Ways of Speaking on Norwegian Radio 1935-1980 A Study of Text Norm Evolution WENCHE VAGLE Within research on media discourse, the in- radio texts that have been produced and terest in the historical dimension has been transmitted up through the decades. The growing over the last decade or so. There radios text norms is an indirect route to is an awareness that mass media genres the social settings and functions that this change over time. However, empirical re- medium has fostered, and ultimately to its search on historical shifts in meaning pat- cultural significance. If genres are the terns in mass media discourse is just begin- drive belts from the history of society to ning to emerge. A minute part of this fresh the history of language (Bakhin, quoted ground will be covered in this article, from Fairclough 1992:126), then the his- which reports from an on-going research tory of a society can be surveyed through project on text conventions in radio discourse. the evolution of its genre system, as it is More precisely, the issue to be addressed is articulated by shifts in communicative pat- the unfolding of ways of speaking on terns. Norwegian public service radio in the pe- This article will present the over-all riod 19351980, which roughly covers the scope of a project with the working title era of The Norwegian Broadcasting Cor- Diachronic Shifts in Radio Discourse. Lin- porations (NRK) broadcasting monopoly guistic Interaction and Time-Space Trans- in Norway. What was referred to as text con- formations in Norwegian Radio 1935- ventions above can be rendered more tech- 1980. Given the mid-way status of the nically as text norms, which form a sub- project, priority will be given to theoretical group of social norms. More informally, they framework, problem area and investigation can be given as ways of meaning. They techniques. Nevertheless, there is also constitute registers and genres. An important room for preliminary findings and illustrat- subset of the radios ways of meaning is ing excerpts from Norwegian radio texts its ways of speaking, and it is these that (included in a separate appendix). Finally, are inspected in my study.1 the following question is raised: What does My claim is that revealing facets of the it mean when meaning patterns on the ra- radio mediums cultural impact can be un- dio change? Answers are sought in the covered via an examination of its text norms technological and socio-historical context as they shine through in the succession of of the radio medium more specifically: 183 in the communicative tasks and responsi- which are essential for the manufacture and opera- bilities that radio broadcasting has taken on tion of the equipment and for its use as well (Ong in Norway. 1990:136). Previous Research on Starting from the conclusion of my prior research on radio discourse, that broad- Present-Day Radio Talk casting has given rise to its own text strate- My interest in the historical growth of gies so that it is no longer relevant to treat speaking patterns on the radio springs the language of the air as a parallel to the from a small-scaled survey of Norwegian printed word, the present study sets about radio magazine talk in the mid-1980s (Vag- to trace the genesis of linguistic radio reg- le 1990a, 1990b, 1991 & 1992). That study isters. This endavour will outline some disclosed a heterogeneous picture of dif- phases in secondary orality: namely those ferent radio situations expressed through that are voiced by Norwegian radio in the more or less distinct linguistic registers. It period 1935 till 1980. turned out that these registers could be lo- cated along a somewhat disordered con- Wider Implications tinuum from basically written registers (in all but the oral reading delivery) via differ- of Object of Study ent mixtures of spoken and written lan- I have stated that renewals in the radios guage to basically spoken registers (with text norm repertoire represent a revealing some preplanning of topical structure). object of study because they furnish an in- The scale materialised when the different direct path to the social situations and text types in the corpus, identified on the functions that this medium has brought basis of situational criteria, were ranked by about, and thereby also to its cultural im- frequency counts of spoken and written port. In order to substantiate this claim, I parameters. In passing, it can be noted that need to sketch a couple of theoretical ar- these results are in agreement with other guments from communication theory, so- observations on radio language as a blend ciosemiotics and action theory. Some of of speaking and writing (cp Tannen 1989: the theoretical points will come to a fuller 150ff, Lindblad 1985, Jonsson 1982, Nord- view in page 186 on theoretical framework. berg 1991, Lomheim 1987, Berge 1990: 53). The spoken-written continuum that was roughed out in my former study can Radio Situations be seen as an outer face of secondary ora- Let me start with the gist of Joshua lity, which is a displaced and hybrid orality, Meyrowitz (1985) and Anthony Giddens marked by planned spontaneity (Silver- (1990) observation on mass media and mo- stone 1991:148f). In Walter Ongs wording: dernity: The influence of modern media on social behaviour and society stems from This new orality has striking resemblances to the old the new spatio-temporal configurations of in its participatory mystique, its fostering of a com- the communicating parties that have been munal sense, its concentration on the present mo- brought to earth by the media industrys ment, and even in its use of formulas. But it is es- application of modern communication sentially a more deliberate and self-conscious orality, technology. With this insight as a point of based permanently on the use of writing and print, departure, the radio situation can be cha- 184 racterised and distinguished from other lights) and norms established by convention communication situations on the basis of for situated use of sign systems in commu- two factors: 1) the special set-ups of the nication (such as text norms). Advanced sign communicative coordinates of time, space systems that include both a lexicon and a and participants that have been facilitated grammar (or their equivalents), of which by the appliance of radio technology for human language is the prototypical one, broadcasting purposes, and 2) the types of command yet another semiotic resource: social, i.e. communicative, functions that the ability to fuse instantiations of single integrate such situations. Let us put these signs into complex wholes, i.e. texts, and two factors under scrutiny in order to iden- thereby generate an infinite array of novel, tify the mechanisms through which they agglomorated meanings (cp Lundsten influence the radios ways of meaning. forthcoming). In addition, technological This will also bring us to the issue of the and technical layers might be involved radios cultural impact. both technology for reproducing, storing, and transmitting semiotically coded infor- mation (such as writing, Morse and notes), as Communication and Mediation well as secondary technology that opens This is the slot in my argument where I up to further transgression of spatio-tem- need to make a detour to communication poral boundaries (such as print media and theoretical deliberations. According to the electronic media). These diverse mediation phenomenological framework that I am strata interconnect so that physical, per- working with, communication involves one ceptual, and technical properties impose party who presents a states of affairs, an certain limits that need to be respected in intentional object tied to her conscious- the formation of semiotic medium phe- ness, to another party by way of a medium nomena. Apart from this ontological bind- (or more media). It is a necessary condition ing, it is the social functions the commu- for communication to occure that the nicative tasks, purposes and intended ef- other party provides an uptake, i.e. that she fects for the undertaking of which actors apprehends the states of affairs in question employ semiotic systems and conventions on the basis of the mediated presentation that determine the genesis of semiotic that was made by addressor (cp Lundsten resources. forthcoming). Being a mental phenom- enon, a communicative act needs to be car- Text Norms Mediate ried by a physical medium in order to be perceivable. Mediation in itself is not par- Social Situations and Functions ticular to communicative acts: All action is The point that I want to make by way of mediated. What is specific to communica- this excursion to the composite nature of tive acts, stemming from their mental na- communication mediation, is the fact that ture, is the complexity of their mediation. among all the tiers of mediation involved, It consists, not only of physical and per- it is the conventional norms for communi- ceptual layers (sound or light waves and cative use of sign systems, notably text perceptual qualities connected to the hu- norms, that respond the most directly to so- man perceptual-cognitive apparatus), but cial situation and function. (Sign systems also of normatively based semiotic ones: themselves, for example natural languages, sign systems (such as language and traffic also adapt to the jobs and settings that they 185 are taken into use to convey, but that is a will also lay bare in what way the radios much slower process.) Hence, it is on the ways of speaking realise the specific so- semiotic level of text norms that one will cial settings engendered by this broadcast- find the imprints left by the radio situa- ing medium and thereby manifest its cul- tions origos of time, space and partici- tural meaning.