A thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of - Etheses - Queen Margaret ...

argues, by the repetitive, structured patterns experienced by individuals within everyday life,
through having their gaze constantly directed and focussed upon objects already known or
experienced (even if only generally) so that the individual‟s look is always at what is to some
extent already familiar. It is unnecessary with each new perception of an object to re-learn
what that object specifically is, for it is recognised as belonging to a type already partially
known. If it becomes important its details will come into focus later on. The familiar natures
of objects and relations perceived within emerging everyday experience enable anticipation
of what things are like. As Wilson notes:
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as they thus constitute the familiarity of a life-world, horizons allow a cultural
knowledge to be used and (apparently) confirmed. (Wilson, 2005:17).
Individuals inhabit everyday life-worlds of pre-given familiarities, assumptions and
perceptions as the spheres of taken-for-granted, common sense knowledge. Things are
regarded as being the way they are because, apparently, that is the way they just are. Because
life-worlds are encountered „naturally‟ their character is experienced unreflectively and
uncritically. In the quotidian, nature and culture appear as indistinguishable (Bauman, 2001).
The life-world is where physical bodies turn into cultural objects „as people whose physical
movements are then meaningful acts, gestures and communication‟ (Husserl, quoted in
Wilson, 2005:17). It involves the embodiment of the subject within a structure of
expectations, roles, routines and behaviours perceived as unproblematic and made
unremarkable by familiarity. The life-world exists within horizons which mark out familiar
assumptions as obvious in that they:
provide the basis (and limits) of justifications in verbal discourse which refer to this
level of the seemingly unproblematic... These are significant limits, since cognitive
horizons of understanding implied by speech, writing and vision are... inflected by
ideology (Wilson, 2005:18).
Wilson suggests that broadcast media, and particularly TV, resist innovation by offering
audiences unending opportunities to recognise the familiar. TV re-presents to its intended
viewers „their horizons of experience, their role-based needs, desires and their perceptions of
what is rational‟ (Wilson, 2005:21). It draws on and maintains a set of cognitive horizons of
understanding within existing life-worlds, constructing its on-screen artefacts as „a well-
known presence within the viewer‟s life-world through frequent repetition of form, character
and content‟ (Wilson, 2005:20). He argues that programmes such as talk shows, current
affairs discussions and the news: