Books by Dimitrios Meletis
Writing is an eclectic phenomenon whose many facets are studied by the young interdisciplinary fi... more 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.
Der Genitiv der Negation (GenNeg) ist ein für slawische Sprachen typisches linguistisches Phänome... more Der Genitiv der Negation (GenNeg) ist ein für slawische Sprachen typisches linguistisches Phänomen, das im Russischen in zwei syntaktischen Positionen auftritt, in denen es jeweils mit einem anderen Kasus konkurriert: in der Subjektposition mit dem Nominativ, in der Objektposition mit dem Akkusativ. Diese Kasuskonkurrenzen stellen LinguistInnen seit über hundert Jahren vor mehrere herausfordernde Fragestellungen, von denen diese Publikation eine zentrale behandelt: In welchen Kontexten ist der GenNeg erlaubt und welcher Bedeutungsunterschied ergibt sich durch die genannten Kasusalternationen? Nachdem in einem umfangreichen Theorieteil zunächst der russische Genitiv besprochen und die relevantesten semantischen, teils auch syntaktischen Forschungsansätze zum GenNeg präsentiert werden, sollen ebendiese anhand einer qualitativen Analyse ausgewählter Beispiele aus der Fachliteratur auf ihre Gültigkeit getestet werden. Zusätzlich werden analoge Sprachstrukturen aus dem russischen Nationalkorpus sowie Grammatikalitätsurteile von L1-SprecherInnen des Russischen herangezogen, um zu überprüfen, inwiefern die Beispiele der sprachlichen Realität gerecht werden. Es wird gezeigt, dass Nomen, die eine GenNeg-Markierung erlauben, folgende Merkmale aufweisen: Einerseits fehlt ihnen eine relative Existenz-/Präsenzpräsupposition, d. h. es wird nicht davon ausgegangen, dass der Referent, den sie bezeichnen, in einer gewissen Domäne existiert/anwesend ist; andererseits sind sie vom semantischen Typ <e, t>, der keine Individuen, sondern Merkmale bezeichnet, weshalb der GenNeg meistens eine unspezifische, indefinite Lesart erhält. Sprachwandelprozesse bedingen, dass die Frequenz des GenNegs stetig abnimmt und die anderen Kasus (Nom und Akk) zur neutralen Kasuswahl werden. Auf Basis der systematischen Darstellung des Forschungsstands sowie der Analyse werden Desiderata herausgearbeitet, die als Anknüpfungspunkte für die zukünftige Forschung dienen sollen.
urn:nbn:at:at-ubg:3-6661
Dieses Buch stellt die erste umfassende wissenschaftliche Auseinandersetzung mit der Graphetik da... more Dieses Buch stellt die erste umfassende wissenschaftliche Auseinandersetzung mit der Graphetik dar – jenem interdisziplinären Forschungsfeld, das die Form und Materialität von Schrift untersucht. Neben einer kritischen wissenschaftsgeschichtlichen Darstellung der wichtigsten Beiträge zentraler Vertreterinnen und Vertreter werden relevante Definitionen gesammelt und diskutiert. Ein vorgeschlagenes Modell rückt graphetische Beschreibungsebenen und Einheiten in den Fokus, bevor schließlich der perzeptive Aspekt von Schrift beleuchtet wird und Konzepte wie Leserlichkeit und Lesbarkeit besprochen werden. Ein programmatisches Fazit samt Desideratakatalog wagt zuletzt einen Blick in die Zukunft der Graphetik.
Doctoral dissertation by Dimitrios Meletis
2019. Naturalness in scripts and writing systems: Outlining a Natural Grapholinguistics
Naturalness Theory (NT) is based on the notion of linguistic naturalness and postulates that ling... more Naturalness Theory (NT) is based on the notion of linguistic naturalness and postulates that linguistic phenomena that are structured in ways to make them relatively easy to process by humans physiologically, cognitively, and sociopragmatically are more natural than other, more complex phenomena. Drawing on evidence such as language change, language acquisition, and language disorders, various parameters of naturalness have been proposed. These, thus far, focus primarily on the phonological and morphological subsystems of language. This dissertation is, on the one hand, an (1) extension of NT as it offers an outline of how the notion of naturalness can be transferred to grapholinguistic phenomena. To achieve this, typologically highly diverse scripts and writing systems must be compared to identify naturalness parameters at the universal, typological, and system-specific levels for both the material (graphetic) and linguistic (graphematic) subsystems of writing. Such a comparison requires a shared descriptive and terminological framework, which is why this dissertation provides, on the other hand, an (2) outline of a descriptive grapholinguistics complete with definitions of graphetic and graphematic categories, most notably the grapheme. Through merging the theoretical tenets of NT with a systematic analysis of writing, this dissertation demonstrates that a so-called Natural Grapholinguistics offers promising new insights as well as a tertium comparationis for future comparative analyses of scripts and writing systems. The end result is a first sketch of a theory of writing that, as a theory, does not stop at the description of the structure of writing systems, but is capable of explaining why they are built the way they are.
Papers (peer-reviewed) by Dimitrios Meletis
Zeitschrift für Sprachwissenschaft, 2021
In essence, typologies of writing systems seek to classify the world's diverse writing systems in... more In essence, typologies of writing systems seek to classify the world's diverse writing systems in principled ways. However, against backdrops of early, misguided assumptions (Gelb 1969 [1952]) and stubborn term confusions, most proposals have focused primarily on the dominant levels of representational mapping (i. e., morphemic, syllabic, or phonemic), despite their shortcomings as idealizations (Joyce 2016, forthcoming; Joyce and Borgwaldt 2011; Meletis 2018). In advocating for exploring a more diverse range of criteria, either as alternatives or complementary factors, this paper outlines a promising framework for organizing typology criteria (Meletis 2018; 2020), which consists of three broad categories; namely, (a) linguistic fit, (b) processing fit and (c) sociocultural fit. Linguistic fit concerns the match between a language and its writing system and, thus, relates closely to the traditional criterion of representational mapping. Processing fit pertains to the physiological and cognitive aspects of a writing system, such as word spacing. Finally, sociocultural fit addresses the communicative and social functions of writing systems, such as implementing orthographic reforms. In singling out a particular parameter from each category, the paper illustrates its potential application as a typology criterion with cross-linguistic observations from the German (GWS) and the Japanese writing systems (JWS).
