Much of my research has been devoted to the study of different aspects of writing and literacy, which are all subsumed by the interdisciplinary field of grapholinguistics. While this field is well established in the German-speaking realm—as Schriftlinguistik—it is still emerging more internationally. In my doctoral research, funded by the Austrian Academy of Sciences and conducted at the University of Graz (AT), I carved out a framework for the description of typologically diverse writing systems (including basic comparative concepts such as grapheme or graphotactics). Using this framework as a basis, I aimed for explanation, i.e., the question of why writing looks and functions the way it does (and has developed diachronically to what it is today)—as a semiotic system linked to language, a medium in need of physiological and cognitive processing, and a mode of communication deeply anchored in individual cultures. To achieve this, I relied on a functionalist usage-based approach (linguistic Naturalness Theory) and considered external writing-related evidence from a range of disciplines (e.g., psychology, IT, sociology, design theory), embracing the interdisciplinary nature of writing as a subject and grapholinguistics as a field. Find details on the various sub-aspects of my grapholinguistic research by clicking one of the headings belox the Research Output box.

Research output

Key publications

[2020] The nature of writing: A theory of grapholinguistics (Grapholinguistics and Its Applications 3). Brest. Fluxus Editions. DOI: 10.36824/2020-meletis.

[2022, with Christa Dürscheid] Writing systems and their use: An overview of grapholinguistics (Trends in Linguistics. Studies and Monographs 369). Berlin, Boston: De Gruyter. DOI: 10.1515/9783110757835.

Other publications

[in preparation, with Martin Evertz-Rittich and Rebecca Treiman] Handbook of Germanic Writing Systems (Handbooks of Germanic Linguistics). Boston, Berlin: De Gruyter.

[submitted a] Schriftlinguistik interdisziplinär, multiperspektivisch, komparativ: Die Erarbeitung struktureller, psycholinguistischer und soziolinguistischer Typologien. In Henning Lobin, Mechthild Habermann & Angelika Wöllstein (eds.), Jahrbuch des IDS 2023. Berlin, Boston: De Gruyter.

[submitted b] What’s in a name? Trends and challenges in naming the study of writing. In Yannis Haralambous (ed.), Grapholinguistics in the 21st Century 2022. Brest: Fluxus Editions.

[2021] On being a grapholinguist. In Yannis Haralambous (ed.), Grapholinguistics in the 21st Century. June 17–19, 2020. Proceedings, Part I (Grapholinguistics and Its Applications 4), 47–62. Brest: Fluxus Editions. DOI: 10.36824/2020-graf-mele.

Third-party funds

[2022] Gold Open Access Funding for book Writing systems and their use: An overview of grapholinguistics (€ 7000), Schweizerischer Nationalfonds (SNF)

[2017–2020] DOC Fellowship for project Naturalness in Scripts and Writing Systems: Outlining a Natural Grapholinguistics (€ 82333), Österreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften (ÖAW)

Award

[2021] Prize for an Outstanding Doctoral Dissertation by the Faculty of Arts and Humanities, Karl-Franzens-Universität Graz

Conference Activity

[2023] Talk Writing de/scrib/ing itself: How the duality of writing as a metalinguistic instrument and research object challenges a Descriptive Grapholinguistics, Visiolinguistics: Panoramas of languaging and visuality, Open University (UK)

[2022, with Christa Dürscheid] Keynote Grapholinguistics – An expanding research field, LautSchriftSprache 5 – From the Maya Script to Germanic Runes, Universitetet i Agder (NO)

[2021] Organized Workshop Writing: System, use, ideology, 46th Austrian Linguistics Conference, Universität Wien (AT)

[2019] Talk Schrift/Linguistik – Eine Theorie zwischen interdisziplinärer Schriftforschung und deskriptiver Linguistik, Guest Lecture at Deutsches Seminar, Universität Zürich (CH)

