Designing interpretive communities toward justice: indexicality in classroom discourse

Abstract

Purpose - This study aims to investigate how, through text-based classroom talk, youth collaboratively draw on and remix discourses and practices from multiple socially indexed traditions.

Design/methodology/approach - Drawing on data from a year-long social design experiment, this study uses qualitative coding and traces discoursal markers of indexicality.

Findings - The youth sustained, remixed and evaluated interpretive communities in their navigation across disciplinary and fandom discourses to construct a hybrid classroom interpretive community.

Originality/value - This research contributes to scholarship that supports using popular texts in classrooms as the focus of a scholarly inquiry by demonstrating how youth in one high school English classroom discursively index interpretive communities aligned with popular fandoms and literary scholarship. This study adds to understandings about the social nature of literary reading, interpretive whole-class text-based talk and literary literacies with multimodal texts in diverse, high school classrooms.

Full text

Designing interpretive communities
toward justice: indexicality in
classroom discourse
Scott Storm,Karis Jones and Sarah W. Beck
Department of Teaching and Learning, New York University, New York,
New York, USA
Abstract
Purpose –This study aims to investigate how, through text-based classroom talk, youth collaboratively
draw on and remix discourses and practices from multiple socially indexed traditions.
Design/methodology/approach –Drawing on data from a year-long social design experiment, this
study uses qualitative coding and traces discoursal markers of indexicality.
Findings –The youth sustained, remixed and evaluated interpretive communities in their navigation across
disciplinary and fandom discourses to construct a hybrid classroom interpretive community.
Originality/value –This research contributes to scholarship that supports using popular texts in
classrooms as the focus of a scholarly inquiry by demonstrating how youth in one high school English
classroom discursively index interpretive communities aligned with popular fandoms and literary
scholarship. This study adds to understandings about the social nature of literary reading, interpretive whole-
class text-based talk and literary literacies with multimodal texts in diverse, high school classrooms.
Keywords Disciplinary literacies, Indexicality, Teaching literature, Classroom discourse
Paper type Research paper
Clark walks into English class wearing an intricate array of gold and black poster board
pieces layered to appear like futuristic plate mail. He strikes a theatrical pose; several
students sing the theme song, “Transformers, robots in disguise!”This performance, in the
high school English course described in this study, illustrates youths’participation in
fandoms –interpretive communities (Fish, 1980) in which many youths engage, yet which
are not typically included in English Language Arts (ELA) classrooms. More typically, ELA
draws from academic interpretive communities, such as composition and linguistics and
centers the discipline of literary studies in curriculum and assessment (Levine, 2019).
Some view the disciplinary practice of literary scholars as too abstruse for K12 students or
envision disciplinary literacies as reserved for students who have already mastered supposedly
basic skills (Heller, 2011). However, Moje (2007,2015) argues that engaging all youth in
disciplinary literacy is essential to social justice because doing so provides access to
intellectually rich content and engages youth in knowledge production. Moje points to Lee’s
(1995) scholarship, which centers youths’cultural competencies, as an example of disciplinary
practice oriented to social justice. Building on this work, we envision English classrooms as
hybrid communities that simultaneously support youth-based and disciplinary literacies from
literary studies to engage all students (Hinchman and O’Brien, 2019).
We draw on data collected in a yearlong social design experiment conducted by the first
two authors to theorize English classrooms as hybrid interpretive communities. To these
Funding: This research was supported in part by a grant from the International Literacy Association.
Interpretive
communities
toward justice
Received 20 June2021
Revised 11 October2021
6 December 2021
21 December 2021
Accepted 21 December2021
English Teaching: Practice &
Critique
© Emerald Publishing Limited
1175-8708
DOI 10.1108/ETPC-06-2021-0073
The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available on Emerald Insight at:
https://www.emerald.com/insight/1175-8708.htm

