/gʁafematik/ 2024 — Grapholinguistics in the 21st Century

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Grapholinguistics in the 21st century—From graphemes to knowledge

G21C (Grapholinguistics in the 21st Century, also called /gʁafematik/) is a biennial conference bringing together disciplines concerned with grapholinguistics and, more generally, the study of writing systems and their representation in written communication. The conference aims to reflect on the current state of research in the area and on the role that writing and writing systems play in neighboring disciplines like computer science and information technology, communication, typography, psychology, and pedagogy. In particular it aims to study the effect of the growing importance of Unicode with regard to the future of reading and writing in human societies. Reflecting the richness of perspectives on writing systems, G21C is actively interdisciplinary. It welcomes proposals from researchers from the fields of computer science and information technology, linguistics, communication, pedagogy, psychology, history, and the social sciences.

G21C aims to create a space for discussing the range of approaches to writing systems and specifically to bridge approaches in linguistics, informatics, and other fields. It will provide a forum for explorations in terminology, methodology, and theoretical approaches relating to delineating an emerging interdisciplinary area of research that intersects with intense activity in practical implementations of writing systems.

And, BTW, we didn't make the term “grapholinguistics” up; it first appeared in 1967 and was officially introduced with the current meaning in 2015 by Martin Neef. It is a straightforward translation of the German term »Schriftlinguistik«. It is not the first case of a mixed Greek neoclassical component prefixed to the word “linguistics,” famous precedents are “psycholinguistics” and “neurolinguistics,” less famous ones, “xenolinguistics,” “biolinguistics,” “cryptolinguistics,” etc.

The Grapholinguistics in the 21st Century Conference is kindly endorsed by ACL (Association for Computational Linguistics) and by ATypI (Association Typographique Internationale).

The first edition of G21C was held in Brest, France, on June 14-15, 2018, the second edition was held online on June 17-19, 2020, and the third edition of G21C was held in Palaiseau, on June 8-10, 2022.

Sponsored by IMT Atlantique and LabSTICC CNRS laboratory (UMR 6285)

Main topics of interest

We welcome proposals from all disciplines concerned with the study of written language, writing systems, and their implementation in information systems. Examples of topics include, but are not limited to:

Epistemology of grapholinguistics: history, onomastics, topics, interaction with other disciplines
Foundations of grapholinguistics, graphemics, and graphetics
History and typology of writing systems, comparative graphemics/graphetics
Semiotics of writing and of writing systems
Computational/formal graphemics/graphetics
Grapholinguistic theory of Unicode encoding
Orthographic reforms, theory, and practice
Graphemics/graphetics and multiliteracy
Writing and art / Writing in art
Sinographemics
Typographemics, typographetics
Texting, latinization, new forms of written language
ASCII art, emoticons, and other pictorial uses of graphemes
Linguistic landscape
Gender-neutral and non-binary writing, graphemic and graphetic methods
The future of writing, of writing systems and styles
Graphemics/graphetics of science-fiction and astrolinguistics
Graphemics/graphetics and font technologies
Graphemics/graphetics in steganography and computer security (phishing, typosquatting, etc.)
Graphemics/graphetics in art, media, and communication / Aesthetics of writing in the digital era
Graphemics/graphetics in experimental psychology and cognitive sciences
Teaching graphemics/graphetics, the five Ws, and one H
Grapholinguistic applications in natural language processing and text mining
Grapholinguistic applications in optical character recognition and information technologies

