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On understanding a text: reader response and Alan Duff's Once Were Warriors
Author(s) -
TAWAKE SANDRA K.
Publication year - 1995
Publication title -
world englishes
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.6
H-Index - 49
eISSN - 1467-971X
pISSN - 0883-2919
DOI - 10.1111/j.1467-971x.1995.tb00357.x
Subject(s) - courage , order (exchange) , diversity (politics) , power (physics) , curriculum , sociology , psychology , history , anthropology , pedagogy , philosophy , theology , physics , finance , quantum mechanics , economics
This paper compares responses of two groups of readers from different cultures to the same novel as a means of shedding light on the text and uncovering differences in values, assumptions, and the ways words and actions are interpreted in the two cultures. Pacific‐island readers and non‐Pacific‐island readers responded to Once Were Warriors , the prize‐winning novel by New Zealand Maori Alan Duff. Analyses of the responses suggest differences in the ways Pacific‐island readers and non‐Pacific‐island readers respond to the diseased social order depicted in the novel and to the agents of change and images of healing that are presented as well as to concepts of knowledge, personal power, and physical courage evoked by the novel. The study has theoretical implications for the diversity and unity of English and applied implications for teacher training and curriculum development.