Languages & Linguistics
Graphology
Graphology is the study and analysis of handwriting, particularly in relation to personality traits and psychological characteristics. It is based on the idea that handwriting can reveal insights into a person's emotions, behavior, and thought processes. Graphologists examine factors such as letter shapes, spacing, and pressure to interpret the subconscious aspects of a person's writing.
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8 Key excerpts on "Graphology"
eBook - ePub- Norman L. Farberow(Author)
- 2017(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
There are many research materials, but none in textbook form, and few of them satisfy both graphologists and psychologists. Nevertheless, before the academic taboo against Graphology can be fairly evaluated, one should have a better understanding of how and why academic antipathy to this questionable science has caused the intellectual aridity if not the experimental erosion on Graphology’s American frontier. Certainly, both graphologists and psychologists have justifiable complaints. These conflicting attitudes and values begin, I believe, with the psychologists’ lack of knowledge of the historical research in Graphology on the continent of Europe. It has been stymied by the graphologists’ inability to translate the language of handwriting analysis into the sophisticated concepts of modern experimental psychology. A brief exposition of the history may show that not all graphologists are intuitivists and aid in the search for the new paths to communication and research with the psychologists, who are needed for critical research and testing. Webster’s New Twentieth Century Dictionary (unabridged, 1958) defines Graphology: “the study of handwriting, especially as it is supposed 1 to indicate the writer’s character, aptitude, etc.” The literature on Graphology abounds with diverse and conflicting claims as to its utility, versatility, immutability, and reliability. Most psychologists limit the range of its current effectiveness, whereas almost all graphologists expand its predictability potential far beyond the confines of the highest correlations ever achieved. As in most other disciplines, the extremists can prove that they are right
- Durgesh Srivastava, Neha Sharma, Deepak Sinwar, Jabar H. Yousif, Hari Prabhat Gupta, Durgesh Srivastava, Neha Sharma, Deepak Sinwar, Jabar H. Yousif, Hari Prabhat Gupta(Authors)
- 2023(Publication Date)
- CRC Press(Publisher)
Graphology is the study and analysis of handwriting in relation to psychology to evaluate emotions and physical state. It has been established that neurological disorders such as congenital apraxia, and strephosymbolia as well as psychological illnesses such as depression, compulsive disorder, schizophrenia, and psychosis have a significant impact on handwriting. The author studies various research studies and has provided the characteristics or features of handwriting to identify anxiety, depression, ADHD, OCD, autism, Parkinson’s disease, Alzheimer’s, and others. Neurodegenerative Parkinson’s disease is characterised by motor symptoms. Naumann et al. [ 23 ] studied handwriting movements including speed, length of strokes, and acceleration, and the results revealed a major difference in the handwriting movements of healthy ones and patients with Parkinson’s disease. Rosenblum et al. [ 24 ] conducted research among elderly people with major depressive disorder (MDD). Participants were asked to perform four handwriting tasks on digital tablets with which velocity, time on air, space, and pressure were measured. It was found that patients with depression exerted substantially less pressure, while the time taken to write was longer. An increased amount of spacing between words decreased connectivity between letters and decreased organisation was also found. ComPet – Computerised Penmanship Evaluation Tool was used to collect and analyse the data. Singh et al. [ 25 ] state that every human develops his/her own style of penmanship based upon their personal struggles, thus giving insight into the psyche and the why behind the individual’s actions. The paper elaborates on different characteristics of handwriting such as text size, word incline, spaces, margins, string, wavy line, arcades, upper zone, middle zone, pen pressure, etc. and explains what these features of handwriting reveal. Chaubey et al. [ 26 ] explain Graphology and the science behind it
eBook - PDF- Sidney I. Dobrin(Author)
- 2015(Publication Date)
- Parlor Press, LLC(Publisher)
Graphologists trace the impulse to analyze handwriting to Biblical and Roman times. The first connections between personality and handwriting are often attributed to Camillo Baldi, a seventeenth century Italian physician; following Baldi is a long list of French, German, and American researchers who adopted and adapted Graphology’s various methods for character analysis. Abbé Jean-Hippolyte Michon coined the term “graphologie” and founded the Société Français de Graphologie in Paris in 1871; his work, including Les Mystères de l’écriture (1872), System de graphologie (1875), and Méthode Practique de Graphologie (1878), helped to establish Graphology’s taxo-nomical basis: it became a study of fixed signs and their relationship to one’s character (Nickell 25). Michon’s student, Crépieux-Jamin, trans-formed the field once again as he instituted a more holistic approach that attempted to read more broadly across individual signs. Crépieux-Jamin also brought Graphology to the attention of Alfred Binet and Pierre Janet whose endorsements aided the esteem of the science (Roman 5). Con-versely, German work on handwriting analysis relied on an older, in-tuitive approach—often associated with Ludwig Klages’s expressivist movement. Klages argued that all gestures, from bodily movements to handwriting, reflected one’s inner character. Then, in the latter part of the nineteenth century, Wilhelm Prey-er’s research transformed German Graphology once again; I will return to this important turning point in the next section. American work on Graphology is often associated with M.N. Bunker and the founding, in 1929, of graphoanalysis. Melissa M. Littlefield 218 Graphoanalysis . . . has been called a protest against both the atomistic one-to-one sign Graphology that typified the French school and the broad, sweeping, intuitive Graphology of the German school.