Social Semiotics, 2021
Typographic mimicry is the wrapping of writing in a “foreign dress,” i.e. the use of typefaces in... more 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 actors – both lay and expert producers and recipients – must 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).
Open Linguistics, 2020
Variation in writing is highly frequent at both the visual and the functional levels. However, as... more Variation in writing is highly frequent at both the visual and the functional levels. However, as of yet, the associated notion of allography has not been systematically described. In this article, two major types of allography are proposed: graphetic allography, conceptually comparable to allophony, depends on visual similarity and captures how concrete units are associated with visual abstractions, i.e., how three graphs in <cabana> are instances of the basic shape |a|. Graphematic allography, conceptually closer to allomorphy, does not depend on visual similarity but groups together units that share the same function, i.e., represent the same linguistic unit (phoneme, syllable, morpheme, etc.) and are complementarily distributed, meaning there exist no contexts in which they contrast. An example is the positionally conditioned alternation between |σ| vs |ς| for the Greek grapheme <σ>. By means of a number of criteria, subtypes of graphetic and graphematic allography are proposed and examples are given from different writing systems. A special case that is discussed is the complex phenomenon of capitalization. Additionally, examples of variation phenomena that are not included in the concept of allography are given, and orthographic variation is addressed as a marginal case of variation dependent on the norm rather than the system.
Writing Systems Research, 2019
The grapheme appears to be a central concept of grapholinguistics. However, there is no consensus... more 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 <house> and <mouse> 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.
Written Language and Literacy, 2018
Naturalness Theory (NT) is founded on the notion of naturalness and claims that when a linguistic... more Naturalness Theory (NT) is founded on the notion of naturalness and claims that when a linguistic phenomenon can be processed by humans with little effort, both sensomotorically and cognitively, it is deemed more natural compared to other, more complex phenomena. Drawing on evidence such as language change, language acquisition, and language disorders, various parameters of naturalness (e.g., biuniqueness, constructional iconicity) have been postulated, which focus on the phonological and morphological subsystems of language. This paper offers an outline of how naturalness can be extended to grapholinguistic phenomena. Comparative graphematics (cf. Weingarten 2011), extended to comparative grapholinguistics, is assessed as a method that can be used to reveal naturalness parameters which apply to both material (graphetic) and linguistic (graphematic) aspects of writing. The reduction of extrinsic symmetry across various scripts will be discussed as an example. By integrating these preliminary theoretical ideas into the framework of NT, it is demonstrated that so-called Natural Grapholinguistics could offer promising new insights as well as a tertium comparationis method for future comparative analyses of scripts and writing systems.
The works of Russian author Adelaida Gercyk (1874–1925) have been mostly overseen and neglected b... more The works of Russian author Adelaida Gercyk (1874–1925) have been mostly overseen and neglected by literary scholarship. This article focuses on her sketch O starosti [On old age] (1915). In describing three separate events with different settings, the sketch’s main thread is the female protagonist’s continuous examination of aging. While initially idealizing old age, her urge to push it away is made increasingly perceivable. It is argued that the protagonist’s sentiments as well as the depicted interaction with other members of society open up contradictory discourses of aging. This article aims to uncover which strategies Gercyk uses in O starosti to convey how the concept of old age is constructed and evaluated in a society in which the opposition young vs. old is automatically accompanied by the attribution of numerous other stereotypical character traits. Furthermore, it is shown how Gercyk employs a variety of motifs such as death, physical as well as mental deterioration, and fear to paint a multifaceted picture of old age and its status in society.
Co-Authored papers (peer-reviewed) by Dimitrios Meletis
Yannis Haralambous (ed): Graphemics in the 21st Century. Brest: Fluxus Edition (= Grapholinguistics and Its Applications 1), 167–183., 2019
The present article stands at the interface of CMC research and grapholinguistics. After outlinin... more The present article stands at the interface of CMC research and grapholinguistics. After outlining which features are typical of the writing of pri vate text messages, the focus of the first part of the paper (Sections 2 and 3) lies on the use of emojis. Notably, emoji use is not-as is commonly done-analyzed under a pragmatic perspective, but grapholinguistically, at the graphetic and graphematic levels: emojis are conceptualized as visual shapes that may assume graphematic functions within a given writing system. In the second part (Section 4), it is underlined that all variants of written digital communication (such as the use of emojis, but also all other characters) are made possible only due to the Unicode Consortium's decisions; this, finally, is argued to have farreaching consequences for the future of writing.
Papers (editorial review) by Dimitrios Meletis
In this essay, I discuss the challenges of (engaging in) grapholinguistics, a young field that fo... more In this essay, I discuss the challenges of (engaging in) grapholinguistics, a young field that focuses on writing, a topic mostly marginalized in ‘mainstream’ linguistics to this day. Issues that are raised include the lack of writing-related classes in linguistic study programs, institutionalization (e.g. departments or chairs for grapholinguistics), and pertinent publication and presentation outlets. Furthermore, the essay highlights problems caused by the interdisciplinarity of grapholinguistics, including linguistic, theoretical, methodological, and terminological boundaries that must be crossed. These issues are partially addressed through a personal lens, i.e. my own ‘journey’ in the field thus far. This allows me to speak from (some) experience not only about the risks of focusing on a topic at the periphery of many disciplines and some of the setbacks this entails but also about my motivation behind proposing a (sketch of a) theory of writing in my PhD thesis that—based on linguistic Naturalness Theory—aims to offer a unified descriptive and explanatory framework for studying writing systems and writing in general. It also gives me a chance to argue that writing, which can be studied with many of the concepts firmly established in other fields of linguistics (as well as additional writing-specific concepts), is central to every language that is spoken, signed and written in literate language communities and should therefore be an integral rather than an optional part of linguistic theories and paradigms in general. Essentially, this essay highlights why doing research in grapholinguistics should be embraced rather than justified.