[2016] Organized Workshop Theorien und Methoden in der Schriftlinguistik, 42th Austrian Linguistics Conference, Karl-Franzens-Universität Graz (AT)

Editorial work

[since 2022] Member of Editorial Board of Journal Written Language & Literacy (John Benjamins)

[since 2020] Member of Editorial Board of Book Series Grapholinguistics and Its Applications (Fluxus Editions)

Teaching

[2023] Writing Systems, University of Massachusetts Amherst (LSA 2023 Linguistic Institute)

[2021] Das deutsche Schriftsystem aus komparativer Sicht, Universität Zürich

[2017] Perspektiven der Schriftlinguistik, Karl-Franzens-Universität Graz

1. Graphetics

My grapholinguistic research started with the study of written materiality; the resulting master’s thesis focused on graphetics and was published as a revised and extended monograph. Its main question is how material features of writing had been treated in linguistics prior to a ‘material turn’. Adopting fruitful ideas from German structural linguistics stemming from a circle surrounding Hartmut Günther, Konrad Ehlich, Florian Coulmas et al., I proposed a descriptive model of the German writing system relying on spatial characteristics (such as empty spaces). Consequently, through reviewing interdisciplinary research on reading, I explored the psychological reality and critically reflected the value of my descriptive proposals. This survey underlined that the identified material aspects of visual data cannot be neglected as they are vital in constituting the meaning and function(s) of texts, assuming a prominent role in their cognitive processing. I have since continued to study various cognitively and communicatively relevant visual aspects of writing—such as iconicity and diagrammaticity, spacing, directionality, typographic features—that have shaped its development and affect its use.

Research output

Key publication

[2015] Graphetik: Form und Materialität der Schrift (Typo|Druck). Glückstadt: Werner Hülsbusch.

Conference Activity

[2022] Talk How visual stereotypes work, Multilingual Writing, Universität Bern (CH)

[2018] Poster Reintroducing graphetics: The materiality of writing, its questions, and its problems, Writing conventions and pragmatic perspectives, Université Libre de Bruxelles (BE)

[2016] Talk Zur Materialität von Schrift: Zentrale Fragen der Graphetik, Guest lecture at Deutsches Seminar, Universität Zürich (AT)

Award

[2015] Best Peer-reviewed Publication on the Basis of the Master’s Thesis, awarded by the Faculty of Arts and Humanities, Karl-Franzens-Universität Graz

Other publications

[submitted] The skeletons and dresses of writing systems: A (grapho)linguistic perspective on graphic structure and variation. In Paul Luna, Fiona Ross, Sue Walker, Vaibhav Singh, and Mariko Takagi (eds.), Bloomsbury Handbook of Global Typography. London: Bloomsbury.

[2022] Typographische Mimikry. In Ursula Rautenberg & Anja Voeste (eds.), Typographie: Disziplinäre Zugänge – Fachliche Konzeptionierungen – Forschungsfragen und Projekte, 68–79. Stuttgart: Hiersemann.

[2021] ‘Is your font racist?’ Metapragmatic online discourses on the use of typographic mimicry and its appropriateness. Social Semiotics. DOI: 10.1080/10350330.2021.1989296.

[2020] Reintroducing graphetics: The study of the materiality of writing. Scripta 11: 91–131.

[2016] Review of Tilo Reißig. 2015. Typographie und Grammatik. Untersuchung zum Verhältnis von Syntax und Raum. Zeitschrift für Rezensionen zur germanistischen Sprachwissenschaft 8.1–2: 147–152. DOI: 10.1515/zrs-2016-0027.

[2015–2017] Network range “Graphetik” [graphetics] (= 32 articles). In Martin Neef, Said Sahel, and Rüdiger Weingarten (eds.) (2013–), Schriftlinguistik (Wörterbücher zur Sprach- und Kommunikationswissenschaft [WSK] 5). Berlin, Boston: De Gruyter.

