The Uses of Literacy: Aspects of Working-Class Life (Penguin Modern Classics)

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We will pay handsomely that man who gives some release to our sense of inferiority by expressing himself violently in print on what we all hate.” Katie Hopkins, anyone? Hoggart goes on to say: “It seems to me evident that most our popular journals have become a good deal worse during the last fifteen or twenty years”. Plus ca change and all that. Some working class cultural things he describes sound familiar (e.g. naughty seaside postcards), but others have passed into history: “The rituals of the Buffs and Odd Fellows. The new clothes bought for children on Whit Sunday”. There were also things I recognised in myself; the “working class speeches and manners in conversation are more abrupt, less provided with emollient phrases than other groups....I find that even now I have to modify a habit of carrying on a discussion on an 'unlubricated' way”. Yes, as some reviewers have said, this book is old fashioned. However, it is still relevant for two reasons. Hoggart, R. (1992). An Imagined Life. Life and Times, Vol. III: 1959–1991. London: Chatto and Windus.

The introduction says that he first wanted to call this book The Abuses of Literacy, but changed his mind. I think that is a useful thing to know. This is an early work of cultural criticism and his discussion of the newspapers, magazines, novels and music that working class people are likely to read and listen to is utterly fascinating. A profound lesson from much of this is that it would be wrong to assume that the working class assimilate this material whole, rather than first ‘making it their own’. Nonetheless, a lot of his discussion here shows how these materials either completely reinforce ‘normal’ working class life, or, like the hard-boiled novels discussed, are so beyond belief that they can only really be used as a form of escapism. His book publisher was concerned that they might get sued if he used direct quotes from some of these novels – and so he made up books. One of those was a book called ‘Death Cab for Cutie’ – which later became a pop band, stealing his title. All very amusing. It shows how people behaved and thought in the 50s. It is told anecdotally and in a style different from scientific writing today but that is because is a product of its time which again makes it interesting. Find sources: "The Uses of Literacy"– news · newspapers · books · scholar · JSTOR ( April 2021) ( Learn how and when to remove this template message) In particular, the comment about ‘sex and violence novels’ reminded me of our lecture and seminar discussions yesterday. To what extent is it true that writers just write what the publishers want to publish? For me, this doesn’t feel like the way that Robinson has approached Lila, and gathering from the seminar discussions this is partly why we all valued her integrity and writing style.Anyway, I just thought that the article was an interesting link between reading, community and contemporary culture, and wanted to share it with you all, It is often said that there are no working classes in England now, that a ‘bloodless revolution’ has taken place, which has so reduced social differences that already most of us inhabit an almost flat plain, the plain of the lower-middle to middle classes.” Three to Compare

Hall, S. (1989). ‘The “First” New Left’, in Out of Apathy, ed. The Oxford University Socialist Discussion Group. London: Verso. In this deeply autobiographical study, written from within the experience of growing up in industrial Leeds, Hoggart argued that Britain was squandering the hard-won skills of education and literacy by moving towards a new kind of society dominated by new and troubling values. The upshot of this, he said, would be that an urban, working-class culture “of the people” would be destroyed.Hall, S. (1997). “The Centrality of Culture”: Notes On The Revolutions Of Our Time’, in Media and Cultural Regulation, ed. K. Thompson. Vol. 6 of the Culture, Media and Identities Course Books. London: Sage and Open University.