About the Two Uses of Language in I. A. Richards’ Criticism

1. Two Uses of
Language in I. A.
Richards’ Criticism
Prepared by
Anjali Rathod

2. Name : Anjali Rathod
Sem : 2
Roll No : 2
Enrollment No : 4069206420220024
Subject : Two Uses of Language in I.A. Richards’ Criticism
Subject code : 22402
Contact Info : rathodanjali20022002ui@gmail.com
Submitted to : S. B. Gardi Department of English , MK
Bhavnagar University

3. Introduction
➢ I.A. Richards, in full named Ivor Armstrong Richards. He was born in Feb. 26 1893,
Sandbach, Cheshire, England and died in Sept. 7, 1979, Cambridge, England.
➢ Richards was an English critic, poet, and teacher who was highly influential in
developing a new way of reading poetry that led to the New Criticism and that also
influenced some forms of reader-response criticism.
➢ Richards was educated at Magdalene College, Cambridge. He was a lecturer in
English and moral sciences there from 1922 to 1929.
➢ In that period he wrote three of his most influential books: The Meaning of
Meaning (1923; with C.K. Ogden), a pioneer work on semantics; and Principles of
Literary Criticism (1924) and Practical Criticism (1929), companion volumes that he
used to develop his critical method.
➢ His speculative and theoretical works include Science and Poetry (1926; revised as
Poetries and Sciences, 1970), Mencius on the Mind (1932), Coleridge on Imagination
(1934), The Philosophy of Rhetoric (1936), Speculative Instruments (1955), Beyond
(1974), Poetries (1974), and Complementarities (1976). His verse has been collected in
Internal Colloquies (1971) and New and Selected Poems (1978). (Britannica)

4. Two Uses of Language
➢ The Two uses of language , there are for Richards two kinds of belief; namely,
Scientific and Emotive beliefs. He defines scientific belief as, “readiness to act as
through the reference symbolized by the proposition which is believed were true”.
(Bilsky#108)
➢ It is clear definition of scientific belief advanced by Richards covers all five types
which i have suggested: namely, the logico-mathematical, the scientific , the
metaphysical the ethical and esthetic, and the theological. (Bilsky#109)
➢ Richards, “scientific belief” corresponds to and is pertinent to his “scientific use
of language”. That is , when a statement is made for the sake of the reference it
causes , the proper response in terms of belief is a scientific belief. (Bilsky#109)
➢ If you use language scientifically; e.g., If you say, “war is strong” and my belief with
respect to this statement is scientific belief. (Bilsky#109)

5. Continue…
➢ The emotive use of language , there is emotive belief , or emotional belief , as
Richards calls it in PC. He holds that “the difference between these emotive
beliefs and scientific beliefs is not one of degree but of kind”. (Bilsky#109)
➢ Richards maintains that emotive beliefs have nothing to do with the truth or
falsity of the statements emotively believed. They are held because they are
instrumental in bringing about certain desirable states of affairs, certain attitudes
and emotional responses, certain imaginative satisfactions. (Bilsky#109)
➢ There are two groups of emotive beliefs, the first is a general belief, an example of
which , in Aristotelian terminology, would be “how a person of a certain character
would speak to act, probably or necessarily”. (Bilsky#109)
➢ The second is similar to Coleridge’s “willing suspension of disbelief” and what
DeWitt Parker refers to as “make-believe”. (Bilsky#109)

6. Continue…
➢ Richards was trying to make distinctions between actualities and feelings of
actually in order to clear up discursive misunderstanding, and his famous
distinction psychological , it should be noted, not substantive between
“Scientific” and “Emotive” uses of Language , which asserts that prose or
scientific discourses contributed by(factual) statements while poetry is
constituted by “Pseudo-statements”.(Foster)
➢ Richards was simply providing a way of designating ,then, two distinct
psychological relationships which may be assumed by an author or a reader
toward the language that passes them. (Foster)
➢ As Richard Foster believed that, To be interested is to try to obtain a cognition ,
to do what Mr. Richards wickedly denies to poetic expressive and grants
exclusively to science: to seek the Truth. (Foster)
➢ The Philosophy of Rhetoric , for example , adumbrate a new “Science” of
language to correspond with how we actually use it, an intention reiterated in the
recent Speculative Instruments where one essay urges a “united studio” “at once
more scientifically and more humanly conceived…”. (Foster)

