To understand literature as language use means to interpret it as a communication act. Communication acts are determined by the communication partners. With respect to literature these are the author and the readers. Although literature should be understood genuinely as determined by both sides criticism sometimes has concentrated on one of the two features.

In its most extreme shape author oriented criticism has lead to attempts to understand a literary text as dominated by the authors biography, like in positivist criticism.

On the other hand, reader response criticism concentrates on the reader alone, as it states that all cognitive processes ground in the subjective. In a comparably extreme orientation this leads to an ahistoric interpretation of literature, in particular, with reference to older texts.

However, in its more reflected form reader oriented interpretations will keep an eye on the reconstruction of a virtual contemporary audience of texts notwithstanding that such re-constructions always remain to be constructed in the reader's mind.

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