5. Registers of Culture

In order to talk about registers of culture, we need to have an understanding of the various definitions of culture. One possible definition relies on the relationship between culture and nature. Actually, in the etymology of the term culture there is an element that refers to nature. The Latin root of the term means “to grow” – this is the meaning that is preserved in terms such as agriculture or horticulture. The term culture in this sense reflects an idea according to which nature and human society cooperate, or perhaps that nature is “tamed” by culture, it is given a cultured form. Another sense of the relationship between nature and civilization or human culture is reflected by the following poem by the American poet Jack Roberts, entitled Dream Fox. Instead of the peaceful parallel between society and nature, as in the etymological examples, here we find a curious tension, or perhaps a conflict between nature and culture.

Not the five tiny black birds that flew
out from behind the mirror
over the washstand,
nor the raccoon that crept
out of the hamper,
nor even the opossum that hung
from the ceiling fan
troubled me half so much as
the fox in the bathtub.
There's a wildness in our lives.
We need not look for it.
That's wrong too.
It finds us.
It finds us,
naked and alone,
in unfamiliar bathrooms,
wiping the grit from our eyes,
waiting for the first signs
that we're back among the living.
I catch him beneath his forelegs and lift.
"Don't bite me," I say. Says he, "I'll bite you."

What are the elements in this poem that represent nature? How do these elements interact with the space in which they appear? What is the effect of this interaction? Is it frightful, surprising, humorous? How does the short conversation at the end of the poem change this effect? And how does the speaking fox present the nature-culture divide? Does it suggest a hierarchy between the two?

One meaning of culture certainly does reflect a hierarchy – it is a meaning where the concept is both narrowed and elevated. Narrowed in the sense that it does not include human civilization in a broad sense, but only a special part of it, namely artistic and aesthetic activities. Thus the meaning of the concept is elevated, since artistic activities in this sense are understood as more valuable than non-artistic or everyday ones.

When we talk about registers of culture, we refer to artistic activities as high culture, while non-artistic, popular ones are regarded as low culture. These two are the main registers of culture.

HIGH means court, elite, or dominant culture, originally aristocratic, associated with power and knowledge, while LOW means popular, folk, mass or sub-cultures. Think of the example from Lecture 3 about words that reflect historical cultural status: Anglo-Saxon words for pig, sheep or calf refer to the live or raw animals while Anglo-Norman counterparts refer to the dead, prepared or cooked meats: pork, mutton and veal. The low status of the Anglo-Saxons is “coded” in the language, and the same is true for the high status of the Anglo-Normans. The terms in relation to each other reveal not only two languages, but a hierarchy of power and wealth, as well as two distinct groups with different cultures in the sense of lifestyles. It is in this sense that “register” refers to different layers of community and user groups of language in a given society. Pork sounds more elegant than pig due to its connotations; the power relations of the two groups are translated to differences of taste and style. Although there might be a clear hierarchy of power regarding layers of community – as there clearly is in this case, with one group representing power and wealth, and the other upholding this system – the consequent hierarchy of value suggested by labeling different groups’ taste and fashion as high and low is not essential. It is the function of ideology.

The value of cultural goods is not stable, it changes depending on the social position of the group using them. Isn’t it strange that Shakespearean drama performed on the Renaissance stage was widely regarded as popular entertainment before a high cultural status – and thus artistic value – was attached to it? Examples show that cultural goods may descend or ascend on a hierarchy as tastes of groups change. The same examples also question the high art vs. popular art division itself. The way the reputation of the graphic novel as a genre changed can serve as an illustration.

As Raymond Briggs, the author of a graphic novel entitled Ethel and Ernest claims in an interview with The Observer, “[o]n the Continent graphic novels have been as accepted as films or books for many years, but England has had a snobby attitude towards them. They’ve always been seen as something just for children.” In other words, genres combining image and text to tell a story were regarded as “low”, not entirely serious or comparable in artistic value with traditional, “high” literary genres. The success of Briggs’s graphic novel, in which he describes the biography of his parents in word and image, has contributed to a breakthrough. In 2005 he and another respected British graphic novelist, Posy Simmonds, were inaugurated into the Royal Society of Literature. With this gesture the authors gained official recognition for their artistic work, and their graphic novels gained cultural prestige. In this sense the existing “high” and “low” division was maintained, what has changed was merely the switched label on graphic novels – a genre previously considered popular was now recognized as artistic. But such changes inevitably raise questions about the criteria of labeling itself. In 2007 these two authors illustrated the cover of the magazine published by the Royal Society of Literature with the title “The Invasion of the Graphic Novelist”. The title mocks and reveals the alleged sentiments of conservative members of the Royal Society of Literature, who fear that the acknowledgement of a genre that had been previously regarded as low and not serious would “invade” the society and its traditions, since it inevitably restructures its system of values.

What has happened that allowed for this change to happen? There are several possible answers to this. The good reputation of graphic novels on the continent, the waning of the “snobby” attitude towards them in Britain, the introduction of the term “graphic novel” (sounding more prestigious than comics), the growing importance of visual culture and the lowered costs of printing are all factors that may have contributed to the change. The example shows that culture understood as high and low culture is not an ontological but a functional category. It does not exist on its own as high and low, only as culture of distinct communities.

You may recall from Lecture 3 that when English became a university subject it meant mainly the study of literature in English because the aim of studies was thought to be the study of texts with artistic value and prestige. Today the palette has broadened for two reasons. On the one hand, claims for artistic value and prestige have been challenged (the next lesson deals with this topic), while on the other hand texts that were perhaps previously regarded as unworthy of study, or “low” have been studied for other reasons than aesthetic worth. Not only new topics and genres have been included, but new questions and new types of approach as well. A play, a poem, an advertisement or a pop song may equally be a proper source to examine the way they negotiate their own cultural and political context – in that sense there is no difference between “high” and “low”. With such questions English studies has broadened into Cultural, Communication and Media Studies, making English an interdisciplinary field.