2020. Warum hassen alle Comic Sans? Metapragmatische Onlinediskurse zu einer typographischen Hassliebe. In Jannis Androutsopoulos & Florian Busch (eds.): Register des Graphischen (= Linguistik – Impulse & Tendenzen; 87), 253–284
Der Genitiv der Negation (GenNeg) ist eine linguistische Besonderheit slawischer Sprachen – allen... more Der Genitiv der Negation (GenNeg) ist eine linguistische Besonderheit slawischer Sprachen – allen voran des Russischen –, die Forscherinnen und Forschern seit mehr als einem Jahrhundert zahlreiche Rätsel aufwirft. Zunächst stellen sich morphosyntaktische Fragen: Wie kann es sein, dass ein ‚Subjekt‘ – wie wir es vor eurozentrischem Hintergrund definieren – nicht im Nominativ, sondern im Genitiv, einem obliquen Kasus, steht? Und womit kongruiert in solchen Sätzen das Verb? Im Hinblick auf die Tatsache, dass der GenNeg mit anderen Kasus alterniert und konkurriert – in der Subjektposition mit dem Nominativ, in der Objektposition mit dem Akkusativ – ist eine Erforschung mehrerer Aspekte fruchtbar: Welche semantischen Unterschiede in der Bedeutung einer Aussage löst die jeweilige Kasuswahl aus? Warum ver- wenden ältere SprecherInnen eher den Genitiv, jüngere hingegen eher den Akkusativ? Gibt es neben den semantischen und syntaktischen Faktoren, die eine Kasuszuweisung bedingen, auch noch pragmatische Aspekte, die beachtet werden müssen?
Dieser Beitrag widmet sich drei der relevantesten (und dominantesten) Ansätze einer semantischen Analyse des Phänomens: Angefangen mit der (1) informationsstrukturellen Annahme eines perspektivischen Zentrums in Existenzsätzen, das den GenNeg überall dort lizensiert, wo eine Situation aus Sicht eines Schauplatzes/Ortes und nicht der/des darin befindlichen Referenten betrachtet wird (Bsp. Ivana ne bylo na lekcii), zu der Formulierung der (2) Property-Type-Hypothese, die davon ausgeht, dass jene Nomenphrasen (NPs), die im Genitiv auftreten, eine Verschiebung ihres semantischen Typs (von Typ e, der individuelle Referenten bezeichnet, zu Typ <e,t>, der für Merkmale/Eigenschaften steht) erfahren haben (Bsp. Ja ne ljublju ėtoj pevicy = Ich mag etwas an der Sängerin nicht, bspw. ihren Gesang) bis hin zur umfassendsten Analyse nicht-kanonischer Genitivverwendungen (zu denen auch der Genitiv nach intensionalen Verben wie ždat‘ gehört), dem Konzept des (3) irrealen Genitivs, der einerseits ebenfalls voraussetzt, dass mit dem GenNeg markierte NPs eine semantische Typverschiebung durchmachen (s. Punkt (2)) sowie andererseits nur Referenten ohne Existenzpräsupposition kennzeichnet (Bsp. Lena ne polučila otveta; es wird nicht ausgesagt, dass überhaupt eine Antwort existiert).
Anhand von Beispielen werden diese Ansätze präsentiert und diskutiert, wobei besonderes Augenmerk auf jene Aspekte gelegt wird, die nach wie vor offene Fragen aufwerfen. Ergänzt werden die eigenen Analysen ausgewählter Beispielsätze (sowohl bekannte aus der Literatur als auch neue aus dem russischen Nationalkorpus) durch die intuitiven Grammatikalitätsurteile von MuttersprachlerInnen. Das Ziel ist neben einer systematischen Darstellung und Kritik der bisherigen Erkenntnisse zur Semantik des GenNeg auch die Erstellung eines Desideratakatalogs, der Anknüpfungspunkte für die zukünftige Forschung identifiziert.
Encyclopedia Articles by Dimitrios Meletis
Schriftlinguistik / Grapholinguistics (Wörterbücher für Sprach- und Kommunikationswissenschaft 5)
interdisciplinary field concerned with the analysis and description of the materiality of scripts... more interdisciplinary field concerned with the analysis and description of the materiality of scripts as well as its part in the production and perception of written language [...]
Talks by Dimitrios Meletis
In grapholinguistics (and linguistics in general), ‘orthography’ remains a contentious term let a... more In grapholinguistics (and linguistics in general), ‘orthography’ remains a contentious term let alone concept. Since English is a self-regulating writing system (cf. BERG/ARONOFF 2017, 2018) not or-thographically regulated by any official authority of linguistic policy, ‘orthography’ has often been used as a descriptive term more or less synonymous to ‘writing system’ in central and highly visible anglophone literature. In contrast, in other grapholinguistic traditions – such as the germanophone –, ‘orthography’ is interpreted prescriptively and tied to notions of normativity and system-external regulation (cf. NEEF 2015, DÜRSCHEID 2016, MELETIS 2020). While descriptive grapholinguistics (and its most prominent subbranch of graphematics) is concerned with what is systematic (or ‘grammatical’), i.e., conforms to the regularities of the system, orthography adds to this the evalua-tive and (meta)¬prag¬ma¬tic¬ally relevant notion of ‘correctness’.
However, the existence of orthographic standardization cannot be captured by a simplifying dichotomy, with systems like English classified as unregulated and systems like German as officially regulated; instead, there is a whole variety of different orthographies that serve as a normative benchmark in writing systems, rendering their respective users aware of the (in)correctness of scribal practices. In this paper, such different types of orthography will be described with the help of sever-al criteria that form the basis of a preliminary typology. In systems that are equipped with one, an orthography becomes a structural matter; however, it always originates as a social phenomenon, which is echoed by the predominantly sociolinguistic nature of the following criteria (cf. also CA-HILL 2014, HINTON 2014):
— Natural vs. artificial captures whether the orthographic conventions in a writing system have de-veloped naturally, through implicit negotiations among users during the prolonged continued use of the writing system (cf. MIHM 2016 for premodern orthographies), to become a ‘phenomenon of the third kind’ (cf. KELLER 2014), or whether they are artificial in the sense of having either been (1) implemented for an existing and established writing system without consideration of the actual use of that system (whether said system already had an orthographic standardization or not), or (2) im-plemented immediately during/after the creation of a new writing system, which has thus never been in use without a standardization.
