New goals in studying reading as a civilizational phenomenon

Abstract

The author suggests that, to revise the traditional goals of reading studies, we have to develop the deeper understanding of reading as a global civilizational phenomenon. The actual scope of reading, comparable with the role and scope of writing, demonstrates its social power seen as the power of influence. The author specifies the two levels of the power of influence manifestation: the phylogenetic (individual identity) level and ontogenetic level (the mankind, or its part, e. g. social group, national community, team, etc.). Despite the vast, over 200 year, experience, of the reading studies in Russia, the empirical materials are rather biased. This is due to predominating sociological methods that address the exposed sides of reading. The author proposes the following tasks for reading studies: Study of reading impact (power of influence) on personality formation during his or her lifetime (deep comprehensive longitude studies are needed comprising psychological, pedagogical and other methods); studies of social power of reading in the transforming environments of different scope (from families, school class, team up to the region and the state). The author also argues that the interdisciplinary research teams have to be established and the array of modern scientific methods have to be applied to reveal the actual power of reading and to evaluate the degree of its social impact.