What you see is what you get? Challenging the primacy of the visual in writing research

1 The visuocentrism of the “visual world”

“We live in a visual world”, cultural sociologists Richard Howells and Joaquim Negreiros remind us at the outset of their book on Visual Culture, and they go on to elaborate that

We are surrounded by increasingly sophisticated visual images. But unless we are taught how to read them, we run the risk of remaining visually illiterate. This is something that none of us can afford in the modern world. (Howells and Negreiros 2019 [2003]: 1)

This is a statement that many scholars of social and cultural sciences would arguably subscribe to. It even became a kind of truism in the wake of what has been called the “visual turn” (Jay 2002) in cultural studies, a turn that also captured sociolinguistics, at the latest with the advent and success of social semiotic research on multimodal communication, which is itself often reduced to, or at least mainly linked with, so-called ‘visual communication’ (see Kress and van Leeuwen 2001; Jewitt 2014; Bateman, Wildfeuer, and Hiippala 2017).

Writing, the topic of this special issue, seems to be the case in point. As opposed to speech as a primarily ‘auditory mode’, writing is usually characterized as one of the main semiotic modes – next to images – that employ and intricately depend on the visual channel (see e.g. Olson 2009; Lillis 2013: 32–37; Allan 2016: 2). As Kress and van Leeuwen (2006 [1996]: 17) have it in their Grammar of visual design:

Of course, writing is itself a form of visual communication. Indeed, and paradoxically, the sign of the fully literate social person is the ability to treat writing completely as a visual medium […].^[1]

Like Howells and Negreiros, Kress and van Leeuwen are firmly convinced that everyone who fails to capture the visual is basically ‘illiterate’ and – given the prevalence of the visual in late modern society^[2] – hardly able to communicatively survive. Since, as Howells and Negreiros (2019 [2003]: 8) add: “we live in a visual world, learning to be visually literate is not a luxury but a necessity.” To become a social actor, the authors conclude, the modern human needs to “open [their] eyes” (Howells and Negreiros 2019 [2003]: 8).

In this paper, I set out to challenge this truism. To be clear: I am not going to argue that we do not live in a visual world, or that the visual is not an important channel in scriptal communication, or in communication generally. What I am going to challenge, however, is the primacy of the visual in the theoretical conceptualization, as well as in the societal treatment, of script and writing. I will argue that writing, or graphic communication in general, is not primarily a visual mode of communication, but a multi-sensorial one that is, primarily, spatial (as opposed to speech, which is primarily temporal, and signing, which is both spatial and temporal). I am thereby drawing on existing conceptualizations (e.g. Harris 1995; Meletis and Dürscheid 2022) to which we will return in section 3.

My case in point is a script and a writing practice that is all around us, used by a huge – but hardly estimable (see section 2) – number of persons worldwide, but which nonetheless remains somewhat socially invisible, viz. braille.

Braille, one might argue, is a ‘special case’ which might be easily integrated in the current theory of writing by simply extending the definition of script or writing system to cover “set[s] of visible or tactile signs” (Coulmas 1996: 560), thereby maintaining the idea that ‘normal’ script is a visual mode of communication (with braille being the ‘exception’ to the rule). However, as I will elaborate in this paper, this misses the point. Neither is braille an exclusively tactile script nor is other script exclusively visual. As we shall see later (section 3 and 4), braille might also be read visually (and sighted readers do this in different ways), as well as for instance Latin alphabet script is regularly read tactily by visually impaired and blind readers. Furthermore, even if we read visually (or tactily), other sensual modes might still be relevant in semiosis.

This does not preclude that sensual channels might get (and, arguably, in fact usually do get) primacy in practice. To be sure, notwithstanding the mentioned cases, braille is mainly read by touch, and the script has been devised for that very purpose. Likewise, most other scripts are mainly read with the eyes. Also, evidence has been given that braille is particularly suited for tactile reading (since punctual patterns are more distinguishable by touch than linear patterns), and likewise lineographic scripts (such as the Latin alphabet) are better suited for the visual channel than punctographic scripts (such as braille; see Millar 1997: 14–55; Englebretson et al. 2023: 405–406).^[3] But still, this does not lend itself to a sensorial categorisation of script or even script forms, for whether and how sensual channels get factual primacy depends on the context and on the reader’s disposition, not on the scripts semiotic affordance. I concur with the proposal of Meletis and Dürscheid (2022: 17–18) “that writing is simultaneously visual and tactile but that one of these channels is always dominant” (orig. emph.) and hence presume that all scripts are multi-sensorial in the first place. If they were not, then reading Latin alphabet scripts tactily, and reading braille visually, would not be possible.

