Journeys of exploration to the everyday life of the textual society
Finns used to know the exact names of different types and species of trees. The well-known collector of Finnish folklore Samuli Paulaharju introduced a large variety of interesting names for different types of pine trees in his work Sompio (1939) (including aihki, lakkapää, hyötymänty, räkämänty, jouhimänty, karhakka, rämemänty, käskärä, suosto, kelo, honka, aarniohonka). The citizens of the present-day textual society are better familiar with the names of different pieces (or heaps) of paper: piece of news, column, interview, and advertisement; novel, short story, poem, and aphorism; agenda, minutes, memo, and report; law, regulation, decree, and directive – and so on.
Those who used to master trees now master papers. The world of different papers, messages, and news is what we often call “everyday life”. But what is, in fact, the relation between the everyday life and texts?
The Research Institute for the Languages of Finland carried out a research project on the everyday lives of texts at the beginning of the 21st century. The project was based on the presumption that people often take for granted the texts and their meanings which they come across with every day. We do not distinguish between important and less important texts, nor do we stop to consider the messages involved in the texts. Only a few of us have the time or the energy to think about the choices of which the texts are made up in more detail. Without noticing it, we may even accept such meanings in the texts that we would not otherwise be ready to accept.
The research project was published as a book called Tekstien arki. Tutkimusmatkoja jokapäiväisiin merkityksiimme [Everyday lives of texts. Journeys of exploration to our everyday meanings.] in 2005. The book includes articles by researchers from different fields, based on the conception that the range of writings in the textual society is huge, and no-one could possibly master all the practices of making and interpreting texts. Even the genres that have been regarded as established change; the old genres mix and merge, and new genres are born.
In the midst of the chaotic world of meanings and the media, the norm-bound standard language is not necessarily the form of language we most often come across in our everyday lives. The world of everyday texts could rather be characterized as versatile: it involves doing a vast variety of things through texts, combining various linguistic forms, using graphic characters in innovative ways, and dialogue between the visual and the verbal.
Texts have the tendency to organize things. On the other hand, texts seem to organize our thoughts and affect our behaviour. Texts may deprive people of their power: in other words, some people may deprive others of their power by texts. Those who know how to compose texts and formulate meanings are those who rule even otherwise.
Research into everyday texts may make us think about what kind of new language awareness and critical text know-how we might need in the textual society. It is time to talk about, e.g., how the supremacy of texts should be taken into account whilst planning education and political decision-making.
People often ask us, as researchers of everyday texts, what everyday life is and what we mean by (everyday) texts. It is easy to think about a number of answers to these question in an offhand way: everyday life is the necessary “element of life”, which we do not notice. It is the air we breathe. It is the self-evident things we never seem to question. It is the meanings we never unravel.
However, by giving answers like these, we will not make it very close to the essence of everyday life. We need to explore deeper. The journeys of exploration in Tekstien arki are based on, e.g., the following ideas:
* Everyday life can be investigated by investigating texts; everyday texts can be investigated by linguists, culturologists, and sociologists, and they can even do it jointly.
* Everyday life is filled with schemata, routines, and repetition; yet, everyday life is versatile, varied, and unexpected; everyday life is made up of conflicting ingredients.
* The smallest, most usual and most self-evident texts are those that matter the most in the sense that we often fail to question the meanings they prop up.
* The essence of everyday life can be searched for in message notes, grocery packaging, road signs, advertisements, briefs, forms, etc.; no text is meaningless whilst we consider what types of meanings are conveyed through texts.
* Everyday life entails constant negotiations about meanings – a textual power struggle – and the winners are those who master the conventions of language and interaction.
As we fill our world with texts, we may turn it into an “it-world” (Martin Buber), an objectified and alienated reality, where everything observable becomes an external object. In the “it-world”, quantitative information replaces qualitative knowledge: the meaning industry is a core field of industry. Things just happen to people. People do not do, act, nor think actively on their own.
The book Tekstien arki is divided into distinct journeys to our everyday meanings:
* First journey: The boundaries between work and free time are not clear. Nor are there clear boundaries between work and home. Work entails cooperation and spending time together in we-spirit; it involves care work, interpersonal and interactive work, housework and salaried work; distance working and working on site. More and more often, work means working with different texts. Work may not necessarily be bound to a certain place or a certain time, nor is it very far from the moments when people take a pause from their work (which can be read in, e.g., the coffee table books of workplaces), or when people are away from their actual workplace (mobile phones, internet).
* Second journey: Defining space is one of the basic human needs. Outlining and “making” space are part of the interaction by which people draw the lines between ’us’ and ’them’, through which they build different borders and control space. Spaces are given names, but it is not evident what and where the names are. Spaces also include texts that allow and forbid, enable and limit people’s actions. Even these little texts involve choices based on the classification of people into, e.g., the young and the old, the fast and the slow, the handicapped and the healthy.
* Third journey: Eating and other basic needs are being created, channelled, and maintained through texts. Various (marketing) communications intrude the most private spheres of our lives. By acquiring and eating food, we become members of certain groups. For example, by printing advertisements on the table mats in workplace cafeterias and selling different things by advertising them on grocery packaging, advertisers reinforce the idea that it is ”normal” and natural to advertise anywhere, and that being a human being entails above all being a consumer.
* Fourth journey: The concept of family is defined both in families’ internal communication and in other texts, such as various forms of public administration. For example, when we look at the family through notes written by children to their parents, it may appear quite different from the family of official day-care forms. The multiplicity of the family-related texts involves the thought of the multiplicity of the family as such. You can see the family not only as a haven of peace, but also as a battlefield of dominance, conflicts, and power relations, lacking real privacy. The meanings of family are diverse, and it is by no means self-evident who belongs to “the family” at a given point of time.