Keynote speakers


Annick Payne	Camille Circlude	Donald E. Knuth
Annick Payne is an associate professor of Anatolian Studies at Ca' Foscari University, Venice. She is the PI of the ERC project "Communication in Ancient Anatolia". A particular research interest of hers is writing and cognition, especially the development and system of the Anatolian Hieroglyphic script. References; Hieroglyphic Luwian. An Introduction with Original Texts, Harrassowitz 2004; 2010; 2014. Iron Age Hieroglyphic Luwian Texts in Translation, SBL 2012. Schrift und Schriftlichkeit. Die anatolische Hieroglyphenschrift, Harrassowitz 2015.	Camille Circlude, author of La typographie post-binaire, is a typo-graphic designer and researcher. They holds a Master's degree in Gender Studies, is an active member of the Bye Bye Binary collective and works as a graphic designer based in Brussels. They also teaches at the erg (École de recherche graphique, Brussels). Camille Circlude is currently working on a research project entitled Typographie post-binaire: recherche sur les usages, les appropriations et la pollinisation des fontes, funded by the Fonds de la Recherche en Art (FRArt/F.R.S.-FNRS). References: Camille Circlude, La typographie post-binaire – La typographie, au delà de l'écriture inclusive, Paris, éditions B42, collection «Façons», 2023.	Donald Ervin Knuth is an American computer scientist and mathematician. He is a professor emeritus at Stanford University. He is the 1974 recipient of the ACM Turing Award, informally considered the Nobel Prize of computer science. Knuth has been called the “father of the analysis of algorithms.” Besides being the author of the multi-volume work The Art of Computer Programming, Knuth is the creator of the TeX computer typesetting system, the related METAFONT font definition language and rendering system, and the Computer Modern family of typefaces, for which he has given a mathematical definition of the “most pleasing curve.” Selected references: The Art of Computer Programming, 4 vols., Addison-Wesley, 1997-2015. Computers & Typesetting, 5 vols., Addison-Wesley, 1984-1986. Digital Typography, Lecture Notes. Stanford, CA: CSLI, 1999. Surreal numbers: how two ex-students turned on to pure mathematics and found total happiness: a mathematical novelette, Addison-Wesley, 1974. 3:16 Bible Texts Illuminated, Madison, WI: A-R Editions, 1990.
Classifiers in the Anatolian Hieroglyphic Script The Anatolian Hieroglyphic script, used ca. 1500-700 BCE, was introduced as a second writing system, next to cuneiform, during the Hittite Empire and became the only writing system of the so-called Neo-Hittite successor states. It is a mixed logo-phonetic writing system, with semantic signs functioning as logograms and classifiers, and syllabic signs representing sound. While the script underwent continuous development during its existence, it was at all times open for further and ad hoc creation of signs. In the Bronze Age, there was only a small number of classifiers, inspired by but not identical to the model of Hittite cuneiform. This developed into a much larger and very active system in the Iron Age, which drew on both the script’s iconicity, semantic and phonetic relationships. The study of classifiers offers insight into semantic groups, their proximity or distance, as well as interaction between and across different individual groups. As a category of signs, classifiers thus illuminate cognitive structures of the original script users. At the same time, the pictorial character of the script offered an additional level of interconnections with both objects from the real world and the inherited artistic tradition. This was actively exploited and leads to meta-textual phenomena which form a counter-point to the classification as a script-internal category. This paper will offer an overview of the system of classification and discuss current research through the application of the ©iClassifier digital research tool—Orly Goldwasser—Conceptualization and classifier theory, Haleli Harel—Computational realization and research coordination, Dmitry Nikolaev—Programming. The tool was developed in the ArchaeoMind Lab, PI Orly Goldwasser, ISF grants 735/17 and 2408/22. iClassifier enables and facilitates digital data collection, classifier annotation, detailed classifier analysis, robust computer-assisted lexical and statistical reports, and diverse network modeling.	Post-binary typography for a debinarised future How can we move beyond the gender binary characteristic of the French language? Camille Circlude details the emergence of inclusive, non-binary, and post-binary typography, which, in the wave of inclusive writing, seeks to fight the gendered nature of the French language. The field of typographic design now offers an unprecedented space for writing to embrace the vast prism of gender beyond binarity. Typography is seen as an emancipating technology that enables us to resist hegemony and embrace the hybridity of forms. Today, it offers the possibility of materializing queer, non-binary, genderfluid, agender, and genderfuck existences in the shared and symbolic spaces of language and writing. Camille Circlude takes stock of six years of typographic experimentation (2017-2023) in a practice that continues to spread and continues to be written in the present. Exploring the possibilities of a post-binary future, the talk will look at the questions and issues raised by these new typographic forms in terms of their legibility, oralisation, and digital pollination.	The Grapholinguistic Model of TeX Written text documents are computer representations of grapholinguistic utterances. Decades before DOC, PDF, and TEI, Donald Knuth introduced the TeX document model. It is based on multiple resources: a program in the TeX programming language and a binary document obtained by compiling the program, and external resources such as fonts, images, etc. This lecture will be in the form of an interview with Donald E. Knuth by Yannis Haralambous around the grapholinguistic aspects of the TeX document model. An “All Questions Answered” Session “In every class that I taught at Stanford, the last day was devoted to “all questions answered.” The students didn't have to come to class if they didn't want to, but if they did, they could ask any question on any subject except religion or politics or the final exam. I got the idea from Richard Feynman, who did the same thing in his classes at Caltech, and it was always interesting to see what the students really wanted to know. During this session, I'll answer any question on any subject.”

