Critical reading is a form of skepticism that does not take a text at face value, but involves an examination of claims put forward in the text as well as implicit bias in the text's framing and selection of the information presented. The ability to read critically is an ability assumed to be present in scholars and to be learned in academic institutions.
There are no simple relations between these levels. As the "hermeneutic circle" demonstrates, the understanding of single words depends on the understanding of the text as a whole (as well as the culture in which the text is produced) and vice versa: You cannot understand a text if you do not understand the words in the text.
The critical reading of a given text thus implies a critical examination of the concepts used as well as of the soundness of the arguments and the value and relevance of the assumptions and the traditions on which the text is based.
"Reading between the lines" is the ability to uncover implicit messages and bias.
Read more about Critical Reading: Symptomatic Reading, The Reciprocal Nature of Reading and Writing, Epistemological Issues, A Famous Example, Literature
Famous quotes containing the words critical and/or reading:
“The critical method which denies literary modernity would appear—and even, in certain respects, would be—the most modern of critical movements.”
—Paul Deman (1919–1983)
“There are women in middle life, whose days are crowded with practical duties, physical strain, and moral responsibility ... they fail to see that some use of the mind, in solid reading or in study, would refresh them by its contrast with carking cares, and would prepare interest and pleasure for their later years. Such women often sink into depression, as their cares fall away from them, and many even become insane. They are mentally starved to death.”
—Ellen Henrietta Swallow Richards (1842–1911)