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Typography and discourse
... and (iii) variations in layout (e.g., indentation, boxing, alignment, bullet points, text shape, use of pictures) and typography (see Table 1.1), which distinguish content visually (Lemarie et al., 2008;Lorch, 1989;Sanford et al., 2006). Unlike other focus mechanisms that are shared across modes of communication (e.g., particles, syntactic position) or are specific to speech (e.g., prosodic stress), focussignaling devices available only in written language, and more specifically, typographic emphasis, have been greatly overlooked within linguistic inquiry (Waller, 1991;Slattery, 2016). Written language has been traditionally described by analogy with features of spoken texts, which has contributed to the general view that the former is unsystematic and deficient in relation to speech in many respects (McAteer, 1989;Nunberg, 1980). ...
... Divergence from this common pattern across the reviewed studies could be explained, according to the author, in terms of different performance measures, the complexity of the typographic manipulations that were made, and the proportions of emphasized content within the employed materials. As directions for future studies, Lorch claimed that a better understanding of the similarities and differences among the different forms of 1 Other typographic studies available in the literature have also approached the topic from the perspectives of (i) the global structuring of a text (Waller, 1991), (ii) readers' assessments of the connotations of typography (Doyle & Bottomley, 2009;Larson & Picard, 2005), (iii) punctuation (Nunberg, 1990), and (iv) translation studies (Saldanha, 2011). However, these lines of research are not particularly relevant to my immediate purposes here because very few deal with typographic emphasis, and researchers that did approach typography as a means to create visual differentiation were not interested in psycholinguistic questions. ...
The standard view of the effects of typographic emphasis in English is that type styles (e.g., capitals, italics) enhance memory for emphasized information to the detriment of reading speed and without contributing semantically or pragmatically meaningful information to the text. Fewer emphasis studies that have concerned themselves with reference questions offer off-line evidence that typography interacts with linguistic variables and, more specifically, that it adds a modulatory or a contrastive layer of meaning to the interpretation of referential expressions. No study to date has investigated, however, whether typographic emphasis can bring a referent into discourse focus and consequently affect the processing of co-referential expressions (e.g., repeated names, pronouns). This study provides on-line evidence for the visual-emphatic, contrastive, and discourse focus effects of typographic emphasis during normal silent reading in English by means of two eye-tracking experiments manipulating capitals and italics in cohesive pieces of discourse. A data-driven case is made that typographic emphasis is a visible carrier of content that serves a linguistic function in the text.
... Arbeiten wie die von Waller (1996), Bucher (2007) und Hyland (2005 stellen also die Rolle der Typographie als textstrukturierendes Mittel auf der operationalen Ebene heraus. Dabei lassen sie jedoch den Versuch vermissen, diese dezidiert im Rahmen des sprachlichen Texthandelns, genauer im Rahmen der Illokutionsstruktur von Texten zu verorten, die in Arbeiten wie der von Motsch (1996) systematisch erforscht wurde.24 ...
Using the example of newspaper headlines, this paper develops a speech-act theoretic approach to aspects of meaning that can be communicated through the use of typographic means. After considering, more generally, the relationship between speech act theory and writing, analogies between prosody and typography are discussed and the claim is developed that typographic means, just as prosodic means, may function as illocutionary force indicating devices. Using Gallmann’s (1985) system of graphic means, newspaper headlines are defined, more specifically, as typographic objects indicating the (meta-textual) illocution type of an announcement of the text topic. Finally, the relationship between the grammatically determined illocution of a (sentential) headline and its typographically determined meta-textual illocution is modeled, on the basis of Searle’s (1982b) account of fictional speech acts, as an interplay of „vertical“ and „horizontal“ rules. The paper closes with a discussion of the more general question whether typographic acts are speech acts.
... Some of this is summarized as part of a broader discussion of describing graphic aspects of language in Walker (2001). In particular, Waller's work on reader-focused notions of accessibility and structure in relation to graphic genre demonstrates the value of approaching documents on a number of levels (see Waller, 1987aWaller, , 1987bWaller, , 1991. His work was developed further by the GeM project and this is reflected in our consideration of 'macro-structural' elements (see Delin, Bateman and Allen, 2002). ...
