Please help me refutate or alleast find redeeming sides to living in a world where language is used and misused as just another commodity.
I wasn't familiar with Hoggart, but I can't help agreeing with much of what he says. However, he does go on a bit. I can't help thinking that Orwell covered much the same turf, but to greater effect, in Politics and the English Language.
Today most of us take it for granted that everyone around us is to some degree literate. We've all been to school and tackled readin' and ritin'. But using language with precision and imagination is another matter altogether. Personally speaking, I find it terribly difficult to come up with original metaphors and to avoid clichés. The same old words and phrased come rolling out. How did people like Addison and Steele or the framers of the American Constitution manage to get it so right? For one thing, they weren't bombarded from morning to night (there I go) with the language of hucksterism. And having some degree of formal education separated them from the less literate masses. Even more impressive were those, such as Abraham Lincoln or Bartolomeo Vanzetti, whose natural facility with language trumped their humble beginnings.
