For a Phenomenology of Radio and Television

Abstract

This article begins to explore the conditions of the intelligibility of the broadcast output of radio and television. The issue is posed from the point of view of everyday life. It takes as its starting point the obvious fact that radio and television are treated by everyone as part of the taken-for-granted furniture of ordinary, daily existence. In this context television and radio appear as unproblematically and meaningfully available for anyone and everyone. How it is that they so appear in this way is what this article attempts to illuminate. It draws upon a range of overlapping disciplines with a common interest in the intelligibility of the social practices of everyday life: the sociology of interaction, ethnomethodology and conversation analysis, and the pragmatics and philosophy of ordinary language. It is most pervasively influenced by Heidegger's (1962) ontological analysis of ordinary existence as being-in-the-world, the theme of Division One of Being and Time.

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