Graphic variation and graphic ideologies: a metapragmatic approach

Abstract

This paper suggests to systematically focus on metagraphic discourse in typographic landscape analysis. It argues that the analysis of such discourse reveals ideological ascriptions to emplaced graphic forms. These graphic ideologies, sets of beliefs about the social meaning and the use of graphic variants and about the users who are (assumed to) be using them, frame the interpretation of landscapes in a dynamic way; they are socially stratified and subject to discursive negotiation. Therefore, it is argued that rather than conceive of typographic landscapes as semiotic products with a fixed social meaning, it is more apt to shift the focus from graphics as a social resource to graphic variation as a social, reflexive practice. The paper introduces a metapragmatic theory that can be used to access metagraphic discourse and that attempts to explain the dynamics of typographic meaning. At the core of the theory lies an interpretive concept of socially stratified graphic knowledge which provides the basis for social actors’ ideological ascriptions. It is argued that these ascriptions are essentially a means of social positioning. Furthermore, it is argued that they interact with linguistic and spatial ideologies, an interaction from which the actual interpretation of emplaced text and texted place dynamically emerges. As a case in point, the article discusses a specific newspaper commentary that provides an interpretation of Gothic type in a historically framed public place, Berlin Tempelhof Airport.