Close reading adapted into social hermeneutics became Cultural Studies’ method

Evidence

Fourth, there was the methodological innovation evidenced in Hoggart’s adaptation of the literary-critical method of “close reading” to the sociological task of interpreting the lived meanings of a culture. One says “sociological,” but clearly something more innovative than standard empirical sociological methods was required—nothing less than a kind of “social hermeneutics” is implied in these interpretive procedures: “we have to try to see beyond the habits to what the habits stand for, to see through the statements to what the statements really mean (which may be the opposite of the statements themselves) to detect the differing pressures of emotion behind idiomatic phrases and ritualistic observances” (Hoggart 1958: 17). — Hall, Stuart, Essential Essays, Volume 1, 151

Categorization

• DEFINE: Names the ‘social hermeneutics’ innovation: reading a culture as one reads a text, looking past stated meanings to emotional pressures.
• XREF: connects to: Medieval hermeneutics functioned both doctrinally and as cultural assimilation; Cultural and literary studies lead cross-group analysis of othering discourses — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 522