas you are more inclined to sit at the table with your computer, where it's located, or where you're used to work. So they would create better spatial settings for the reading. And one of the things that we believe is that it takes time to get into a reading flow, and you have to slow down – it's not just like you can read immediately and get into it. So creating these spaces seem to be crucial, and the book seems to be good at that. So the material, of course, that matters. I mean, and there are many, many, many... I mean, that's been studied heavily, but the results are very diverse, I think, depending on whether you are an optimist, or a pessimist, in terms of digitalization. But there seems to be trouble with spatial and temporal remembering – the sequence of events – when you read on a device, digital device, because you don't have the feeling of length, for instance. All the persons that we talk to prefer the book over the screen, but they very often use the screen, or the digital device, because it's cheaper. And, you know, that's some of the good things, of course – that it's a democratic good thing that you can access all kinds of literature cheaper digitally than, you know, buying the books.
Karin Kukkonen
Or going to the library...?
Sarah Bro Trasmundi
Yeah, that's true. But there seem to be a different kind of experience with reading a book that many people still prefer – also the young generation. So I don't think that... There are definitely some big differences there. And I think, also, that people seems to have actually some sort of relationships with their physical books too, even though they give it back in school. It's like, that was my book, and stuff like that. So people would have a different kind of relationship. What that means for, you know, the skills that we think are important – like memory and stuff like that – I don't know. But it seems to have some sort of impact, at least, that is important for the readers.
Karin Kukkonen
Yeah, I guess this question of identity and personality probably comes into play.
Sarah Bro Trasmundi
Yeah. But even those who are the high tech people seem still to prefer reading a book when you ask them, at least in our study. So when they didn't, it was a matter of convenience, I mean...
Karin Kukkonen
So these should be the people who actually have the skills to navigate seamlessly on the screen.
Sarah Bro Trasmundi
Yeah. So that was... I mean, I had expected that they were more optimistic, and provided all the possibilities that were related to the digital reading devices. But they still preferred the real book.
Karin Kukkonen
More space for the imagination.
Sarah Bro Trasmundi
Yeah, exactly. Yeah.
Karin Kukkonen
As we're concluding the podcast, I wanted to invite you to give us a reading recommendation, either digital or non digital, to be enjoyed on any kind of format.
Sarah Bro Trasmundi
It was a tough question, I think, because you really want to give an advice to... That people should read something brand new that no one knows about. But, I think that that's not what I will do. I think I will recommend Lambros Malafouris' book, How Things Shape the Mind. He is an archaeologist, and he mixes anthropology and then theories of distributed cognition and embodied cognition, and talks exactly about how we think with things – and how that's crucial. And I think it's been an eye opener for me, at least, in terms of opening up how people are making sense with the books, and how they engage with the books. And it's not just about retrieving information in that traditional sense. So that would be, I mean, everyone would enjoy reading that book, because that was at least very radical, and turned upside down the whole idea about how things shape our minds and thinking, yeah.
Karin Kukkonen
Thank you. Thank you for the excellent conversation, and for the reading recommendation.
Sarah Bro Trasmundi
Thank you.
Karin Kukkonen
It was a pleasure to have you. And thanks to everyone listening to the LCE podcast.