Reading Authorship into Texts

Abstract

Textbooks are a central feature of social studies classrooms. Within these books are many kinds of “texts,” such as paragraphs and chapters, titles and sub-headings, pictures and charts, captions and labels, end of chapter questions, classification schemes, and so on. Students can be taught various ways to “read” this complex montage of texts, including readings that make authorship more visible and open to critical question. This article provides eight concepts borrowed from selected cultural studies literature, together with illustrative sets of questions, for interpreting authorship of texts: representation, the gaze, voice, intertextuality, absence, authority, mediation, and reflexivity. Selected examples are taken from social studies textbooks used in the Canadian province of British Columbia.