Moreover, as we shall see (section 3), the ‘special casing’ of braille does not only entail problematic consequences for the theory of writing but also for the societal treatment of braille users and usage. As it often seems to presuppose a medical/deficient model of dis/ability which is being mapped onto modes (braille readers as ‘readers who cannot read visually’), the braille script and its users are being de-normalised and often also pathologised.^[4]

From a sociolinguistic perspective, it can be argued that the ‘special-casing’ of braille and the visuocentrism it rests upon derive from socially enregistered ideological construals (expectations, assumptions and evaluations) related to graphic communication – or graphic ideologies (Spitzmüller 2012: 257). In this paper, I will discuss such graphic ideologies that can be identified in academic (theoretical) discourse on braille and on script/writing in general. I argue that they are a central topic of a sociolinguistics of writing, since from looking at how braille is (mis-)construed we can learn a lot about how writing and script are ideologically constructed, practically used, and socio-politically governed in general.

The remainder of the paper is structured as follows. First, I will provide some basic information on the braille script, its principles and features (section 2). Against the backdrop of this I will critically assess the conceptualisation of braille (and the lack thereof) in the theory of writing (section 3). Section 4 will outline a sketch of how braille might be assessed from a sociolinguistic perspective (with a focus on the indexicalities that seem to surround it). A concluding section (section 5) formulates some consequences for our field of endeavour.

2 Features and 1principles of braille^[5]

In its initial form, the braille script was invented around 1825 by the then 16-year-old Frenchman (and blind scholar) Louis Braille (1809–1852). Braille drew on several previous attempts to provide a script that could be read by touch, one of it being a lineographic (embossed Latin alphabet) script of Valentin Haüy (1745–1825), the (sighted) founder of the Institution Royale des Jeunes Aveugles (royal institute for young blind people) in Paris, where Braille has been taught. The other and arguably more important one is the écriture nocturne (‘night writing’), a punctographic script (consisting of 36 signs with maximally 12 points), which has been first presented to the public in 1815 by Charles Barbier de la Serre (1776–1841). Often misconstrued as a script for military purposes, Barbier actually wanted to literally empower people who had, for social or psychological reasons, limited or no access to literacy (see Campsie 2021 for details).

So, braille is only one of, but the most popular, script used in tactile reading. Other temporarily popular such scripts include Moon Type, a lineographic script derived from the Latin alphabet, and New York Point by William Bell Wait (see footnote 3), a punctographic script that attempted to improve braille. Many other proposals have been made; most (including Haüy’s and Barbier’s), however, have been rather ephemeral (see Lorimer 2002 for details).

Braille basically employs a rather systematic binary encoding of signs in form of a system of (initially) 6 dots, arranged in so-called ‘cells’ in two columns which consist of maximally 3 dots each (⠿). In metapragmatic reference, the cells are usually identified by referring to the salient (e.g. visible) dots of a cell, in numerical order, starting from the top of the left column down to its bottom (1–3) and continuing with the right column in the same order (4–6). Thus, ‘dots-2346’ refers to the cell ⠮.^[6]

Since each dot has two possible states (raised/not raised in the materialisation for tactile reading, but also visible/invisible or thick/thin in visual materialisation), the braille system provides for maximally 64 (= 2⁶) different signs (including the completely ‘empty’ cell which represents the blank). This is however extended by several strategies. To begin with, single cells can be combined to di- or trigraphs (cell clusters that form one semiotic entity). Furthermore, braille writing systems define so-called indicator signs which, for instance, instruct the reader that the cell (or cell cluster) that follows the indicator is to be read as a number rather than a letter, as capitalized, emphasized, as a special symbol, or as a more complex graphic entity. A central feature of braille thereby is that individual cells are strategically underspecified (have multiple potential meanings) and might only be disambiguated in the context, or cotext, of their occurrence.

To this end, braille writing systems usually define so-called modes which determine specific reading options. Modes might be presupposed by the context of the text or initiated and ended by indicators. One such mode is the numeric mode (initiated by the numeric indicator ⠼ [dots-3456]). In this mode, selected cells (which might refer to graphemes or grapheme clusters in other modes) represent numbers. The mode is active until a cell which cannot refer to a number, including the empty cell, is used (see Simpson 2013: 61). Hence, ⠼⠃⠚⠃⠑ reads <2025>, whereas ⠼⠁⠎⠞ reads <1st> (since ⠎ might not refer to a number and hence terminates the mode).

