The Nature of Writing. A Theory of Grapholinguistics

Meletis, Dimitrios

doi:10.36824/2020-meletis

Cited by 25 publications

(8 citation statements)

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“…Cardona 1986Cardona , 1991Olson 1994;Coulmas 1996Coulmas , 2003Coulmas , 2020Daniels & Bright, 1996;Valeri, 2001;Iannà ccaro, 2005;Arcangeli, 2007, pp. 29-50;Haarmann, 2002;Rogers, 2005;Baines, Bennet & Houston, 2008;Sanga, 2009;Banfi & Grandi, 2012;Sampson, 2016;Cotticelli-Kurras & Rizza, 2017;Daniels, 2018;Meletis, 2020; and the rich bibliography of Ehlich et alii, 1996). By doing so, even if the details of writing system change could be quite complicated, and not always easy to be thoroughly investigated, we should anyway be able to underline some recurrent trends that regulate the entire process.…”

Section: On Writing Systems Shift Typologymentioning

confidence: 99%

Shifting Between Writing Systems: Some Linguistic Remarks and Typological Observations

Scarpanti¹

2022

IJL

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Just like human languages, also writing systems tend to change in diachrony, and sometimes they are substituted by new ones, in a process that we can call writing systems shift. The way this process takes place is determined by many conditions, which are here briefly described and discussed. Some recurrent facts suggest that a script shift is a linguistic phenomenon which is strongly marked, and which needs both a strong motivation, inside the speaking community, and a strong motivator, outside the same community. Despite some previous thoughts, in fact, it’s possible that choosing a new writing system is not simply the consequence of an evolution towards a “better” or “more adapt” system, but rather a more general matter of linguistic identity, which involves the whole speaking community.

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Section: On Writing Systems Shift Typologymentioning

confidence: 99%

Shifting Between Writing Systems: Some Linguistic Remarks and Typological Observations

Scarpanti¹

2022

IJL

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“…Note the crucial difference between the concepts of script and writing system (cf. Coulmas 1996;Meletis 2020a). A script is defined here as a set of graphic basic shapes that is used for the writing system(s) of one or multiple language(s).…”

Section: Notesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“Is your font racist?” Metapragmatic online discourses on the use of typographic mimicry and its appropriateness

Meletis

2021

Social Semiotics

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Typographic mimicry is the wrapping of writing in a "foreign dress," i.e. the use of typefaces in which one's script (e.g. Latin) is made to visually resemble a different script (e.g. Chinese) with the goal of evoking associations with a "foreign" culture. First, this paper addresses the formal aspects of this practice, specifically the choice of visual features to be mimicked. The core part then focuses on typographic mimicry as a social practice and includes a discussion of both the typographic knowledge that different actorsboth lay and expert producers and recipientsmust apply to establish and recognise the associated cultural indexicality and the typographic ideologies (i.e. beliefs and attitudes) these actors hold. The central question being investigated is how typographic mimicry is discursively negotiated. An exemplary metapragmatic discourse analysis of online reactions to a food ad and comments to two articles covering the topic catered at readers with different knowledge backgrounds highlights that typographic mimicry is not a "neutral" practice. It shows that central aspects being debated are the (re)appropriation of cultural stereotypes by users both outside and within the respective cultures and the related question of whether using typographic mimicry is generally (in)appropriate (or even racist).

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“…The most thoroughgoing explorations of parallels between natural language grammar and writing system structure are Myers (2019) and Meletis (2020); the latter, a typological survey, the former, a study of Chinese characters. Both map extensive correlations between grammatical and graphic systems.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The puzzle of ideography

Morin

2022

Behav Brain Sci

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An ideography is a general-purpose code made of pictures that do not encode language, which can be used autonomously – not just as a mnemonic prop – to encode information on a broad range of topics. Why are viable ideographies so hard to find? I contend that self-sufficient graphic codes need to be narrowly specialized. Writing systems are only an apparent exception: at their core, they are notations of a spoken language. Even if they also encode non-linguistic information, they are useless to someone who lacks linguistic competence in the encoded language or a related one. The versatility of writing is thus vicarious: writing borrows it from spoken language. Why is it so difficult to build a fully generalist graphic code? The most widespread answer points to a learnability problem. We possess specialized cognitive resources for learning spoken language, but lack them for graphic codes. I argue in favor of a different account: what is difficult about graphic codes is not so much learning or teaching them as getting every user to learn and teach the same code. This standardization problem does not affect spoken or signed languages as much. Those are based on cheap and transient signals, allowing for easy online repairing of miscommunication, and require face-to-face interactions where the advantages of common ground are maximized. Graphic codes lack these advantages, which makes them smaller in size and more specialized.

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The Nature of Writing. A Theory of Grapholinguistics

Cited by 25 publications

References 0 publications

Shifting Between Writing Systems: Some Linguistic Remarks and Typological Observations

Shifting Between Writing Systems: Some Linguistic Remarks and Typological Observations

“Is your font racist?” Metapragmatic online discourses on the use of typographic mimicry and its appropriateness

The puzzle of ideography

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