data, we apply qualitative coding and discourse analytic methods focused on indexicality to
explore the socially constituted communities that youth reference in classroom discourse
and illuminate how youth engage with, navigate between and remix multiple interpretive
communities within an ELA classroom. We ask:
In a course designed to center hybrid interpretive communities, what practices and
discourses do youth draw on in whole-class literary discussions?
How are these practices and discourses indexically linked to interpretive
communities that shape the classroom community?
Empirical and theoretical perspectives
Fish (1980) views the use of shared interpretive strategies as central to the definition of an
interpretive community. Aligning with Fish, we define interpretive communities as socially
constituted shared ways of reading, writing, thinking, reasoning and being. We see
disciplines, which Moje (2015) defines as “domains or cultures in which certain kinds of texts
are read and written for certain purposes”(p. 255), as types of interpretive communities.
Although literary studies are one interpretive community with relevance to ELA
curriculum, it is important to study the inclusion of other interpretive communities in the
ELA classroom, especially youth-driven ones, so that we can more robustly theorize the
heterogeneity of ELA as its own hybrid interpretive community in a way that supports
youths’cultural and symbolic resources.
Literary literacies as interpretive communities
The interpretive community of literary scholars is distinguished by both cognitive processes
and social practices –literary literacy (Rainey, 2017). Experienced literary readers use
knowledge of literary devices (e.g. metaphors), forms and histories. They attend closely to text
structure and patterns (Peskin, 1998). They demonstrate tolerance for ambiguity in texts and
engage with texts toward which they have negative affective responses (Dorfman, 1996).
Rainey (2017) found that literary scholars enact shared practices such as seeking patterns,
identifying strangeness and considering interpretive possibilities with the goals of pursuing
literary problems and constructing new knowledge as a community of scholars. Tyson (2015)
adds a concern for theoretical lenses (e.g. feminism, queer theory) as a way of investigating
representations of power. Wilder (2005) identified a social justice topos within literacy
scholarship that entails using critical theory to uncover insights about language/power. Storm
and Rainey’s (2021) topic model of 4,039 contemporary literary criticism articles showed that
literary studies include an overlapping focus on humanistic themes, issues of criticality and
investigations of form –including a range of representational forms in addition to linguistically
centered print –such that the interpretive practices of literary studies now include formalistic
tools of visual analysis (e.g. color), film analysis (e.g. camera angles), music theory (e.g. tempo)
performance arts (e.g. gesture) and fashion design (e.g. textiles).
Newcomers to the discipline, such as high schoolers, learn through apprenticeship to
more experienced practitioners. Beck (2006) demonstrated how adolescent learners in one
high school classroom acquired both idiosyncratic and normative understandings of the
nature of written literary analysis through intersubjective negotiation with their teacher.
Fields and Frankel (2021) described how student identities and experiences shaped stance
and localized understanding of literary analysis discourse. Specific strategies, such as
Levine’s(2014)affect-based approach, have been shown to be effective in producing
generative and diverse interpretive responses. Similarly, Lee’s(1995)investigation of the
ETPC

effectiveness of cultural modeling showed how African-American youth’s cultural-linguistic
resources for signifying could be leveraged to support literary analysis.
Youth-centered fandoms as interpretive communities
Youth literacies include participation in fandoms: groups of people who read, listen to or
watch a text, and then engage in response through face-to-face interactions or digital
participation in forums, fanfiction and videos. Fandoms, interpretive communities in their
own right, are overlapping with, yet distinct from, the interpretive community of literary
scholars in several important ways.
First, fandom practices center on affective and personal engagement. Lammers and
Marsh (2018) theorized how participating in fanfiction communities helped a study
participant build a personal identity as a passionate writer. This emphasis on affect and
personal response tends to downplay the analysis of form and craft more common among
literary scholars. For example, Magnifico et al. (2015) evaluated feedback practices in
Hunger Games fanfiction communities, and though they found a high level of affective
engagement, they also illustrated that the feedback lacked specificity about “the craft of
writing”(p. 158).
Second, whereas literary scholars write literary criticism articles on individual texts or
provide justification for multiple texts, fandom participants create compositions across
modalities, genres and platforms as they quote, allude to and remix myriad focal texts. Chandler-
Olcott and Mahar (2003) explored how anime fanfiction writers engaged in multimodal
composition, intertextual conversations and hybrid text creation, highlighting the dissimilarities
between these texts and more traditional essays. Similarly, Aljanahi and Alsheikh (2021)
examined how fans cosplay (i.e. wear character costumes) as a context to remix popular media.
Third, while literary scholars engage with justice-driven concerns as rhetorical topos,
fandom participants build justice-oriented social worlds. Thomas and Stornaiuolo (2016)
illustrated how, in fandoms, affective and multimodal responses became a basis for youth’s
justice-driven revisions of mainstream texts through practices of racebending and
genderbending –shifting representations toward inclusivity of marginalized identities.
Similarly, Black et al. (2019) examined how fanfiction writers shift autism disability
discourses by revising Harry Potter.
Contribution of the present study: hybrid interpretive communities
We aim to show, through empirical analysis of classroom discourse, that ELA classrooms
can integrate literary and fandom practices to construct hybrid interpretive communities.
We define practices as socially constituted shared ways of working with texts and discourses
as language-in-use and in combination with these practices. To investigate how discourses
point to interpretive communities, we focus on indexicality. Indexicality illuminates how
linguistic and non-linguistic signs get imbued with social meanings (Silverstein, 2003). For
example, in the USA culture, a rainbow flag often indexes pride for a queer community.
Indexicality highlights how language signals both the existence of and membership in
socially constituted interpretive communities, even when speakers may not consciously
consider themselves interpretive community members.
We focus on youths’indexicality to understand how discourse indexes socially
constituted interpretive communities, and to discern whether, how and to what extent
discourse serves to construct new classroom-based hybrid interpretive communities. Our
analysis explicitly assumes a social justice orientation (Moje, 2007) in that it aims to
illustrate how youth navigate, remix, contest and potentially transform interpretive
communities as they co-construct their own hybrid interpretive spaces; and how, in doing
Interpretive
communities
toward justice