7. Continue…
➢ Emotional Belief is all that is appropriate. Given a need in the organism, an
imbalance, mental or physical, a tendency to survive toward equilibrium; any idea,
no matter what the extent to which intellectual rejection takes place, any idea
which can be taken as a step to its fulfilment is accepted. (Bilsky#112)
➢ Emotional belief for Richards is this acceptance , this use of the idea by our
interests, desires, feelings, attitudes. (Bilsky#112)
➢ Richards would classify as an emotional belief, one which according to him is
distinctly different from a scientific belief. An example of such a belief would be
“A man will kill his wife if she provokes him into an extreme state of jealousy”.
(Bilsky#114)
➢ Richards would be right in this assertion , but this fact doesn’t make the
aristotelian type of statement an “emotional belief”. We find ourselves holding
such beliefs in real life and also in works of art. (Bilsky#114)

8. ➢ Manuel Bilsky’s point of of view that, Richards makes mistake because
he fails to draw the important distinction between truth in the sense of
what can be verified by certain specific facts, data, etc., and truth in the
sense to which John Hospers,for example attaches so much significance.
Hospers calls this type of truth “truth-to”: “works or art are true-to
human nature, human emotions…”.(Bilsky#115)
➢ These are certainly truths, not the truths of physics, or of chemistry, or of
history, but the truths of psychology and therefore, it seems to Manuel
Bilsky entitled to intellectual status just as reading as the other types of
truths which Richards admits to this category. (Bilsky#115)
Continue…

9. ❏ I.A. Richards, a prominent literary critic of the 20th century, believed that language
served two primary functions in literary criticism: the expressive function and the
practical function.
❏ The expressive function of language refers to the way in which language is used to
convey emotions, feelings, and subjective experiences. According to Richards, this
function is essential to the study of literature because it allows readers to
understand the writer's intentions and emotional experiences.
❏ The practical function of language, on the other hand, refers to the way in which
language is used to convey information, facts, and objective data. This function is
equally important in literary criticism because it allows readers to understand the
text on a more objective level, such as identifying literary techniques, themes, and
symbols.
Que.- The Two Uses of Language in I.A. Richards’
Criticism. (#ChatGpT)

10. Continue…
❏ Richards believed that both of these functions were necessary for effective
literary criticism. While the expressive function allows readers to connect
with the writer's subjective experiences and emotional intentions, the
practical function provides the tools and techniques needed to analyze and
understand the text objectively.
❏ In summary, Richards believed that language served two distinct yet
complementary functions in literary criticism: the expressive function,
which conveys subjective experiences and emotions, and the practical
function, which conveys objective information and data. Both functions are
necessary for effective literary analysis and understanding. (#ChatGPT)

11. ● Bilsky, Manuel. “I. A. Richards on Belief.” Philosophy and Phenomenological
Research, vol. 12, no. 1, 1951, pp. 105–15. JSTOR,
https://doi.org/10.2307/2103371. Accessed 13 Mar. 2023.
● Britannica, The Editors of Encyclopaedia. "I.A. Richards". Encyclopedia
Britannica, 22 Feb. 2023, https://www.britannica.com/biography/I-A-Richards.
Accessed 14 March 2023.
● Foster, Richard. “The Romanticism of I. A. Richards.” ELH, vol. 26, no. 1, 1959,
pp. 91–101. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.2307/2872081. Accessed 14 Mar. 2023.
Works Cited

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