Book Review:  How to Read, by J.B. Kerfoot

Subject:  Second Area of Involvement of Kerfoot’s Constructive and Critical Orientation:  Handling Word Meanings

This is the third blog entry on reviewing How to Read, by J. B. Kerfoot.  It will consider the second area of involvement of Kerfoot’s constructive and critical orientation to learning how to read: handling the meaning of words.

The blog entry of September 20, 2023 considered the first area of involvement, reading as producing a mental movie.  And, the blog entry of September 15, 2023 gave an introduction to the book and considered the meaning of the title page inscription of the book, “Reading is a form of living.”

Please note that the italicized words in the quotes taken from the book are the author’s emphasis and are not my added emphasis.

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Second Area of Involvement Constructive and Critical Method:  Handling Word Meanings 

Words are the key components of reading and the handling of words requires both constructive and critical activities.  This area of involvement is covered in Chapter Two (“Muckraking the Dictionary”) and Chapter Three (“Watching the Wheels Go Round”) of J. B. Kerfoot’s book.

When reading a sentence, the reader is not literally drawing on exact meaning from a physical dictionary for the meaning of a particular word in a sentence.  A dictionary provides a general notion of the meaning of a word, but determining the particular meaning of a word in a sentence when reading is dependent on context:  words have their meanings in relationship to other words in the sentence.  Further, a word’s meaning in a sentence is connected to the living experience of the reader.

In both cases, verbal contextual meaning, or experiential verbal meaning, learning how to read means enlarging the store of words the reader has.  Words are molds-pliable molds- containing meanings that one has put into them.  They need to be expanded upon and/or revised in one’s ongoing reading.  This means paying attention to new words or the different uses of words in a sentence and retaining these discoveries in the one’s store of vocabulary.  The cumulative effect of this is to be more responsive and to draw more discriminately “…for the word-meanings in which we interpret the directions that our successive partners, the authors, issue us.”[i]

Moving from reading individual words to reading words in sequence –in succession in sentences and paragraphs, or in essence reading the text of the book.  To define the mental mechanics of reading words in succession Kerfoot uses the projection of a film onto a screen.

A movie is a series of individual photo frames speed up in succession to give motion, creating action, when projected onto a film screen.  There are 1,200 individual film frames being projected per minute, which is 20 film frames per second.  The eye, in watching the film, is taking in the individual film frames but not does not see them individually but in fluid motion creating the animation on the film.  Kerfoot correlates the film viewer’s eye taking in film frames to the reader’s eye taking in words on the page when reading.  He estimates that in reading a reader takes in one page of reading or about 300 words per minute which breaks down to 5 words per second being registered in the mind.

How does the mind handle the flow of words and assign word meanings given such rapidity of taking in words?  The reader cannot slow down the motion of taking in words to extract the exact meaning of each word without the deleterious effect of making the text a jumble, as slowing down the speed of a film would lead to the slower motion of images that could not adequately depict the film’s story.  Kerfoot says that the eye takes in each word as “…to feel the flavor of its significance, but is always moving-before we have time to differentiate the impressions made on us-abandoned for another word, different, yet either qualifying or qualified by the first one, that a series merges in our minds into a living flux of ‘representation’ or ‘understanding’ that we call ‘reading’, and that we have elected to describe as a ‘mental movie’.”[ii]

“Flavors of significance” are word meanings felt and captured by the reader at the time of reading the words since in reading the reader cannot stop and think of the full meaning of the words.  The reader carries forward the portion of a word’s meaning that seems appropriate to the following words.  What is important to Kerfoot in this activity is the control of word meanings, what Kerfoot calls “controlled meanings.”  “Controlled meanings” are the follow up to the “flavors of significance” assigned by the reader to words.  He states the reader does this retroactively and will make adjustments as to the appropriateness of the originally assigned word meanings in light of successive word meanings as necessary.  To quote Kerfoot: “We control our ‘flavor of significance’ by hindsight not by foresight.  We do not cut them to measure.  We get them ready-made, and refit them when necessary.”[iii]

The adjustments made by “controlled meanings” would a critical activity, or a self-corrective activity, and done subconsciously and immediately in most cases.  To build a better approach in handling “controlled meanings” the reader is to exercise alertness, becoming aware as possible when making word meaning adjustments.  Reading is not passively receiving words (semi-alertness), but actively receiving words (full alertness), immediately assigning meanings, and making subsequent adjustments of word meanings to gain the full meaning of the text.  Alertness then is one’s initiative of attending to the variegation of words and self-correcting in making adjustments to word meanings as needed.  A conscious awareness of this will filter through to a better and more efficient unconscious handling of words, informing and broadening one’s alertness as one reads over time.

Since words are the first matter in reading, they also go to the heart of Kerfoot’s approach to learning how read.  To quote him: “…that in reading, we deliberately and of our own choice expose ourselves to suggestion; respond automatically and personally to the successive stimuli of words and word groups; and then consciously or unconsciously criticize and control our automatic responses.”[iv].  This is the most important passage in the book.  The person reading is responding spontaneously to what the words suggest to him or her given their understanding and then adjusting/criticizing their reactions as needed.  This goes to the core of the constructive and critical reading approach.

There is also another dimension to this way of reading:  it is the path to gaining self-knowledge and self-culture.  Kerfoot is a strong advocate of culture being built up over time by the individual reacting to a work of art and then criticizing their own reactions to the work of art.  He objects to culture being imposed upon a person from the outside by critics and authorities telling the person in advance on what to think a work of art means.  If a person is told what a book means in advance and accepts this view uncritically, then the person has prevented themselves from knowing their own initial reactions and views on the book.  The person must first react to the book and then criticize their reactions in light of their misunderstandings and in light of differing views from theirs.  To do anything different is not to have lived in relation to the book by first reacting to it.  For Kerfoot:

 “Culture is always unique, for it is an individual achievement – a by-product of personal living.

Its essential entity is an ‘attitude toward the cosmos.’  Its component elements-the things from which it is built up-are recognized relationships between the life inside us and the world without.  And the ultimate atoms out of which these component elements are constructed are neither more or less than ‘controlled meanings’-spontaneous personal feelings, subsequently criticized.

Culture is a gradually coordinating accumulation of criticized reactions-of ‘controlled meanings’ that we ourselves have given to hunger and thirst and satiety; to love and friendship and hate; to hope and fear and indifference; to words and sentences and books; to art and philosophy and religion; – in a word to life .”[v]

To recognize the relationships between the life inside us and the world outside us is an area of involvement to be examined latter.  And the attitude towards the cosmos is the capstone attitude towards reading that also will be examined later.

The next blog entry on September 26 (Tuesday) will consider, the third area of involvement Kerfoot’s constructive and critical orientation to learning how to read:  the driving human impulses for reading and the direction reading should take over time.

FOOTNOTES

[i] How to Read, 1916, 46

[ii] Ibid, 63

[iii] Ibid, 71-72

[iv]  Ibid, 83

[v]  Ibid, 85-6.  I will note that somewhat later in the book Kerfoot uses a marvelous phrase that emotions, thoughts, judgements ranging from pleasure to pain, to delight or disgust are the “coefficients of living”.  They are what are happening inside of one’s self when reading and have magnitudes since one is using their emotions, thoughts, and experiences as catalysts to understand what is being read.  To quote Kerfoot, “Reading, then, is a form of living because of all the things that happen inside of us when we read.”  All of this on pages 119-120