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ABSTRACT
Typographic mimicry is the wrapping of writing in a “foreign dress,” i.e. the use of typefaces in which one’s script (e.g. Latin) is made to visually resemble a different script (e.g. Chinese) with the goal of evoking associations with a “foreign” culture. First, this paper addresses the formal aspects of this practice, specifically the choice of visual features to be mimicked. The core part then focuses on typographic mimicry as a social practice and includes a discussion of both the typographic knowledge that different actors – both lay and expert producers and recipients – must apply to establish and recognise the associated cultural indexicality and the typographic ideologies (i.e. beliefs and attitudes) these actors hold. The central question being investigated is how typographic mimicry is discursively negotiated. An exemplary metapragmatic discourse analysis of online reactions to a food ad and comments to two articles covering the topic catered at readers with different knowledge backgrounds highlights that typographic mimicry is not a “neutral” practice. It shows that central aspects being debated are the (re)appropriation of cultural stereotypes by users both outside and within the respective cultures and the related question of whether using typographic mimicry is generally (in)appropriate (or even racist).
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
1 This paper is partially based on my German publication “Typographische Mimikry,” to be published in: Typographie: Disziplinäre Zugänge – Fachliche Konzeptionierungen – Forschungsfragen und Projekte, edited by Ursula Rautenberg, and Anja Voeste. Stuttgart: Hiersemann.
2 Note that in typographic terminology, “script (typeface)” designates typefaces that emulate (mostly cursive) handwriting. Here, it is used in its grapholinguistic reading, in which script refers to a coherent set of characters/basic shapes used to write given languages (see also below). Furthermore, although the designation “Roman script” would be more accurate, I use Latin script in the context of this paper as “roman” is also used in typographic terminology, where it denotes the “normal” style of a typeface in which the characters’ vertical lines are not slanted (as is the case in italic type).
3 In other words, what is usually investigated in this field is the materiality and multimodality of discourses and not how these phenomena are negotiated in discourses.
4 Notably, “typographic mimicry” could be considered too broad a term to denote the phenomenon as “typography” includes more than just typeface design. While the present paper indeed focuses exclusively on typeface mimicry, other features such as writing direction that can be and are sometimes mimicked (e.g. printing a text in top-to-bottom lines that run from right to left to suggest “Asian” writing) warrant the use of “typographic mimicry.”
5 Note the crucial difference between the concepts of script and writing system (cf. Coulmas Citation1996; Meletis Citation2020a). A script is defined here as a set of graphic basic shapes that is used for the writing system(s) of one or multiple language(s). The Latin and Cyrillic scripts, for example, are used for many writing systems, respectively (e.g. English, German, Swedish, Italian, etc. use Latin script while Russian, Belorussian, Ukrainian, etc. are written in Cyrillic script). A writing system, then, is the combination of a script and a specific language (cf. Weingarten Citation2011). The English writing system pairs Latin script with the English language, making it different from the German writing system, which pairs the same script (with some additions and modifications) with German. Given this distinction, typographic mimicry, as a primarily visuo-semiotic rather than linguistic phenomenon, concerns scripts and not language-specific writing systems. Sutherland’s (Citation2015) use of the term “writing system mimicry” is not in line with this.
6 Pseudoscript, which Coulmas (Citation2014, 17) lists as an alternative designation, is also used in a related but different sense, cf. Nagel (Citation2011, 229), who studies ornamentation in the early history of Italian art, some of which “consists of script, usually eastern in flavour, sometimes close to Greek or Hebrew, often close to Arabic, but in fact in no known language: for the sake of convenience I call them ‘pseudoscripts’ […]. These apparently arbitrary strokes, slashes, and squiggles correspond to individual letterforms; their sequences sometimes repeat the same form at considered intervals, giving the array the appearance of having a linguistic structure.” Thus, in this alternative reading, pseudoscripts are fictitious illegible scripts that merely visually resemble writing.
7 Note that this illustration is Eurocentric. Although it is sometimes implied (cf., for example, the definition in Alessandrini Citation1979), Latin script is not always the source script in typographic mimicry. Indeed, many different combinations can be found (i.e. Chinese script emulating Arabic script, Japanese kana mimicking Thai script, etc.). Some examples are collected at https://www.flickr.com/groups/cross-script-letterforms/ (accessed 10 May 2021).
8 Not everyone agrees that striving for such a grapho-grammar is feasible or even possible. Spitzmüller (Citation2012, 258), for example, argues that systematising typographic features in this way is impossible as “their interpretation is itself dependent on the context that is set up by means of all communicative modes. Therefore, it does not make sense to set up a context-abstract ‘grammar’ of visual elements or to look for distinctive semantic characteristics of specific graphic features. Due to the dynamic nature of graphic elements, such attempts are bound to fail.”
