Graphology
Graphology is concerned with the form of a written text, i.e. its shape, layout and appearance. These will have been chosen by the text’s creator so that the text a) complies with genre conventions, b) accounts for the context of use and c) to make the text pleasing to the eye or more useful to the mind.
This could be especially important regarding audience – a young audience would require different graphological decisions to be made when compared with an older audience. Also, purpose will, to some degree, determine graphological style: an instructional text will require a different layout from a descriptive text, for example. Graphology includes aspects such as layout, font face, but is the use of colour, italics, bold, underline, letter headings, headlines, columns, tables, bullet points and much more – all aspects of its visual form.
- Where graphology can become a most useful analytical tool or framework is when it is realised that it is the very first aspect of a text that is perceived by its audience. Thus, it can materially affect both the reception and interpretation of a text.
- We, as audiences, have become conditioned to the generic appearance of particular texts – and it is at the level of a text’s graphology that this process begins, well before the audience gains any knowledge of the text’s content. Thus, the graphological aspects of a text can initiate a conditioned mind-set (often an ideologically conditioned response – see ideology later) that can materially affect the way the text is received and interpreted.
