1
Re-Practicing Practical Criticism
Gary D. Shank
M Cecil Smith
Department of Educational Psychology,
Counseling and Special Education
Northern Illinois University
DeKalb, IL 60115
Paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association,
Atlanta, Georgia, April 12 - 16, 1993
Page 2 of 11
Shank and Smith/Re-Practicing
Re-Practicing Practical Criticism
The purpose of this paper is to revisit the psychological study of expertise in reading from a
semiotic perspective. There has been, over the past two decades, an abundance of research
within the framework of cognitive psychology which has investigated the nature of expertise
across a variety of domains, including air traffic control (Means, et al., 1988) radiology (Lesgold,
Rubinson, Feltovich, Glaser, Klopfer, & Wang, 1988), horse race handicapping (Ceci & Liker,
1986), chess (Charness, 1981; Chase & Simin, 1973; Degroot, 1965), and electronics (Egan &
Schwartz, 1979). A picture of expertise has emerged which cuts across all of these activities and
demonstrates that: 1) experts perceive large, meaningful patterns in their domain, 2) have
superior short- and long-term memory for domain-relevant information, 3) are faster and more
efficient at performing basic skills pertinent to their domain of expertise, 4) represent problems
at a deep level of understanding, 5) spend a good deal of time analyzing problems before
attempting solutions, and 6) display superior self-monitoring skills (Glaser & Chi, 1988).
In particular, characteristics of expert adult readers have been examined in the psychological
literature. From the perspective of cognitive psychological research, expert adult readers are
those persons who are strategic and can monitor their understanding of text. Expert readers
possess sufficient prior knowledge and appropriate strategies which enable them to solve
problems that they encounter in reading, such as breakdowns in comprehension. As readers
develop and elaborate their knowledge schemas more slots are created so that incoming, relevant
information is more easily learned and retrieved. When a person possesses considerable
knowledge of a particular domain, the acquisition of new information is facilitated as the
information is mapped onto one’s existing knowledge structures. Another characteristic of
expert readers is that they display an interest in the topic and appropriate attitudes towards the
reading task(s). Finally, expert readers ably pursue and accomplish personal goals in reading,
such as wanting to know about a topic and finding entertainment in leisure reading.
Research on expert reading has generally examined the skills of domain experts, such as
attorneys and law students (Lundeberg, 1987), professors (Pressley, Beard, & Brown, 1990), and
physicists (Bazerman, 1985). It is, by now, widely accepted that extensive knowledge of a topic
or domain is the sine qua non of skilled reading (Bransford & Johnson, 1972). There may be
situations and contexts, however, in which expert-like reading ability is demonstrated even when
the reader lacks sufficient prior knowledge of a domain. Scardamalia & Breiter (1991) suggest a
dialectical process occurring between the reader’s textbase (i.e., a representation of what the text
says) and their situation model (i.e., the reader’s domain knowledge relevant to a text). The
situation model is used for making inferences necessary in constructing the textbase;
comprehension of text propositions, in turn, modifies the reader’s situation model. Expertise is
characterized by high levels of such back-and-forth activity, according to Scardamalia and
Bereiter (1991).
3
In our study, we wanted to get beyond the idea that acquiring expertise in reading is strictly a
process of decoding and extracting information from an extensive prior knowledge database, and
acquiring appropriate strategic skills. We chose to augment the standard cognitive theoretical
approach with a more semiotic understanding. In particular, we focused on the work of Roland
Barthes (1975). In The Pleasure of the Text, Barthes describes reading not so much as a
cognitive experience as an erotic experience. Part of the pleasure of the text, from Barthes
perspective, is pushing the act of reading beyond its mundane ordinary boundaries.
As a consequence, then, we were interested in looking at expertise in people who push the
boundaries of reading as part of their vocations. This entailed looking at how the critic, broadly
conceived, reads. Coupled with this task is the idea of asking critics to reflect not only of their
process of reading, but to develop pedagogical suggestions that could be used to help people
improve their own styles and habits of reading.
