Handstyle as social meaning: Graphic variation, graffiti and gender

Abstract

The work presented here contributes to a better understanding of graphic variation and its role in the making of social meaning. Specifically, we report on a case study of female-coded graffiti, and how its graphematic and visual rendering undermines dominant street art norms. In early 2018, the inner city of a small German college town was covered with street art with an overt feminist stance, including tropes such as “riot girls” and topics such as female empowerment and anti-fraternity stances. Because of the temporal and spatial consistency of the inscriptions, they became salient to public perception and were reported on as such in the local press. However, these instances of feminist graffiti did not just stand out based on their content and political positioning, but arguably due to their graphematic and visual qualities. Thus the handstyles displayed in the graffiti are described as diverging from expected visual street art norms – as unprofessional, but also as feminine or even “girly”. This unexpected, and transgressive, graphematic quality raises interesting questions for the construction of social personas around graphematic practice.Our study is based on a picture corpus of over 60 street art instances, as well as a reference corpus of non-female coded graffiti in the same location. We analyze the linguistic landscape data based on semantic and lexicogrammatical, but also graphematic features such as coloring, capitalization, roundedness and use of serifs in the handstyles. By interpreting our data as a case of graphematic variation as social practice, we locate our case study in the larger discussion on street art and the making of social meaning in written discourse. Specifically, we critically discuss perceptions of graffiti as a transgressive semiotic practice (Pennycook 2008), and draw attention to the gendered social meaning to be found here: as Macdonald (2001: 149) argues, street art can be seen as “(n)ot a site for ‘youth’, but a site for ‘male’ youth – an illegal confine where danger, opposition and the exclusion of women is used to nourish, amplify and salvage notions of masculinity.” We link this to ongoing research into gendered perceptions of graphematic practice, such as Vaisman's (2014) study on gender and graphic style.