— Regulated vs. unregulated describes, in a narrow sense, whether an orthographic standardization is officially regulated by an external stakeholder of linguistic policy (such as the Council for German Orthography in the case of German orthography) or not (such as English orthographies; cf. also KARAN 2014).
— Codified vs. uncodified reflects whether orthographic conventions are externally and explicitly cod-ified as rules – whether these are officially regulated or not. Types of codifications include rule-books, guidelines, and dictionaries. Notably, orthographies can be unregulated but codified (such as English orthographies, for which there exist dictionaries with – strictly speaking – only nonofficial status).
— Original vs. reformed is a subcriterion assessing whether a regulated codified orthography exists in its first, i.e., original form, or whether it has been reformed, i.e., re-codified, at least once.
— Community involvement vs. no community involvement (or a continuum of bottom-up vs. top-down standardization): In a loose sense, this criterion pertains to the involvement of users in the (implicit or explicit, gradual or onetime) establishment of orthographic conventions, their codifica-tion as rules, and their potential reform, i.e., bottom-up processes of standardization. In a narrow sense, it describes whether community members are involved in the (initial) explicit regulation and possibly codification of orthographic rules (cf. BOW 2013, PAGE 2013 for case studies) – which is the case mostly in the context of literacy development (cf. LÜPKE 2011, the contributions in CA-HILL/RICE 2014), i.e., the creation of new writing systems from scratch.
— As the first of two criteria that are structural in nature, variable vs. nonvariable establishes a con-tinuum capturing the degree of a writing system’s graphematic variability. It thus determines the possibility of (licensed or unlicensed) graphematic variation and with it, the expression of social (non-denotative) meaning and creativity etc. in writing. The Japanese writing system, for example, often affords multiple ways of writing the same word (or, more generally, utterance) without a devi-ance from the norm automatically being perceived as strictly ‘incorrect’ (cf. JOYCE/MASUDA 2019). It is crucial whether these variable parts of a writing system are unregulated, as there may exist graphematically highly variable writing systems which are strictly regulated and thus do not afford the same possibilities for ‘correct’ graphematic variation.
— Motivated vs. arbitrary is used to evaluate whether orthographic conventions/rules are based on the graphematics of the writing system, i.e., its internal systematics and its actual usage, in which case they are motivated, or whether they are arbitrary and based on other (external) considerations.
It is important to emphasize that this list is, of course, non-exhaustive. However, the proposed crite-ria allow categorizing and comparing different types of orthographic standardization. This can (fi-nally) further our understanding of the status that diverse kinds of norms assume in different writing systems. Notably, linguistic norms arguably play a more prominent role in the written modality than in the spoken one – they possibly even originate in writing and literacy (cf. MĬKIL¬LÄH¬DE/LEP¬PÄ-NEN/IT¬KON¬EN 2019 for normativity in language).
In this paper, not only the listed criteria will be presented – along with examples of writing systems and their orthographies to which they apply in various combinations – but a related im-portant question that will be raised is what bearing this typology has on central normative concepts such as ‘orthographic rule’ and ‘orthographic mistake’. Specifically, differences in the perception of prescriptivity will be highlighted – what to members of one literate community may be a rule (and a deviation from it a mistake) may for members of another community merely be a convention (and a ‘deviation’ from it variation). Fleshing out the basis of grapholinguistic normativity is expected to not only improve our understanding of writing and literacy practices, but pragmatics – and meta-pragmatic beliefs – regarding the linguistic and communicative behavior of members of literate communities in general. Furthermore, it is relevant to applied fields such as literacy development and the reform of existing orthographies.
References
BERG, KRISTIAN & MARK ARONOFF. 2017. Self-organization in the spelling of English suffixes: The emergence of culture out of anarchy. Language 93(1). 37–64. https://doi.org/10.1353/lan.2017.0000
BERG, KRISTIAN & MARK ARONOFF. 2018. Further evidence for self-organization in English spelling. Language 94(1). e48–e53. https://doi.org/10.1353/lan.2018.0013
BOW, CATHERINE. 2013. Community-based orthography development in four Western Zambian languages. Writ-ing Systems Research 5(1). 73–87. https://doi.org/10.1080/17586801.2012.747427
CAHILL, MICHAEL. 2014. Non-linguistic factors in orthographies. In Michael Cahill & Keren Rice (eds.), Develop-ing orthographies for unwritten languages, 9–25. Dallas: SIL International.
CAHILL, MICHAEL & KEREN RICE (eds.). 2014. Developing orthographies for unwritten languages. Dallas: SIL In-ternational.
DÜRSCHEID, CHRISTA. 2016. Einführung in die Schriftlinguistik, 5th edn. (UTB 3740). Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht.
HINTON, LEANNE. 2014. Orthography wars. In Michael Cahill & Keren Rice (eds.), Developing or¬tho¬graphies for unwritten languages, 139–168. Dallas: SIL International.
JOYCE, TERRY & HISASHI MASUDA. 2019. On the notions of orthography and graphematic representation from the perspective of the Japanese writing system. Written Language & Literacy 22(2). 247–279. https://doi.org/10.1075/wll.00028.joy
KARAN, ELKE. 2014. Standardization: What’s the hurry? In Michael Cahill & Keren Rice (eds.), Developing or-thographies for unwritten languages, 107–138. Dallas: SIL International.
KELLER, RUDI. 2014. Sprachwandel: von der unsichtbaren Hand in der Sprache, 4th edn. (UTB, 1567). Tübingen: Francke.
