Lost in transcription: Enhancing the typographic description of prosody in written discourse through dynamic typography

This study is applied research within the field of graphic design. Its focus is the intersection between new media/experimental typographic practice, speech visualisation and oral history. This research emerged from the practice-based investigation of a problematic situation identified within the field, drawing upon the exploration of an appropriate methodology that combines the design practice of the practitionerresearcher and social science methods.

The principal aim of this investigation was to identify the attributes and behaviours of dynamic typographic form that may extend the limited visual description of spoken discourse and enhance the possibilities for representation of emotion through prosody within the context of oral history. Experimental typography practices have granted written discourse expressive visual significance, subsuming word into image in print, film and television. Dynamic typography as a computational, responsive and temporal new media form has received less attention, despite offering immediacy and interaction.

A naturalistic and reflective methodological approach was taken, encompassing qualitative and quantitative methods. Design practice, oral history, interview-based survey techniques, critical theory and transcription practices all combine as tools in the development of a model and a set of methods for generating dynamic typography as a supplement to transcripts in web-based oral history archives. The King's Cross Voices Oral History Project supplied the majority of the speech extracts that comprised the speech corpus used. Conducting oral history interviews as an interviewer for the project provided not only insights into oral history practice, but also a community of residents to interview and an oral history archive exemplar.

The research outcomes are: firstly, the identification of a design process model and a set of methods to generate dynamic typography representations of prosody, providing a template for future use; secondly, the recognition and development of two attributes and behaviours of dynamic typographic form that extend the typographic description of language and enhance the representation of prosody in oral history interviews in webbased archives.

This thesis comprises an illustrated text and the set of identified dynamic typography attributes presented on DVD-ROM.

This thesis is restricted by request of the author. Please contact UAL Research Online for more information.