Towards the Metalanguage for Describing Text Vizualizations

Abstract

The paper deals with supposedly basic categories of metagraphemics, a study of various means of visual transformation of a text using resources of variability of broadly understood alphabetic writing signs, as well as possibilities of semantic interpretation of pictorial components of a text, such as pictures in the proper sense, figures, diagrams, schemes, etc. Similar, but not identical resources are available for other systems of writing; they call for special investigation and are not discussed here. Within metagraphemics, we suggest distinguishing, at least, the following phenomena (and, respectively, subsections of metagraphemics as a discipline): substantial metagraphemics, i.e. the study of material substance of a text; chromographemics (variability of colors of graphemes within a text); supragraphemics (variability of typefaces and fonts, as well as other graphic modifications within them); topographemics (spatial models of configuration of graphemes on plane or in space); syngraphemics (variability of punctuation); cinemographemics (animation of a visual text); iconic graphemics (a specific type of creolization of a text presupposing installing configuration of graphemes in a picture or transformation of graphemic configuration into a picture). There is no fundamental difference between the metagraphemics and the creolization of the text (introduction of the image or its elements into the text). This allows us to use a single categorical apparatus of linguistic and cognitive semantics to describe the phenomena under discussion. At the same time, multimodal communication involves interpretation through various metalanguages that are not reducible to a single categorical apparatus. We study the peculiarities of semantic interpretation of metagraphemic phenomena, analyze several examples of iconic supragraphemics, iconic topographemics with the elements of creolization and swastika expertise.

Keywords

• visual semiotics
• metagraphemics
• metalanguage
• text visualization
• image semantics
• linguistic expertise