Typographic landscape in urban space: a sociolinguistic approach
This paper suggests a sociolinguistic approach to typographic landscape analysis. Typography is discussed as a semiotic resource with meaning-making potential. The paper argues that typographic variation provides dynamic indexical links to social practice. It obtains its ‘social voice’ and becomes a...
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
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Immanuel Kant Baltic Federal University
2022-11-01
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| Series: | Слово.ру: балтийский акцент |
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| Online Access: | https://journals.kantiana.ru/slovo/5206/37846/ |
| _version_ | 1811233243659239424 |
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| author | V. E. Chernyavskaya |
| author_facet | V. E. Chernyavskaya |
| author_sort | V. E. Chernyavskaya |
| collection | DOAJ |
| description | This paper suggests a sociolinguistic approach to typographic landscape analysis. Typography is discussed as a semiotic resource with meaning-making potential. The paper argues that typographic variation provides dynamic indexical links to social practice. It obtains its ‘social voice’ and becomes an integral part of the social context in which it is perceived as typical and able to generate particular socially loaded meanings. This research is in line with contemporary social semiotics, interactional linguistics, and discourse studies and is based on typographic meaning as a key notion providing the basis for social actors’ ideological ascriptions. Typography and typographic meaning formation are discussed within modern Russian urban space. It is argued that urban area enables addressing agency and interaction aspects of social communication. The city space provides access points for observing, shaping and interpreting meanings in the social context. As cases in point, the paper discusses the typefaces such as Antiqua font used in pre-revolutionary Russia, lettering imitating the font of Soviet newspapers, Handwriting font, and Stencil font and their embeddedness in current socio-cultural practice. The analysis uses advertising, social and commercial texts. The findings indicate that typography should be considered as a social meaning which results from indexical connections of a sign and the context it is used in. Semiotification of space allows observing stronger reflexivity and, therefore, metapragmatic activity of communicants.
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| first_indexed | 2024-04-12T11:17:47Z |
| format | Article |
| id | doaj.art-4228fc42d4c8430f91dc69978c09d611 |
| institution | Directory Open Access Journal |
| issn | 2225-5346 2686-8989 |
| language | English |
| last_indexed | 2024-04-12T11:17:47Z |
| publishDate | 2022-11-01 |
| publisher | Immanuel Kant Baltic Federal University |
| record_format | Article |
| series | Слово.ру: балтийский акцент |
| spelling | doaj.art-4228fc42d4c8430f91dc69978c09d6112022-12-22T03:35:27ZengImmanuel Kant Baltic Federal UniversityСлово.ру: балтийский акцент2225-53462686-89892022-11-01134718410.5922/2225-5346-2022-4-5Typographic landscape in urban space: a sociolinguistic approachV. E. Chernyavskaya 0Immanuel Kant Baltic Federal University This paper suggests a sociolinguistic approach to typographic landscape analysis. Typography is discussed as a semiotic resource with meaning-making potential. The paper argues that typographic variation provides dynamic indexical links to social practice. It obtains its ‘social voice’ and becomes an integral part of the social context in which it is perceived as typical and able to generate particular socially loaded meanings. This research is in line with contemporary social semiotics, interactional linguistics, and discourse studies and is based on typographic meaning as a key notion providing the basis for social actors’ ideological ascriptions. Typography and typographic meaning formation are discussed within modern Russian urban space. It is argued that urban area enables addressing agency and interaction aspects of social communication. The city space provides access points for observing, shaping and interpreting meanings in the social context. As cases in point, the paper discusses the typefaces such as Antiqua font used in pre-revolutionary Russia, lettering imitating the font of Soviet newspapers, Handwriting font, and Stencil font and their embeddedness in current socio-cultural practice. The analysis uses advertising, social and commercial texts. The findings indicate that typography should be considered as a social meaning which results from indexical connections of a sign and the context it is used in. Semiotification of space allows observing stronger reflexivity and, therefore, metapragmatic activity of communicants. https://journals.kantiana.ru/slovo/5206/37846/typographytypographic meaninglandscapesociolinguistics |
| spellingShingle | V. E. Chernyavskaya Typographic landscape in urban space: a sociolinguistic approach Слово.ру: балтийский акцент typography typographic meaning landscape sociolinguistics |
| title | Typographic landscape in urban space: a sociolinguistic approach |
| title_full | Typographic landscape in urban space: a sociolinguistic approach |
| title_fullStr | Typographic landscape in urban space: a sociolinguistic approach |
| title_full_unstemmed | Typographic landscape in urban space: a sociolinguistic approach |
| title_short | Typographic landscape in urban space: a sociolinguistic approach |
| title_sort | typographic landscape in urban space a sociolinguistic approach |
| topic | typography typographic meaning landscape sociolinguistics |
| url | https://journals.kantiana.ru/slovo/5206/37846/ |
| work_keys_str_mv | AT vechernyavskaya typographiclandscapeinurbanspaceasociolinguisticapproach |