In literary theory, a text is anything that we can use to communicate information, messages, stories, ideas and feelings. It can be consumed, analysed, interpreted and understood by us and other people. It’s anything that we make meaning from – anything that gives us messages, thoughts and feelings when we engage with it.
You don’t have to be able to read it for it to be considered a text. You can watch or hear it. In fact, you use any of your senses to engage with it! As long as it’s communicating some sort of meaning to you, that’s all that counts.
That means that “text” doesn’t just mean words on a page. It doesn’t only refer to the things people can send you on your phone, either – although both of those examples do count!
Here are just a few of the examples of what we might be talking about when we say the word “text”:
- Novels
- Poems
- Films
- Plays
- Speeches
- School Textbooks
- Post-It Note Reminders
- Architecture
- Paintings
- Fashion
- Conversations
- Blog Posts
There are hundreds of other things that we would technically call a text, too. It’s all about being able to analyse it and make meaning.
Even that urinal in the Tate Modern counts as a text. That’s because it forces people to think about what it means to put a urinal in a posh art museum and force posh people to look at it.
As you’ve probably realised, the word “text” has a lot in common with the way we use the word “art”. It’s even broader, though. When you’re making art, it suggests you’re trying very hard to give it a profound, important message. With text, though, it doesn’t matter how profound the message is. As long as someone interprets meaning from it, it counts