Everyday Language and Everyday Life

by Hoggart,Richard

• ISBN13: 9780765801760
• ISBN10: 0765801760
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2003-02-28
• Publisher: Routledge

Summary

For years Richard Hoggart has observed the oddity of a common speech habit: the fondness for employing ready-made sayings and phrasings whenever we open our mouths, a disinclination to form our own sentences "from scratch, " unless that becomes inescapable. But in this book he is interested in more specific questions. How far do the British, and particularly the English, share the same sayings across the social classes? If each group uses some different ones, are those differences determined by location, age, occupation or place in the social scale? Over the years, did such sayings indicate some of the main lines of their culture, its basic conditions, its stresses and strains, its indications of meaning, and significance? These and other concerns animate this fascinating exploration of how the English, and particularly working-class English, use the English language.Hoggart sets the stage by explaining how he has approached his subject matter, his manner of inquiry, and the general characteristics of sayings and speech. Looking back into time, he explores the idioms and epigrams in the poverty setting of the early working-class English. Hoggart examines the very innards of working-class life and the idioms, with the language that arose in relation to home, with its main characters of wives and mothers, husbands and fathers, and children; the wars; marriage; food, drink, health, and weather; neighbors, gossip, quarrels, old age, and death. He discusses related idioms and epigrams and their evolution from prewar to present.Hoggart identifies the sayings and special nuances of the English working-class people that have made them identifiable as such, from the rude and obscene to theintellectual and imaginative. Hoggart also examines the areas of tolerance, local morality, and public morality, elaborating on current usage of words that have evolved from the fourteen through the eighteenth centuries. He

Author Biography

Richard Hoggart was professor of modern English literature at Birmingham University and founded the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments	xi
Preface	xiii
Introduction	xv
Beginnings	1	(20)
Approaches	1	(4)
Sources	5	(2)
Characteristics	7	(9)
Bundles and Clusters	16	(5)
Poverty and Its Languages	21	(20)
The Nature of Poverty	21	(5)
Putting up with Poverty	26	(5)
Caution	31	(3)
Robust and Often Cheerful Resistances	34	(7)
Family and Neighbourhood (I)	41	(18)
`No Place Like Home'	41	(5)
Wars---and Changes in Outlook	46	(2)
The Main Characters	48	(6)
Marriage	54	(5)
Family and Neighbourhood (II)	59	(16)
Food	59	(9)
Drink	68	(2)
Health	70	(2)
Weather, the Countryside, and the Time of Year	72	(3)
Family and Neighbourhood (III)	75	(16)
Neighbours	75	(5)
Gossip	80	(3)
Quarrels	83	(2)
Old Age, Ageing, and Death	85	(6)
Work, Class, Manners	91	(18)
Work	91	(9)
Class	100	(5)
Manners	105	(4)
Language and Vulgarity: The Life of the Mind	109	(20)
The Rude and the Obscene	109	(7)
Intelligence, Intellect, and Imagination	116	(13)
Live and Let Live	129	(16)
Tolerance	129	(7)
Local Morality	136	(3)
Public Morality	139	(6)
Many Beliefs	145	(14)
Religion	145	(6)
Superstition	151	(5)
Time	156	(3)
A Gathering: And a Glance at Today	159	(20)
Together and Apart	159	(2)
Aphorisms and Social Change	161	(15)
The Emerging Idioms of Relativism	176	(3)
Index	179