so, they challenge a conception of literary literacy that privileges only the practices of
literary scholars.
Methodology and methods
This report is one result of a year-long multi-cycle social design experiment (Gutiérrez, 2016)–a
form of design research focused on redesigning learning ecologies toward equity. Scott and
Karis designed a classroom community to center literary and fandom literacies. During and
between each of three unit-long design cycles, youth participated by choosing focal texts,
facilitating discussions, joining feedback focus groups and writing evaluations that changed
the course structure.
Data collected for the larger study included student writing, audio recordings of class
sessions, video of summative assessments and daily fieldnotes. The present study used this
larger data set to conduct new analysis using qualitative coding and discourse analytic tools to
uncover whether and how youth indexed social practices of various interpretive communities
in whole-class discussions about focal texts.
Context
The study took place in an urban public school, with no specialized admissions criteria, in
the northeast USA. Student demographics in the school and classroom were approximately
45% Latinx, 25% black, 20% white and 10% Asian. Approximately 75% of students
received free or reduced-price lunches, and 30% received special education services. The
data in this study come from one semester-long 12th grade English course that was co-
taught by Scott and a special education teacher. In this school, all youth chose from a menu
of English courses each semester. For some youth, this course was the only one that fit their
schedules. Others selected this course as opposed to similarly creative options.
Research team. Scott, a white gay man from a working-class background, took a teacher-
researcher stance toward his role as the classroom teacher and had 13years of experience
teaching social-justice-driven high school English courses. Karis, a white university-based
researcher studying youth fandom literacies and social justice, served as a teacher-
researcher-in-residence in the classroom. Sarah, a white university-based teacher educator
studying disciplinary literacy and language use, joinedfor data analysis.
Instructional context. The course was designed around three units. In unit one, the class
read peer-reviewed articles about fandom cultures. Concurrently, members pitched ideas for
fandoms the class should study and overwhelmingly voted for Grey’s Anatomy –a
television medical drama. They also analyzed clips, memes and fanfiction focused on this
television show, conducted literary analyses of fandoms of their choice and presented papers
in cosplay (costumes), as illustrated in the opening of this article. In unit two, the class read
the novel, Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston alongside relevant literary
criticism and fanfiction. The youth wrote and presented literary analyses in hour-long oral
examinations with literary professionals. In unit three, youth planned and enacted
individual projects to move a fandom of their choice toward justice, for example, by writing
racebent/genderbent fanfiction, to counter marginalized representations, by writing
message board posts to critique problematic ideologies and creating original memes to
challenge stereotypical archetypes/tropes/diction.
Throughout the course, most Fridays were devoted to Fandom Kingdom Seminars in
which youth brought in a text from one of their favorite fandoms for the class to collectively
analyze. These 11 seminars focused on text-based talk and included the whole class as
opposed to smaller groups. In these seminars, classroom talk followed a pedagogical routine
adopted from previous scholarship about disciplinary methods of teaching pop-cultural
ETPC

texts through discussion (Storm and Rainey, 2018). This method was designed to center,
cultivate and sustain student voices in the discussion. First, participants sat in a large circle
and read or watched the focal text. Next, youth independently annotated reactions and
analysis. Then, the class read or watched the focal text a second time. Afterwards, everyone
discussed their annotations with partners to extend and rehearse ideas. Then, the whole
class engaged in extended discussion about their reactions and analysis. Seminars lasted at
least a half-hour and were typically student-facilitated. The last few minutes were reserved
for reflection/debrief. Teachers prompted youth to discuss what they learned about literary
analysis, fandoms, identities and their passions.
Focal texts for the Fandom Kingdom Seminars include two seminars around an excerpt
of Their Eyes Were Watching God and nine seminars discussing youth-selected texts that
comprised a wide range of genres and modalities, including movie trailers, television show
clips, images, poetry, stories, websites. Focal texts included: Grey’s Anatomy, Pokémon,
Stranger Things, The Joker, Hunter x Hunter, as well as images of street art, student-created
artwork and original fan fiction.
Data sources and analysis
This study analyzes the 11 whole-class text-based literary seminars which were audio-
recorded and transcribed –generating 198 pages of transcription. Because these 11 seminars
happened routinely on Fridays throughout the semester, they represent a way to trace
student discourse across the whole semester at fairly regular intervals.
Phase 1. To answer our question about which practices and discourses youth used in
classroom talk (RQ1), we used structural and descriptive codes (Saldaña, 2015) to identify
the discourses and practices that youth drew on in their text-based talk. Discourses included
literary terminology (e.g. mood, metaphor), words denoting affect (e.g. love, gets me hyped),
the language of social justice movements (e.g. feminism, toxicity) and language of fandom
discourses including participation structures (fans, newcomer/old-timer). Practices included
those of literary scholars (patterns, strangeness) and those of fandoms (affective response,
intertextual connections). Scott coded all transcripts at the level of the conversational turn.
Karis and Sarah each independently coded half the transcripts. All data were coded by two
researchers. Codes were compared against one another, and disagreements were resolved
through discussion. Codebook examples are included in Table 1.
Phase 2. To address how youth indexed interpretive communities (RQ2), we used
discourse analytic methods of tracing indexicality (Wortham and Reyes, 2015). Indexicality
highlights how signs reveal socially meaningful information by proximity or association.
For example, in one seminar, a participant said, “That was really good”. The pronoun “that”
likely referenced youths’collective analysis in the preceding conversational turns. Although
single words alone may not provide enough information to determine indexes, reading them
in combination with the full transcripts, audio recordings, fieldnotes and emic knowledge of
the classroom guided our interpretation of reference.
Indexicality can be systematically traced through deictics, or words that need socially
contextual information to be fully understood, such as pronouns (they, it, this, that),
temporal words (now, later, tomorrow) and spatial words (here, there). Indexicality can also
be tracked through reported speech, which refers to direct and indirect quoting or
paraphrasing of a real or imagined person or group –whether accurately or inaccurately.
We analyzed deictics and reported speech in the coded data of youths’classroom talk,
tracing likely indexes of each occurrence. Then, we read across our analysis to see whether
and how indexical co-occurred with particular codes. See Table 2 for examples.
Interpretive
communities
toward justice