LÜPKE, FRIEDERIKE. 2011. Orthography development. In Peter Austoin & Julia Sallabank (eds.), Hand-book of en-dangered languages, 312–336. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511975981.016
MÄKILLÄHDE, ALEKSI, VILLE LEPPÄNEN & ESA ITKONEN. 2019. Norms and normativity in language and linguistics: Basic concepts and contextualization. In Aleksi Mäkillähde, Ville Leppänen & Esa Itkonen (eds.), Norms and normativity in language and linguistics, 1–28. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. https://doi.org/10.1075/slcs.209.01mak
MELETIS, DIMITRIOS. 2020. The nature of writing. A theory of grapholinguistics (Grapholinguistics and Its Applica-tions 3). Brest: Fluxus Éditions. https://doi.org/10.36824/2020-meletis
MIHM, AREND. 2016. Zur Theorie der vormodernen Orthographien: Straßburger Schreibsysteme als Erkenntnis-grundlage. Sprachwissenschaft 41(3–4). 271–309.
NEEF, MARTIN. 2015. Writing systems as modular objects: Proposals for theory design in grapholinguistics. Open Linguistics 1. 708–721. https://doi.org/10.1515/opli-2015-0026
PAGE, CHRISTINA J. 2013. A new orthography in an unfamiliar script: A case study in participatory engagement strategies. Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development 34(5). 459–474. https://doi.org/10.1080/01434632.2013.783035
‘Writing system typology’, thus far, is closely associated with a descriptive classification of w... more ‘Writing system typology’, thus far, is closely associated with a descriptive classification of writing systems focusing on the linguistic level (phonemic, syllabic, morphemic) that the basic units of writing systems relate to – their main underlying criterion, thus, is ‘dominant level of representational mapping’ (cf. Joyce/Meletis in press). Such typologies have been used to show how writing systems function at their core as well as to highlight both similarities and differences between them. Arguably, however, due their narrow scope, many potentially relevant features and parallels remain blind spots.
These start already at the structural level, as the restricted focus on the relation between writing and language results in a disregard of systematic structural features that are intrinsic to writing systems, i.e., not determined by their relation to language. These include, for example, allography, i.e., systematic variation of variant units in writing, or graphotactics, the rules of how units of writing may combine to form larger units (such as written words, sentences, etc.). Notably, a restriction to structure dismisses paramount questions concerning the use of writing systems, e.g., how they are processed and used for communication, bringing to the fore psycholinguistic and sociolinguistic perspectives. Potential criteria for possible psycholinguistic typologies of writing include, for example, spacing between graphemes or written words, or the visual complexity exhibited by the script used for a writing system. A candidate for a sociolinguistic typology is the degree of normativity and prescriptivism characterizing a literate culture, which is established, among other things, by asking if and how the writing system in question is orthographically regulated and how this affects users’ literacy practices and ideologies pertaining to writing.
Since, in a comprehensive and integrated theory of writing, a writing system must always simultaneously be considered as a system with its own idiosyncratic features, a semiotic system relating to a given language, a graphic medium that must be physiologically and cognitively processed, and a communication tool and a cultural technique embedded in a given context and culture, structural, psycholinguistic, and sociolinguistic perspectives arguably should never be adopted completely divorced from each other (cf. Meletis 2020). This talk aims not only to present different structural and use-based typologies of writing that go beyond those brought forth by ‘traditional’ writing system typology but also to show how they are connected and interact with each other and, importantly, how this can increase our know¬ledge of the fundamental nature of writing.
REFERENCES
Joyce, Terry & Dimitrios Meletis (in press): Alternative criteria for writing system typology. Cross-linguistic observations from the German and Japanese writing systems. Zeitschrift für Sprachwissenschaft Special Issue.
Meletis, Dimitrios (2020): The nature of writing. A theory of grapholinguistics (= Grapholinguistics and Its Applications; 3). Brest: Fluxus Editions. DOI: 10.36824/2020-meletis.
Graphotactics captures the “restrictions on ways in which” elements of writing “may combine with ... more Graphotactics captures the “restrictions on ways in which” elements of writing “may combine with each other” (McCawley 1994: 115) to form larger written units. These restrictions take on many forms in the world’s diverse writing systems. For instance, users of the English alphabet likely know that <v> almost never occurs word-finally as <e> is commonly added after it, cf. <have>, <give> (cf. Berg 2016: 2). Phonographically, these words (/hæv/ and /ɡɪv/) would not require a written word-final <e>, underlining that notwithstanding important parallels, graphotactics is not always dependent on phonotactics. This is a vital point in arguing that writing systems not only represent various levels of language but are also their own systems exhibiting distinct features—and it is paramount that they be studied (also) as such.
Despite graphotactics being a core feature of writing systems, research on it—especially comparative—is scarce. This talk aims to systematize various types of restrictions, including, at the subsegmental level, favored positions of semantic and phonological components inside Chinese characters that “determine whether the character is legal or not” (Ho/Ng/Ng 2003: 853). As for larger written units, in many abu¬gi¬das such as Devanāgarī or Thai, secondary vowel graphemes occur in specific positions around consonants, with some being misaligned in appearing before consonants despite following them in speech (cf. Winskel 2009). A well-known length-related example is the ‘three-letter-rule’ in English: content words must consist of at least three letters (distinguishing <buy> from <by>).
Crucially, graphotactic regularities are independent of external orthographic regulation and thus not explicit, codified rules but intrinsic to writing systems as self-regulating systems and thus part of users’ implicit knowledge. They rely fundamentally on a two-dimensional spatiality that departs from the linear temporality of speech. This makes graphotactics central in arguing that writing systems are indeed systematic in nature.
References
Berg, Kristian (2016): Graphemic analysis and the spoken language bias. Frontiers in Psychology 7: 388. DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2016.00388
Ho, Connie S.-H., Ting-Ting Ng & Wing-Kin Ng (2003): A ‘radical’ approach to reading development in Chinese: the role of semantic radicals and phonetic radicals. Journal of Literacy Research 35.3: 849-878. DOI: 10.1207/s15548430jlr3503_3
McCawley, James D. (1994): Some graphotactic constraints. In W. C. Watt (ed.), Writing systems and cognition (= Neuropsychology and Cognition, 6), 115-127. Dordrecht: Springer. DOI: 10.1007/978-94-015-8285-8_7
Winskel, Heather (2009): Reading in Thai: the case of misaligned vowels. Reading and Writing 22.1: 1-24. DOI: 10.1007/s11145-007-9100-z
Writing has long been identified as a central factor in the standardization of languages. Yet, th... more Writing has long been identified as a central factor in the standardization of languages. Yet, the effect of literacy on (standard) language ideologies remains understudied to this day (but cf. Johnson 2002, Dickinson 2015, Weth & Juffermans 2018), as do the public’s attitudes on orthographic standardization. However, it is becoming increasingly important as the relation between authorities of language policy and the ‘lay’ people who are affected by policies has gradually changed, causing a new kind of ‘twenty-first-century prescriptivism’ (cf. Heyd 2014: 491) to evolve in which normativity is no longer negotiated exclusively top-down but is also constituted by bottom-up processes (especially of digital nature in the realm of the internet). This talk is devoted to an investigation of said prescriptivism.
