Realiteetit

Realiteetit is the plural form of realiteetti, a Finnish noun used mainly in academic and public discourse to refer to realities in a nuanced or constructed sense. It denotes different modes, constructions, or levels of reality, such as social, cultural, or epistemic realities. In everyday Finnish, todellisuus is more common for the everyday sense of reality.

Realiteetti is a loanword adopted into Finnish from other European languages to express the concept of reality. The word is formed with the Finnish derivational suffix -teetti, and its plural form is realiteetit. The term is largely confined to formal or theoretical contexts.

Usage of realiteetit appears in philosophy, sociology, media studies, and discourse analysis to distinguish between various realities shaped by institutions, discourse, and perception. In media contexts, the concept can describe multiple realities presented by texts, and the compound realiteettiohjelma refers to a reality show. The plural form realiteetit allows discussion of several distinct realities within a single framework.

In practice, researchers analyze how different groups experience different realiteetit of politics, economy, health, or everyday life, highlighting that reality is not a single, uniform thing but a set of interacting constructions. The term thus complements but does not replace todellisuus in Finnish, offering a more specialized lens for analysis of how realities are produced and maintained.

See also: todellisuus, realismi, realiteettiohjelma, konstruktionismi.