Richard Hoggart:

Some Thoughts on Language and Literacy Today

A paper prepared for the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada'• Seminar on language and Literacy, Toronto, 19 and 20 October 1979.

I PROPOSE to look at some recurrent aspects of literacy studies in Great Britain now. It is clear that there has been some gain, especially over the last 15 or so years. The main advance is that we have become much more receptive to the variety of ways in which sophisticated communication can take place. We now know that many forms of speech which were previously dismissed as illiterate, ungrammatical or ungenteel can carry a complex range of meanings. We don't even have to say any longer that oral communication among people who hardly ever put pen to paper is interesting and alive only because it is concrete and metaphorical rather than abstract and conceptual. We know that apparently disconnected and uneducated speech can keep in play very elaborate structures of assumptions. We know a good deal more about nonverbal communication. We are more open to a great range of linguistic inventiveness; we almost all now welcome Jin-

guistic diversity. All that is a gain - and has become something of a fashion.

So what am I bothered about? I suppose by what can happen to almost any intellectual fashion: that it can temporarily blind its adherents to the limits of its usefulness. Take, for example, linguistic and literacy studies about children. Work of this kind is almost universally marked by a care and concern, a range of generous impulses, which only a curmudgeon would fail to recognise. But good intentions are never enough; generous impulses are never enough; sooner rather than later they are likely to get in the way of the fuller development of the very children these people do genuinely care about.

One often finds in this work a romanticism which expresses itself in that softcentred phrase: 'The artist is not a special kind of a man; every man is a special kind of artist'. Of course, I see what is meant and in my time I've drawn aid from the declaratiOn. But it's been so over-used and over-extended today that it's become a justification for levelling, a denial of the existence of gifts in some which the rest of us don't have, and of efforts by some which the rest of us won 't make. So it should now be buried, since it has become the servant of an easy populism. It is related to the singleminded enthusiasm of some people for 'grass roots broadcasting' (for which I hope a good future). But the same people do not normally want to discuss the problems of how to structure and finance broadcasting on the national level, and those must be solved if broadcasting is to be a strong fifth estate, casting a critical eye on governments and parties and unions and corporations.

Similarly, work of this kind is often lopsidedly over-protective towards children. It is more fearful of submitting them to intellectual effort than of their straining muscles in, say, folk-dancing. Above all, it is afraid of anything which might be interpreted as a moral judg-

Contents

Some Thoughts on Language and Literacy Today: Richard Honart .... 2 New Zealand Diary: Norman Simms 10 Political Memoirs: Bernard Crick ..... 17 Nicos Poulantzas: Donald Sassoon .. 21 Considering the Authentic Performance of Music: Peter PblDlps ..................... . 25 Stratford: Keith Miies ............................ 38 The Ceremony, a short story by Graham Petrie .................................................... 34

Reviews Bainbridge, Beryl, Another Part of the Wood: Barbara Hardy ....................... 9 Brooke, Nicholas, Horrid Laughter in Jacobean Tragedy: Katharine Worth 15 Clark, David, Superstars: W. H. McCrea ............................................................... 24 Cork, Richard, The Social Role of Art: Janet Daley .......................................... 27 De La Fontaine, Jean, Some Tales: Henry Phillips ........ ............................. 16 Dorati, Antal, Notes of Seven Decades: Paul Driver ..................... :.................... 26

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Hobsbaum, Philip, Tradition and Expetiment in English Poetry: A. D. Moody 13 Huruata, Pataka: Norman Simms .... 12 Lessing, Doris, Shikasta: Jonathan Keates ............ ...................................... 7 Leyser, K. J ., Rule and Conflict in an Early Medieval Society: Janet L. Nelson ........................... ... ..... ... ..... ................... . 22 Montgomery, L. M., The Doctor's Sweetheart, etc.: Valerie Alderson ................. 29 Moore, Brian, The Mangan Inheritance: Paul Balley ......... ........ ..... .. .. ........ ... ... .. 8 Lloyd, G. E. R., Magic, Reason, and Experience: Richard Stoneman ......... 23 Nagel, Thomas, Mortal Questions: R. A. Duff/C. K. Grant .......................... .. .... 20 Pluckrose, Henry and Wilby, Peter (eds.), The Condition of English Schooling: Heather C. Gordon ......... .............. ...... 6 Shapiro, David, John Ashbery: A. T. K. Crozier ........................ ..... .............. .. .... 14 Stang, Ragna, Edurd Munch: Krzysztof, z. Cleszkowskl................ .. 28 Stead, Christina, Miss Herbert: Paul Balley.............. ................... ............... ... 8 Taylor, Apirana, Eyes of the Ruru: Norman Simms .. ....... ...................... .. .. 11 Verlaine, Paul, Femmes/Hombres: Henry Pblllips .. ....... ... ....... ....... .. ... ....... ....... ... . 16

Wendt, Albert, Leaves of the Banyan Tree: Nonnan Simms .. ........... .. .......... 12 Zahan, Dominique, The Religion . . . of Traditional Africa: Geoffrey Parrlnder ......... .. .... .. ......... .... ................................. 17 The Professors' Best Books of 1979: Psychology, German .......................... 30

Next laaua: Woman Barbara Pym - An Interview ·Val Hennessy : Love Storie• by New Woman · Lorna Saga: Women writing and writing about women · Helen Langdon on Germaine Grear: But is i t Art? : Janet Daley on Star Trek : V. Skultans The Matakan Body : Guido Almanal: Seeing Through Clothe• : Brian Harrison : Women in T r a de U n i o n s J e • n~ Rhys : Jana Austen : Poems by: Denis Levertov : Elaine Feinstein : Ann Cluysenaar : The Franch Profaaaora' Beat Book• in 1979. ·

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