The theoretical basis of reader-oriented
criticism
-
Language is a means of understanding what
it means to 'be', rather than a means of expressing a 'given' reality.
-
What it means to 'be' is best seen in
terms of socially constructed realities rather than in terms of the world
as psychologically 'real'.
-
Analysis of text is therefore a dynamic
activity, concerned with language as a dynamic process, not as a static
product.
-
Analysis therefore concentrates not just
on what language says, but on what language does.
-
What language does is not done through
a single voice, but through a process of interaction; it is dialogic (to
use Bakhtin's term), so the interactive voices, not the single, individual
voice, become the focus of analysis. The ego is therefore decentered and
consequently social, institutional and textual constructions of reality
are foregrounded.
-
Socially constructed realities are understandable
only in terms of ideological variation. Such variation inevitably means
that the construction of meanings for texts is a process of indeterminacy.
There are no fixed, determinate meanings encoded within the texts; texts
are best understood in terms of indeterminate meanings constructed by readers.There
is therefore no such thing as 'the' single, correct, meaning of a text.
-
This means that the status of the writer
is deprivileged, and the role of the reader, governed by institutional
and social discourses, is given a much more prominent role in the construction
of meaning.
-
A critical practice informed by these
factors therefore concentrates on the analysis of literary texts in terms
of reading, not writing.
-
This type of criticism is therefore a
political act, aiming to understand not simply what a text means but how
a text means.