Comments on: Can You Say “Shared Text”?

By: Chicken … er, Pumpkin Soup for the Wizarding Soul

Chicken … er, Pumpkin Soup for the Wizarding Soul — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 01:44:43 +0000

[...] after anecdote of fans’ experience connecting with other fans, often strangers (can we say shared text, Professor [...]

By: Bob Hawkins

Bob Hawkins — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 16:05:09 +0000

I spent a winter in Orsay, France, living in an apartment owned by the university. There were also a couple of biochemists from Manchester staying there. I’m a physicist. Our shared text was classic science fiction. We explained the work we were doing to each other by saying things like “The Galloway Gallagher story about the alien that could evolve instantly? You remember how Gallagher figured out it’s weakness?”

A shared text is really convenient.

By: Red Rocker

Red Rocker — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 13:51:47 +0000

Yeah, I see the assumption. I”m wondering how far we can generalize that assumption, however.

Let’s assume it’s an article aimed at undergraduates. So they’d be how old? 17 to 20, maybe 21? The HP books were released between 1997 and 2007. When this generation were becoming readers. Assuming that most of these undergraduates are readers, then I think it’s safe to assume that a lot of the audience for this article will be familiar with the work: for them it is a shared text, much like LOTR was for their parents.

Not sure that would apply to a non-undergraduate crowd though. I’m suspecting that to a large part of the general population HP would be a shared text through the medium of the movies rather than the books. Which is still fair – literacy levels very pretty low in the days when the Bible was the shared text. I’m remembering a tour guide in Northern Italy pointing at the stained glasss windows in a Church depicting different scenes from the Bible and explaiing that this is how the largely illiterate church goers got their religious education.

By: Eeyore

Eeyore — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 00:03:07 +0000

I love it. For one thing, it really describes the college experience, whether it’s Stanford or some other place. But the way they just sprinkled all the potter stuff throughout is very telling – they know (or assume) that the readers will get it. Cool.

By: Arabella Figg

Arabella Figg — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 23:31:06 +0000

What a great article. Shared text, definitely. The author doesn’t even really notate references, either. No extrapolation. Either you understand this article or you are clueless. I think a non HP reader could get the overall intent of the author in relation to the college bubble references, but won’t get the richness of understanding to which the HP reader is privy.