/gʁafematik/ 2026 — Grapholinguistics in the 21st Century

grafematik2026 : /gʁafematik/ 2026 — Grapholinguistics in the 21st Century

24-26 Jun 2026 Reading (United Kingdom)

Grapholinguistics in the 21st century—Entangled Scripts, Cultures, Disciplines

G21C (Grapholinguistics in the 21st Century), also known as /gʁafematik/, is a biennial academic conference that convenes scholars from disciplines engaged with grapholinguistics and, more broadly, the systematic study of writing systems and their manifestation in written communication. The conference seeks to examine the current state of scholarship in this domain and to assess the significance of writing and writing systems within adjacent disciplines, including computer science, communication studies, linguistics, typography, psychology, and pedagogy. Of particular concern is the investigation of the expanding influence of Unicode and its implications for the future of literacy and textual practices in human societies.

Reflecting the diversity of scholarly perspectives on writing systems, G21C is fundamentally interdisciplinary in orientation. The conference welcomes submissions from researchers across information technology, language and communication studies, graphic communication, and the social sciences.

G21C endeavors to establish a forum for discourse on the varied approaches to writing systems, with particular emphasis on fostering dialogue between linguistic, informatic, and other disciplinary frameworks. The conference provides a venue for scholarly inquiry into terminology, methodology, and theoretical paradigms relevant to the delineation of an emerging interdisciplinary research area that intersects with substantial practical developments in writing system implementation.

The Theme: Entangled Scripts, Cultures, Disciplines

Entanglement operates at multiple levels in the study of writing. Scripts may be entangled within a single writing system—as in Japanese—or across different languages and, therefore, writing systems, as seen in multilingual documents and public signage. Such entanglements raise fundamental questions: How do scripts/writing systems interact graphically, linguistically, and semiotically?

Because scripts carry the cultural histories of the writing systems that use or have used them, script entanglement often triggers cultural entanglement. Yet the relationship is not unidirectional. Two cultures coexisting in shared physical or virtual spaces may deploy their respective scripts as markers of distinct identity—using writing not to entangle but to disentangle, to assert boundaries rather than dissolve them.

The concept of entanglement extends beyond scripts themselves. Since its inception in 2018, the /gʁafematik/ conference has demonstrated that grapholinguistics is inherently entangled with multiple disciplines: linguistics, naturally, as its parent field, but also history, archaeology, paleography, typography, computer science, artificial intelligence, psychology, education sciences, and others. These disciplines do not merely coexist within the conference's knowledge domain—they reach toward one another, interweaving their methods and insights in the study of that profoundly human act: reading and writing.

For the fifth iteration of /gʁafematik/, it is time to foreground and examine these three levels of entanglement: within writing systems, between cultures, and across disciplines.

The Term “Grapholinguistics”

Regarding the term “grapholinguistics,” it should be noted that this nomenclature represents established scholarly usage rather than neologism. The term first appeared in 1967 and was formally introduced with its current definition in 2015 by Martin Neef. It constitutes a direct translation of the German term Schriftlinguistik. The formation follows established precedent in linguistic terminology, wherein Greek neoclassical elements are prefixed to "linguistics"—notable examples include "psycholinguistics" and "neurolinguistics," with additional instances such as "xenolinguistics," "biolinguistics," and "cryptolinguistics."

Endorsers and Sponsors

The Grapholinguistics in the 21st Century Conference receives endorsement from the Association for Computational Linguistics (ACL) and the Association Typographique Internationale (ATypI).

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, the third edition of G21C was held in Palaiseau, on June 8-10, 2022, and the fourth edition of G21C was held in Venice, on October 23-25, 2024.

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

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, Princeton University, Washington DC, USA
Claude Gruaz, formerly at CNRS, Rouen, France
Yannis Haralambous, IMT Atlantique & CNRS Lab-STICC, Brest, France
Daniel Harbour, Queen Mary University of London, UK
Keisuke Honda, Imperial College London and University of Oxford, United Kingdom
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, Karl-Franzens-Universität Graz, Austria
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