* Fifth journey: Writing one’s life and turning it into a story has become popular in the present-day textual society. Autobiographical texts display the multiplicity and mosaic nature of everyday life. On the one hand, everyday life is controversial; yet, on the other hand, it can be described leaving out the less pleasant things. In stories illustrating the family and relatives, everyday life builds on marriage, parenthood, and childhood memories. The stories about people’s newspaper reading experiences show, in turn, that everyday life and the family are also built around the media: people read newspapers, play games, and watch TV together. Moreover, the routines associated with, for example, reading the newspaper help us to manage the daily flow of stimuli, which makes the everyday life feel more secure.
* Sixth journey: couple relationships and “life management” are always fashionable topics in public life. Couple relationships are not only described in feature stories and interviews, but people also try to create them through texts, e.g., by dating ads. In dating ads, people seek for partners, reinforcing, at the same time, the general conceptions of what is worth pursuing and natural: the right and desirable form of living the everyday life is that of living as a couple. The couple relationship provides fruitful material even when the everyday life and its conventions are carnevalized, as in Viivi ja Wagner (a popular Finnish cartoon, describing a woman and a pig living as a couple). Occasionally, the carnevalization in the cartoon shakes the conventional ideas of good womanhood and manhood.
* Seventh journey: News is often talked about as if it were obvious that there is a ‘news’ genre. People still take news seriously, as the truth. Yet, even the variety of briefs is extensive. Different briefs share, above all, the notion of security and everyday life they seem to offer to the readers, enabling people to look at various accidents, crimes, and administrative decisions close-up, yet from a suitable distance. The readers can let themselves be lulled into “ready-made meanings” and look for security in recursive reading experiences. Texts that are labelled as “news” reinforce the idea of an ordinary, natural reality, and things that happen there. At the same time, a piece of news reinforces the conception that the world can be observed as an outsider, as it were – and as real.
* Eighth journey: A way of pursuing happiness and security is to make texts based on “knowing”. Knowing represents a way of implementing the ideology that “we all are the architects of our own fortunes”. At the end of the 19th century, these texts often took the form of magic books, whereas now, at the beginning of the 21st century, they can be, e.g., Football Pools entries. While the magic books referred to seers as expert authorities, Football Pools entries are based on the pools tips offered in newspapers. The pursuit of happiness and security through texts also always involves the idea of misfortune and insecurity, the evil and the unknown.
Contents of the book:
Lähtö [Start]
Heikkinen, Vesa: Arkea arkeissa [Everyday lives on leaves]
I Työn liepeillä [Around work]
Lauhakangas, Outi: Harmaata on elo ÖP:ssä. Öljynpuristamon pöytäpäivyrin sitkeät sanat [Grey are the days in the OPP. Tough words at the Oil Pressure Plant]
Toriseva, Marianne: 1 VIESTI SAAPUNUT. Intiimisti kännykällä? [1MESSAGE RECEIVED. Intimately on the mobile?]
II Liikettä tilassa [Motion in space]
Halonen, Johanna: Keskusta Centrum. Opaskilvet ja paikannimien tilat [The City Centre Centrum. Signposts and spaces of place names]
Tiililä, Ulla: Paina # kun liikut hitaasti. Rentoutta ja muodollisuutta bussissa [Press # when you move slowly. Casual and formal communications on the bus]
III Pötyä pöydällä [?]
Julkunen, Verna: Luomukkaita pöytätablettinautintoja [Organic treats on the table mat]
Vanhala-Aniszewski, Marjatta: Venäjän lempeän auringon alla. Pakattuja makuja ja mielikuvia [Under the sweet sun of Russia. Packed tastes and images]
IV Perheen päitä [Heads of the family]
Kankaanpää, Salli: Hei! Äiti kuule! Nykyperhe lapsen kirjelappusessa [Hey! Listen, mom! The present-day family in a child’s message note]
Vuori, Jaana: Ilmoita perhesuhteesi! Lapsiperhe lomakkein [Indicate your family relations! Forms for families with small children]
V Elämäkertoja [Autobiographies]
Latvala, Pauliina: Siihen kun muistini ulottuu. Kertomuksia suvusta ja elämästä maalla [As far as I can remember. Tales of the family and life in the countryside]
Kärki, Anita: Aamupala loppuu aina ennen lehteä. Kertomuksia lukemisesta [You always run out of breakfast before you get to the end of the paper. Stories about reading]
VI Pikkujuttuja [Small stuff]
Tirkkonen-Condit, Sonja: Voihan pökäle! Mustavalkoista karnevaalia Viivin ja Wagnerin tapaan [Holy poop!A black-and-white carneval according to Viivi and Wagner]
Muikku-Werner, Pirkko: ”Yhteiset ilot”. Kontakteja nimimerkein [“Pleasures together”. Getting into contact under a pseudonym]
VII Tietosanomia [News releases]
Heikkinen, Vesa & Lehtinen, Outi & Lounela, Mikko: Lappeenrantalaismies löi toista nenään baarissa. Uutisia ja uutisia [A man from Lappeenranta strikes another on the nose in a bar. News and news]
VIII Onnen etsijöitä [Looking for luck]
Issakainen, Touko: Warokeino ja muita temppuja talon turvaksi. Taikoja 1800-luvulta [Precaution and other means to secure the house. Magic from the 19th century]
Heikkinen, Vesa: Ja rivit täyttyivät, voiton ja onnen odottajan rivit. Tuumiteltuja tekstejä [And the rows were filled, rows written in the quest of winning and luck.]
Translated by Marja Heikkinen