The most important mode in many braille writing systems (including Unified English Braille) is the contracted mode. In this mode, which is the default in most braille writing (including public signage) for the writing systems that provide it, some cells or cell combinations (so-called contractions) do not refer to single graphemes but to more complex grapheme clusters which might, but do not necessarily, correlate with (formal) morphosyntactic entities (free and bound morphs or syllables).^[7] For instance, in Unified English Braille, cell ⠃ (dots-12) reads as <b> in uncontracted (alphabetic) mode, the number <2> in numeric mode, and the cluster <but> in contracted mode. The cell combination ⠁⠃ which refers to <ab> in uncontracted (alphabetic) mode and the number <12> in numeric mode refers to the graphic cluster <about> in contracted mode. Sometimes, modes are implied. For instance, in Unified English Braille, numeric mode automatically sets uncontracted mode until the numeric mode is cancelled. Hence, while ⠼⠁⠎⠞ reads <1st>, <2b> requires the grade-1 (= uncontracted) mode indicator ⠰ (dots-56) after the terminating blank, ⠼⠃⠰⠃, since ⠼⠃ ⠃ would be read as <2 but>.

The use of contractions is regulated by the standards, which highly differ in the restrictions or options they provide. For instance, in contrast to other writing systems (such as German Braille), Unified English Braille has significantly less limitations as to when contractions might be used. Whereas in German Braille, contractions must not span morpheme boundaries or digraphs in general (but might span syllables; see BSKDL 2021: 98–101), this is possible in Unified English Braille except for several specific cases (e.g. boundaries between free morphemes in compound words; Simpson 2013: 146). The contraction ⠷ (dots-12356, <of>), for example, might be used in proOF (⠏⠗⠕⠷, thus both splitting and bridging the digraph <oo>), the contradiction ⠮ (dots-2346, <the>) in cases such as STrENgTHEn (⠌⠗⠢⠛⠮⠝) where <the> crosses the boundary to the bound morpheme (for a critical assessment, see Englebretson et al. 2023).^[8]

Figure 1:

Examples from Unified English Braille

As the previous elaboration already demonstrated, many braille writing systems are (even in alphabetic writing cultures^[9]) only in very small parts alphabetic, i.e. graphic systems that encode graphemes (graphic signs that mark a semantic difference). In Unified English Braille, this is the case for uncontracted mode and some contractions that conform to digraphs (see Figure 1). In uncontracted mode, braille is in most parts non-alphabetic, as cells represent complex graphic clusters that might or might not conform to morphological entities (mainly morphs, not morphemes). For this reason, it is not adequate to classify braille as an alphabet or even a transliteration of some (lineographic) alphabet, although a certain alphabet (or, in non-alphabetic writing cultures, the used lineographic script) might have served, or keeps on serving, as a model for the development of the respective braille writing system.

Since the system has been adapted for different languages or purposes, there is no unified braille writing system. Rather than that, a wide range of braille writing systems exists (see Perkins et al. 2013). Even for English, the now common standard, Unified English Braille, has only been adopted very recently (in the UK, this has replaced the local writing system in 2011, in the US in 2012; other English-speaking countries had done the shift in the years before). Notwithstanding these cultural differences, however, braille is always read left-to-right (also with languages such as Hebrew or Arabic that have a right-to-left lineographic script), which is probably due to the French origin of the script and the colonial context in which it has been spread around the globe.

To be properly tangible, braille symbols need to match some criteria: The dots need to be aligned harmonically and the space between them needs to be within a tangible range (not too close, not too distant). Consequently, in the pre-digital age, braille documents were rather voluminous and expensive, and braille writing required a slate and stencil (for handwriting), a specific typewriter or printer (see Adler 2023 [1973]: 217–219). This obviously restricts stylistic variation – although not much is known about variation practices – and writing was also quite challenging (with the stencil, writing needs to be done in mirror-image form).

In the digital age, with the invention of the braille display (a piezo-electronic device that can dynamically produce a line of maximally 80 cells from computer input), digital texts can be encoded more easily into tangible braille output. On the other hand, these devices are quite expensive (a relatively simple braille display costs between 2000 and 9000 Euros), which excludes many users (although in some countries, parts are covered by public health insurance).

