The Pragmatics of Typography

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Communication among humans is known to be complex, which is perhaps why some technologies of communication go unrecognized by their users. For example, written communications, whether public signage, billboards, books, instruction manuals, or even consumer electronics interfaces, depend on the purposeful deployment of typefaces and fonts. The typeface or font chosen in each case carries its own meaning, which influences the message received and resonates with readers through these shared cultural forms, even if readers are unaware. Surprisingly, considering typeface's ubiquity and importance, this area of social life has been little studied. Social scientists have examined typeface primarily in narrow, cognitive terms, such as by studying relative readability. But much wider research is needed to understand how the many different typefaces that populate societies are created, selected, and used, and how they ultimately build and influence communication.Dr. Keith M. Murphy, an anthropologist at the University of California at Irvine, will undertake an ethnographic and discourse analytic investigation of how varieties of printed language mediate communication. The research will focus on typographic design and pedagogy; decision making around the use of typeface for public communication; and the curation and cultivation of typographic knowledge. Data will be collected through semi-structured interviews, participant observation, video-recorded activity analyses, and archival research, in studios, classrooms, and archives, primarily in San Francisco, Los Angeles, and New York City. Data analysis will include an innovative use of techniques from archaeology to examine relations between typographic specimen categories and contexts of use. Findings from this research will elucidate how typeface influences the messages people send and receive. Theoretically, the research expands upon social scientific understanding of the materiality of human communication.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.