This commentary explores selected ideas presented in the special issue on language and the self and considers them in terms of reading. Bertau’s notions of the in-between and sharedness, Lipari’s description of the polychronic, polymodal, and polyphonic qualities of language events, and Karsten’s description of the cross chronotope relationships between self-positions during writing are discussed. Using a case analysis of a young child’s wordless picture book reading, this set of ideas is used to illuminate reading as a dialogic, relational event of the self, one that depends on the use of social imagination as a critical part of the meaning-making process.
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