As to the question of how many braille users there are, there are no reliable statistics available. Often, it is circulated that, at least in the US, about 10 % of all people with respective visual impairment actually read braille, with declining tendency. However, as a recent survey by Sheffield et al. (2022) points out, these estimations are based on weak, outdated and wrongly interpreted data and unclear notions as to what ‘braille literacy’ actually means.

In the context of these questionable statistics, it is often stated that braille is on the decline since text-to-speech (TTS) techniques are available. However, there are doubts that can be raised here, too. First, as Sheffield et al. (2022: 22) remark, as opposed to TTS, braille allows for access to text without the help of electronic devices. More importantly, however, is that it also allows for active scriptal participation, whereas TTS only enables passive reception (see Englebretson et al. 2023: 401). Furthermore (and this points towards the theoretical argument unfolded in section 3), as a script, braille allows access to spatial information (tables, taxonomies, lists, but also the spatial structure of texts) much easier than speech can do (see Baumgartner et al. 2010: 2). Due to these reasons, it seems adequate to assume (with Marshall and Moys 2020) that TTS is used rather in addition than instead of braille.

There might also be a sociolinguistic argument for this. As will be elaborated in section 4, braille is arguably not just a way to encode and transfer information (as is often assumed in the literature). As other modes of communication, it has social and indexical functions for its users (and the recipients) which are not simply transferable to an alternative sign system.

It has already been stressed in the introduction that braille is, like any other script, multi-sensorial. Even though braille is in most cases read via the tactile channel and had been devised for this very purpose, it can be read visually. Some people also evidently do this (especially people working in respective organisations, but see also the indexical meaning of braille for sighted readers discussed in section 4). The definition of the American Foundation for the Blind rightly reads:

Braille is a system of raised dots that can be read with the fingers by people who are blind or who have low vision. Teachers, parents, and others who are not visually impaired ordinarily read braille with their eyes. (https://www.afb.org/blindness-and-low-vision/braille/what-braille; accessed 28 May 2024)

Likewise, lineographic script is often read via the tactile channel by people with visual impairment. Regarding public signage, accessibility regulations often promote the concept of embossed lineographic (e.g. Latin alphabetic) script that can be read via the tactile channel.^[10]

Incidentally, as for instance Djonov and van Leeuwen (2011) have pointed out, tactility might also become semiotically relevant in visual reading in what the authors term texture – a haptic quality of texts that is either materially realized or visually emulated. Also here, the visual channel is only one (albeit usually the dominant one) in the multi-sensorial practice we call ‘reading’.

3 A ‘scriptal prosthesis’?

As we have seen, braille is a highly unique, interesting and challenging script. One would assume that this is immensely attractive to script theory and all fields that engage with writing and its use in society. Interestingly enough, however, this does not seem to be the case to date, except for some special fields.

In general, discussion of tactile scripts is in fact hard to find in the literature. Most grapholinguistic work or work on the sociolinguistics of writing do not even mention braille or tactile scripts (see e.g. Coulmas 2002; Lillis 2013; Coulmas 2013; Dürscheid 2016 [2002]). The voluminous World Writing System by Daniels and Bright (1996) briefly touches upon braille in a chapter called ‘Shorthands’ (Daniels 1996: 816) which is, remarkably, subsumed to the part ‘Secondary Notation Systems’ of the book.

The still seminal handbook Writing and its use by Günther and Ludwig (1994–1996) at least includes a chapter on braille (Britz 1996), but this is included in a part called ‘Sonderschriften/Special Writing Systems’, next to chapters dedicated to secret code and transliteration, and the editors of the handbook make it clear in their introduction that they conceive of braille as a “transfer from the visual to the haptic dimension” (Günther and Ludwig 1994: xx), that is a secondary notation system at best.