One of the first things that fascinated me when I started to study Russian was subjects of sentences that are marked with the genitive in the context of a negation. When I delved deeper into the topic, I found myriad formal and functional approaches to this topic that mostly deal with its syntactic and semantic aspects. In my master’s thesis, which was published as a book (in German), I reviewed and contextualized many of the most relevant approaches to the genitive of negation in Russian (both in subject and object positions) and complemented this with my own small-scale corpus linguistic study to test which of the approaches have the most explanatory force. Later, I also taught a general course on negation and covered aspects such as standard negation (in declarative sentences), negation in imperatives and existential sentences, negative concord and double negation, the acquisition and processing of negation, and the pragmatics of negation. I plan to continue working on aspects of negation in the future.

The public’s main way of measuring linguistic competence is through the adherence to socioculturally negotiated norms. In the case of norms concerning the use of language (including speaking, signing, and writing), literacy assumes a central role: it affords us—both ‘lay’ language users and linguists—categories to conceptualize language. Put differently, the phoneme, the word, and the sentence as concepts may be intricately bound to what is materialized and thus made cognitively accessible by written structures (cf. Davidson 2019). In a similar vein, writing is many lay users’ gateway to language as they arguably even view it pars pro toto as language (explaining, to a degree, the emotional reaction to orthography reforms that change ‘their language’).

It is unsurprising, thus, that literacy practices are regularly exploited as tools of power. The gradual democratization of writing and the spread of digital technologies made both—especially in combination—readily available instruments serving empowerment as well as oppression. Orthographic competence—often perceived by the public as the core part of linguistic competence—has become a necessity for social advancement, creating inequalities among peers, especially when engaging in controversial discourses. At the same time, the expansion of communicative contexts in(to) the digital realm, where many of these discourses are found, has altered our perception of linguistic ‘correctness’. This makes linguistic normativity and prescriptivism important subjects particularly in an emergent digital pragmatics as a central subfield of digital linguistics, and I am studying them at the linguistic, pragmatic, and metapragmatic levels.

In my current postdoc research project at the University of Zurich (CH), I am collecting, processing, analyzing, and making available for joint use authentic data of both the exercise of normativity and prescriptivism as well as attitudes and ideologies associated with it using corpus linguistic approaches. My starting point is different forms of the cultural technique of correction. I collect corrections, including their linguistic and pragmatic contexts, not only in informal digital communication but also in official educational environments such as schools and universities, and in the public space. Subprojects thus are, among others, the analysis of a corpus of instances of orthographic shaming, a study of attitudes on normativity and the (orthographic) standard elicited in semi-structured interviews, and the study of strands of argumentation in the metapragmatic discussion of (aspects of) literacy practices (such as the choice of font).  

The Beginnings

For the first years of my life (i.e., prior to my parents’ divorce), I was raised bilingually (German/Greek), and the elementary school I then attended was one of the first bilingual ones in Austria (German/English). It is no big surprise, then, that I fell in love with all things language, so much so that it was almost a given that I would later choose to study linguistics at the University of Graz (AT). Although I was instantly hooked on the general study of language(s), I also wanted to delve deeply into a new language, which is how I wound up studying Russian (from scratch). In 2013, I completed my two bachelor’s studies with a thesis on the psycholinguistic relevance of the comma in the reading process^[1] and a cultural-analytical thesis on the Russian remake (or rather copy) of the popular US sitcom How I Met Your Mother.^[2] Given that I wanted to pursue an academic career, I continued with respective master’s studies, obtaining MA degrees in linguistics (in 2014) with a thesis on psycholinguistic issues relevant in graphetics, the study of the materiality of writing,^[3] and in Russian (in 2016) with a study of the semantics (and, to a lesser degree, syntax) of the Russian genitive of negation.^[4]

