Nöjesläsare och analytiska texttolkare : Empiriska perspektiv på läsarattityder och litterär kompetens hos svenska 18-åringar

Abstract Nordberg, Olle (2014) Nöjesläsare och analytiska texttolkare. Empiriska perspektiv på läsarattityder och litterär kompetens hos svenska 18-åringar. Uppsala University, Sweden This thesis discusses the literary reading of Swedish teenagers in the digital era, with a focus on literary competence and attitudes. The results are based on two empirical studies, which in some ways are related to each other. The first study compares teenagers’ reading in 2000 and 2012. Swedish 18 year-olds were given an essay test that originally took place as a national test in 2000. In the test assignmentthe student is asked to discuss his/her own reading. A comparison has been made between results from each year and changes in young people’s relationship with fiction has been analyzed during a time period when the IT and multi-media habits of teenagers were radically shifting. In the following study, the same group of students, from 2012, read a short story by the Swedish author Werner Aspenström. They processed the text by answering different kinds of questions about their reading including emotional reactions, interpretations and associations. They also answered questions about themselves as readers of fiction and media consumers. The first study indicates that there has been a change in the view of literary fiction so that the reading of fiction today is seen by young people as mere entertainment. To see the reading of fiction as a way of understanding reality better and developing one’s personality is clearly more common among the test results from the year 2000. This tendency can also be observed in the fictional works that students refer to as strong reading experiences. Young people from the 2012 test emphasize fantasy to a greater extent than was the case 12 years earlier. In that earlier group there was a larger number of classics and renowned writers mentioned. Overall, the reading experiences are described as entertainment in a rather shallow and subjective way by the 2012-students. Their literary competence appears to be low. However, in the second study it became clear that these teenagers actually possess a rather advanced literary competence. The results from the interpretative parts of the survey are generally good, even though students state that they read very little fiction compared to other forms of media consumption. It is clear that the students can shift between different kinds of reading, and that they can be competent readers even if they do not regard themselves in that way. Another seemingly contradictory conclusion from the study is that the teenagers can express a really positive attitude to books and the reading of fiction, but at the same time state that they very seldom read. The results show, however, that they clearly do not connect their reading from screens with their traditional book reading. All the reading done while working on school projects and so on simply does not count as “reading”. In addition to this it can be said that the traditional division between fact and fiction is not something that these young readers set store by. Time-hallowed lynchpins in the complex field of literary reading appear to have become obsolete. In the concluding part of the study the need for new perspectives and empirical ways of understanding the reading of young people is underlined. The results are presented as a possible starting point for a morecomprehensive discussion, not only in the area of empirical reading studies, but also in the fields of literary teaching and literary didactics.