Abstract/Summary

TYPOGRAPHIC LANDSCAPES – THE SOCIAL DIMENSIONS OF TYPOGRAPHY AND LETTERING IN THE MULTILINGUAL URBAN SPACES OF THE RUHR METROPOLIS This thesis investigates how typography is used by social actors to perform communicative and social practices in urban spaces. Typography is the substance of materialised language and therefore a highly relevant “social practice” (Spitzmüller 2013) for the study of urban spaces. However, so far, typography has played no significant role in the relevant areas of linguistic and semiotic landscape research. The present study addresses this research gap, following a multidisciplinary approach that integrates positions from sociolinguistics and typography regarding typographic meaning-making in urban spaces. Methodologically, the present study combines quantitative and qualitative analyses of image and interview data. The core database is the corpus of the Signs of the Metropolis research project (1) (cf. Ziegler et al. 2018) containing around 25,500 geocoded photographs of fixed inscriptions in urban space, taken in 2012/2013 in eight streets north and south of the “social equator” A 40 (cf. Kersting et al. 2009: 142–145) in the four cities of Duisburg, Essen, Bochum and Dortmund. For this research, the type styles were subsequently tagged throughout the entire dataset, as well as the materials, colours, sign types and sizes in a data sample of over 500 images. This quantitative approach provides insights into the distribution of typography and language in the Ruhr area and allows for a detailed typographic analysis of discourse types and the differences between neighbourhoods. Furthermore, over 100 images were collected in 2020 in the borough of Duisburg-Marxloh and compared with Google Street View data from 2008 for a time comparison study to track changes in shop signs. The second empirical study reveals the context and background of a distinctive finding from the quantitative study: the high number of extraordinary decorative typefaces in predominantly Turkish-language texts in the northern district of Duisburg-Marxloh, which do not occur in any other neighbourhood in the Signs of the Metropolis dataset. Through 55 guided interviews with passers-by, shop owners, sign makers and design experts, significant insights were gained into the typographic everyday practices of the neighbourhood and its inhabitants, analysing both the intentions of the text producers as well as the perceptions and interpretations of the text recipients. The core findings can be briefly outlined as follows: The comparative analysis of the discourse types revealed how (typo)graphic design performs basic communicative functions in urban space, in that the five discourse types tend to use different prototypical combinations of (typo-)graphic resources. The study demonstrated how the form and materiality of written language – in font choices, signage types, colours and graphic compositions – influence the impact of texts and how the variability of typographic form is socially relevant in urban space. Furthermore, the analysis of discourse types pointed to multiple social dimensions of typographic action. These include genre formation, expressions of ideology and identity construction, as well as cultural and ethnic stereotypes in letter forms. Comparing the northern and southern neighbourhoods, it became clear that the higher cultural and linguistic diversity of the northern neighbourhoods is accompanied by greater visual and typographic variance. This means that the typography visually reflects the social structure of the city districts. The second part of the thesis focused on Duisburg-Marxloh and revealed a typographic practice with significant social implications in the context of migration. The interviews with the four stakeholder groups illustrated how social actors of different generations realise social positioning and a sense of home in the neighbourhood through specific geographical, historical, pop-cultural and religious indexicalities of unique decorative letterforms. They use typographic means to create demarcation and belonging, construct identities and negotiate shifting lifestyles and values between past, present and future. The study in Duisburg-Marxloh thus exemplified the central role typography plays in human coexistence in urban cultures, which are characterised by sign actions. Letter forms carry the history of their use with them and are employed by social actors in urban spaces as communicative vehicles with diverse references. Overall, the study demonstrated how social transformation can be observed through (typo)graphic expressions in urban space. A further unexpected finding highlighted by the interviews was how savvy especially young people were in their observations and reflections on typography. This suggests that typography plays a growing role in the consciousness and communicative decisions of non-professional designers and that it deserves more academic attention. Based on the findings of this research, it seems desirable to expand the study of typography in urban space and to establish typographic landscape research as an independent field of study. Our time is marked by an extensive “loss of home crisis” (2) and the question of how different communities in exile in various places of the world create a sense of home through written inscriptions in cityscapes is a pressing matter. (1) The project 'Signs of the Metropolis: Visual multilingualism in the Ruhr area' in cooperation between the University of Duisburg-Essen (UDE), the Centre for Turkish Studies and Integration Research (ZfTI) and the Ruhr University Bochum (RUB) was led by Prof. Dr. Evelyn Ziegler. Co-applicants were Prof. Dr. Heinz Eickmans, Prof. Dr. Ulrich Schmitz, Prof. Dr. Klaus Peter Strohmeier and Prof. Dr. Hacı-Halil Uslucan. The project was funded by the Mercator Research Center Ruhr (GZ MERCUR: Pr-2012-0045, project duration: 01.08.2013–31.08.2018). (Cf. Ziegler et al. 2018, Ziegler/Schmitz 2022) (2) Pinzler, Petra/Schmitt, Stefan (14.12.2022): Zeit – Auch das noch? – der freundliche Krisenpodcast: Warum immer mehr Menschen fliehen müssen.