REFFERING CLOSELY TO DAVID W WEST’S ESSAY ‘PRACTICAL CRITICISM ; IA RICHARD’S EXPERIMENT IN INTERPRETATION ’ EXPLAIN THE CONCEPT PRACTICAL CRITICISM. AYESIGYE YVONNE 13/U/25453 OUMA EMMANUEL TIMOTHY 13/K/2229/PS NYANZI DORIS 13/U/25231 KEMIGISA RITAH 13/U/6469/EVE HAPPY MILLAH 13/T/2247/PS

In this essay, we will define the concept practical criticism according to different scholars, account for I.A. Richards experiment and relate Pavlov’s notion of the conditioned reflex to I.A Richards’ experiment of issuing anonymous poems. In the latter part, We will discuss factors that evoke and develop responses in readers. Robert Eagleston (2000) defines practical criticism as a form reading ,sometimes known as “close reading,” which involves the intense scrutiny of a piece of prose or poetry concentrating on the words on the page and disregarding the work’s context’; this critical technique he says , was first most fully outlined in I.A. Richard’s book Practical Criticism’ (Eagleston, pp.16,41-42). Peter Barry also argues in the Beginning Theory (1995) that I.A. Richards ‘pioneered the SStechnique called Practical Criticism’, and he defines it as a technique that ‘ made a close study of literature possible by isolating the text from history and context’ (Barry, 1995,p.15). technique which concentrates We acknowledge I.A.Richards as the founder of an intrinsic technique of reading literature now known as ‘practical criticism’, a technique which concentrates upon ‘the words on the page’ and which disregards the text’s social and historical context. It is in fact a technique which was popularized in the middle years of the Century in Britain in the work of the group of critics associated with F.R. Leavis and his Scrutiny journal, and in the US in the work of New critics such as Cleanth Brooks, Crowe Ransom and Allen Tate. Quite interesting to David West's essay was his interest on the enormous impact that Richard's lectures had. Many flocked to attend these lectures and on one occasion, L.C Knights had to sit on a window sill because of the great crowd. Credit to this was based on two reasons; the first being Richard's focus on the reader and the interpretation process rather than the text itself. ne used poetry to acquire peoples’ opinions and feelings. The second was the use of a scientific experiment to investigate the forces which shape our reading of literary texts. An important question arises! What led Richards to conduct this experiment? Why was he more interested in the reader and reading process rather than in the literary text? Just like any other experiment, Richards wanted to find answers to particular questions. In one of his works which he wrote with C.K Odgen entitled " Meaning of Meaning" published in 1923 in which he argues that,” Interpretation, or what happens in the mind of an interpreter is quite distinct both from the sign and from that of which the sign stands for." This analysis was similar to that of Ferdinand De Saussurre in his study of Semiotics where he points out a distinction between a signifier and the signified. Richard too emphasizes that words have meaning only when a thinker makes use of them. To bring out a better picture of this, Richards and Odgens came up with a triangle with three corners representing the symbol/signifier on one bottom corner, the referent/signified on the other bottom corner and the thought or reference at the apex of the triangle. This meant that thee interpreter is a mediator between what something is and what it actually means. In relation to poetry as used by I.A Richards, a poem will stand as meaningless unless the interpreter makes meaning out of it withholding Sbarriers such as the poet and the time in which it was written. To sum this, without an interpreter, there would be no connection between word and thing. that is why Richards was more interested in his audience's opinions on poems rather than on the poems themselves. It is not text that generates meaning but the mind of an interpreter. Pavlov carries out a scientific approach in regards towards understanding practical criticism by using a dog’s response towards the bell and according to this experiment; he administers stimuli to elicit response and the response being analyzed for what it reveals about the functions of the cerebral hemispheres in the dog. Pavlov does this by administering stimuli inform of the sound of the bell and measures the amount of saliva which the dog produces as response or reflex to the stimulus. From this experiment, Pavlov deduces that he dog had been conditioned to expect food at the sound of the bell and food had been linked in the dogs’ cerebral hemispheres. And this accounts for its salivation at the sound of the bell even when food is not there and this Pavlov calls the conditioned reflex. Pavlov’s experiment of also administering unprecedented stimulus that is to say the one which the dog has not experienced before for example the ringing of the bell investigates a particular response to a particular stimulus in isolation. The same way I.A Richards uses this unprecedented stimuli where he distributes anonymous poems that are not even dated to the undergraduates and seeks to know, how they would interpret these texts, what