Code Description Exemplars Analysis
Literary discourse Literary terminology/
formalistic devices/
strangeness/patterns/
semiotics
I know it’s a motif. The
clown symbol is mostly
repeated throughout the
movie.
Seeking patterns
(“repeated throughout”)of
formalistic devices
(“symbol”) to identify
literary concepts (“motif”).
[There is] music for each
character. And I wrote what
is shown in the scene itself,
visually. So as of music, it
wasn’t intense. Whereas
something what I know that
anime has intensity, always
building up.
Noticing musical and
visual form as it relates to
literary terminology
(“character”) and
comparing these patterns
across genres (“anime”)to
show how the text is
constructed (“intensity,
always building”).
I come to the conclusion she
probably was the main
character, she wanted to
feel like that kind of person,
instead of the freaks who
are basically the backbone
of the circus but they
weren’t really being shown
out there to show their
abilities and stuff. I find
that weird, that it would
show only her instead of the
people she brought to show
off.
Noticing strangeness (“I
find that weird”)ofan
interpretive paradox –in
this case that the text
foregrounds a behind-the-
scenes character as
opposed to more typically
central characters
(“backbone of the circus”).
Using this strangeness to
make an interpretive
claim (“she probably was
the main character”).
Fandom discourse Discussing affective
responses/fandom
structures/identities/
fanfiction/fan-art
Like to me the show seemed
intriguing. It pulled me in
Centering affective
response
Wattpad [fanfiction site] is
designed to tell you how
much people read your
book, so that’s how you
know when you’re actually
having an impact...I used
to write, like books on
Wattpad.
Discussing fanfiction
platform (“Wattpad”), fan
participation structures
(“designed...impact”) and
personal experiences (“I
used to write, like books”).
I grew up watching Batman
and Joker, how everyone
identifies Joker as this bad
person because of Batman. I
guess watching the trailer
you could tell that there’s
always two sides.
Discussing personal
identities/histories with
fandoms (“I grew up
watching Batman and
Joker”). Focusing on
moral lesson from the text
(“always two sides”)
instead of abstract themes
or literary forms.
Meshed Discourse Combining
discourses
I thought the show was
good. I loved it....I feel like
later on there’s going to be
like a huge change in tone,
Starting with fandom-
based affective response
(“I loved it”) and
predicting shifts in
literary form (“change in
(continued)
Table 1.
Codebook excerpts
ETPC

Because indexicality occurs naturally in interaction, tracing indexicality allows researchers to
track “pathways of shared knowledge and to give evidence of the collaborative nature of the
discursive construction of knowledge”(Staats and Batteen, 2010, p. 41). Vital to understanding
the social nature of disciplinary literacy, this analysis allows researchers to see not only what
individual discourses and practices participants take up but also how and to what degree they
index the interpretive communities associated with these discourses –allowing us to trace
Code Description Exemplars Analysis
in terms of conflict and
tension.
tone, in terms of conflict
and tension”).
There’s a small part in the
intro...and I think that’s
the only character that I
believe said something.
That can also...that can
also hype a fan up.
Starting with noticing
strangeness (only one
character speaks) and
noting that this choice can
influence affective
response (“hype a fan
up”).
It was shooting when the
woman was talking to her,
I’m not saying that she
living her best life, but she’s
living, I like that she has
connections, she has
friends...And I think that’s
super dope...[when there
is] a protagonist the journey
is only on the person or on
the character. But when it’s
an ensemble cast, you
basically see their point of
view and you see the effects
of them.
Noticing a formalistic
device (“shooting”
referring to camera
angles), moving into the
textual world (she has
friends), centering affect
(“that’s super dope”),
unpacking interpretive
puzzles by discussing
affordances/constraints of
having a “protagonist”or
an “ensemble cast”.
Meta-analysis Explicit talk about
discourses
We go deeper into ways it
connects with literary
analysis or other discourses
or life things.
Talking about “literary
analysis”as opposed to
other “discourses”.
I guess when we watch it
twice, it kind of is helpful
because the first time we
get to just see it just as
viewers, as the audience, as
fans get to see it. And then
the second time we watch it,
that’s when we’re able to
analyze it, have to go deeper
into the video or artifact or
whatever is being
presented, and then you can
identify and categorize
what certain sections of that
scene correlates to the
literary terms.
Aligning with fandom
interpretive communities
(“as fans”) and then on a
second viewing aligning
with literary interpretive
communities (“literary
terms”).
Table 1.
Interpretive
communities
toward justice