9 Cf., more generally, Kim and Kim (Citation1993, 32, emphasis in original): “Despite the visual integrity and ingenuity of many of these alphabets, Western letterers’ mimicry of calligraphic strokes used by other writing traditions inevitably fails to refer correctly to the ductus, or order and direction of strokes, of the different traditions.”
10 Arguably, lumping these two into one category is already a questionable action, underlining that little to no distinction is made between them from the Western perspective that serves as the dominant lens through which these representations of other cultures are (simplistically) viewed (cf. also Shaw Citation2009). This category, incidentally, also includes typefaces that mimic Hangul, the script used in the Korean writing system, further underlining that scripts used for various Asian writing systems are commonly not categorised in a more fine-grained manner. Interestingly, this broad categorisation is also reflected in the reception study by Celhay, Boysselle, and Cohen (Citation2015, 171), who even note uncritically that it is “understandable that accurately determining whether an exotype is making a reference to the Chinese or the Japanese culture is difficult for a sample of Western respondents.”
11 January–February 2021.
12 While these designations are all based on the term font (which is also used in many of the comments cited in this paper as well as in the provocative quote that makes up part of its title), here, the term typeface is preferred. For the difference between them, cf. Murphy (Citation2017, 68): “The term ‘font’ is more widely used than typeface in colloquial discourse, largely due to its endemic presence in consumer word-processing software, but there is a historical difference between the two terms: in traditional typesetting the word ‘font’ refers to a complete set of letters and other characters in one typeface, one style (bold, italic, etc.), one weight (the thickness of its lines), and one size.” Thus, for example, while Times New Roman is a typeface, 12 pt bold Times New Roman is one specific font of that typeface.
13 For information on the foundry, cf. also http://luc.devroye.org/fonts-53475.html (accessed 11 May 2021).
14 And neither were some of their uses: for example, Patil and Owens (Citation2019, 13–16) trace that typefaces mimicking Japanese (which, due to the lack of fine-grained differentiation, resemble typefaces mimicking Chinese, cf. Section 2) were used during WWII in US propaganda material with the goal of spreading racial prejudice. Another example they present is the use of typefaces mimicking Hebrew that could be found in Nazi propaganda. Such historical uses justify (and definitely explain) the discussion of whether contemporary uses of typographic mimicry have an underlying racist motivation.
15 Its predominant use in signage makes typographic mimicry a relevant subject of linguistic landscaping research. Accordingly, it features prominently in case studies such as Kim and Kim’s (Citation1993) analysis of the typographic landscape of Los Angeles but also at a more theoretical level in general discussions of the functions of typography in space and time, i.e. as part of semiotic landscapes, cf. the Social Semiotics special issue “Typographic Landscaping: Creativity, Ideology, Movement” (Järlehed and Jaworski Citation2015).
16 Note that typographic knowledge is a special form of graphic knowledge, which also subsumes knowledge about other types of writing (e.g. handwriting). The same applies to typographic ideologies.
17 In fact, typographic mimicry, due to the evoked visual similarity, often makes reading even more difficult for readers who are literate in the target script. The biggest challenge is posed by actual characters from the target script which are used for visually similar characters in the source script although they have a different graphematic value. A typical example is <Λ> used instead of <A> in Latin typefaces emulating Greek script. Here, readers literate in Greek recognise the “real,” i.e. Greek graphematic value of the grapheme <Λ> (a correspondence with the phoneme /l/), which is why they potentially have problems reading it as <A> (with the correspondence /a/). This borrowing of actual characters instead of a mere visual emulation of features of their appearance is referred to as graphematic crossing and often occurs in addition to typographic mimicry (for different types of graphic crossing, cf. Spitzmüller Citation2007).
18 This appears to be explicit typographic knowledge at least among experts, i.e. type designers, as implied by a user’s comment in response to Helfand’s (Citation2007) article (cf. below): “[…] can you trace the cultural associations of Hot Tamale [a typeface evoking Mexican culture, cf. , DM] back to a particular source? […] maybe it looks ‘Mexican’ simply because it has been used so many times for burrito menus. Maybe the Mexican look is merely a reflection of its predominant usage” (Rob Henning, 26 June 2007). For an analysis of how typefaces can develop such (initially unintended) connotations through the complex interaction of a variety of factors, see Giampietro (Citation2004), a study tracing how the typefaces Neuland and Lithos have “come to signify Africans and African-Americans, regardless of how a designer uses them, and regardless of the purpose for which their creators originally intended them.”