In a recent pilot study 21 semi-structured interviews with Austrian university students were conducted to investigate attitudes on (i) orthographic regulation, (ii) deviances from the written standard and denigrating public corrections of mistakes (so-called ‘orthographic shaming’), as well as (iii) changes of orthography, i.e. spelling reforms and involved stakeholders.
Many of the participants’ utterances, e.g. “Every time that I’m writing somewhere, I’m writing, and therefore it has to be correct”, were entrenched in normativity and (self-)prescriptivism, the most important aspects of which will be traced in this talk, as a metapragmatic discourse analysis of the interviews shows that in a literate community whose writing is orthographically regulated, (1) normativity appears to be inherent to literacy practices, which are strongly affected by standard language ideologies, (2) knowledge of various norms pertaining to the written standard is considered social/cultural capital and is instrumentalized in the establishment and reinforcement of hierarchies of power, and that, generally, (3) the public’s nuanced attitudes towards orthography and literacy prove invaluable in examining the interaction between the status of prescriptive orthographies as central cornerstones of linguistic policy and everyday literacy practices.
Dickinson, Jennifer A. (2015): Introduction: Language ideologies and writing systems. Pragmatics 25.4: 507–516.
Heyd, Theresa (2014): Folk-linguistic landscapes: The visual semiotics of digital enregisterment. Language in Society 43: 489–514.
Johnson, Sally (2002): On the origin of linguistic norms: orthography, ideology and the first con-stitutional challenge to the 1996 reform of German. Language in Society 31: 549-576.
Weth, Constanze & Kasper Juffermans (2018): Introduction: The tyranny of writing in language and society. In Constanze Weth & Kasper Juffermans (eds.), The tyranny of writing: Ideologies of the written word, 1–19. London, New York: Bloomsbury.
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Dieser Beitrag widmet sich drei der relevantesten (und dominantesten) Ansätze einer semantischen Analyse des Phänomens: Angefangen mit der (1) informationsstrukturellen Annahme eines perspektivischen Zentrums in Existenzsätzen, das den GenNeg überall dort lizensiert, wo eine Situation aus Sicht eines Schauplatzes/Ortes und nicht der/des darin befindlichen Referenten betrachtet wird (Bsp. Ivana ne bylo na lekcii), zu der Formulierung der (2) Property-Type-Hypothese, die davon ausgeht, dass jene Nomenphrasen (NPs), die im Genitiv auftreten, eine Verschiebung ihres semantischen Typs (von Typ e, der individuelle Referenten bezeichnet, zu Typ <e,t>, der für Merkmale/Eigenschaften steht) erfahren haben (Bsp. Ja ne ljublju ėtoj pevicy = Ich mag etwas an der Sängerin nicht, bspw. ihren Gesang) bis hin zur umfassendsten Analyse nicht-kanonischer Genitivverwendungen (zu denen auch der Genitiv nach intensionalen Verben wie ždat‘ gehört), dem Konzept des (3) irrealen Genitivs, der einerseits ebenfalls voraussetzt, dass mit dem GenNeg markierte NPs eine semantische Typverschiebung durchmachen (s. Punkt (2)) sowie andererseits nur Referenten ohne Existenzpräsupposition kennzeichnet (Bsp. Lena ne polučila otveta; es wird nicht ausgesagt, dass überhaupt eine Antwort existiert).
Anhand von Beispielen werden diese Ansätze präsentiert und diskutiert, wobei besonderes Augenmerk auf jene Aspekte gelegt wird, die nach wie vor offene Fragen aufwerfen. Ergänzt werden die eigenen Analysen ausgewählter Beispielsätze (sowohl bekannte aus der Literatur als auch neue aus dem russischen Nationalkorpus) durch die intuitiven Grammatikalitätsurteile von MuttersprachlerInnen. Das Ziel ist neben einer systematischen Darstellung und Kritik der bisherigen Erkenntnisse zur Semantik des GenNeg auch die Erstellung eines Desideratakatalogs, der Anknüpfungspunkte für die zukünftige Forschung identifiziert.
Encyclopedia Articles by Dimitrios Meletis
Talks by Dimitrios Meletis
However, the existence of orthographic standardization cannot be captured by a simplifying dichotomy, with systems like English classified as unregulated and systems like German as officially regulated; instead, there is a whole variety of different orthographies that serve as a normative benchmark in writing systems, rendering their respective users aware of the (in)correctness of scribal practices. In this paper, such different types of orthography will be described with the help of sever-al criteria that form the basis of a preliminary typology. In systems that are equipped with one, an orthography becomes a structural matter; however, it always originates as a social phenomenon, which is echoed by the predominantly sociolinguistic nature of the following criteria (cf. also CA-HILL 2014, HINTON 2014):
— Natural vs. artificial captures whether the orthographic conventions in a writing system have de-veloped naturally, through implicit negotiations among users during the prolonged continued use of the writing system (cf. MIHM 2016 for premodern orthographies), to become a ‘phenomenon of the third kind’ (cf. KELLER 2014), or whether they are artificial in the sense of having either been (1) implemented for an existing and established writing system without consideration of the actual use of that system (whether said system already had an orthographic standardization or not), or (2) im-plemented immediately during/after the creation of a new writing system, which has thus never been in use without a standardization.
— Regulated vs. unregulated describes, in a narrow sense, whether an orthographic standardization is officially regulated by an external stakeholder of linguistic policy (such as the Council for German Orthography in the case of German orthography) or not (such as English orthographies; cf. also KARAN 2014).
