The Art of Talking about Books : Book Talk from a Rhetorical Perspective

In this study the book talk is examined as a communicative act with a purpose to convince according to an under-lying intention to promote reading. I follow the book talk’s way from an idea of the book talker (and the library) to the reception of the audience, with the aim to understand how to talk about books in an engaging manner. More specifically, the rhetorical situation and the purpose of a book talk, the performance and the means to arouse and retain interest in the book talk as a speech and in the books themselves are examined and the impact of the book talk on the audience.The empirical material consists of observations of two different book talks (both directed to children) and interviews with the two different book talking librarians and a few of the children from the audiences to both book talks. The theoretical framework consists of rhetorical theories from both antique and modern times and I perform a rhetorical analysis of both book talks. As a complement to the rhetorical theories I use concepts from Readers’ Advisory such as ”book appeal” and ”reading appeal” to talk about what in the books themselves and in reading as an activity can be used as an argument.The results of the study show that in principle all children wanted to read one or more of the books presented in the book talk. To achieve this interest from the children the librarians know how to use the stories in the books and to draw on the arguments from the books themselves. This involves different appeal-elements from the books as plot summary, characters, genre, style and atmosphere. The book talking librarians also used different rhetorical techniques including evidentia, identification, pathos and ethos. Ethos especially in the form of the benevolence or goodwill the book talker shows the audience by including them in the book talk and trusting them to share what they think about the books. This study is a two years master’s thesis in Archive, Library and Museum studies