I. A. Richards ( Essay on English criticism) THE TWO USES OF LANGUAGE

I. A. Richards                                      The Two Uses of Language

Ivor Armstrong Richards was born at Cheshire in England in the year 1893. His Principles of Literary Criticism was published in the year 1924. The essay titled “The Two Uses of Language is taken from this book.  I.A. Richards was a great critic who developed a new way of reading poetry. His great contribution to literary criticism was the distinction he made between the ‘two uses of language’ – the referential and the emotive.  I. A. Richards is considered as one of the founders of modern literary criticism better known as the New Criticism.  He thought that criticism should emulate the precision of the exact sciences.  Aesthetics, psychology and semantics were brought together in this new approach to criticism. Thus “New Criticism” has been developed.

Richards turns criticism into a science. He believes that the making of literature is a scientifically analyzable activity.

To explain the nature of poetry, Richards first examined the working of the human mind.

According to Richards, the human mind is a “system of impulses” and poetry is the record of the happy play of impulses. It is to share his experience that the true reader goes to him. Richards examines what kind of language poetry uses.  There are two uses of language. They are the scientific use and the emotive use.  In the referential or scientific, the word faithfully recalls the object.  In the emotive use, the word evokes emotions. The emotive use of language is used in poetry and other literary works.  In the scientific use of language, the references should be correct and the relation of references should be logical. References are conditions for developing attitudes. References may be true or false. But the aim of references is only to support and develop different attitudes in human beings.  Aristotle wisely said: “Better a plausible impossibility than an improbable possibility”. In the emotive use of language, false (wrong) references are not harmful or dangerous.  On the other hand, in the scientific use of language, false (wrong) references are very dangerous.  Similarly in the emotive use of language, any truth or logical arrangement is not necessary.

  Richards denied to poetry any truth of reference and argued that the ‘truth’ as applied to a work of art could mean only the ‘internal necessity’ or ‘rightness’ of the work of art.  Artistic truth is a matter of ‘inner coherence’.  Richards goes on to consider the connotations of the word ‘truth’ in criticism.  In literary criticism, the common use is ‘acceptability’ or ‘probability’.  For example “Robinson Crusoe” written by Daniel Diffoe is true in the sense of the acceptability, because the readers all over the world greatly appreciated this novel. But after all it is nothing but a fiction! Such a person existed in real life is not relevant to the ‘truth’ of the novel. Similarly a happy ending to Shakespeare’s play ‘King Lear’ would be false because it would be unacceptable to the readers. Poetry uses language emotively and connotatively while science uses it referentially and denotatively.

Paragraph questions:

1)      Briefly explain the two uses of language as introduced by I.A. Richards? – 2^nd para.

2)      What according to I.A. Richards are the chief uses of the word ‘truth’ in criticism? – answer 3^rd paragraph of the essay.

Essay: Briefly describe I.A. Richards’ contribution to Literary Criticism.