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Diagrams are used to make complex relationships and proportions visually clear. Their underlying semiotic structure and their potential to generate an understanding of the complex phenomena they are referring to turn diagrams into distinctive media of representation and are the focus of a current debate in philosophy and cultural theory. Under the heading of ‘diagrammatics’ (Diagrammatik) or ‘diagrammatology’ (Diagrammatologie), the schematic iconicity (abstractivity) and the operational character (operativity) of diagrammatic reasoning – both central insights in Charles Sanders Peirce’s semiotic philosophy – are promoted in the debate as key concepts for cultural analysis. The paper outlines the discussion and draws on these two central concepts to argue that visual shape is a constitutive dimension of textuality. Written texts, even purely ‘verbal’ ones, are not only designed to be read, but can always be interpreted – or ‘seen’ – in terms of spatial relationships on a page: the shapes of lines and paragraphs often suffice to identify the genre of a text before a single word is read. But serving on their own as contextualisation cues is merely a side effect of the functions that the visual relationships of verbal parts have within a text: these relationships primarily allow for a flexible form of coherence and help readers navigate their way through complex texts. The paper shows how a diagrammatically informed pragmatic analysis can account for these functions, which have rarely been addressed within the linguistics of written discourse so far and are largely overlooked by both recent typographic and multimodal approaches alike. The paper concludes by outlining three key areas for future research: (1) the relationships between verbal and visual units on the page (or the screen), (2) the pragmatics of lists and tables as prototypes of diagrammatically structured text-parts; and (3) the diagrammatic character of epistemic writing.

Every text has a specific optical surface. The micro and macrotypographical design elements of a text determine its typographic relief. The typographic relief of a text refers to entries in the collective memory of font. This typographical dispositivity, which remains comparatively stable through continued updating, controls the expectations of the recipients and the process of understanding with respect to the type of text, the socio-cultural affiliation of the text producer, the addressed target group or in terms of additionally generated accompanying texts. The analysis of typographic reliefs as a semiotic resource reveals the typography of a text as a support structure for dispositivity and thus for textuality.

In recent times presentations have drawn the attention of scientific interest as a new form of communication. In visualization of abstract structures or relationships in scholarly presentations using diagrams, different medial layers of meaning are conjoined in a very special way. The present paper examines firstly the multimodal structure of presentations and the mechanisms of establishing cross-modality coherence. Then the results of a reception experiment are discussed that gives rise to the assumption that multimodality can in fact improve the understanding of scholarly presentations. In the final part of the paper the production of an abstract visualization in a scholarly presentation is exemplified with regard to the solution of disambiguation and linearization problems. We claim that abstract visualizations in presentations are used to produce narratives by the speaker, and without such narratives this kind of visualization cannot be understood properly.

The internet affords many different types of multimodal and networked communication. That said, the paper asks about the conceptual standing of online texts that are (re-)made, viewed and read in acts of communication. It thus seeks to develop a conceptual approach towards defining online texts as accomplished and enacted sign ensembles that are afforded by communicative settings. To this end, we mobilise insights from linguistics and communication studies as well as sensibilities from the sociology of technology so as to combine understandings of media affordances, communicative genres and markers of textuality with a view on the routine work that goes into making and employing texts. Taken together, online texts are understood as visually displayed, interface-sensitive and prefigured sets of signs whose specific designs and coherent and cohesive organisations depend on situations, ways of handling, code and viewing devices.

The article aims at pointing out the significance of the locatedness of communication. It is argued that the current focus on modiality of communication in linguistic studies needs additional thought on the impact of where the communication takes place, is to be read, heard or touched. By analysing empirical examples it is demonstrated how important a text’s place is and how it has to be examined both methodologically and theoretically. The paper’s aim is to point out that “location bound” and “not location bound” are crucial characteristics of every text analysis. Accordingly it is discussed how texts (like public signs, time tables or announcements) define the identity of places and how they make places readable as specific places. Therefore it is essential for every text analysis to take into consideration both the location of the message delivered and the current context of the person reading, hearing or touching it.

The emergence of discourse markers is widely treated as a case of grammaticalization. Their formal and functional properties are, however, contrary to many parameters of grammaticalization. In the past this problem has been solved in different ways. My suggestion is that the development of discourse markers is not a case of grammaticalization but rather a case of pragmaticalization. The aim of this work is primarily to clarify the differences between grammaticalization and pragmaticalization using the German discourse marker ja as an example. This is achieved by the established pragmaticalization parameters, which are employed in cases of spoken language.