Note, furthermore, that Britz (1996) uses a term still very common in German, Blindenschrift (‘script for the blind’), which closely links braille not only with a specific group of users, but with a specific disability, a defect of the visual apparatus. This stems from a deep enregisterment (Agha 2024) of braille usage with blindness, disability and accessibility (to which we will return) and is part of the pathologisation of braille that takes place also in parts of script theory.^[11]

In general, script theory seems to widely assume that braille is, at best, an auxiliary script, a secondary system derived from ‘proper’ script as a sort of prosthesis for people who cannot ‘read properly’.^[12] Even researchers who work on braille specifically often characterise it as “code for print”, that is, as a secondary script (see the [self-]critical elaboration of Englebretsonet al. 2023: 407–410). A typical case is the following statement in an article on Blindenschrift which is included in a reference work on script and writing:

Normally, script is received via the visual channel. To enable blind and visually impaired persons to participate writing culture, attempts have been made as of the 18th century to devise scripts which might be perceived via the tactile sense.^[13] (Voß 2013; my translation)

This de-normalisation of braille can also be found in some of the few sociolinguistic studies that touch upon braille. Bunčić for instance briefly notes in his comprehensive sociolinguistic survey on digraphia in different writing systems:

Special-purpose transcriptions like the Braille tactile alphabet, the Morse code, etc. are even more technical alternative scripts for use with a different medium. While in principle constituting cases of the use of a different script and therefore cases of digraphia, they are too universal and have too little to do with sociolinguistics to be considered here.^[14] (Bunčić 2016: 100–101; emph. bold in orig.)

As these examples demonstrate, braille is, if it is considered at all, mainly degraded to a ‘secondary’ or ‘auxiliary’ script or ‘code’ – a semiotic ‘prosthesis’ without any social impact. Interestingly enough, this echoes the long-lasting devaluation of script itself to a ‘secondary’ semiotic system (as opposed to oral language, from which it was allegedly derived) in linguistics – a devaluation one of the disciplines that keeps on degrading braille, viz. grapholinguistics, set out to rebut (see Meletis and Dürscheid 2022: 25–31).

Meanwhile, ample empirical evidence has been provided that tactile reading is not a ‘secondary’ encoding of visual reading and that there are significant differences between both approaches to text (see e.g. Millar 1997; Hughes 2011; Fischer-Baum and Englebretson 2016; Bedny and MacSweeney 2019). To begin with, the assumption that braille readers decode (print) letters that is implied on the notion of the ‘secondary script’ does not hold scrutiny. This should actually become clear if we only consider the specific structure of braille writing systems (contracted mode in particular). Additionally, cognitive studies have shown that tactile braille readers do not simply decode one cell after the other. Similar to visual readers, they decode more complex cell cluster entities. The difference, however, is that tactile readers perceive the cells sequentially while visual readers perceive letter complexes or word forms at once. Nonetheless, several studies have shown that there are word-superiority effects also in tactile reading which indicate that tactile reading is embedded in complex framing processes, not unlike visual reading (see Millar 1997: 107–113; Hughes 2011: 378). All this evidence backs the theoretical position that braille needs to be regarded as a script in its own right (see Englebretson et al. 2023).

Apart from these perceptual arguments, the secondarisation of braille dismisses the fact that braille arguably has eminent social meaning for its users. However, since most of the relatively scarce braille research takes place in cognitive strands and in an experimental setting, and since neither grapholinguistics nor the sociolinguistics of writing, social semiotics or New Literacy Studies seem to have any interest in the topic, there is not much solid ground on which we could build sociolinguistic arguments (see section 4).

Why this disinterest? Is it possible that the ‘othering’ of braille as an ‘auxiliary’ or ‘secondary’ script is an attempt to maintain the idea that modes of communication can be mapped onto different senses, and that braille generally challenges ideas of what writing and scripts are? Is visuocentrism part of a general linguistic sensocentrism? This is at least not implausible.

While unfolding his ‘integrational’ approach to writing, Roy Harris suggests a similar diagnosis. He notes that the development of a tactile alphabet by Valentin Haüy and Louis Braille

[…] is commonly treated by historians of writing as a late, fortuitous and minor episode in the evolution of the alphabet. In fact, it raises an issue of fundamental theoretical importance concerning writing in general.

What Haüy stumbled upon was a truth that has eluded countless generations of sighted writers and readers; namely, that the underlying formal substratum of writing is not visual but spatial. (Harris 1995: 45)

As Harris hastens to emphasise, this does not mean that temporality does not play a role in writing when the spatial arrangement of texts is practically perceived (and the same applies to spatiality in temporally structured oral speech):

[…] the formation, processing, and interpretation of written forms […] all take time. Thus the way graphic space is organized is not ultimately independent of these temporal activities. What an individual can do ‘at once’ is very limited. Beyond these limits, we move sequentially. So even if we can ‘take in’ a page at a glance, we can seldom read on it and its spatial organization is not too complex. (Harris 1995: 45)

Since the sequential perception of text constituents, which is even more pronounced in braille, might lead to the assumption that script, and even more so braille, is not spatial but linear, it is also worth considering another argument of Harris (1995: 46): the fact that writing is aligned (i.e., materialised in lines of letters) does not imply that it is linear (one-dimensional in a syntagmatic arrangement), since lines are placed on a two-dimensional page. After all, in so-called ‘left-to-right’ reading cultures, we do not only read from left to right, but also from top to bottom.