— Codified vs. uncodified reflects whether orthographic conventions are externally and explicitly cod-ified as rules – whether these are officially regulated or not. Types of codifications include rule-books, guidelines, and dictionaries. Notably, orthographies can be unregulated but codified (such as English orthographies, for which there exist dictionaries with – strictly speaking – only nonofficial status).
— Original vs. reformed is a subcriterion assessing whether a regulated codified orthography exists in its first, i.e., original form, or whether it has been reformed, i.e., re-codified, at least once.
— Community involvement vs. no community involvement (or a continuum of bottom-up vs. top-down standardization): In a loose sense, this criterion pertains to the involvement of users in the (implicit or explicit, gradual or onetime) establishment of orthographic conventions, their codifica-tion as rules, and their potential reform, i.e., bottom-up processes of standardization. In a narrow sense, it describes whether community members are involved in the (initial) explicit regulation and possibly codification of orthographic rules (cf. BOW 2013, PAGE 2013 for case studies) – which is the case mostly in the context of literacy development (cf. LÜPKE 2011, the contributions in CA-HILL/RICE 2014), i.e., the creation of new writing systems from scratch.
— As the first of two criteria that are structural in nature, variable vs. nonvariable establishes a con-tinuum capturing the degree of a writing system’s graphematic variability. It thus determines the possibility of (licensed or unlicensed) graphematic variation and with it, the expression of social (non-denotative) meaning and creativity etc. in writing. The Japanese writing system, for example, often affords multiple ways of writing the same word (or, more generally, utterance) without a devi-ance from the norm automatically being perceived as strictly ‘incorrect’ (cf. JOYCE/MASUDA 2019). It is crucial whether these variable parts of a writing system are unregulated, as there may exist graphematically highly variable writing systems which are strictly regulated and thus do not afford the same possibilities for ‘correct’ graphematic variation.
— Motivated vs. arbitrary is used to evaluate whether orthographic conventions/rules are based on the graphematics of the writing system, i.e., its internal systematics and its actual usage, in which case they are motivated, or whether they are arbitrary and based on other (external) considerations.
It is important to emphasize that this list is, of course, non-exhaustive. However, the proposed crite-ria allow categorizing and comparing different types of orthographic standardization. This can (fi-nally) further our understanding of the status that diverse kinds of norms assume in different writing systems. Notably, linguistic norms arguably play a more prominent role in the written modality than in the spoken one – they possibly even originate in writing and literacy (cf. MĬKIL¬LÄH¬DE/LEP¬PÄ-NEN/IT¬KON¬EN 2019 for normativity in language).
In this paper, not only the listed criteria will be presented – along with examples of writing systems and their orthographies to which they apply in various combinations – but a related im-portant question that will be raised is what bearing this typology has on central normative concepts such as ‘orthographic rule’ and ‘orthographic mistake’. Specifically, differences in the perception of prescriptivity will be highlighted – what to members of one literate community may be a rule (and a deviation from it a mistake) may for members of another community merely be a convention (and a ‘deviation’ from it variation). Fleshing out the basis of grapholinguistic normativity is expected to not only improve our understanding of writing and literacy practices, but pragmatics – and meta-pragmatic beliefs – regarding the linguistic and communicative behavior of members of literate communities in general. Furthermore, it is relevant to applied fields such as literacy development and the reform of existing orthographies.
References
BERG, KRISTIAN & MARK ARONOFF. 2017. Self-organization in the spelling of English suffixes: The emergence of culture out of anarchy. Language 93(1). 37–64. https://doi.org/10.1353/lan.2017.0000
BERG, KRISTIAN & MARK ARONOFF. 2018. Further evidence for self-organization in English spelling. Language 94(1). e48–e53. https://doi.org/10.1353/lan.2018.0013
BOW, CATHERINE. 2013. Community-based orthography development in four Western Zambian languages. Writ-ing Systems Research 5(1). 73–87. https://doi.org/10.1080/17586801.2012.747427
CAHILL, MICHAEL. 2014. Non-linguistic factors in orthographies. In Michael Cahill & Keren Rice (eds.), Develop-ing orthographies for unwritten languages, 9–25. Dallas: SIL International.
CAHILL, MICHAEL & KEREN RICE (eds.). 2014. Developing orthographies for unwritten languages. Dallas: SIL In-ternational.
DÜRSCHEID, CHRISTA. 2016. Einführung in die Schriftlinguistik, 5th edn. (UTB 3740). Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht.
HINTON, LEANNE. 2014. Orthography wars. In Michael Cahill & Keren Rice (eds.), Developing or¬tho¬graphies for unwritten languages, 139–168. Dallas: SIL International.
JOYCE, TERRY & HISASHI MASUDA. 2019. On the notions of orthography and graphematic representation from the perspective of the Japanese writing system. Written Language & Literacy 22(2). 247–279. https://doi.org/10.1075/wll.00028.joy
KARAN, ELKE. 2014. Standardization: What’s the hurry? In Michael Cahill & Keren Rice (eds.), Developing or-thographies for unwritten languages, 107–138. Dallas: SIL International.
KELLER, RUDI. 2014. Sprachwandel: von der unsichtbaren Hand in der Sprache, 4th edn. (UTB, 1567). Tübingen: Francke.
LÜPKE, FRIEDERIKE. 2011. Orthography development. In Peter Austoin & Julia Sallabank (eds.), Hand-book of en-dangered languages, 312–336. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511975981.016
MÄKILLÄHDE, ALEKSI, VILLE LEPPÄNEN & ESA ITKONEN. 2019. Norms and normativity in language and linguistics: Basic concepts and contextualization. In Aleksi Mäkillähde, Ville Leppänen & Esa Itkonen (eds.), Norms and normativity in language and linguistics, 1–28. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. https://doi.org/10.1075/slcs.209.01mak
MELETIS, DIMITRIOS. 2020. The nature of writing. A theory of grapholinguistics (Grapholinguistics and Its Applica-tions 3). Brest: Fluxus Éditions. https://doi.org/10.36824/2020-meletis
MIHM, AREND. 2016. Zur Theorie der vormodernen Orthographien: Straßburger Schreibsysteme als Erkenntnis-grundlage. Sprachwissenschaft 41(3–4). 271–309.