Keynote speakers


Amalia Gnanadesikan	Adam Jaworksi	Zanna van Loon
Amalia Gnanadesikan comes to the study of written language from theoretical linguistics and phonology more specifically. Now retired, she has taught linguistics and/or writing at Rutgers, West Chester, and Holy Family Universities and the University of Maryland, and served as research scientist and technical director at the University of Maryland Center for Advanced Study of Language. Her book on the intellectual history of writing, The Writing Revolution: Cuneiform to the Internet, is now in its second edition. Her recent work focuses on identifying linguistic units and grammatical structures in writing systems, either as representations of structures in the corresponding spoken language or as correlates to spoken linguistic structures that serve to organize the written signal in its own right rather than simply encoding the spoken signal. Selected References Gnanadesikan, Amalia E. (2025). The Writing Revolution: Cuneiform to the Internet, 2nd edition. Wiley-Blackwell. Gnanadesikan, Amalia E. (2024). Amodal Morphology: Applications to Brahmic Scripts and Canadian Aboriginal Syllabics. Forthcoming in In Y. Haralambous (Ed.), Grapholinguistics in the 21st Century: Proceedings of the 2022 Conference. Fluxus Editions, 45–66. Gnanadesikan, Amalia E. (2023). Segments and Syllables in Thaana and Hangeul: A comparison of literate native-speaker inventions. Written Language and Literacy 26(2): 238–265.	Adam Jaworski is Emeritus Professor at the University of Hong Kong and Honorary Professor at the HKU School of English. Formerly, he was at Adam Mickiewicz University Poznań, Birkbeck University of London, and Cardiff University. His research interests include discourse, globalisation and mobility by choice (tourism), display of discourse in public space, and text-based art. With David Karlander, he co-edits the Oxford University Press book series, Oxford Studies in Sociolinguistics. Recent publications Corey Fanglei Huang and Adam Jaworski. in press. Disrupting and (re)making the city: Public art and mental health activism in Hong Kong. Discourse & Communication. Crispin Thurlow and Adam Jaworski. 2025. Regrounding work in elite discourse. Pragmatics and Society 16/2. 151–173. Sean P. Smith, Johan Järlehed, and Adam Jaworski. 2025. HOLLYWOOD: The political economy and global citation of an emblematic language object. Language in Society. 54/1: 57–88. Adam Jaworski and Kellie Gonçalves. 2021. ‘High culture at street level’: Oslo’s Ibsen Sitat and the ethos of egalitarian nationalism. In Robert Blackwood and Unn Røyneland (eds.) Spaces of Multilingualism. London: Routledge. 135–164. Adam Jaworski. 2020. EAT, LOVE and other (small) stories: Tellability and multimodality in Robert Indiana’s word art. In Crispin Thurlow (ed.) The Business of Words: Linguists, Wordsmiths, and Other Language Workers. London: Routledge. 86–109.	Zanna Van Loon is the curator of rare books and manuscripts at the Museum Plantin-Moretus. Her research interests include the materiality and sociality of the early printed book, book trade networks, and print culture. She previously worked as the expert on analytical bibliography and the project leader of STCV: The Bibliography of the Hand Press Book, the online and open access bibliography of early modern books printed in the Southern Netherlands. In 2020, she obtained a Ph.D. in Early Modern History at KU Leuven on the social and material characteristics of early modern missionary manuscripts and printed books on Indigenous languages of North and South America. In January 2025, her monograph titled The Early Modern Production of Missionary Books on Indigenous Languages in New Spain and Peru (Amsterdam University Press) was published.
A Philographer’s Manifesto: How and Why a Linguist Studies Writing Systems Increasingly, writing is accepted as a true modality of language, one that sits at the intersection of human instinct and technology. The relationship of writing to the primary modalities of language is complex: writing expresses language; it fossilizes language; it analyses language; it influences both lay and specialist perceptions of language; and it uses the building blocks of language in its construction. This talk will discuss evidence for these properties of writing and place them in the context of what the goals of grapholinguistics are and should be.	Sculptural Place Names: Between Elitism and Egalitarianism in High-Value Urban Spaces Sculptural place names are large, typically human size, free standing, three-dimensional letter forms designating cities, countries, and other locations. They are commonly found in high value, gentrifying urban areas, or transportation hubs associated with social mobility and elite lifestyles. Yet, their street-level emplacement and accessibility allow public easy engagement: sitting, climbing, and ubiquitous photo-taking. Thus, sculptural place names present a paradox, on the one hand, signifying distinction, while on the other, inviting ludic performances of place. The presentation, developed in collaboration with Tong King Lee, explores this paradox by engaging in a social semiotic analysis of emplacement, three-dimensionality, and typography. It starts with the emergence of text-based public art as an urban genre, then it examines the meaning potentials of sculptural place names through their materiality, multimodal design, and embodied performances of visitors interacting with these language objects. Finally, it is proposed that sculptural place names be seen as a means of mediation of (aspirational) elitism and (pragmatic) egalitarianism, with implications for how we understand place-making, regeneration, and gentrification.	How material forms shape early modern missionary linguistic knowledge Knowledge moves through different media—oral, visual, and material—each shaping its durability, shape, and transferability. In the early modern Spanish viceroyalties of New Spain and Peru, missionary grammars, vocabularies, and devotional translations were central tools for codifying Indigenous languages and transmitting the Catholic doctrine. These books, whether handwritten or printed, were not static carriers of linguistic knowledge, but dynamic objects whose form and function were determined by social, material, and spatial processes. This talk underscores that no text exists outside its material support, and that understanding missionary books codifying Indigenous languages requires attention to these books as physical and cultural objects, made by a network of human actors working with particular materials and techniques in particular places, and dependent on local conditions and possibilities.

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