'Critica Practica' (1929) by I. A. Richards - Two Uses of Language & Four Kinds of Meaning

1. Paper N/o., Subject Code, Name : 109 : 22402 :
Literary Theory & Criticism and Indian
Aesthetics
Topic : Two Uses of Language & Four Kinds of Meaning
Prepared By : Nirav Amreliya
Batch : 2021-2023 (M.A. Sem. 2)
Enrollment Number : 4069206420210002
Ro. N/o. : 18
Submitted To : Smt. S. B. Gardi Department of English,
Maharaja Krishnakumarsinhji Bhavnagar University,
Vidhyanagar, Bhavnagar – 364001
(Dated On : 14th April, 2022)
‘Practical Criticism’ & ‘Principles of Literary Criticism’
- Ivor Armstrong Richards (1893 – 1979)

2.  Ivor Armstrong Richards – poet, dramatist, speculative philosopher, psychologist
and semanticist, is among the first of the 20th century critics to bring to English
criticism a scientific precision and objectivity.
 He is often referred to as the ‘critical consciousness’ of the modern age.
 New Criticism and the whole of modern poetics derive their strength and
inspiration from the seminal writings of Richards such as Principles of Literary
Criticism, Practical Criticism, Coleridge on Imagination, The Foundation of
Aesthetics (with C.K.Ogden and James Wood) and The Meaning of Meaning (with
Ogden).
 Richard’s influence rests primarily on his Practical Criticism (1929) which is based
on his experiments conducted in Cambridge in which he distributed poems,
stripped of all evidence of authorship and period, to his pupils and asked them to
comment on them. He analyses factors responsible for misreading of poems.
Even a “reputable scholar” is vulnerable to these problems.
 George Watson praises : “Richards is simply the most influential theorist of the
century, as Eliot is the most influential of descriptive critics.”

3. Two Uses of Language
:
Scientific Use Emotive Use
 The use of words recall to objects.
 Provides factual data and information.
 Does the over-literal reading of literary text.
 Appeals to logical and comprehensive aspect of
literary text.
 Chiefly used in prose, essays, and journals.
 The use of words which evoke emotions.
 Provides sentimental approach towards literary
text.
 Focuses only on the emotive production.
 Appeals readers’ emotional side by sentimental
situational settings.
 Chiefly used more in poetry than fiction or novel.
 In 34th chapter of his ‘Principles of Literary Criticism’ (1924),
Richards propounds the concept of Two uses of Language :

4. In order to delineate the concept mentioned, let us take William Wordsworth’s famous
poem ‘My Heart Leaps Up’ to apply scientific and emotive readings :
 By doing Scientific Reading, we find that if one – especially poet –
beholds natural phenomenon like “rainbow in the sky,” if his/her
“heart leaps up,” the person would be dead.
 Another misunderstanding can happen in the lines : “The child is
father of the Man;” It is hard to believe that how an unexperienced
child can be the father of a grown man; but to read between the
lines, readers are expected to develop insight which is not possible
in Scientific Reading.
My heart leaps up when I behold
A rainbow in the sky:
So was it when my life began;
So is it now I am a man;
So be it when I shall grow old,
Or let me die!
The Child is father of the Man;
And I could wish my days to be
Bound each to each by natural
piety.
 If we look through the lens of Emotive Use of the language in the
poem, we find that it expresses elated and lofty feeling of
beholding such a majestic natural phenomenon – that is to say that
beholding “rainbow in the sky.” A sensitive reader may possibly
recall his/her childhood and the joys of being a fresh life on the
planet surrounded by the beauty of nature.
William Wordsworth
(1770 – 1850)

5. Sense Feeling Tone Intention
 What speaker or author
speaks.
 Writer’s emotional
attitude towards the
subject.
 Tone refers to attitude of
speaker towards his
listener.
 Intention is the writer’s
aim which may be
conscious or unconscious.
 The speaker speaks to
arouse the readers
thought.
 It is an expression.  There is a kind of relation
between speaker and
listener.
 It refers to the effect one
tries to produce.
 This language is not
poetic.
 This very language is
emotive, poetic and
literary as well.
 Since speaker is aware of
his relationship with
language and with the
listener, he changes the
level of words as the level
of audience changes.
 This purpose modifies the
expression.
 Directs the hearer’s
attraction up on some
state of affairs
 Only rhyme and meter
cannot make poetry to be
a good, emotion is
equally important.
 It means tone varies from
listener to listener.
 The emphasis shapes the
arrangement to draws
attention to something of
importance.
 The first chapter ‘The Four Kinds of Meaning’ of the Third Part of his book ‘Practical Criticism’ (1929), Richards provides the literary world with
his views on Meaning and its Types; according to him, there are four kinds of meaning found in poetry especially :

6.  To understand the four types of meaning in better way, we can refer to W. B. Yeats’s (1865 1939) famous
ironical poem ‘On Being Asked for a War Poem’ written on February 6, 1915 in response to a request by Henry
James that Yeats compose a political poem about World War I. The understanding of all these aspects is part of
the whole business of apprehending the meaning of poetry :
I think it better that in times like these
A poet's mouth be silent, for in truth
We have no gift to set a statesman right;
He has had enough of meddling who can please
A young girl in the indolence of her youth,
Or an old man upon a winter’s night.
On Being Asked for a War Poem
“Come away, O human child!
To the waters and the wild
With a faery, hand in hand,
For the world's more full of weeping than you can understand.”
(From ‘The Stolen Child’)
― William Butler Yeats, The Collected Poems of W.B. Yeats

7. 1. Sense : Sense is that which is communicated by the plain literal meanings of the words. When the writer
makes an utterance, he directs his hearers’ attention upon some state of affairs, some items for their thought and
consideration.
“I think it better that in times like these
A poet's mouth be silent, for in truth…”
The sense of the poem is given in the beginning
lines of the poem that the poem is about some
perilous time wherein the speaker seems to be
ironically advising fellow poets to remain silent,
but ironically telling that all those who have
hidden themselves should come out from the
burrow and write to stop war.