One of the things we discovered quickly is that very little is known about the way that critics
read. Gevinson (1991), for example, has suggested that the idea of reading expertise in the field
of literary criticism may be a dubious concept, at best. While there has been a good amount of
literature looking at how students interpret texts (Cox & Many, 1991; Rogers, 1991; and Smith,
1992 are recent examples looking at the interpretational skills of, respectively, elementary,
secondary, and college age students), most of these studies have concentrated on determining the
validity of reader response theory as a mode for informing reading instruction. We feel that
reader response theory, as exemplified by Rosenblatt (1979, 1982) is a valuable addition to the
theoretical domain of reading research and instruction, but we felt that our research needed to be
grounded in work that was more explicitly linked to the performance of criticism as a day-to-day
activity.
The obvious choice of a foundation for exploring the critical nature of reading was I.A.
Richards’ (1929) classic work, Practical Criticism. In this book, Richards asked students to read
and interpret 13 poems of differing levels of quality. Richards then gathered and synthesized
these responses into a work that helped delineate the critical experience from the perspective of a
talented learner. Since then, others have built upon Richards’ work. Kintgen (1983), for
example, was able to “re-do” Richards’ original project using the more sophisticated analytical
tools of reader response theory. But, to our knowledge, no one has approached critics with the
same task, at least with the goal of extending the boundaries of reading itself and using the
results as a pedagogical tool.
One of the difficulties of our task was surmounting a number of logistical obstacles. As we saw
it, there were two main obstacles. First of all, we needed to recruit a number of critics from a
diverse set of backgrounds, and second of all, we had to give them something to critique that was
new to all of them. The first obstacle was solved by taking advantage of the tremendous power
of electronic communication media. By accessing the following discussion lists, we were able to
assemble a dozen volunteers to read and interpret a single text for us. Those lists were: Derridal, a discussion list on the works of Jacques Derrida and deconstruction; Semios-l, a list dealing
Page 4 of 11
Shank and Smith/Re-Practicing
with visual and verbal semiotics; Medtext-l, a list dedicated to medieval codicology; Quairs-l, a
list on qualitative research in the human sciences; and several other private lists on postmodern
thought. Out of our dozen volunteers, four actually submitted long and thoughtful
interpretations.
In order to get a fresh work for our critique, one of the authors commissioned a personal friend,
who is a published poet, to create a new poem for the task, and for the poet to further supply his
own critique, theory of interpretation, and pedagogical plan. The text of that poem follows:
The Waking of the Poet
at dawn
when from the dead of night
the slumbering stones lie deaf
and beneath the transparent earth
half-buried yesterdays steady
their constant urgencies
(soundless) with a million flakes
of nameless silences (where the inner
god of things rules in the quietness of thought)
he unfolds his still dubious features
into the orange streaks of the
gently breaking foliage of light
(timeless and colossal, like cliches)
the moves where shadows precede him
and the sound of pattering footsteps
drops backward in time, fading
and fainting on the blank asphalt
of the moment before –
while the eternal calm
of ignorant human memorabilia
restless dancers gather their airy garments
and (without waiting for applause)
suddenly disappear.
How are we to interpret this poem? Or, better yet, how are we to read it? Here are some
instructions from the author:
The title is an important clue. It is, of course, a metaphor for something like the birth of
the poet, or the awakening of the poet’s vocation. Do notice though that what it (the
poem) describes is a physical awakening followed, almost immediately, by a morning
walk.... Part of what I have been trying to “say” is that elusive something that I think all
poets are trying to “say” at all times: the incomprehensible beauty of words.
5
Our four critics, labeled hereafter as Critics 1 through 4, attempted to communicate their
interpretational and pedagogical stances. A brief synopsis of each critical performance follows.
It is important to note that there is not enough time here to do justice to the critical efforts of our
volunteers; that will comprise a later, more detailed work which is now in progress. We also
need to point out that all four of the volunteer critics were male, and so each will be addressed as
“he.”
Critic #1 specialized in compositional training, with a background in rhetoric. His approach was
similar to Kintgen (1983) and Richards (1929), in that this critic performed a series of microanalyses over three distinct readings. The following excerpt will have to suffice for an
examination of Critic #1's approach:
Were I publishing an article on this poem.... I’d probably first attempt to describe it lineby-line for phonemic units. This could take me quite a while. If I were only interested in
getting the article published, I’d ask a number of readers to read the poem for transciption
and interview them about their sound-based reactions. Then I would attempt to show
what role the phonemic relationships (which are largely physiological and relatively
simple to trace) play in the semantic interpretation of the poem. I begin to believe that
the primary strength of this poem is sound.
