Approaching typographic variation

Abstract

This article introduces a linguistic approach to typography which is based on (interactional) sociolinguistic and metapragmatic theories of communicative variation that is located in the rather new sociolinguistic strand called the sociolinguistics of writing. Within the framework clarified here, typography, and graphic design in general, is understood as a variable perceptible resource which provides, by means of its reference-indeterminate variability, options for the ascription and interactive contextual construal of social (or indexical) meaning. As will be elaborated upon, the approach draws on the assumption that such social meaning is not inherent to communicative forms, but the result of discursively shared (enregistered) and thus unevenly distributed and hence contextually differing expectations, beliefs and assumptions (graphic ideologies). The work introduces a range of basic notions that are needed for the linguistic investigation in typography (typography, typographic scales, text design, multimodality), sketches the scope of linguistic investigations into typographic design on the background of different functions of typographic variation, locates the sociolinguistic approach vis-a-vis other linguistic approaches to typography, introduces the basic notions on which a sociolinguistics of typography is built (graphic variation, graphic knowledge, enregisterment, and graphic ideologies) and finally exemplifies the approach by means of examples from Germanspeaking discourse.