It is long known that in visual reading, readers access this space by non-linear (saccadic) eye movement (see Rayner et al. 2005). As finger-tracking experiments reveal, tactile readers move their fingers in different directions to access the spatiality of text, too, not only within the limitations of the line but within and across the two-dimensional space of pages. Proficient braille readers even use two fingers simultaneously, with one finger for instance doing regressions for corrections/assurance of meaning or doing progressions to help with text planning (see e.g. the studies of Bertelson et al. 1985; Millar 1989, 1987).

All this backs the suggestion that braille is undoubtedly a proper script like any other graphic (that is: spatial) system of signs – not an auxiliary, not in any way semiotically subordinate, and certainly no ‘scriptal prosthesis’.

4 Indexicalities of braille

As already mentioned, there is almost no sociolinguistic work on braille. One exception is the thirty year old study of Schroeder (1994; 1996) who did qualitative research on how so-called ‘legally blind persons’^[15] construe braille. Schroeder did in-depth interviews with eight persons in New Mexico who fall into this category (and who thus still have some vision). Four of these informants reported that they are braille users, the other four report that they do not use it. Some report that they have been actively discouraged in school and society to learn and use braille as long as they could still visually read, if even only hardly. Most, like Schroeder himself, acquired braille on their own later in their lives. This resonates with the diagnosis of Subtirelu (2021: 669):

[…] reading print is seen as a skill expected of a “normal” adult or a “typically developing” child. By contrast, reading Braille is thought of as a skill only useful for individuals whose disabilities prevent them from accessing text in the “normal” way. Hence, while reading Braille instead of print may be treated as an acceptable alternative practice for individuals who cannot see print with their eyes, the societal preference for reading print remains. […] individuals who can read Braille will likely be implored to learn to develop print literacy to any extent that they are able. By contrast, individuals who can read print are not likely to be encouraged to learn to read Braille even though many of them would be able.

One of the most interesting results of Schroeder’s study is that, independently of their eyesight quality, the self-qualified ‘braille readers’ among the informants also all self-identified as ‘blind persons’, while the self-qualified ‘non-braille readers’ all identified as ‘persons with visual impairment’ and actively distanced themselves from blind people, aligning with the sighted (see Schroeder 1994: 228–229). ‘Braille readers’ evaluated braille and reading highly positively, as a central constituent of their identity, an empowering force (see Schroeder 1994: 228) and, as one informant expressed it, as “a sign of independence, and accomplishment and equality” (Schroeder 1994: 97), while ‘non-braille readers’ thought that braille is of less importance but also expressed much less enthusiastic evaluations about their own reading practices. Schroeder (1994: 230) concludes that

[…] the use or nonuse of Braille is intertwined with the feelings of self-esteem and self-concept of legally blind individuals. An important question is whether the use of Braille is intertwined with issues of identity and particularly identity as a person with a disability.

Drawing on Goffman (1963), Schroeder (1994: 251–252) argues that braille might be a social symbol that might help to overcome stigmatisation. This obviously draws on a cultural model of dis/ability which tries to avoid pathologisation by construing dis/ability as “a culture with a rich history and shared identity among disabled people” and which “embraces the experience of disability and how it shapes people” (Ladau 2021: 40; see also Canagarajah 2023: 5–6). Like the social model which construes dis/ability as generated by society, this is opposed to the traditional medical model that regards dis/ability as a physical or mental deficiency which needs to be compensated and which we identified as (at least implicitly) informing the academic de-normalisation of braille (on the diverse models, cf. Waldschmidt 2018).

