What do we learn from dialogues in fiction?

Project Information

FictDial

Grant agreement ID: 845343

DOI

10.3030/845343

Project closed

EC signature date 11 April 2019

Start date 1 September 2020

End date 27 June 2024

Funded under

• EXCELLENT SCIENCE - Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions

Total cost

€ 214 158,72

EU contribution

€ 214 158,72

Coordinated by

UNIVERSITETET I STAVANGER
Norway

Periodic Reporting for period 1 - FictDial (What do we learn from dialogues in fiction?)

Reporting period: 2020-09-01 to 2022-08-31

Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project

FictDial investigates the function of dialogues in novels, i.e. in literary fiction. In novels, dialogues are written conversational exchanges between characters. However, dialogues might not be necessary for telling a story. Conversations between characters could be just summarized without quoting what has been said. Nonetheless, fictional literary texts, like novels often include direct discourse between characters. Hence, it is an intriguing question what the effect of dialogues is on readers of fiction. The project examines whether reading dialogues in fiction could lead to immersion and embodied experiences and whether dialogues facilitate social learning. Moreover, it also investigates the effect of reading fictive dialogues on adolescents who are going through an important period of social development. The project could reveal the significance of reading novels for the adult and the adolescent readers. Throughout the project, interdisciplinary methods are applied from qualitative, and literary analysis to behavioural experiments and measurements of eye movements.

Work performed from the beginning of the project to the end of the period covered by the report and main results achieved so far

In the project, two review studies investigated the recent insights about the psychology of face-to-face conversations and the empirical and theoretical accounts of fictional dialogues and their role in social learning.
An online questionnaire was developed at the host institute of the project, the Norwegian Reading Centre for Reading Education and Research to examine how realistically fictional dialogues are perceived by adult and adolescent readers compared to written transcripts of every-day conversations. Altogether more than 400 responses were received from 16-year or older participants.
A quantitative analysis of parts of XIXth-century realistic novels was performed in the Centre for Literature, Cognition and Emotions of the University of Oslo. The output of the analysis and the analysed texts were also used to design and run an eye-tracking study in collaboration with RITMO Centre for Interdisciplinary Studies in Rhythm, Time and Motion. Data from 51 participants were collected who read chapters from novels in the laboratory while their eye movements were recorded.
The project also developed tests for measuring language- and reading experience of Norwegian adults and adolescents. A new Norwegian version of the Author Recognition Test (ART) was developed which is a frequently used implicit measure of reading behaviour. To develop the Norwegian ART, a pre-test was also performed in which we asked 33 experts of literature and reading (librarians, editors of publishers, literary scholars) in a questionnaire to judge the literariness and popularity of 110 Norwegian and international fiction authors’ works.
From the results of this project, one study was published until the end of the project, and seven other studies have been prepared and planned to be published in scientific journals. The studies were also presented on three international conferences and on several research seminars and workshop. Two public talks were presented for the wider public.

Progress beyond the state of the art and expected potential impact (including the socio-economic impact and the wider societal implications of the project so far)

In recent years, there has been a well-known decline in adolescents' reading skills and motivation. They spend less time reading especially longer fiction for enjoyment. Hence, FictDial brings valuable insights into why and how adolescents read and enjoy fiction. Understanding the processes behind adolescents' reading can help to create suitable intervention strategies.
The project also resulted in the development of several tools for studying reading in the Norwegian population, for example, implicit measures of reading frequency, vocabulary measures and digital tools for estimating word frequency and other features of longer texts. These tools could provide methodological support for a broad range of empirical reading studies that use the Norwegian language. The results of the project give also new insights into a broad field of sciences, from developmental psychology and psycholinguistics to empirical literature and literary theory.

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