Data excerpt
Indexical analysis
Deictics
Indexed interpretive
communities Reported speech
Indexed interpretive
communities
[Discussing the tv show
Grey’s Anatomy]
Iwant to talk about the
camera angles....Ifeel like
it all starts off where the
doctors and how they talk
about their patient “this is
Amelia, age 20”and then
“she has this and that”
and then once they say her
name, they focus on her
first and then they focus
back on the doctors who
keep going. And then she
gets a CT or a CAT scan or
anything else, they put the
camera to the CAT scan to
show what she has.
Pronouns are bolded.
Pronouns that likely
reference characters/
storied-world are
italicized.
Pronouns that likely
reference filmmakers/
writers are underlined.
The deictic “they”first
discusses characters; its
most likely referent is the
word “doctors”. Then the
referent shifts to the
filmmakers as the deictics
point to camera angles to
“focus”on one character
and then “focus back on
the doctors”
Fandom interpretive
communities treat
characters as if they are real
and highlight affective
responses. Literary
interpretive communities
analyze form and how texts
are constructed.
Deictics that referred to
characters more likely
indexed fandoms. Deictics
that referred to filmmakers/
writers more likely indexed
literary interpretive
communities.
This participant
highlighted camera angles,
thus analyzed form. Then
shifted to and sustained
deictics that referred to
filmmakers. This
participant’s discourse
likely indexed a literary
interpretive community
Reported speech appears in
quotations.
The phrase “this...20”was
reported speech. It was a
direct quotation from a
Grey’s Anatomy character
in a clip the class watched
immediately prior to this
data excerpt.
The phrase “she has this
and that”was likely an
indirect quotation that
captured a larger pattern
in this television show of
doctor characters
providing a medical
diagnosis –a pattern in the
clips/memes the class
watched and likely a
pattern in other medical
dramas
Literary interpretive
communities seek patterns
in textual form. This
reported speech highlighted
the characters’patterned
speech. The reported speech
captures a likely pattern in
how doctor characters
diagnose others across the
genre of medical genres.
This reported speech likely
indexes participation in a
literary interpretive
community
Table 2.
Discourse analytic
method example
ETPC

whether youth were using disciplinary practices in relative isolation or were using these
practices as participants in socially indexed interpretive communities.
Findings
Our analysis of indexicality illustrated the ways that youth navigated multiple interpretive
communities through their sustaining, remixing and evaluating of these communities. This
analysis suggested that youth constructed a classroom hybrid interpretive community.
Sustaining interpretive communities
In all of the 11 seminars, we noted multiple transcript segments that we had coded as
fandom practices co-occurring with deictics that established and maintained the frame of
reference as the textual world, with the speaker discussing characters as real people. Even
as youth discussed characters and constructed claims about the text’s content, their analysis
was not about how the text was constructed. Thus, their language indexed the interpretive
community of fandoms more strongly than that of literary scholars. For example, Jewel
stated:
Ifeel like the doctors and the patient, they don’t get attached they don’t worry. Like how one of
the doctors, his name’s Alex, he is connected with a guy who said he didn’t have insurance and
he said not to worry about it....And it was just a lot.
In line with fandom practices, Jewel centered her own affective response (“I feel like”,“it was
just a lot”). She also traced the affect of the doctors and the patient (“don’t worry”,“not to
worry”). Jewel’s deictic pronoun “they”referred back to “the doctors and the patient”,
indexing people in the textual world without analyzing semiotic forms. Jewel’s deictics
referred to the characters as real people as opposed to referring to the writers or directors
who constructed the characters. Discoursally, Jewel continued to maintain this frame. She
used “he”to refer first to a doctor in the show “Alex”and then to Alex’s patient, and then
again to Alex. Jewel concluded, “and it was just a lot”, which seemed to refer to the
relationships and situations within the storied world. While fandoms and literary
communities both talk about authors/writers/directors, the centralizing of affect and the
marginalization of issues of craft/form align Jewels words with a fandom interpretive
community.
In all of the 11 seminars, we observed multiple conversational turns where literary
discourses about issues of form co-occurred with deictics that referenced characters as
constructed by writers or filmmakers. In these instances, which were just as likely to occur
in discussions of novels as they were in movie trailers and television clips, the interpretive
community of literary scholars was more strongly indexed than that of fandoms. For
example, Jewel, analyzing an anime television show trailer, told the class:
Ifeel like the trailer was set between lightness and darkness. It was a lot of light, but then it was
a lot of dark. It brought the font out. It was only basically white and big. But it was light, then
just went dark. And then it popped out, “who will fail?”And then went back to light.
Jewel used terms from film analysis such as setting, lighting, color and font, which she
marked discoursally with: “set”,“lightness and darkness”,“font”,“white”and “big”. These
terms reflect the formalistic practices of literary discourse. Deictics revealed how Jewel
established this literary frame by using the deictic “it”to refer to how the trailer was
constructed as opposed to the people in the trailer. She maintained this frame by continuing
with “it was a lot of dark”. The parallelism in the sentence structure of “it was a lot of light,
but then it was a lot of dark”linked these ideas together as likely having the same deictic
Interpretive
communities
toward justice

