Det ’gamla huset’ - En undersökning av hur gamla hus verbaliseras i narrativa hemma-hos-reportage i tidskrifterna Sköna Hem och Gård och Torp åren 1979 - 2011

Abstract

This essay examines how old houses verbalized and visualized in printed media. The study are limited to examining at‐home‐reports in two Swedish journals, Sköna Hem and Gård och Torp at the period from 1979 – 2011. Al together has about 40 reports examined. Today, media is occupies an increasingly important role as mediators of our old buildings. Conscious choice is made in the journal of what is presented and thus represented old houses. These inclusions also create standards for values and become normative for the society. Also the fact that the media uses the heritage in form of old houses to promote them selves, implies a commodification of the built heritage and a market profit is a problem that become visible in today’s society. The propose is to visibility how old houses are represented in print media, the analysis also aims to raise a discussion on the normative production made for old houses in magazine, which in a broader context also includes the discourse of our heritage. The study is using a discursive theory to examine the reports and to get an objective results as possible. I also use the representation theory to highlight the problem of representation as a window to the reality. The results show mainly that it is a distorted view of building that is represent, one examples is that building’s exterior rarely gets much attention and gets therefore not neither a high evaluative, and at the same time gets the owners a lot of attention in both text and pictures. The study has helped to draw attention to the fact that printed media has a major impact on the valuation through its representation of old houses in magazines. It has also reveals how the built heritage is presented and appears in a broader discourse.