Wilson, L. 2023. C.K. Ogden, I.A. Richards and ‘Word Magic’: Rethinking the Relation of Language to Myth. in: Edinburgh Companion to Modernism, Myth and Reigion Edinburgh Edinburgh University Press. pp. 151-165
| Chapter title | C.K. Ogden, I.A. Richards and ‘Word Magic’: Rethinking the Relation of Language to Myth |
|---|---|
| Authors | Wilson, L. |
| Abstract | This chapter rereads the interwar work of CK Ogden and IA Richards, in particular the artificial language they created and championed, Basic English. In Dialectic of Enlightenment, Horkheimer and Adorno suggest that the languages of positivism and the languages of myth are entwined in the reified enlightenment, but the assessment of Basic English in much recent work are based on the assumption that these languages are opposites. The chapter shows that the work of both Ogden and Richards is key in rethinking the supposed split between positivism and myth. In the work of Ogden through the interwar period can be seen, rather than the unambiguous positivism seen by recent critics, the return to myth predicted by Horkheimer and Adorno. By tracing the precise reasons for this, moreover, it becomes apparent how much of the work that Richards did, particularly in the 1930s, rather than preaching a positivism that collapses back into ‘word magic’, propounds a different kind of myth – one which, though partial and contradictory, approaches Horkheimer and Adorno’s sense of mediation as the answer to the reification of enlightenment. What Richards’ work of the 1930s can be seen as struggling towards (even if not achieving) is the sense that humans’ interaction with the world does not consist of disenchanted description – for Horkheimer and Adorno ‘mere perception, classification, and calculation’ – but of ‘mediated conceptual moments which are only fulfilled by revealing their social, historical, and human meaning’ |
| Keywords | CK Ogden |
| IA Richards | |
| Basic English | |
| positivism | |
| myth | |
| language | |
| Book title | Edinburgh Companion to Modernism, Myth and Reigion |
| Page range | 151-165 |
| Year | 2023 |
| Publisher | Edinburgh University Press |
| Publication dates | |
| Published | Jan 2023 |
| Place of publication | Edinburgh |
| Series | Edinburgh Companion |
| ISBN | 9781474494786 |
| 9781474494809 | |
| 9781474494793 |