Critic #1 also shares his view of communicating the skill of interpreting poetry to students,
drawing primarily on a reader response approach:
I’m very responsive to poems which create an affective response as I read them for the
first time. The affective response is primarily physiological. The poem coincides with a
perceived rise in body temperature and a sense of an adrenal rush... Consciously, these
“transcendent” experiences are difficult to describe and analyze, but I believe they occur
most often when the music of the language seems particularly apt to the image described
or when the poem seems brilliantly “True.” .... I’ve got to get in the mood of the poem
and into a reality where poetry is important. To analyze a poem to any extent, the poem
must take over and force me to view it closely and discriminately. I sometimes despair of
teaching students that reading (whether poetry or journal articles) could produce such
close analysis.
Our first critic seems more akin to the reader response theorists used by cognitive researchers,
although his emphasis on affective response goes against and beyond most of the emphasis in the
cognitive literature.
Critic #2 is versed in political discourse. His approach is similar to Riffaterre (1978) with its
emphasis on the semiotic structuring of the work leading to deeper layers of analysis. Critic #2
explicitly reads the poem from a surface and concrete level, to a deeper and more abstract level:
Page 6 of 11
Shank and Smith/Re-Practicing
I experience this poem on a number of levels. First, of what is perhaps a conventional, or
literal level. The poet has awakened and is possibly on an early morning stroll. The
scene is manifestly peaceful and quiet, perhaps aided by the cushioning of a recent
snowfall. The world around him remains asleep and still, and past cares are temporarily
muted... On a more abstract and metaphorical (and ultimately less convincing) level, the
poem refers to a person’s transformation into a poet. In this reading, the “half-buried
yesterdays” ... are previously dominant experiences and identities are receding and being
superceded by the “still dubious features” emerging from the dark and into the light of
the dawn... And at an even more abstract level, the poem can be reread as the emergence
not of a particular poet, but of poetic thought itself – of the poet in us all.
Critic #2 does not teach reading or interpretational skills, and so did not express a detailed theory
of interpretation. He does acknowledge an interesting debt to Richards (1929), however:
I’m not aware of having a particular (theory of interpretation), although I don’t mean to
claim that I come to this or any other writing with a blank and totally receptive mind. I
have been influenced by I.A. Richards’ idea of “practical criticism,” but that’s not so
much a theory as an appeal for careful reading. I have also been influenced by Susan
Sontag’s admonition that we listen more intently to a text before prematurely theorizing
about it...finally, I have been influenced by William Stephenson’s writings on the
quantum nature of the mind – hence the ideas of footsteps dropping “backwards in time”
and of “restless dancers”....have certain appeal... I might add that Richards too was
interested in the connection between quantum theory and literary criticism.
Critic #3 is a rhetorician who brings the subtle details of his craft into his act of interpretation:
I make a strong distinction between “meaning” which is what any individual makes of the
text at a particular time, and “signification” which is what any person reasonably
prepared can be expected to decode from a text at any time.... Putting words in an
arrangement is a matter of creating a coded public document... No text, in my view,
begins with privilege except insofar as the author’s original coding intentions constitute a
specially “correct” reading.
Critic #3 provides a complex and rich “reading” of the poem. Some excerpts of that analysis
follow:
What I would call the “preferred subject” of this poem, the central notion that shapes it, is
the contrast, mildly ironic, between the imaginative (poetic) activity which takes place
during sleep (in dreams) while the poet is physically immobile and not in control of his
thoughts and the descent into concreteness which comes with waking and drives such
inspiration away... The poem is apparently intended to be taken seriously rather than as a
parody or heavily ironic statement. None of the figures or juxtapositions of words or
phrases invites the decoding of a “second” voice to contrast with the basic narrative
7
voice... The syntax of the title invites a sense of ambiguity arising from the two main
readings of “to wake” (become conscious after sleep; a funeral watch)... The poem is
structured as a single sentence. It does not contain any capital letters, which lack, I
suppose, may be intended to indicate the unconscious/semi-conscious nature of the voice
which we reconstruct from the words of the poem. On the other hand, the careful and
correct syntax of the complex sentence cuts against that judgement.
