Accepted author manuscript, 364 KB, PDF document
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Research output: Contribution to Journal/Magazine › Journal article › peer-review
Research output: Contribution to Journal/Magazine › Journal article › peer-review
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TY - JOUR
T1 - Iconicity, attribution and branding in orthography
AU - Sebba, Mark
N1 - Date of Acceptance: 09/03/2015
PY - 2015/8
Y1 - 2015/8
N2 - This paper discusses three processes relating to the social meaning of scripts and orthographies, all of which are potentially mediated by the role of script-as-image. One of these processes, iconisation, was introduced to the field by Irvine and Gal (2000) and is widely known. Attribution is a process which precedes iconisation, whereby a group of people associate a linguistic feature or language-related practice with a group of people who (supposedly) use that feature or engage in that practice. Orthographic branding involves a specific visual/graphical element of written language such as an alphabetic character. Through ‘branding,’ this element becomes an emblem of a group of people who use the element in question in their writing practices. Branding may involve iconisation, but the processes are distinct. This paper describes and distinguishes the three processes and provides examples from different languages and user communities.
AB - This paper discusses three processes relating to the social meaning of scripts and orthographies, all of which are potentially mediated by the role of script-as-image. One of these processes, iconisation, was introduced to the field by Irvine and Gal (2000) and is widely known. Attribution is a process which precedes iconisation, whereby a group of people associate a linguistic feature or language-related practice with a group of people who (supposedly) use that feature or engage in that practice. Orthographic branding involves a specific visual/graphical element of written language such as an alphabetic character. Through ‘branding,’ this element becomes an emblem of a group of people who use the element in question in their writing practices. Branding may involve iconisation, but the processes are distinct. This paper describes and distinguishes the three processes and provides examples from different languages and user communities.
KW - iconisation
KW - orthography
KW - multimodality
KW - script
KW - literacy
U2 - 10.1075/wll.18.2.02seb
DO - 10.1075/wll.18.2.02seb
M3 - Journal article
VL - 18
SP - 208
EP - 227
JO - Written Language and Literacy
JF - Written Language and Literacy
SN - 1387-6732
IS - 2
ER -