Program committee

Jannis Androutsopoulos, Universität Hamburg, Germany
Vlad Atanasiu, Université de Fribourg, Switzerland
Kristian Berg, Universität Oldenburg, Germany
Peter Bilak, Typothèque, The Hague, The Netherlands
Florian Coulmas, Universität Duisburg, Germany
Jacques David, Université de Cergy-Pontoise, France
Mark Davis, Unicode Consortium & Google Inc., Switzerland
Joseph Dichy, Université Lumière Lyon 2, France
Christa Dürscheid, Universität Zürich, Switzerland
Martin Dürst, Aoyama Gakuin University & W3C, Sagamihara, Japan
Martin Evertz, Universität Köln, Germany
Amalia Gnanadesikan, University of Maryland, College Park MD, USA
Claude Gruaz, formerly at CNRS, Rouen, France
Yannis Haralambous, IMT Atlantique & CNRS Lab-STICC, Brest, France (head of the program committee)
Daniel Harbour, Queen Mary University of London, UK
Keisuke Honda, Dublin City University, Ireland
Shu-Kai Hsieh, National Taiwan University, Taipei, Taiwan
Dejan Ivković, York University, Toronto, Canada
Jean-Pierre Jaffré, formerly at Université Paris 5, France
Terry Joyce, Tama University, Fujisawa, Kanagawa, Japan
George Kiraz, Rutgers University, Piscataway, New Jersey, USA
Marc W. Küster, Office de traduction de l'Union européenne, Luxembourg
Frédéric Landragin, CNRS - Laboratoire Lattice, Montrouge, France
Christophe Lemey, URCI Mental Health Department, Brest Medical University Hospital, Brest, France
Gerry Leonidas, University of Reading, United Kingdom
Kamal Mansour, Monotype Imaging, Los Altos, California, USA
Klimis Mastoridis, University of Nicosia, Cyprus
Dimitrios Meletis, Universität Zürich, Switzerland
Tomi S. Melka, formerly at Parkland College, Champaign, Illinois, USA
Ghassan Mourad, Université Libanaise, Beirut, Lebanon
James Myers, National Chung Cheng University, Taiwan
Panchanan Mohanty, University of Hyderabad, India
Lisa Moore, Unicode Consortium, USA
Shigeki Moro, Hanazono University, Kyoto, Japan
Sonali Nag, University of Oxford, UK
J.R. Osborn, Georgetown University, Washington DC, USA
Jean-Christophe Pellat, Université de Strasbourg, France
Miquel Peyró, Universidad de Sevilla, Spain
Christian Puech, Université de la Sorbonne nouvelle, Paris, France
François Rastier, formerly at CNRS, Paris, France
Cornelia Schindelin, Universität Mainz, Germany
Virach Sornlertlamvanich, SIIT, Thammasat University, Phatum Thani, Thailand
Jürgen Spitzmüller, Universität Wien, Vienna, Austria
Richard Sproat, Google Research, Tokyo, Japan
Susanne Wehde, MRC Managing Research GmbH, München, Germany
Kenneth Whistler, Unicode Consortium, Berkeley, California, USA

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