NEEF, MARTIN. 2015. Writing systems as modular objects: Proposals for theory design in grapholinguistics. Open Linguistics 1. 708–721. https://doi.org/10.1515/opli-2015-0026
PAGE, CHRISTINA J. 2013. A new orthography in an unfamiliar script: A case study in participatory engagement strategies. Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development 34(5). 459–474. https://doi.org/10.1080/01434632.2013.783035
These start already at the structural level, as the restricted focus on the relation between writing and language results in a disregard of systematic structural features that are intrinsic to writing systems, i.e., not determined by their relation to language. These include, for example, allography, i.e., systematic variation of variant units in writing, or graphotactics, the rules of how units of writing may combine to form larger units (such as written words, sentences, etc.). Notably, a restriction to structure dismisses paramount questions concerning the use of writing systems, e.g., how they are processed and used for communication, bringing to the fore psycholinguistic and sociolinguistic perspectives. Potential criteria for possible psycholinguistic typologies of writing include, for example, spacing between graphemes or written words, or the visual complexity exhibited by the script used for a writing system. A candidate for a sociolinguistic typology is the degree of normativity and prescriptivism characterizing a literate culture, which is established, among other things, by asking if and how the writing system in question is orthographically regulated and how this affects users’ literacy practices and ideologies pertaining to writing.
Since, in a comprehensive and integrated theory of writing, a writing system must always simultaneously be considered as a system with its own idiosyncratic features, a semiotic system relating to a given language, a graphic medium that must be physiologically and cognitively processed, and a communication tool and a cultural technique embedded in a given context and culture, structural, psycholinguistic, and sociolinguistic perspectives arguably should never be adopted completely divorced from each other (cf. Meletis 2020). This talk aims not only to present different structural and use-based typologies of writing that go beyond those brought forth by ‘traditional’ writing system typology but also to show how they are connected and interact with each other and, importantly, how this can increase our know¬ledge of the fundamental nature of writing.
REFERENCES
Joyce, Terry & Dimitrios Meletis (in press): Alternative criteria for writing system typology. Cross-linguistic observations from the German and Japanese writing systems. Zeitschrift für Sprachwissenschaft Special Issue.
Meletis, Dimitrios (2020): The nature of writing. A theory of grapholinguistics (= Grapholinguistics and Its Applications; 3). Brest: Fluxus Editions. DOI: 10.36824/2020-meletis.
Despite graphotactics being a core feature of writing systems, research on it—especially comparative—is scarce. This talk aims to systematize various types of restrictions, including, at the subsegmental level, favored positions of semantic and phonological components inside Chinese characters that “determine whether the character is legal or not” (Ho/Ng/Ng 2003: 853). As for larger written units, in many abu¬gi¬das such as Devanāgarī or Thai, secondary vowel graphemes occur in specific positions around consonants, with some being misaligned in appearing before consonants despite following them in speech (cf. Winskel 2009). A well-known length-related example is the ‘three-letter-rule’ in English: content words must consist of at least three letters (distinguishing <buy> from <by>).
Crucially, graphotactic regularities are independent of external orthographic regulation and thus not explicit, codified rules but intrinsic to writing systems as self-regulating systems and thus part of users’ implicit knowledge. They rely fundamentally on a two-dimensional spatiality that departs from the linear temporality of speech. This makes graphotactics central in arguing that writing systems are indeed systematic in nature.
References
Berg, Kristian (2016): Graphemic analysis and the spoken language bias. Frontiers in Psychology 7: 388. DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2016.00388
Ho, Connie S.-H., Ting-Ting Ng & Wing-Kin Ng (2003): A ‘radical’ approach to reading development in Chinese: the role of semantic radicals and phonetic radicals. Journal of Literacy Research 35.3: 849-878. DOI: 10.1207/s15548430jlr3503_3
McCawley, James D. (1994): Some graphotactic constraints. In W. C. Watt (ed.), Writing systems and cognition (= Neuropsychology and Cognition, 6), 115-127. Dordrecht: Springer. DOI: 10.1007/978-94-015-8285-8_7
Winskel, Heather (2009): Reading in Thai: the case of misaligned vowels. Reading and Writing 22.1: 1-24. DOI: 10.1007/s11145-007-9100-z
In a recent pilot study 21 semi-structured interviews with Austrian university students were conducted to investigate attitudes on (i) orthographic regulation, (ii) deviances from the written standard and denigrating public corrections of mistakes (so-called ‘orthographic shaming’), as well as (iii) changes of orthography, i.e. spelling reforms and involved stakeholders.
Many of the participants’ utterances, e.g. “Every time that I’m writing somewhere, I’m writing, and therefore it has to be correct”, were entrenched in normativity and (self-)prescriptivism, the most important aspects of which will be traced in this talk, as a metapragmatic discourse analysis of the interviews shows that in a literate community whose writing is orthographically regulated, (1) normativity appears to be inherent to literacy practices, which are strongly affected by standard language ideologies, (2) knowledge of various norms pertaining to the written standard is considered social/cultural capital and is instrumentalized in the establishment and reinforcement of hierarchies of power, and that, generally, (3) the public’s nuanced attitudes towards orthography and literacy prove invaluable in examining the interaction between the status of prescriptive orthographies as central cornerstones of linguistic policy and everyday literacy practices.
Dickinson, Jennifer A. (2015): Introduction: Language ideologies and writing systems. Pragmatics 25.4: 507–516.
Heyd, Theresa (2014): Folk-linguistic landscapes: The visual semiotics of digital enregisterment. Language in Society 43: 489–514.
Johnson, Sally (2002): On the origin of linguistic norms: orthography, ideology and the first con-stitutional challenge to the 1996 reform of German. Language in Society 31: 549-576.
Weth, Constanze & Kasper Juffermans (2018): Introduction: The tyranny of writing in language and society. In Constanze Weth & Kasper Juffermans (eds.), The tyranny of writing: Ideologies of the written word, 1–19. London, New York: Bloomsbury.