Richard hoggart the uses of literacy. The Uses of Literacy by Richard Hoggart 2022-12-11
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Richard Hoggart was a British scholar and author who is best known for his work on the social and cultural significance of mass media and popular culture. In his book "The Uses of Literacy," Hoggart examines the ways in which mass media and popular culture can shape and influence individual and collective identity, particularly among working-class communities.
Hoggart was born in Leeds, England in 1918 and grew up in a working-class neighborhood. He was educated at Leeds Grammar School and later studied at the University of Hull, where he earned a degree in English literature. After serving in World War II, Hoggart returned to academia and completed a Ph.D. in English literature at the University of London.
In "The Uses of Literacy," Hoggart argues that mass media and popular culture can have a powerful influence on the way people think and behave, particularly in working-class communities. He believes that these forms of media and culture can shape and reinforce certain values, beliefs, and behaviors that may not necessarily align with the best interests of individuals or society as a whole.
For example, Hoggart argues that mass media can promote a culture of consumerism that values material possessions and superficial appearances above more meaningful and enduring values such as community, compassion, and intellectual growth. He also believes that mass media can reinforce harmful stereotypes and prejudices, and can contribute to a general erosion of cultural and social cohesion.
Hoggart's work has had a significant influence on the study of media and cultural studies, and his book "The Uses of Literacy" remains a classic text in the field. Despite the many changes that have occurred in media and popular culture over the past several decades, Hoggart's insights and observations about the power and influence of mass media and popular culture remain relevant and thought-provoking.
Richard Hoggart’s ‘The Uses of Literacy’, by Emily Wheeler
After defining the working class through its mores and mind-sets, Hoggart unfolds his concerns about developments in mass-produced culture. As such, it was a pioneer of that much-derided and misunderstood area of academia, Media Studies. Hoggart spices his text with phonetic lists of northern phrases, all phonetically mis-spelt and wthout an h in sight as Orwell succintly referenced in the Road to Wigan Pier. It's amazing to realize how much things have changed since Hoggart's time, in some ways, buy how little in others. I lived in a working class community in Birmingham and my first thought was that his idea of a working-class community described an out of date idea. Our response, then, must be not only to examine the content of the publications that are read, but to accord central importance to the ownership of the media and the institutions for cultural dissemination and promotion.
He confronts his subject with clear and knowledgeable eyes, criticising the faults and acknowledging the values of the class he originates from himself. All the same, it has turned up repeatedly over the years, mentioned in other books I did read. I'm sure my parents would read this and be rubbing their hands in glee at the "back in my day things were better" scenario described. In it, Hoggart argued that collective engagement in a project of civic literacy would grow naturally out of the increasing education of the working classes, and that knowledge really would translate into power. I suggest reading the interview and then dipping into the book. His own fervour for culture in the sense of the best and finest is touching, as is the poignancy of being apart as the scholarship boy.
I loved the semi-genetic conviction with which Hoggart damns the young frequenter of 1950s milk bars as a sort of degenerate among degenerates; his detailed attack on a certain kind of almost-intellectual all the way down to how he decorates his house is also quite barmy. Today, that same argument is of course being made by portly dads in Fred Perry and Weller haircuts. If the book was meant to be accessible, he needed to write more clearly than this. It was so important for Hoggart to demonstrate that many working-class people were just as intelligent as their economic superiors. Although he effectively invented cultural studies, Hoggart didn't foresee the mingling of cultures, that Beyonce could be a proposal for an MA thesis, that educated people would enjoy Eurovision, that one can read James Joyce and watch Coronation Street.
The Uses of Literacy, by Richard Hoggart : Analysis Essay Sample
In some ways yes, but perhaps with its candy-floss ways it's a shallower one. Or his main topic: that the working class are more susceptible to mass culture because of their uneducated, tolerant gullibility; because they work hard and for little money and want entertainment and pleasure, they will mop up anything they're offered. I should have trusted John Hanrahan, my lit crit teacher, more. Culture, media, language: working papers in cultural studies, 1972-79. This book starts by painting a picture of working class life, considering everything from living in a two-up-two-down, what you might eat, the types of jobs you might do, your relationship to religion, to nationalism, to other social classes and even to sport.
If his ideas were profoundly obscure, but ultimately recoverable as deep and thrilling, I would take a chance. Hoggart's The Uses of Literacy still has much to say about class dynamics and the consumption of popular culture. I'm not a fan of e. Even songs that used to unify with a sense of shared experience are now targeted at the individual in a superficial way. His book whilst of its time in some ways, was cannily and regrettably prescient in others. The alarm at the Teddy Boys in coffee bars was a little surprising, given that it kept them out of the pub.
Instead, from the same year, 1957, I am choosing The Uses of Literacy. But that feeling of being an outsider was also true when I did my first degree. It's well-written, which isn't, as a rule, something something you can say often about a Sociologist. Mixing personal memoir with social This pioneering work examines changes in the life and values of the English working class in response to mass media. Yes, as some reviewers have said, this book is old fashioned. I regret not reading this at the time, nearly 30 years ago now. I have so rarely failed to finish a book but this one could be the exception to my rule.
The Uses Of Literacy : Hoggart, Richard : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive
He thus detects the differing pressures of emotion behind idiomatic phrases and ritualistic observances. You can't complain 'it's dated', since all books date. On my reading, on behalf of the common reader, the presumed audience for a list such as ours, it is also unintelligible. It shows how people behaved and thought in the 50s. An amazing course and pioneering popular culture for serious study. Instead he rambles on ad nauseum recounting as in the case of the most recent chapter titles of the sentimental, mawkish songs that were popular in Northern pubs and working men's clubs and to what purpose? The question of cultural classlessness—which Hoggart is clear in the Conclusion we are heading towards, or have already started achieving—is more complex, and I will do no more than scrape the surface of that debate here. Analogously, free speech is not just a matter of what can be said; it is increasingly important who owns the vehicles through which that speech is produced, circulated, and received.
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. The author is prescient. I bought this book at the time, on his recommendation, but never actually read it. 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. The portrayal of life in the North at the time of my parents is quite depressing, all the girls should be looking to get married and have babies! It is only my dogged northern heritage that will enable me to soldier on.
Do not be fooled by the publisher's puff this is the most boring book you could possibly pick up. If his prose was otherwise lovely, I would forgive Syntactic Structures its forbidding and impenetrable mask of technical language aka jargon. It was first published more than fifty years ago, and we would expect that society has moved on a great deal since then and its relevance might be d This is a book I've meant to read for years. I think he grossly understated the impact he was going to have on my life, in many ways. I think I picked up my first sociology from Hoggart too, with the idea that in smaller communities there is social redundancy: the man who cuts your hair is also the amateur car-fixing expert, and the brother of the postmistress. The government then as now embroiled in the Middle East, the teenagers much like our teenagers, and their young queen is now our elderly queen, but the same queen for all that.
Naturally, a lot of this has changed in the years since, but perhaps not as significantly as we might like to think. I'm struggling with this one a bit. Mixing personal memoir with social history and cultural critique, The Uses of Literacy anticipates recent interest in modes of cultural analysis that refuse to hide the author behind the mask of objective social scientific technique. By all rights this should merit a rating of 4 stars. His regret is that the spread of literacy is not being matched by a corresponding drive to put it to meaningful use in either serving the community or simply developing oneself. .