However, while the cultural model might rebut pathologisation, it also has implications which need to be critically pondered (see Waldschmidt 2018: 78). Most importantly, by assuming that ‘dis/abled’ persons are sharing experiences and have a common identity, the model tends to essentialise identity and culture in a way that has been rightly criticised both from within and from outside sociolinguistics (see e.g. Bucholtz and Hall 2005). Also, it raises an identification imperative which is, as we know, not uncommon in language policy contexts but still highly problematic (e.g. regarding the European Framework for the Protection of National Minorities, see Busch and Busch 2012; Craig 2016). Even though Schroeder’s group of informants might have expressed positions that can be interpreted in such a way, we should not conclude from this that there is a general ‘blindness/braille user’ association. Arguably, this association seems to be discursively widespread (enregistered), but we must not confuse (ideological) registers with a general, or ‘natural’, nexus (more plausible is the ‘embodiment model’ proposed by Canagarajah [2023: 6] which highlights that dis/ability might be a resource rather than a set of common values). In any case, to make more solid claims that go beyond a small group of persons in 1990s New Mexico, empirical sociolinguistic work is direly needed.

Another sociolinguistically relevant aspect which has not yet been investigated in depth is whether and how braille is socially indexical to sighted persons. Kleege (2006) focuses on this question in a critical essay about braille in public space and argues that braille might also serve – and sometimes primarily seems to serve – as an indexical signal to the sighted. In particular, this seems to be the case in contexts which attempt to make sighted persons aware of the needs of blind persons (see Figure 2 for an example), which also includes uses of braille in the context of accessibility, as Kleege argues (see below). Braille is also recurrently used when a context of ‘blindness’ is being constructed for other purposes, e.g., in critical artistic comments on visuocentrism (see Warne 2018) or in enactments of ‘blindness’ in stage or screen performance (see Figure 3). In these cases, the referential function of braille text is often negligible; it is the indexical function that is dominant here. In other words: readers are not expected to know what ⠃⠇⠊⠝⠙ (‘blind’) means (denotationally), as long as they know that it means ‘blindness’ (indexically).^[16] Also note that in all displayed cases (except for Figure 3a^[17]), braille is indeed simply a transliteration from the Latin alphabet, letter by letter – ignoring the fact that blind would usually be written ⠃⠇ (using the digraphic contraction for BLIND) in Unified English Braille (Simpson 2013: 135), and ⠃⠇⠌⠙ (blINd) in German Braille (BSKDL 2021: 188).

Figure 2:

‘See more together’: Campaign of the Austrian association for blind and visually impaired persons (Blinden- und Sehbehindertenverband Österreich), 2021.

Figure 3:

Enacted ‘blindness’

The cases with which Kleege is concerned – occurrences of braille in public space in the context of accessibility – are probably the most ‘visible’ ones. Since these occurrences are usually the result of accessibility policies, they seem to condense at specific places – such as elevators, the ‘iconic’ braille space in Kleege’s perspective. As the author notes, these occurrences often do not fulfil the purpose they seem to fulfil, as they are in fact often hardly usable for blind and visually impaired persons:

Perform the following thought experiment. If you do not happen to be blind already, imagine that you are. You board an elevator in a high-rise office building in a large American city. You wish to go to the 22nd floor and scan the panel of braille labels to find the correct button. You can do this even if you don’t read braille since the panel also includes raised arabic [sic!] numerals you can trace easily with the fingers. […] By whatever means, you find and press the button for the 22nd floor. Meanwhile other passengers board the elevator and press buttons. The doors close. You go up. The doors open and someone gets off. Again the doors close and you go up. The doors open and two people get off and one gets on. The doors close. You go up. After another interval, the doors open. What floor are you on?

Answer? You do not have enough information to answer. You must resort to the method blind people used prior to the introduction of braille buttons: you ask your fellow passengers. In fact, you may find it easier to ask them to press the button for you back on the ground floor, since it may be more convenient and polite than to reach around them to scan the panel for the right button. (Kleege 2006: 211)

Kleege infers that such uses of braille, as they do not work well for blind people, primarily seem to address the sighted. And even in cases where the usability is raised with additional means (such as synthetic voices announcing the current floor) sighted passengers are at least co-addressed. For whatever the braille in the elevator coveys tactily,

Braille buttons also send a visual message to anyone using the elevator to allow for the possibility that there are blind people in the world who might end up in the elevator. […] They are a visible sign proving that the building is in compliance with the ADA [Americans with Disabilities Act], whether or not other facets of that code are being observed. (Kleege 2006: 211)

This seems to be true for many uses of braille in public space where the scriptal choice serves as a contextualisation cue. Its message boils down to: ‘you are in an inclusive context here!’. For such contextualisation to work, the deep enregisterment of braille as an indexical of ‘blindness’, ‘dis/ability’ and ‘blind persons’ is a prerequisite. And braille needs to be seen.