would go on in their mind as they try to interpret them and at the end of the day it would account for the motives behind a particular response to a particular stimulus in isolation and thus investigate the very nature of the response. The amount of saliva the dog produces in Pavlov’s experiment can be related to the protocols of different students I.A Richards collects from his students and the sound of the bell which is the stimulus can be related to Richard’s anonymous poems. The amount saliva in Pavlov’s experiment can be equaled to Richard’s study of what happens to or in the mind of the interpreter in the actual sign situation. The food which the dog expects at the sound of the bell can as well be related to the authors and dates which I.A Richard makes anonymous to the students and try to discover how they would interpret these texts. This means that the students were experiencing unprecedented stimulus which has never occurred to them and the way they respond to this is what both Pavlov and I.A Richard have tried to drive at thus to say investigate empirically the forces that shape our reading of literary and other texts that is detachable from the authors name, date and history. ‘A hundred verdicts from a hundred readers as the sole fruit of our endeavours’, Richards’s remarks at one point (p.179). What could account for such heterogeneity o response? The key concept which Richards introduces to explain the motives behind his audience’s interpretations is that of the stock response, a concept which is clearly modeled upon Pavlov’s notion of the conditioned reflex. He goes on to say that these stock responses, or ‘fixed conditionalised reactions’, govern much of the reading of even the most original poetry, but in all forms of human activity’(p.240) According to Richards, there are three main factors involved in ‘evoking and developing our responses’. The first, ideas handed to us by others, second those produced within us; the third is actual experience (p.246). He goes on to say that the first two –‘suggestion and elaboration’-evoke and develop our stock responses, while the third leads to genuine or ‘sincere’ responses. It is clear that those among our responses that are clear hitched to an idea, rather than to the actual particularities of the object, gain a great advantage in their struggle for survival. All response is the product of repetition or exercise and therefore the more we respond in a particular way the firmer and more entrenched that response becomes. In short, if we practice stock responses then that is what we will be capable of. Therefore Richard advises us to practice ‘sincere’ responses so that we can afford to do that in the future. After outlining the factors that evoke and develop responses, Richards gives a corrective to avoid stock responses. He says that the only corrective to stock responses must be a’ closer contact with reality’(p.251) In other words, readers must develop ‘sincere’ responses through ‘actual experience’ of reality; they must be conditioned to respond sincerely. Richards goes on to say that ‘A close contact with reality’ can be gained in two forms; ‘either directly, through experience of actual things, or immediately through other minds which are in closer contact’. As earlier noted, ‘experience of actual things’ is futile if we already have an idea or stock response. Therefore, Richards says we can have the close contact by reading ‘good poetry’ and that it can be a powerful weapon for breaking up unreal ideas and responses. Conclusively, reading and evoking of responses is thus a vicious circle from which there is no escape: we need good poetry in order to have our stock responses broken up; however, we need to have had our stock responses broken up before we can be in the appropriate mental condition to benefit from good poetry. I A Richards definition of practical criticism is looking at it as an intrinsic (inseparable from the thing itself) technique which concentrates upon the words on the page and disregards the texts social and historical context. Richards’s main focus in the experiment he carried out with his students was; Looking at the reader and the process of interpretation, rather than upon the literary text itself and he used poetry as a bait i.e. to trap the opinions and responses of his students and gain insight into the natural history of human opinions and feelings. He also introduced literary studies as a scientific experiment which would enable him investigates empirically the forces which shape our reading of literary texts. Psychology was also another tool that he used in his experiment i.e. the process by which we as human beings make meaning from language. Why the experiment in interpretation? Basically he was interrogating the interpretive process itself by analyzing the self –reported interpretive work of students, as well as the population at large. The practical criticism experiment was to be a means of devising educational methods more efficient than we now use in developing discrimination and the power to understand what we hear and read. Therefore interpretation of literary text is a key aspect that we should consider while reading or defining the concept of practical criticism.