In the summary of the work, Critic #3 alludes to a variety of critical stances that he could, but
chooses not, to take, and reveals that he is not very fond of the work:
I could go on here to a kind of Derridean decoding of the underlying social context
codings: “poet” as a special function in intellectual/moral life in our culture; very
existence of a genre that requires education to recognize and enjoy valorizes the expected
readers and thus implicates them in the social structure implied in the coding... I could
go on, but I’ll leave it...as I don’t think the poem contains enough aesthetic or social
value to spend a lot of time on its social codings and their contexts... So, what does this
all signify? Frankly, to me, not much. The poem is based on a banal notion
(consciousness drives away unconscious creative mental activity), and is riddled with
cliches and figures of comparison so fuzzy as to leave the planet. I find no striking
wording or figuration to give the texture interest or power and the structure is pretty
minimal.
Finally, Critic #4 differs from the other three in that he applies a critical model that he first
developed for use in analysis of visual and graphic images and products. He calls the model
“quad analysis,” and it is based on examining the formal, associative, narrative, and mnemonic
functions of the text, whether it (the text) is visual or verbal. The model has Augustinian echoes,
and is similar to the semiotic poetics of Haley (1988), which itself is based on a conscious
Peircean turn to interpretation of literary works.
While the quad analysis structure is too complex to summarize briefly, we will illustrate it by
citing examples from each mode. For the formal:
The feeling of the words - as music - measured, fully proportioned. There is a sense of
the poet’s form being like that of a classical movement: it has the same sense of
alternating ease and climactic focus. After an introductory pulse, the action settles into a
comfortable rhythm, building to intensity... Returning to its earlier rhythm for the second
half of the poem, there is a shorter but more intense pressure at the end of the poem...
Then comes the concluding, restful couplet.
For the associative:
I contrast it to poetry by folks like Allen Ginsburg or Lawrence Ferlinghetti, also to rap
artists. I contrast it to sentimental poetry such is found on greeting cards... The poem is
Page 8 of 11
Shank and Smith/Re-Practicing
“abstract” in that emphasis is placed on the sounds themselves, while denotation is
sublimated. But while it may require some determined effort to discover what the poem
“is about,” there is a fairly clear “story” to be understood.
For the narrative:
What is the story of the poem? It stuck me quite suddenly that the concluding three lines
captured quite well the feeling one has sometimes when walking... So on one level the
poem seems to be about a person shaking loose the cobwebs of sleep and awakening to a
new day. But there is enough discussion of light, time, silences and so on that a further
explanation is warranted.
And finally, an analysis of the mnemonic nature of the work:
What are the elements that we are likely to remember, consciously or unconsciously,
from the experience of the poem? What are the “hooks” which, like a pop song’s catchy
melody, are likely to stay with us?
Critic #4 emphasizes that his technique of interpretation allows for a variety of sometimes
disparate theories to be used simultaneously to help elucidate the nature of a work:
It is not the specific interpretation of the poem that relates to my theory as much as the
method of taking it apart into four domains of analysis. Semiotics, deconstruction,
structuralist techniques can all be employed within the domain of quad analysis. The
central part is to break the interpretation into four parts. When I did this on the poem, it
revealed to me that it was stronger in the areas of form and narrative than in the area of
association... I discovered on the whole that the form and the narrative supported each
other well.
In conclusion, we feel that this project demonstrates the feasibility of coordinating the complex
threads of contemporary interpretational practice into a cohesive “thickly described text” that can
be used as the basis for informing a richer model of reading instruction.
While we do have the time to elaborate on the ways that we can pull together these modes of
interpretation, we will instead let it suffice to say that the “effort after meaning” that informs
critical projects is powerful enough to help weave together the separate strands of interpretation.
In other words, we are calling for a turning away from the traditional idea that there is a theory
out there somewhere that will characterize reading, once we discover it, and that we need to
converge upon that theory via our use of research. Instead, we take a more semiotic approach
that we need to pull together divergent critical approaches, since each approach informs our
understanding of the work in a different way. In this fashion, we would argue that we need to
teach our students, as they learn to read, to synthesize these disparate skills into a rich and
complex personal and tacit model of reading. While there is no room here to do anything other
9
than mention this next idea, perhaps this is the basic project of whole language approaches, as
articulated from a semiotic perspective.
We would finally like to point out that when poets and artists, such as Roland Barthes (1975) and
Ezra Pound (1934) reflect on reading, they focus on the pleasure and creative vigor of the act.
By coordinating various critical moves, rather than contrasting them, perhaps we can awaken a
similar invigoration toward reading on the part of our students. At that point, the actual critical
vehicle becomes a secondary concern.
