Tekstuaaliseen

Tekstuaaliseen is a Finnish adjective form meaning “textual” or “text-based.” It is the inflected form of the base adjective tekstuaalinen, used to describe things relating to text, textuality, or written material. In Finnish, adjectives agree with the noun they modify in number and case, so tekstuaalinen has various inflected forms such as tekstuaalisen (genitive), tekstuaalista (partitive), and tekstuaaliseen (illative), among others. The illative form tekstuaaliseen is commonly used with nouns in phrases indicating movement toward or immersion in a textual context, for example tekstuaaliseen kontekstiin meaning “into a textual context.”

Usage and meaning: The term appears across humanities and social sciences to discuss features, structures, or contexts of texts. It is frequently paired with related concepts like tekstuaalisuus (textuality) or tekstuaalinen analyysi (textual analysis) to emphasize aspects that pertain specifically to text as a written artifact and to its interpretation, rather than to material, media, or paratext. In literary studies, media studies, linguistics, and digital humanities, tekstuaalinen is used to describe phenomena such as narrative structures, stylistic features, or the relationship between a text and its readers.

Etymology: The word is formed from teksti (text) and the adjectival suffix -uaalinen, which indicates pertaining to or characteristic of something. The form tekstuaaliseen is one of several case-specific inflections that Finnish uses to express grammatical relations.

See also: Teksti, Tekstuaalisuus, Tekstuaalinen analyysi.