Discourses of adolescence in interpretations and responses to literature

Discourses of adolescence/ts that reduce teenagers to impulsive, hormonal, incomplete adults are pervasive, and affect the way that adolescence/ts is regarded in institutional spaces like schools. However, scholars in Critical Youth Studies (CYS) reject these determinations in favor of a vision of adolescence as a social construct; a construct that has changed throughout time and does not accurately reflect the lived experiences of diverse youth. This study considers the way in which these discourses are mobilized and circulating in one English Language Arts (ELA) classroom and, specifically, through the study of literature. Grounded in empirical scholarship that approaches classroom literature pedagogy and response through a sociocultural lens, and in theoretical scholarship in Critical Youth Studies (CYS) and Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA), the purpose of this qualitative inquiry is to observe student response to young adult literature (YAL) in one ELA classroom in order to locate discourses of adolescence that are mobilized and circulating as students comprehend, analyze and interpret texts.