The Lived Experience of Depressed Students Reading Novels: A Linguistic-Literary Analysis of Oral Narratives

Abstract

This study aimed to explore and analyze the lived experience of depressed students reading novels, with emphasis on the linguistic, literary, and narrative patterns embedded in their oral accounts. This qualitative study was conducted using an interpretive phenomenological design. The study population consisted of tenth-, eleventh-, and twelfth-grade students from ordinary public high schools in Shiraz during 2024-2025 who had either received a clinical diagnosis of depression or scored above the cut-off point on the Beck Depression Inventory and had read at least one complete novel during the previous six months. Participants were selected through purposive sampling and the snowball technique. Data saturation was reached after 14 interviews, and four additional interviews were conducted to confirm saturation, resulting in a final sample of 18 students. Data were collected through in-depth semi-structured interviews and analyzed using Braun and Clarke’s thematic analysis, narrative coherence analysis, and conceptual metaphor analysis. The trustworthiness of the data was ensured using Guba and Lincoln’s criteria. The interpretive analysis revealed that reading novels among depressed students was a multilayered and ambivalent experience organized into six main themes: the novel as a shelter for living, representation of depression in the text, narrative structure and ending, linguistic and metaphorical patterns, reading context, and meaning-making through narration. The linguistic-literary analysis identified six conceptual metaphors, namely shelter, escape, companion, immersion, island, and dream; three lexical patterns, including negative-mood vocabulary, spatial-movement vocabulary, and conditional-hesitant structures; and a five-stage narrative structure consisting of initial situation, triggering event, inner experience, response, and evaluation. Reading novels may function as a soothing, hopeful, and meaning-making experience for depressed students; however, superficial portrayals of depression or tragic endings may intensify negative emotions. Accordingly, the informed use of fiction by families, literature teachers, and school counselors can serve as a complementary resource for supporting adolescent mental health.