The PhD years

When I took up my doctoral studies in 2015, the oft-neglected study of writing systems already became my focus, so it was a given that I would choose a writing-related topic for my PhD thesis. My interest for both theory construction and what I often call the ‘bigger picture’ prompted my decision to analyze typologically diverse writing systems to carve out core and hitherto underdeveloped concepts—such as the controversial grapheme—in the (structural) analysis of writing and thereby provide a foundation for a comparative grapholinguistics. I then embedded this descriptive theory in a functionalist framework that incorporates usage-based psycholinguistic and sociolinguistic approaches and extralinguistic data. In October 2015, I started working as a predoc assistant at the linguistics department of the University of Graz and from that point on, my research gained pace: my thesis on graphetics was published as a book, and I was given the chance to write the overview article on graphetics as well as over thirty smaller entries for an encyclopedia on Grapholinguistics (as a part of the De Gruyter series Dictionaries of Linguistics and Communication Science).^[5] In 2016, I attended my first Association for Written Language and Literacy (AWLL) workshop (in Nijmegen, NL) where I presented the concept of my PhD thesis, and I’ve been to each of the association’s workshops since.^[6] Later that year, I organized a (multinational) workshop on grapholinguistic theory and methodology at the 42nd Austrian Linguistics Conference^[7] and received my first-ever invitation as a speaker—for a talk at a symposium dedicated to the registers of digital writing at the University of Hamburg (DE) in June 2017, where my talk dealt with metapragmatic discourses (specifically: the fervent online dislike) surrounding the infamous typeface Comic Sans,^[8] which also sowed the seeds for my postdoc project on normativity and literacy (see below). In 2017, I was awarded a fellowship by the Austrian Academy of Sciences to complete my PhD. Other noteworthy highlights include three talks in 2017, 2019, and 2021 at the open-minded and stimulating conferences of the Linguistic Association of Canada and the United States (LACUS) in Canada (or online, in the case of the 2021 conference); this conference series is special to me not only because significant grapholinguistic presentations had been given at LACUS in the past^[9] but also because I won prizes for all three talks I gave there.^[10] Finally, I embraced the opportunity to present a sociopragmatic project I had started working on (and which forms the basis for my postdoctoral project, see below), focusing on the practice of what I termed orthographic shaming (i.e., pejoratively correcting others’ spelling mistakes publicly on the internet, mostly in social media) as well as general attitudes on orthography^[11] at the Sociolinguistics Symposium^[12] in Auckland (NZ) in 2018, at the International Pragmatics Conference in Hong Kong in 2019, and at the Prescriptivism Conference in Vigo (ES, online due to Covid-19) in 2021.

The Present: early postdoc phase

In 2019, I completed my PhD (which was supervised by Bernhard Hurch, University of Graz, and Christa Dürscheid, University of Zurich) and since April 2020, I hold a postdoc position at the University of Zurich (Department of German Studies). One of my main research interests continues to be the promotion and advancement of foundational grapholinguistic research and theory, and I have published (or submitted) work on basic but hitherto neglected concepts such as the grapheme,^[13] allography,^[14] and graphetics^[15] (all open access) in the hope of shaping a more comparative grapholinguistics; articles on graphotactics and types of orthographic standardization are to follow. Also, in November 2020, a modified version of my dissertation was published as an open access monograph titled The Nature of Writing: A Theory of Grapholinguistics^[16] in the new Grapholinguistics and Its Applications series^[17] (published by Fluxus Editions). The Faculty of Arts and Humanities of the University of Graz awarded me a prize for it. In late 2020, I was invited to write a personal essay on the field of grapholinguistics and my own ‘journey’ in it for the proceedings of the conference Grapholinguistics in the 21st Century (June 2020, online). Although this was an intimidating task, it was also an exciting one—the resulting essay ‘On being a grapholinguist’ can be downloaded below.^[18] Then, in early 2021, I was asked to write an accessible article (in German) about my PhD thesis for a magazine published by the University of Graz, and I must say I enjoyed writing for a broader, non-scientific audience a lot.^[19] My next venture into science-to-public was a talk (in German) about core findings of my PhD thesis at the Scientifica in Zurich in September 2021; it can be watched [here]. My interdisciplinary and international workshop Writing: System, use, ideology was held as part of the 46th Austrian Linguistics Conference (hosted by the University of Vienna) in December 2021. The workshop description as well as the program and the abstracts can be downloaded [here].^[20] A major recent project is my book that was co-authored by Christa Dürscheid; it is an overview of grapholinguistics titled Writing Systems and Their Use and was published as an open access-book in 2022 in the series Trends in Linguistics: Studies and Monographs at De Gruyter; you can download it [here]. Also together with Christa Dürscheid, I was invited to give a keynote at LautSchriftSprache (LSS) 5, which was held in Kristiansand/Fevik (NO) in October 2022. Also, upon invitation, I recently wrote a chapter on phonographic iconicity for the Oxford Handbook of Iconicity in Language.