5 Back into sight: Conclusions

Denn die einen sind im Dunkeln, und die anderen sind im Licht.

Und man siehet die im Lichte, die im Dunkeln sieht man nicht.^[18]

(Bertolt Brecht: Die Moritat von Mackie Messer, 1930 version)

In a visuocentric world, what you ‘get’ is primarily what you see. The invisible might not be inconceivable, but it tends to get sidelined to the margins or beyond. It is well possible that we live in such a visuocentric world where the visual is celebrated and the non-visual overlooked. But even if this is the case, should not scholars try to explore exactly what and who is driven out of cultural focus, rather than simply joining the visual party? Even more so sociolinguistic scholars with their (stated, but, as Canagarajah 2023 elaborates, not always convincingly lived) sensitivity for social inequalities? After all, in a visuocentric world, it seems that the less you see, the less you are seen, and hence the less you get.

I have argued in this paper that writing and reading should not be conceived of as merely visual practices of communication, since script is multi-sensorial in the first place, and since some writing and reading practices do not rely on the visual sense at all, or at least not primarily. Regarding the theoretically and socially eminent case of braille, I have tried to make plausible that including the tactile as an exception, or extension, to the visual does not solve the whole problem, even more so if ‘orders of scriptness’ are being set up, with ‘visual script’ on their top and ‘tactile script’ on secondary position. Sensual channels, as it were, do not lend themselves well for semiotic categorization although they are arguably central in analyses of semioses (i.e. semiotic and metasemiotic practices). What characterises script (and graphics) in the first place is its use of space. This is what all scriptal systems have in common, independently of how, i.e. via which sensory channel(s), this space might be accessed.

Yet script does not only employ space, it is also a means to construct space. The virtual social space and the semiotic landscapes that surround us are, as we know, constituted by communication and ideologies thereof. Script has been considered as being particularly important in this context from the early days of linguistic landscape studies (see Landry & Bourhis 1997). However, it was the “visibility” (Landry and Bourhis 1997: 23) that made (and largely still makes) up a linguistic landscape. Although there is ample of braille in the major cities that have been the field of linguistic landscape studies traditionally, it does not figure in the studies. This demonstrates that linguistic landscapes are not only positive material evidences but ideological construals of what we conceive of as space, script, and communication (see Blommaert 2013).

Although semiotic landscape research has meanwhile started to explore other sensual channels (e.g. Pennycook 2018: 63–66), they are still tremendously under-represented. Hence it is still appropriate to conclude with Pennycook (2018: 66) that:

If we wish to incorporate those other senses that have been overlooked in the European male sensorium – taste, touch and smell – we need to approach semiotic landscapes not only with a focus on multimodality […] but also a more embodied engagement with multisensoriality.

A multi-sensorial (or multi-sensitive) sociolinguistics (not only of writing) would be highly desired, indeed. It would open new paths and maybe also help us to critically re-assess the ways we went.

Acknowledgements

I am indebted to David Klein for encouraging me to take a more serious look at braille and tactile communication and for many insights into this scriptal practice. I am also grateful to have had the opportunity to present and discuss these (back then even more tentative) thoughts for the first time at the occasion of the workshop on Multilingual, Multilectal, Multiscriptal Writing workshop (Dubrovnik 2022), and for many helpful comments from the participants, as well as from participants of subsequent talks on the topic (in Paris, Berlin, and Bern), some of them in team with David Klein. I am also grateful to the two anonymous reviewers for the encouraging feedback and for making me aware of the highly insightful thoughts of Canagarajah 2023.

Image sources

Figure 1: Examples from Unified English Braille. Original figure by the author.

Figure 2: Campaign of the Austrian association for blind and visually impaired persons (Blinden- und Sehbehindertenverband Österreich), 2021. https://www.blindenverband.at/de/aktuelles/489/Neuer-Start-der-Plakataktion-des-Blinden-und-Sehbehindertenverbandes (accessed 2 January 2024).

Figure 3a: Movie Blind (2011). https://www.amazon.com/Blind-Korean-movie-English-Sub/dp/6162622088 (accessed 9 June 2024).

Figure 3b: Movie Blind (2014). https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2616810/mediaviewer/rm2842247424/ (accessed 9 June 2024).

Figure 3c: TV Show Blind ermittelt [‘blindly investigated’] (2018). https://www.imdb.com/title/tt8376990/mediaviewer/rm2354568705/ (accessed 9 June 2024).