Abstract
The notion of asemic writing has known a certain vogue in recent years, and several definitions or descriptions have been offered, for example: “anything that looks like writing, but in which the person viewing can’t read any words”(Tim Gaze). Peter Schwenger is somewhat more precise : « [signs] that don’t belong to any familiar system…[but which] put themselves forward in the form of a sign system, recognizable as marks disposed on a page according to certain conventions.” But everything turns on a particular reader’s knowledge of a given semiotic system, and if a person is not familiar with a system of writing – mandarin, say – that person will not be able to know if a piece of graphic marks that look like mandarin are asemic or not. Asemic writing is thus located more in a viewer’s act of reception than in the marks made on a page or other surface, and what asemic writing puts into play are above all our institutions of writing and codes of reception.
Presenters
Laurence De LoozeProfessor, Department of Languages and Cultures, University of Western Ontario, Ontario, Canada
Details
Presentation Type
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session
Theme
KEYWORDS
Writing, Alphabet, Semiotics, Asemic, Signs, Reception, Reading, Intelligibility