The present and the future

My primary postdoc project is titled Orthographic relativity: Comparing the relation between literacy and linguistic normativity across writing systems and literate cultures.^[21] It grew organically out of my previous metapragmatic/sociolinguistic research on discourses surrounding Comic Sans, orthographic shaming, and typographic mimicry, and is located at the interface between grapholinguistics, sociolinguistics, and pragmatics.^[22] Its main question is how the structure of different writing systems (specifically German, Norwegian, and Japanese) as well as the specific sociolinguistic and sociopolitical embeddings and conditions of literacy in the respective literate communities influence not only categories and concepts of normativity and prescriptivism that users employ to evaluate writing and all language in general but also ideologies (both normative ideologies and ideologies on normativity). In brief: whether there is an orthographic relativity to (socio)linguistic normativity. Some of my smaller ongoing projects within the broad scope of grapholinguistics are articles on graphotactics, different types of orthographic standardization, and grapholinguistic historiography. […] Finally, I was invited by the editors of the new handbook series Handbooks of Germanic Linguistics to edit the volume on writing systems, which of course I gladly accepted; the Handbook of Germanic Writing Systems is currently in the works.

The personal

Personal facts about me include that I love to travel. I am incredibly grateful that being employed at universities has allowed me to attend conferences and visit places that (for financial reasons) I would otherwise probably never have had the chance to see.^[23] I live and work in my two favorite cities: Vienna and Zurich.^[24] I’m fairly creative and often look for outlets for my creativity. In fact, my original plan was to study screenwriting and directing at the Film Academy Vienna (at which Academy Award-winning director Michael Haneke has taught, among others); however, unfortunately, also for financial reasons, I could not move to Vienna at the time and decided to study linguistics in Graz instead (and the rest is history, cf. above). I still dabble in screenwriting (or other forms of creative writing, such as writing a memoir) now and then,^[25] but most of the time, I am actively consuming films and TV series—as in engaging in criticism and discussion and observing ongoing discourses. My theoretical interest in the materiality of writing also translates to practice as I am fascinated by typography and calligraphy and engage in (amateur) design (of posters, booklets, and, obviously, powerpoint slides, cf. below). Also, ever since attending a bookbinding workshop, I will occasionally be found binding my own notebooks—which one could say is my personal take on meditation. In 2019, I trained to become a writing consultant (specialized in academic writing) and have organized workshops and offered one-on-one consultations at the Writing Center of the University of Graz. It feels great to put the theoretical knowledge of (and practical experience with) academic writing to use by means of supporting people in the writing process. What more? I am sharing my life with my partner, who is a speech and language therapist (a coincidence—but a good fit for a linguist, right?), and two Russian Blue cats named Mila and Cookie^[26]. (I am what some people would call a ‘cat person’. And proud of it.)^[27] Finally, if you ever meet me at a conference, chances are I will be wearing a shirt with small animal print^[28]—or at the very least my shirt’s color will match the color of my slides.