referent –the trailer. Jewel then said, “it brought the font out”. Here, the deictic “it”likely
referred not to the trailer per se but to the juxtaposition of light and dark in rapid succession
in the trailer. The deictic “it”again spotlighted semiotic form. Jewel described the font as
“basically only white and big”moving the deictic from the juxtaposition of light and dark to
the font itself, another referent highlighting semiotic form. Jewel shifted from focusing on
the font to the actual words when she said, “it popped out”. This phrase referred to the
words as they appear on the screen where there was previously darkness, and Jewel read the
words “‘who will fail’” as reported speech of the text on the screen.
In all 11 seminars, youth sustained socially recognizable interpretive communities
through their discourse while collaboratively constructing a classroom hybrid interpretive
community that valued diverse practices and discourses.
Remixing interpretive communities
In all 11 seminars, we also noticed instances of “meshed discourses”, or areas where single
conversational turns overlapped and included discourses associated with multiple
communities. For example, Fabienne, talking about Grey’s Anatomy, began:
Iunderstand because it’sa TV show and they need to make it dramatic, but they also need to
make it dramatic enough for you to feel like, “damn”like you’re feeling it. When the thing with
the family and the daughter, Ithought like that,Istarted tearing up. But yeah that’show it be.
They have to make it dramatic. They have to make you think “wow”imagine if Iwere in that
position so you could feel it.
Fabienne analyzed the scene using the deictic “they”to reference the filmmakers. This
deictic presupposed a literary interpretive community. However, Fabienne also used the
reported speech “‘damn’” to discuss an affective response. She then shifted her deictics and
said, “Ithought like that,Istarted tearing up”.“Like that”referenced the way that the show
makers want you to feel”. Fabienne’s deictic shift allowed her to index the affective response
of fans and pinpoint her emotional response, “Istarted tearing up”. Fabienne moved from
highlighting constructed text (is made way more dramatic) to centering affective response
(“Istarted tearing up”.) She shifted again with “that’show it be”where the deictic “it”
described the show maker’s methods of constructing the show to elicit a response from fans.
She maintained this shift as she said, “they have to make it dramatic”where the “they”is
likely the show makers. Finally, Fabienne synthesized her ideas with the last line where she
shifted from “they”(show makers) to you (viewer), and underscored this shift through
reported speech (“‘wow’”) which highlighted the viewer’s affect. In an affective response, she
ended with “imagine if Iwere”, a subjunctive viewer feeling the “it”, the affect of the show
world.
Fabienne interlaced fandom-based affective response with literary analysis of semiotic
forms. Fabienne’s deictic shifts and reported speech demonstrated her navigation between
not just multiple practices or discourses but multiple interpretive communities in such a
way that she begins to construct a hybrid interpretive community within a single
conversational turn. Fabienne’s performance thus remixed interpretive communities. We
noticed this kind of remixing from multiple youth participants in all 11 seminars.
Evaluating interpretive communities
The data we coded as meta-analysis included instances where youth evaluated interpretive
communities. These codes appeared in five of the eleven seminars, though they occurred
more frequently as the semester unfolded. The first three seminars (first month of the
course) had zero instances of meta-analysis. In the middle months of the course, seminars
ETPC

had one or two occasional instances. In the last three seminars (the final month), each had at
least five substantial instances per seminar, and the final seminar had over twice as many
instances of meta-analysis as either of the two preceding seminars. This pattern suggests
that meta-analysis, to some degree, developed across the course seminars.
An example of this type of evaluation through meta-analysis occurred when Ignacio said
that fandom communities ask “‘what if’” or “‘why’” questions while the literary scholars are
going to say “it is”, more like a statement. Because most scholars always have their theory,
or like their idea on why it is, and they’re always disagreeing, or they’re always trying to
improve, move forward with their direction”. Here, Ignacio used reported speech to frame his
idea that a literary interpretive community discusses “‘it is’” where the deictic “it”refers to
how the text is constructed. Even though Ignacio had not had a direct conversation with
actual literary scholars, he still framed his language as reported speech. Ignacio’suseof
invented reported speech offered a glimpse into how Ignacio construed the literary
interpretive community that it is presupposed.
An example of the contrast between communities occurred when youth discussed
affordances and constraints of interpretive communities. In a discussion about the
exclusionary practices of both communities, Ignacio notes of fandoms that “it sometimes
can be more toxic”, with the deictic “it”referring to fandom interpretive communities. He
explains that sometimes when one participates in fandom, the community responds to that
person in “toxic”or exclusionary ways. Ignacio demonstrated this by saying, “then
somebody says ‘That’sdumb!’... that means you’re not a real fan, you haven’t read the
book”. Ignacio used the deictic “you”to show that in fandoms, the “you”is often a
personalized response to a specific interlocutor. The invented reported speech, Ignacio’s
phrase “that’sdumb”, illustrated how fandom communities can make others feel
unwelcomed and can thus be “toxic”.
Fleur also explains issues of perceived accessibility:
Ifeel like the fan fiction community is more straightforward than the literary scholars [...]
Because when the literary scholars say “perspective is limited”,they kind of change up the
wording where they want other people to think more closely, in their wording. And then in fan
fiction, they would just say, “you were wrong”, and that’s kind of straightforward.
Fleur used invented reported speech to characterize interpretive communities. Fleur’s deictic
“they”presupposed a community of literary scholars, whom she represented as committed
to a depth of thought by inventing the phrase “perspective is limited”as a way to capture
how literary scholars might use language that hedges and narrows literary claims –a
practice that the class observed when they read literary criticism about Their Eyes Were
Watching God. Absent pronouns and in passive voice, this deictic suggested a
depersonalized affect. However, Fleur says fan fiction communities might say “you are
wrong”. The invented reported speech that she attributed to a fandom community includes
the deictic “you”, which implies an interpersonal interaction. Fleur’s deictics help her to
illustrate her view of the contrasting levels of accessibility of these two interpretive
communities, as well as her awareness of the linguistic structures that characterize the
discourse of these communities.
Discussion
Analysis of indexical discourse illustrated the links between discourses and the interpretive
communities they signaled in a learning environment designed to support and embrace
hybrid interpretive communities. The larger social design experiment (Jones, 2021) found
that co-designing learning contexts that center youth navigation can support youth in
Interpretive
communities
toward justice

