What is discussed at book club ? : Focus on dialogue around the book

Abstract

 This study analyzes the conversations and the conversation topics from a book club of university students. Three small groups, each consisting of three members, engaged in conversations about a storybook. The conversations were transcribed verbatim and, utilizing the KJ method (Kawakita, 1996) drawing on Watanabe (2018), semantic categories were generated from the conversations. As a result, the conversations were classified into six categories: “Fact-based story analyses”, “Re-experiencing character emotions”, “Attempts to comprehend the work”, “Fact-based self-analyses”, “Experiencing own emotions”, and “Attempts to understand humanity, including oneself”. These categories were subsequently grouped under two higher-level categories: the first three relating to “Discussing the work” and the last three relating to “Discussing oneself”. Content analysis of the conversational sequences revealed a process where the participants collectively constructed their interpretations of the storybook by discussing it from a variety of perspectives.