Page 10 of 11
Shank and Smith/Re-Practicing
References
Baker, L., & Brown, A.L. (1984). Metacognition and reading. In P.D. Pearson (Ed.) Handbook
of reading research, Vol. 1. New York: Longman.
Barthes, R. (1975). The pleasure of text. NY: Hill and Wang.
Bazerman, C. (1985). Physicists reading physics: Schema-laden purposes and purpose-laden
schema. Written Communication, 2, 3-23.
Bransford, J.D., & Johnson, M.K. (1972). Contextual prerequisites for understanding: Some
investigations of comprehension and recall. Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior, 11,
717-726.
Ceci, S.J., & Liker, J.K. (1986). A day at the races: A study of IQ, expertise, and cognitive
complexity. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 115, 255-266.
Charness, N. (1981). Search in chess: Age and skill differences. Journal of Experimental
Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 7, 467-476.
Chase, W.G., & Simon, H.A. (1973). Perception in chess. Cognitive Psychology, 4, 55-81.
Cox, C., & Many, J.E. (1992). Stance towards a literary work: Applying the tranactional theory
to children’s responses. Reading Psychology, 13, 37-72.
DeGroot, A.D. (1965). Thought and choice in chess. The Hauge, Netherlands: Mouton.Egan,
D.E., & Schwartz, B.J. (1979). Chunking in recall of symbolic drawings. Memory and
Cognition, 7, 149-158.
Garner, R. (1993). “Seductive details” and adults’ learning from text. In S.R. Yussen and M C.
Smith (Eds.). Reading across the life span. New York: Springer-Verlag.
Gevinson, S. (1991, April). Defining expertise in reading literature for understanding. Paper
presented at the annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association, Chicago, IL.
Glaser, R., & Chi, M.T.H. (1988). Overview. In M.T.H. Chi, R. Glaser, & M.J. Farr (Eds.). The
nature of expertise. (pp. xv-xxviii). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.
Haley, M.C. (1988). The semiosis of poetic metaphor. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University
Press.
Kintgen, E.R. (1983). The perception of poetry. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press.
11
Lesgold, A., Rubinson, H., Feltovich, P., Glaser, R., Klopfer, D., & Wang, Y. (1988). Expertise
in a complex skill: Diagnosing x-ray pictures. In M.T.H. Chi, R. Glaser, & M.J. Farr (Eds.). The
nature of expertise (pp. xv-xxviii). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.
Lundeberg, M.A. (1987). Metacognitive aspects of reading comprehension: Studying
understanding in legal case analysis. Reading Research Quarterly, 22, 407-432.
Means, B., Mumaw, R., Roth, C., Schlager, M., McWilliams, E., Gagne, E., Rice, V., Rosenthal,
D., & Heon, S. (1988). ATC training analysis study: Design of the next generation ATC training
system (Hill Technical Report). Alexandria, VA: HumRRo International.
Neil, V. (1988). The psychology of reading for pleasure: Needs and gratifications. Reading
Research Quarterly, 23, 6-50.
Pound, E. (1934). ABC of reading. New York: New Directions.
Pressley, M., Beard, P., & Brown, R. (1990, May). Is good reading comprehension possible?.
Paper presented at the University of Maryland Conference Research and Instructional
Innovation. College Park, MD: University of Maryland.
Richards, I.A. (1929). Practical criticism. San Diego: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich.
Riffaterre, M. (1978). Semiotics of poetry. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press
Rogers, T. (1991). Students vs. literary critics: The interpretive experiences, beliefs, and
processes of ninth-grade students. Journal of Reading Behavior, 23(4), 391-423.
Rosenblatt, L.M. (1982). The literary transaction: Evocation and response. Theory into Practice,
22(4), 268-277.
Rosenblatt, L.M. (1978). The reader, the text, the poem. Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois
University Press.
Scardamalia, M., & Bereiter, C. (1991). Literate expertise. In K.A. Ericsson & J. Smith (Eds.),
Toward a general theory of expertise: Prospects and limits, (pp. 172-194). New York: Cambridge
University Press.
Smith, D.J. (1992). Common ground: The connection between reader-response and textbook
reading. Journal of Reading, 35(8), 630-634.
Wilson, P.T., & Anderson, R.C. (1986). What they don’t know will hurt them: The role of prior
knowledge in comprehension. In J. Orasanu (Ed.), Reading comprehension: From research to
practice. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.