Reading Comprehension as Intertextual Practice

Building Meaning Together

David Bloome, Ayanna F. Brown, Huili Hong, Maria Beatriz Pinto

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2026
• Print ISBN:
  9781041104049
  9781041104056
• eBook ISBN:
  9781040678923
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Research in Education

Building on recent scholarship in sociolinguistics, discourse analysis, and social practice theories, this book reconceptualizes reading comprehension as intertextual practices.

Rather than view reading comprehension as the interaction of a reader and a text, the book outlines reading comprehension as a set of dynamic social practices enacted by people in and across social events in which they together build and assign meaning to one or more written language texts. The interactive meaning-building process is inherently intertextual as people act and react to each other, propose connections among multiple texts, and reflect and refract social practices, histories, and ideologies. The theorizing in this book is oriented to generating new images and metaphors to imagine 'reading comprehension' differently. The reconceptualization also derives from using jazz as a metaphor for reading comprehension.

This is a key resource for scholars, graduate students, and teachers in reading and literacy education.

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title page
• Endorsement Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Artist’s Statement
• Contents
• Diagrams and Figures
• Acknowledgments
• Foreword: Reading Comprehension as Enacted, Relational Practice
• Foreword: Connecting with the Power of Jazz for Cultural Relevance and Culturally Sustained Readers
• Introduction: Re-Theorizing ‘Reading Comprehension’ as Intertextual Practices
• 1 Foundations for a Conceptualizing ‘Reading Comprehension’ as Intertextual Practices
• 2 Outline of a Theory of ‘Reading Comprehension’ as Intertextual Practices
• 3 Toward a Philosophy of Meaning for ‘Reading Comprehension’ as Intertextual Practices
• 4 Cultural Ideological Meaning and ‘Reading Comprehension’ as Intertextual Practices
• 5 ‘Reading Comprehension’ as Intertextual Practice, Alienation, I-It/I-You, and Looking Forward
• Appendix: Transcription Key
• About the Authors
• Index