ABSTRACT
While working-class culture holds no monopoly on the word, ‘gritty’ has become a customary adjective to describe working-class cultural production. It would be strange to hear of a high-society narrative referred to as ‘gritty,’ but it would be stranger to hear of a working-class narrative not described this way. However, when used as a noun, ‘grit’ is more equivocal and contingent, frequently signaling perseverance—a trait sometimes associated with the working-class notion of ‘getting by.’ A range of scholars have helped us identify what constitutes genre in working-class texts, yet discrete formal effects warrant close scrutiny. As such, this chapter seeks to advance ways of thinking about working-class representation by considering how cultural traits such as ‘grittiness’ operate as technical effects of narrative, raising questions about their role in the formation and reiteration of cultural identities. In doing so, it underscores the term’s slippery nature, calling on the working-class scholar to address the way the term (and terms like it) are circulated through culture.