8. 2. Feeling : Feeling refers to the feelings of the writer or speaker about these items, about the state of affairs he is
referring to. He has an attitude towards it, some special bias, or interest, some personal flavour or colouring of it,
and he uses language to express these feelings. In poetry, sense and feeling have a mutual dependence. “The
sound of a word has much to do with the feeling it evokes.”
“We have no gift to set a statesman right;”
The feeling of the speaker is expressed more
than that of readers’. The speaker seems to be in
some kind of anguish that despite knowing the
truth he is unable to speak and persuade the
war-monger rulers or leaders to cease the war.

9. 3. Tone : Tone means the attitude of the writer towards his readers. The writer or the speaker chooses
and arranges the words differently as his audience varies, depending on his relation to them. Besides
these, the speaker’s intention or aim, conscious or unconscious, should also be taken into account.
“He has had enough of meddling who can please
A young girl in the indolence of her youth,
Or an old man upon a winter’s night.”
As far as choice of words and phrases is concerned, the reader
can say that the tone of the poem put by the speaker is ironical
as well as satirical – as discussed earlier – towards the so-called
intellectual who have shut their mouths up in the war time during
which they are more expected than others to write and attempt to
cease war.

10. 4. Intention : Intention refers to the effect one tries to produce, which modifies one’s expression. It
controls the emphasis and shapes the arrangement. ‘It may govern the stress laid upon points in an
argument. It controls the ‘plot’ in the larger sense of the word.’
“I think it better that in times like these
A poet's mouth be silent, for in truth
We have no gift to set a statesman right;
He has had enough of meddling who can please
A young girl in the indolence of her youth,
Or an old man upon a winter’s night.”
The throughout reading of the poem gives the glimpse of the speaker’s
intention which is that the speaker wants the readers and listeners to
raise their voice against such an inhumane happening like war and
implicatively though strongly urges poets who have shut their mouth
under flair of timidity to write something that can bring harmony, peace,
and happiness “in times like these” or in times like war as the poem was
written in the middle of the First World War in 1915.

11. Summing Up :
To sum up in the words of George Watson, “Richards is simply the
most influential theorist of the century, as Eliot is the most influential of
descriptive critics.” Richards’ claim to have pioneered Anglo- American
New Criticism of the thirties and forties is unassailable. He provided
the theoretical foundations on which the technique of verbal analysis
was built. He turned criticism into a science, and considered
knowledge of psychology necessary for literary criticism. He inspired a
host of followers, the most notable of whom is William Empson. With
him, textual analysis came to dominate academic criticism. This anti-
historical criticism became New Criticism. Undoubtedly, Richards is
one of its primary founding fathers.

12. Resources :
 Archive, US. 2015.170976.Principles-Of-Literary-Criticism.pdf, Libtiff / tiff2pdf - 20100615, 7 Jan. 2015,
https://ia801901.us.archive.org/14/items/in.ernet.dli.2015.170976/2015.170976.Principles-Of-Literary-Criticism.pdf
 Daniel, John. Richards Figurative Language, 16 Dec. 2008, https://wikieducator.org/Richards_figurative_language.
 Das, Aratrika. “I. A. Richards and Practical Criticism.” Information and Library Network Centre, MHRD-UGC EPG Pathshala -
English, 30 May 2017,
http://epgp.inflibnet.ac.in/epgpdata/uploads/epgp_content/S000013EN/P001456/M019885/ET/1496139546Paper10%3BMod
ule19%3BEText.pdf
 Devika, S. I.A.RICHARDS – PRACTICAL CRITICISM, 12 Nov. 2016, https://drdevika.wordpress.com/2016/11/12/i-a-richards-
practical-criticism/.
 Jha, Chitra. Practical-Critcism.pdf, 16 Apr. 2020, http://mlsmlnmu.ac.in/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/Practical-Critcism.pdf
 Mambrol, Nasrullah. IA Richards’ Concept of Four Kinds of Meaning, 18 Mar. 2016, https://literariness.org/2016/03/18/ia-
richards-concept-of-four-kinds-of-meaning/.
 “Practical Criticism : Richards,I.A. : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming.” Internet Archive, Kegan Paul
Trench Trubner And Company Limited., 1 Jan. 1970, https://archive.org/details/practicalcritici030142mbp
 University, Osmania, and Internet Archive. Practical Criticism by Richards,I.A., Kegan Paul Trench Trubner And Company
Limited, 27 June 2005, https://archive.org/details/practicalcritici030142mbp/page/n3/mode/2up.