Este artigo apresenta uma abordagem de descrio para o design de livros. Constitui parte de um projeto,cujo objetivo desenvolver uma abordagem de descrio para identificar caractersticas visuais tpicas emlivros de leitura e informao para crianas no perodo de 1830 a 1960, de forma a identificar abordagensdiferenciadas e inovadoras de design e identificar modificaes ao longo do tempo. Ele prope a descrio deelementos de design nos nveis macro e micro no que concerne a estrutura do documento e articulao docontedo, tipografia e atributos materiais. Nas descries resultantes, prope-se que esses elementosdeveriam ser discutidos em relao ao contexto de uso que afeta as decises de design. [ Download ]
... The third version of the syllabus can be seen below in All three versions of the syllabus contain the same lexical content, presented in considerably different ways. Waller (1991) comments that "It is reasonable to suppose that anything about a text which is discernable to readers may affect their perception of the status of a document and consequently their expectations, critical stance, reading strategies, goals, and outcomes" (p. 344). ...
Design is often thought of as a set of aesthetic principles applied to enhance the form of an artifact. However, at its core, design is a way to solve problems and improve quality of life. Document design, for instance, focuses on improving the efficiency with which a document communicates information to the reader. As design principles are applied, both form and function benefit, creating a pleasant experience for the reader. Document design may affect readers in areas not connected with the content itself. The current study aims to examine the effect of document design on language learners' assessments of their teachers and institutions. Three versions of a syllabus were created with varying levels of design principles applied. Participants were given the syllabi in random order and instructed to rate both the institution where the class is held and the teacher who created the syllabus. Results indicated a significant difference in the ratings for both the teacher and university.
... 3 Picking up where the review paper left off, Lorch, Lorch and Klusewitz (1995) report on two experiments designed to examine (i) the impact of amount of emphasised material on memory, (ii) the influence of typographic differentiation on information that is not emphasised, and (iii) the distribution of attention during reading of emphasised text material. The first experiment addressed the first two questions by employing a 4-page, single-spaced expository text, which was edited to yield three typographic emphasis 3 Other typographic studies have also approached the topic from the perspectives of (i) the global structuring of a text (Waller, 1991), (ii) readers' assessments of the connotations of typography (Doyle & Bottomley, 2009;Larson & Picard, 2005), and (iii) translation studies (Saldanha, 2011). However, these lines of research are not particularly relevant to my purposes because very few deal with typographic emphasis, and the studies that do approach typography as a means to create visual differentiation are not interested in psycholinguistic questions. ...
Writing is an eclectic phenomenon whose many facets are studied by the young interdisciplinary field of grapholinguistics. Linguistically, writing is a system of graphic marks that relate to language. Under the lens of processing, it is a method of producing and perceiving utterances with our hands, eyes, and brains. And from a communication theoretical and sociolinguistic perspective, it is an utterly personal medium that allows users not only to convey messages to others but also to associate themselves with cultures or ideologies. These perspectives must merge to become the foundation of a functional theory of grapholinguistics that aims not only to describe how writing systems are built but to explain why they are built that way. Starting with a unified framework that allows the description of all types of writing systems with comparative concepts (such as grapheme) and moving towards the incorporation of evidence from disciplines such as psycholinguistics and sociolinguistics to arrive at explanations, this book establishes the cornerstones of such a functional theory of writing. The Nature of Writing is a collection of ideas about writing, a status report about relevant research, a discovery of desiderata, and a new perspective. It is a start, but most importantly, it is an invitation.
The grapheme appears to be a central concept of grapholinguistics. However, there is no consensus on how it should be defined. Some use the concept of grapheme in their work but fail to give a definition while others altogether reject it. When the concept is defined, it is interpreted either as a written unit which refers to a phoneme (this is termed the referential view), or as a written unit that is lexically distinctive (analogical view), which is tested via written minimal pairs such as and analogously to phonological minimal pairs which can be used to discover phonemes. A problem of these two views is that they are restricted to alphabets. A universal conception of the grapheme inclusive of all types of writing systems would make possible the uniform description and, consequently, the comparison of diverse writing systems. Such a conception is proposed here: Graphemes are units of writing which are (1) lexically distinctive, (2) have linguistic value (mostly by referring to phonemes, syllables, morphemes, etc.), and are (3) minimal. These criteria are characterised in detail, and examples from writing systems such as Arabic, Chinese, Devanāgarī, German, Japanese, Korean, Tamil, and Thai highlight their cross-linguistic applicability.
This chapter describes the role of research in typography and graphic communication and in information design that is relevant to the design and use of materials for children’s reading. By ‘design’ in this context we mean ‘typography’ (which is the visual organisation of type and pictures on paper or screen), and ‘process’ (the ways in which design is developed in order to make sure that what is designed works for its intended reader group). We summarise issues that designers consider when they are producing reading materials for beginning and emerging readers, including the constraints imposed by technology. We suggest ways of engaging with users of e-books so that their needs can be considered. We conclude by summarising the typographic parameters that are likely to benefit children’s reading.
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