Den multimodala sakprosan

The reason why the term sakprosa, imprecisely translated as non-fiction, is, in fact, untranslatable into English, is the prefix “sak” (German: Sach), with the approximate meaning “subject”, “case”, or even “thing”. Hence, in these concluding remarks to the book The Discourse of Things, the Scandinavian idiom is recommended as a foreign word to English, as has happened with the idiom “ombudsman”. It is argued that the concept is well fit to discuss and strengthen the quality of socially and culturally important texts in a democratic-ethical perspective. An appropriate understanding of sakprosa texts can be achieved through five metaphorical topoi: (a) the city: a complex textual system of debating publics and common private fora, (b) the anthill: a multitude of everyday activities that are handled through texts, (c) the choir: multi-voiced texts that shed light on the phenomena in question, based on different skills and temperaments, (d) the thing site: where judgments are shared and decisions are made about the future and (e) the borderland. The recent book’s empirical and theoretical studies are commented on and placed in these four topoi, related to a thorough discussion around the author’s own proposal for a definition of the Concept of sakprosa (CPS): “Sakprosa are texts that the addressee has reasons to perceive as direct utterances about reality”, as well as to his division of CPS in literary sakprosa, belonging to the literary institution, and functional sakprosa, which make up the vast majority of texts in today’s societies.

Section: The Choirmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Hopefully, perspectives from sakprosa research can inspire experts in e.g., musical, and visual communication and vice versa. As "interaction with other sign systems" indicates, multimodal texts should not be excluded, quite the contrary (Ledin et al 2019).…”

Section: Descriptiveness Versus Normativitymentioning

confidence: 99%

Concluding Remarks: The Power and Potential of the Concept Sakprosa (CPS): A Guided Tour Through Five Topoi

Tønnesson

2023

Introduction

Höög

Rahm

Hammerstad

2023

This book deals with the Nordic tradition of sakprosa studies, and the role of complex written texts in an increasingly diverse and dynamic society. Since 2009, the journal Sakprosa—a Nordic publication based in Oslo—has been publishing articles on different aspects of applied linguistics, rhetoric, textual studies, discourse analysis, literature studies, educational studies, communication and adjoining disciplines. The word sakprosa is a compound noun, where the first part sak is a rather polysemic word which means ‘thing’ (or ‘issue’, ‘case’, ‘subject’) and the second part means ‘prose’. Thus, the literal meaning is prose (texts) about things. Common translations are non-fictional prose, subject oriented texts or subject-oriented prose as well as non-literary prose. We use the Scandinavian noun sakprosa as it incorporates all these meanings. The six chapters of this book bring forth different aspects of the concept sakprosa—the text-theoretical framework for Scandinavian sakprosa research, CSR-reporting, changes of sakprosa culture because of the digitizing of communication, a study of a master programme for sakprosa writing, crisis information from a public authority and a concluding summary which re-visits all the chapters and reflects on their contributions to the field of sakprosa studies.

Texts as Cultural Artefacts: Theoretical Challenges to Empirical Research on Utterances and Texts

Berge

Ledin

2023

This chapter presents a theory of texts often used in Scandinavian “sakprosa” research. In the chapter, the constitutive features of any text are presented. It is shown how the text as a cultural artefact has the quality of and at the same time being a unique utterance and instantiating a text norm. In the text theory presented, text is part of a text culture, to which other text sharing similar norms belong. Thus, a “text” is conceived as an utterance that competent participants in a specific cultural time and space assign a certain cultural value.