Thoughts on Hoggart

Thoughts on Hoggart

In Richard Hoggart’s preface to The Uses of Literacy: Changing Patterns in English Mass Culture, he describes the type of reader or audience for his work. “I have thought of myself as addressing first of all the serious ‘common reader’ or ‘intelligent layman’ from any class” (11). He asserts that the language is neither too technical or meanings deliberately made obvious. He admits that finding the right style to write about working class life is difficult, for “The ‘intelligent layman’ is an elusive figure, and popularization a dangerous undertaking: but it seems to me that those of us who feel that writing for him is an urgent necessity must go on trying to reach him” (11). He doesn’t elaborate what is particularly dangerous about ‘popularisation’ in regards to the composition of his study. He is suspicious of what he terms “mass culture,” being cheap romances, television, movies, and that this shift is replacing a more ‘authentic’ working class way of life. “the new mass culture is in some important ways less healthy than the often crude culture it is replacing” (24). Thus, the old working class culture may be crude, but at least it’s organic, as opposed to the cheap vulgarity of the “new” popularizations. He doesn’t state where the new mass culture comes from – one can assume it’s a degraded American import. Is the fear of ‘popularisation’ as a literary style and a form of entertainment a fear of fascism? An imposed unifying style that stifles intellectual work and creativity? I’m curious what Hoggart means about “trying to reach” the working class with his work. Did the working class read Hoggart’s book? Could they afford Hoggart’s book? If they did read it, how did they feel about it? The idea of finding a middle ground language that appeals to all audiences but is still respectfully intelligent is found in Wordsworth’s 1802 publication “A Preface to Lyrical Ballads” where Wordsworth idealizes the language of the rural poor and aims to create a classless language that incorporates words and phrases of how people actually speak. Wordsworth also despised the “frantic novels, sickly and stupid German tragedies,” being read in England at the time. Similarly to Hoggart, he disapproved of the imported “sentimental” popular literature devoid of authentic working class culture. Wordsworth’s Lyrical Ballads was too expensive to have been read by the rural poor in 1802, and the intended audience was for scholars and poets. Essentially, though the intentions behind Wordsworth’s and Hoggart’s projects are different. Wordsworth hopes to bring down the elevated language of poetry to that of the plainspoken for a new kind of poetic language, though not distributed for and accessible to the rural poor. Whereas Hoggart aims to describe the cultural shift from a more authentic working class way of life to a degraded “unhealthy” mass culture devoid of meaningful and local folkways. I’d be curious to find out if the people in Leeds found his observations accurate.

Matt Nelson