Alphabet Soup
Sorry I'm late with this post everyone, but I hope it was worth the wait...
As I was looking over my typography books for ideas, I came across this page in "Thinking with Type" which prompted my post.
It reads:
Typography made text into a thing, a material object with known dimensions and fixed locations.
The French philosopher Jacques Derrida, who devised the theory of deconstruction in the 1960s, wrote that although the alphabet represents sound, it cannot function without silent marks and spaces. Typography manipulates the silent dimensions of the alphabet, employing habits and techniques -- such as spacing and punctuation -- that are seen but not heard. The alphabet, rather than evolve into a transparent code for recording speech, developed its own visual resources, becoming a more powerful technology as it left behind its connections to the spoken word.
“That a speech supposedly alive can lend itself to spacing in its own writing is what relates to its own death.” -- Jacques Derrida, 1976 (Thinking with Type, pg. 67)
What I think is the most intriguing is the sentence about the alphabet developing its own visual resources rather than evolving into a code for recording speech. I read this as the author interpreting the alphabet more as a visual stimuli, which has made text into a thing, instead of a means to record our verbal expression. Do you agree with the author's statement? Do you think our written language is more visual than auditory, and is that a positive or negative thing?
posted by lieza @ 9:56 PM
7 Comments:
In it's own way, type does become a "code" for recording speech. It is all dependent upon the way the words and letters are displayed or designed. Through type you convey certain feelings and actions visually. That, when combined with the meanings behind the actual words can be developed into a code for recorded speech that is also a visual stimuli. I think that the ability to do this is a wonderful thing. Because now we can not only visually stimulate but also make other connections between what is written and the meanings behind it.
Type is a visually stimulating thing as well as a way for use to record a message. Type has a body language as do people. It sends a message with it's curves and decorative serifs. Our mind's as a collective society (that has history of knowledge) have created this "feeling" in a typeface. They are an astetically pleasing element of the world as well as a communication device.
Type is sort of a cross between visual and auditory. Sometimes words have a voice, they are arranged in a manner that is less record and more emotion. On the other hand, type can also be simple a vessel in which to record and express thoughts or ideas. Especially today, we use type as a visual element, sometimes deconstructed, sometimes unreadable but a message is still being conveyed. I guess it is how in a particular instance that the designer decides to use typography. There is not black and white in type.
The written language is both a visual and auditory thing. I don't think it can be one without the other. In a sense we need to see it in order to hear it. I think of it as learning a foreign language. You can speak french or can read french. You go to france. What is more important to read the signs or to hear what the natives are speaking to you.
Hmmm. This is interesting. It's true, when I read text I don't really see it as words. I'm not really sure what I see it as though. Pictures? Maybe. This reminds me of some forwarded email I received which had a paragraph written with each word being misspelled. The first and last letters of each word were in the correct order but the middle letters were scrambled. It was still completely readable, which was interesting and apparently worth forwarding to your friends and family or else you will receive bad luck in 7 days.
as far as a code for recording speach, technology took care of that. taperecorders, and now mics on our computers even. i think if something auditory needs to be "coded" it will be done that way. But, we can't "record" our ideas, our inner monolauge, and perhaps mostly our thoughts. So we use written languge to communicate those. I mean, we still record things that happen auditorally with written languge as well as all of our other senses. Its still important. The word code seems like harsh, emotionless data. We don't read code, we interpret information perhaps? So the fact that it's visual it allows for a variety of interpretation. There is code benieth the words your reading now. Geeky internet code. lol. leave the code for the computers and robots. like that mtv commercial... "I WANT MY"....Typography.
Jacques Derrida presents us with a seriously loaded statement with multiple levels of meaning. But, when considering his statement, I think it’s important to consider the theory of linguistic value - the identity of a signifier rests not on itself but on the relation to other signifiers. Typography essentially can be boiled down to positive and negative space, equally important. When looking at letter, especially at an extreme zoom or crop, this becomes more evident. Letters become marks, totally visual. No idenity, no meaning. But typography has a certain functional job. It conveys message and meaning. However, post-structuralism brings the functional job of typography crashing down. Does typography even need to be readable? A great deconstructive designer / typography to look is David Carson. Good stuff. Looking at his work helps me put these abstract concepts into focus. So is written language more visual than auditory?
I think only if you want it to be.
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