achieving expansive and antiracist learning goals. The present study asked related
questions about how youth discoursally construct hybrid interpretive communities. We
traced youth indexicality to show how discourses associated with interpretive communities
were sustained, remixed and evaluated –thus, demonstrating how the class constructed a
novel hybrid interpretive community.
This study points to new understandings of how youth construct disciplinarity for their
own purposes and conceptions of literary reasoning. Like the literary experts that Dorfman
(1996) studied, these youth engaged interpretively with texts that elicited both negative and
positive affective responses. The findings in this study point to how classrooms designed to
support hybrid interpretive communities may help mediate engagement in literary reasoning.
Our findings on the role of affect in supporting literary understanding are consistent with
Levine’s (2014) and with Jones’(2021) finding that affect was a key component of interpretive
practice in fandom communities. Although larger-scale research is needed, affect may have
strong potential to propel navigation across interpretive communities.
This study moves disciplinary literacies forward by developing models to theorize
Moje’s (2015) notions of navigation and evaluation. As with Moje, this study confirms that
while youths’purposes for engaging with literary processes and practices may differ from
those of literary scholars, youths’navigation within and across interpretive communities
may be central to the work of literary literacies. Just as important as learning how to use
literary literacies for one’s own purposes is the work of participating in multiple kinds of
interpretive communities –including hybrid ones. We argue that analyzing youths’deictic
markers help us to understand their relationships to and navigations across interpretive
communities. We also note that we want youth to have the power to decide when to sustain,
remix and evaluate interpretive communities. Naming how youth navigate these
interpretive communities helps researchers and teachers to think about how to support all
learners.
Implications and conclusions
Supporting navigation across multiple interpretive communities in the classroom may feel
intimidating to teachers (Moje, 2015). However, joining with Moje, we emphasize the
necessity of taking up this challenge. Though teachers may worry that bringing in youth
cultures will lessen the rigor of discussions, our findings suggest the opposite. Youths in this
classroom used a wide variety of formalistic tools, critical literary theories and interpretive
practices to interpret texts from youth cultures. Further, our work aligns with researchers
and practitioners who have worked to expand the curricular boundaries of text selection in
English Language Arts classrooms. Our study suggests that English classrooms can
expand not only what texts they select but also how they interpret these texts by expanding
the interpretive communities on which they draw and deem appropriate for classroom talk.
Our study also suggests discursive ways in which centering youths’affective responses
may complement, rather than detract from, their engagement with the practices of a more
traditional literary interpretive community.
This study has made us consider how to support youths in this navigation and
evaluation. For example, teachers might want to have youth try recording (with consent) or
type close-to-verbatim notes of a short part of a classroom seminar and then analyze the
kinds of discourses and practices that they used. We see this naming as a strengths-based
approach to literary interpretation, as it allows youth to identify the myriad interpretive
tools on which they collectively draw and to develop a common language for these tools.
Imagine having youth learn about canonical literary devices such as imagery, connotation
ETPC

