(This is from a murder mystery set in a medieval abbey that touches on meaning and truth: The Name of the Rose.)

when/where?

1988-1989 in Lexington Kentucky

who?

11 women out of the 33 who filled out a questionnaire

middle class; mostly college-educated, women who worked outside the home; 22–55 years of age, 10 white, 1 black (Grodin 1991, “The interpreting audience”, p. 408)

how?

a series of interviews of at least 5 hours over multiple settings

Nancy found The Power of Positive Thinking (Peale, 1952) to see if religion could be helpful and useful, rather than something being forced.

Beth found most everything to be new and different and outside her upbringing. (Grodin 1991, “The interpreting audience”, p. 409)

Searching for one’s own book was important, as it was a conscious expression of control over one’s life, and was a means to connect to a public world; later on, increased selectivity seems to be an indicator of self-improvement, healed, and a diminishment of one’s vulnerability to advertising hype on a book jacket (Grodin 1991, “The interpreting audience”, p. 410)

Most of these women experienced a sense of choice and control yet their anonymity as readers gave them protection from negative face threats associated with the reception of help (Grodin 1991, “The interpreting audience”, p. 411)

Readers found the case/stories compelling as a practical way of understanding ways of addressing problems; help the readers get over the feelings of self-centeredness, of not being alone with a problem (Grodin 1991, “The interpreting audience”, p. 411)

Readers understood authors as active researchers with unique access to people, which grants writers the authority to make recommendations.

This allows readers to seek advice from experts but also seek independence from “inherited authority” because self-help book authors present themselves of having been on their own quest, trying to solve their own problems (Grodin 1991, “The interpreting audience”, p. 412)

Reading a self-help book connects the reader with strangers, with those outside one’s day-to-day interpersonal world. Such a connection may be beneficial because it provides the anonymity and enables the unshackling that can result from leaving the constraints of community. [Grodin 1991, “The interpreting audience”, pp. 412-413]

Margaret objected to the need to to be an eagle, alone, and enjoying life on your own, before you can begin a relationship; you needn’t be perfect and wonderful before connecting with another (Grodin 1991, “The interpreting audience”, p. 403)

Feminist critic and self-help author Harriet Lerner (1999) worries that most books are trying to perfect and improve women by teaching them to “privatize, individualize, and pathologize” their problems rather than understand them as an outgrowth of inequality (p. 15) (Grodin 1991, “The interpreting audience”, p. 406)

The social action perspective in audience research is that popular things like a baseball game or television become a reservoir of knowledge available for aspects of social life (e.g., talking about a baseball game in the office lunchroom). (Grodin 1991, “The interpreting audience”, p. 414)

Self-help reading seems to come from a sense that “there is not a sufficient or satisfying reservoir of knowledge available for significant aspects of life…. Of not having a sufficient sense of what constitutes the common” (Grodin 1991, “The interpreting audience”, p. 414)

Few participants were critical of the existing institutional order, and there is virtually no talk of political change (Grodin 1991, “The interpreting audience”, p. 417)

• merits
  • accessible
  • tuned to its moment
  • endorsed by celebrities (including Trump)
• criticisms
  • shallow overconfidence
  • unconnected to reality/circumstances
  • formulaic relationship to God