19 Note that in this paper, the notion of “culture” is used rather broadly. Incidentally, this use reflects what producers and recipients of typographic mimicry often believe and what is thus a pillar of this practice: that there is “a” Chinese (Arabic, Japanese, …) culture they can evoke by using certain typefaces. This, of course, sweeps actual cultural heterogeneity under the carpet but at the same time aptly highlights the boundaries of (typographic) knowledge that typographic mimicry may not cross in order to stay sociosemiotically meaningful.
20 For a sample of Hot Tamale, cf. .
21 The institutions that train these designers are also criticised, cf. Fernández (Citation2015): “Maybe we should also hold accountable the institutions that teach design without teaching the social implications of design.”
22 Similar questions – albeit sociopolitically not as pressing – are found in metapragmatic online discourses surrounding the (use of) typeface Comic Sans (cf. Meletis Citation2020b). In them, what users perceive as a clumsy and childish appearance of the typeface serves as one of the reasons that many people argue its use in more formal and serious contexts (such as CVs) is inappropriate. The fact that it is still so often used in such contexts leads to generally unfavourable attitudes towards the typeface.
23 This paper focuses on mimicking typefaces that can be downloaded for free on websites such as dafont.com (cf. ). This may invite the impression that the discussion of the poor quality of mimicking typefaces may be associated with the fact that freely downloadable typefaces are generally considered poorly designed/cheap. However, the ideologies traced here are by no means restricted to freely downloadable typefaces but extend also to commercial typefaces. The analysis of discourses suggests indeed that the evaluation of these typefaces as being of poor quality is related to the purpose they are meant (and believed) to fulfil rather than to the question of whether they are available for free.
24 The term yellowface is used primarily to denote white actors playing Asian characters (cf. J. Lee Citation2019). A linguistic parallel to yellowface typefaces can be found in so-called “Mock Asian,” the imitation of stereotypical Asian speech (especially in English, cf. Chun Citation2008).
25 Written by user Msilvertant (12 July 2014). This as well as the following comments can be found under Coville’s (Citation2013) article.
26 Wereboar (2 October 2013).
27 Steve Dutch (25 October 2014).
28 Darko29 (26 September 2013). Interestingly, in the lay discourse, such as in this example, several users “out” themselves as (or at least pretend to be) designers in their comments, presumably to underline that they have expert typographic knowledge and thus emphasise the legitimacy of their opinions. The arguments, in any case, are similar to the ones prevalent in expert discourses (see below).
29 Graphicstyle7 (26 September 2013).
30 One aspect she mentions is the typefaces’ names, providing as an example the name Circumcision for a typeface mimicking Hebrew (cf. https://www.fonts.com/de/font/t-26/circumcision/regular, accessed 17 February 2021). This is picked up by a commenter who notes that “the names should be the target of scrutiny, not the letterforms” (Josh, 27 June 2007). This as well as the following comments can be found under Helfand’s (Citation2007) article.
31 Written by user Whaleroot (27 June 2007).
32 Jessica Gladstone (26 June 2007).
33 Rob Henning (26 June 2007).
34 james puckett (26 June 2007).
35 Josh (28 June 2007).
36 Per Baasch Jørgensen (14 April 2010). Notably, the author of this comment is the designer of two (commercial) typefaces named Bagel and Falafel that mimic Hebrew script. His (defensive) contribution to the discussion shows that type designers themselves also take part in the discourses on typographic mimicry, especially in contexts that cater to experts (such as the Design Observer).
37 visakh (27 June 2007).
38 Dori Tunstall (30 June 2007).
39 Rebecca (20 June 2010).
40 Gino (28 June 2007).
41 Sinaku (26 September 2013).
42 Notably, typefaces which are commonly perceived as “neutral” are seldom the focus of research, which centres instead on special and “non-neutral” forms of design, a situation that Spitzmüller (Citation2016a, 115) refers to as expressive typography bias. This bias is echoed in what is being predominantly negotiated in discourses, underlining that “norms go unnoticed while marked practice is interpreted” (W. Lee and Su Citation2019, sec. 2, para. 1; Kroskrity Citation2004).
43 Comment under the article found at https://gothamist.com/food/fresh-directs-chop-suey-font-for-stir-fry-products-raises-eyebrows, written by user RobertMosesSupposesErroneously (15 June 2012, accessed 17 February 2021).
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Dimitrios Meletis
Dimitrios Meletis is a linguist specialising in the study of writing systems and their use. He holds a PhD in Linguistics from the University of Graz and is currently a postdoc researcher at the University of Zurich. He has published books on graphetics as well as a general functional theory of writing systems (The Nature of Writing, Fluxus Éditions 2020) and articles on central concepts of the field including the grapheme and allography. Currently, he is working on a research project focusing on literacy and (self-)prescriptivism.