and symbolism not from a teacher lecture or a vocabulary list but rather from naming the
moves their peers make in classroom discussion.
Scholarship that has focused on disciplinary literacy in isolation from youth cultures has
sometimes served to harm youth by framing disciplinary work as expert and all other
interpretive stances as novice. Similarly, classrooms that have excluded youth cultures have
sometimes done so in the name of access to disciplinary content. We urge a reconsidering of
these framings because they may preclude the navigation and evaluation work needed to
understand disciplinary literacies not just as teaching a culture of power but rather as
striving toward transformative social justice education.
References
Aljanahi, M.H. and Alsheikh, N. (2021), “There is no such thing as copying in cosplay’: cosplay as a
remixed literacy practice”,Journal of Adolescent and Adult Literacy, Vol. 65 No. 3.
Beck, S.W. (2006), “Subjectivity and intersubjectivity in the teaching and learning of writing”,Research
in the Teaching of English, Vol. 40 No.4, pp. 413-460.
Black, R., Alexander, J., Chen, V. and Duarte, J. (2019), “Representations of autism in online harry potter
fanfiction”,Journal of Literacy Research, Vol. 51 No. 1, pp. 30-51.
Chandler-Olcott, K. and Mahar, D. (2003), “Adolescents’anime-inspired ‘fanfictions’: an exploration of
multiliteracies”,Journal of Adolescent and Adult Literacy, Vol. 46 No. 7, pp. 556-566.
Dorfman, M.H. (1996), “Evaluating the interpretive community: evidence from expert and novice
readers”,Poetics, Vol. 23 No. 6, pp. 453-470.
Fields, S. and Frankel, K.K. (2021), “A case study of one youth’s stance toward the discourse of literary
analysis in a secondary English classroom”,Research in the Teaching of English, Vol. 55 No. 4,
pp. 293-415.
Fish, S.E. (1980), Is There a Text in This Class? The Authority of Interpretive Communities, Harvard
University Press, Cambridge, MA.
Gutiérrez, K.D. (2016), “AERA presidential address: designing resilient ecologies –social design
experiments and a new social imagination”,Educational Researcher, Vol. 45 No.3, pp. 187-196.
Heller, R. (2011), “In praise of amateurism: a friendly critique of Moje’s‘call for change’in secondary
literacy”,Journal of Adolescent and Adult Literacy, Vol. 54 No. 4, pp. 267-273.
Hinchman, K.A. and O’Brien, D.G. (2019), “Disciplinary literacy: from infusion to hybridity”,Journal of
Literacy Research, Vol. 51 No. 4, pp. 525-536.
Jones, K. (2021), “Fandom kingdom: Analysis of metadiscourse across fandom spaces and issues of
power and transformation”, Unpublished doctoral dissertation.
Lammers, J.C., Marsh, V.L. (2018), “A writer more than ... a child’: a longitudinal study examining
adolescent writer identity”,Written Communication, Vol. 35No. 1, pp. 89-114.
Lee, C. (1995), “A culturally based cognitive apprenticeship: teaching African American high school
students skills in literary interpretation”,Reading Research Quarterly, Vol. 30 No. 4, pp. 608-630.
Levine, S. (2014), “Making interpretation visible with an affect-based strategy”,Reading Research
Quarterly, Vol. 49 No. 3, pp.283-303.
Levine, S. (2019), “A century of change in high school English assessments: an analysis of 110 New
York state regents exams 1900-2018”,Research in the Teaching of English, Vol. 54 No. 1,
pp. 31-57.
Magnifico, A.M., Curwood, J.S. and Lammers, J.C. (2015), “Words on the screen: broadening analyses of
interactions among fanfiction writers and reviewers”,Literacy, Vol. 49 No. 3, pp. 158-166.
Moje, E.B. (2015), “Doing and teaching disciplinary literacy with adolescent learners: a social and
cultural enterprise”,Harvard Educational Review, Vol. 85 No. 2, pp. 254-278.
Interpretive
communities
toward justice

Moje, E.B. (2007), “Developing socially-just subject matter instruction: a review of the literature on
disciplinary literacy teaching”,Review of Research in Education, Vol. 31 No. 1, pp.1-44.
Peskin, J. (1998), “Constructing meaning when reading poetry: an expert-novice study”,Cognition and
Instruction, Vol. 16 No.3, pp. 235-263.
Rainey, E.C. (2017), “Disciplinary literacy in English language arts: exploring the social and problem-
based nature of literary reading and reasoning”,Reading Research Quarterly, Vol. 52 No. 1,
pp. 53-71.
Saldaña, J. (2015), The Coding Manual for Qualitative Researchers, 3rd ed.,Sage, Thousand Oaks, CA.
Silverstein, M. (2003), “Indexical order and the dialectics of sociolinguistic life”,Language and
Communication, Vol. 23 Nos 3/4, pp. 193-229.
Staats, S. and Batteen, C. (2010), “Linguistic indexicality in algebra discussions”,The Journal of
Mathematical Behavior, Vol. 29 No. 1, pp. 41-56, doi: 10.1016/j.jmathb.2010.01.002.
Storm, S. and Rainey, E.C. (2018), “Striving toward woke English teaching and learning”,English
Journal, Vol. 107 No. 6, pp. 95-101.
Storm, S. and Rainey, E.C. (2021), “Investigating literary disciplinarity: topic modeling contemporary
literary criticism”, Paper presented at the annual meeting of the AmericanEducational Research
Association.
Thomas, E.E. and Stornaiuolo, A. (2016), “Restorying the self:bending toward textual justice”,Harvard
Educational Review, Vol. 86 No. 3, pp. 313-338.
Tyson, L. (2015), Critical Theory Today: A User-Friendly Guide, 3rd ed., Routledge, New York.
Wilder, L. (2005), “The ‘rhetoric of literary criticism’revisited: mistaken critics, complex contexts, and
social justice”,Written Communication, Vol. 22 No. 1, pp. 76-119.
Wortham, S. and Reyes, A. (2015), Discourse Analysis: Beyond the Speech Event, Routledge, New York,
NY.
About the authors
Scott Storm is a doctoral student and public-school English teacher. His research on disciplinary and
critical literacies has appeared in Journal of Adolescent and Adult Literacy, English Journal, Literacy
Research and Instruction, and Schools: Studies in Education. Scott Storm is the corresponding author
and can be contacted at: scott.storm@nyu.edu
Karis Jones is a former urban public school teacher and current teacher educator. Her scholarship
on the equitable design of literacy learning contexts has appeared in Linguistics and Education,
English Journal, Journal of Adolescent and Adult Literacy, Contemporary Issues in Technology and
Teacher Education and Journal of Language and Literacy Education.
Sarah W. Beck is a former high school English teacher, a teacher educator, and a literacy
researcher. Her scholarship on writing instruction, writing assessment and disciplinary literacy can
be found in Research in the Teaching of English, Journal of Adolescent and Adult Literacy, English
Journal, Journal of Literacy Research, and Assessing Writing.
For instructions on how to order reprints of this article, please visit our website:
www.emeraldgrouppublishing.com/licensing/reprints.htm
Or contact us for further details: permissions@emeraldinsight.com
ETPC