eBook - PDF- David Crystal, Alan C. L. Yu, David Crystal, Alan C. L. Yu(Authors)
- 2023(Publication Date)
- Wiley-Blackwell(Publisher)
‘Grapheme analysis’ is the main business of graphemics (or Graphology). graphetics (n.) A term used by some linguists, on analogy with phonetics, for the analysis of the graphic substance of written or printed language. For example, it is theoretically possible to define a universal set of graphetic features which enter into the formation of distinctive letter shapes. There are also several properties of the written medium which exercise a considerable influence on communication, Grimm’s law 213 e.g. colour, size of writing or print, spacing. There is plainly an overlap here with the field of graphics and typography (and graphics is in fact sometimes used as a label for this field). So far little analysis of texts in these terms has taken place, and the rela- tionship between graphetics and Graphology remains unclear. graphics (n.) see graphetics graphic substance A term used by some linguists to refer to the written or printed form of language seen as a set of physically definable visual properties, i.e. marks on a surface. The analogous term for speech is phonic substance. The linguistic analysis of these graphic or graphetic features is sometimes referred to as Graphology, on analogy with phonology. Graphology (n.) A term used by some linguists to refer to the writing system of a language – on analogy with phonology. A graphological analysis would be concerned to establish the minimal contrastive units of visual language – defined as graphemes, graphemic features, or without using emic terms – using similar techniques to those used in phonological analysis. Graphology in this sense has nothing to do with the analysis of handwriting to determine the psychological charac- teristics of the writer – an activity for which the same term is often popularly used.
eBook - ePub- Robert Saudek(Author)
- 2018(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
IIHistory of GraphologyEVER since men began to write it has been known that letters, however carefully copied, always diverged from the original, and that every handwriting bore the individual stamp of its author. But at a time when manuscripts were “painted and drawn” rather than written, the divergencies were comparatively slight. Calligraphic writing was the aim, care was bestowed on its production, and a regular, florid writing embellished with flourishes was considered good.As by degrees writing became more and more common, interest in an individual type of handwriting increased. A bad hand was no longer a cause of shame, and the Latin proverb that the learned never write well was accepted.Based on the recognition that a free-and-easy hand shows greater intimacy on the part of the writer, a “formed handwriting”, i.e. a naturally flowing handwriting, running swiftly over the paper, gradually gained preference, a style showing that the writer was more engrossed in the contents of his letter than in the formation of the written symbols.Long before Graphology established the principle that the value of any handwriting as psychological research material was all the greater the more the writer’s attention was distracted from the mechanical act of writing, it was recognised that people revealed themselves more honestly, openly and unreservedly when, writing in a state of excitement, in haste, or entirely occupied by the thoughts they desired to communicate, they carelessly dashed off a few lines.For a century it was a hobby for some people to scrutinise handwriting for the purpose of discovering what traces of the writer’s character they might reveal. Such classifications were of course entirely arbitrary when made without knowledge of the mechanical and physiological conditions under which the writing had been produced, or merely general when based on the impression produced by a written page or, indeed, frequently by a simple signature.
eBook - ePubHow to Analyse Texts
A toolkit for students of English
- Ronald Carter, Angela Goddard(Authors)
- 2015(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
Graphological and Phonological Levels DOI: 10.4324/9781315683226-11 Aim: Section A will increase your awareness of how signs and sounds help to shape meanings in texts. This will enrich and deepen the level of detail you are able to offer in any text analysis. Contents: Part II, Section A Definitions Language as a semiotic system What are the rules? Signs and symbols Sounds and symbols Speech, writing and multimodality Review your skills Ideas for assignments Definitions DOI: 10.4324/9781315683226-12 The term Graphology refers to the visual aspects of language, and for that reason it is more closely associated with writing than with speech. There is a specialist use of the term which refers narrowly to the study of handwriting, but the broader use of the term within language study refers to all the aspects of visual appearance that affect how we interpret written communication. This can range from the nature of the medium of production – such as the quality of the paper or brightness of the screen – to aspects such as typeface, font, the use of colour, and the effects of different layouts. The term phonology refers to the study of the sound system of a language, which can form the basis for understanding how different languages (and different dialects of the same language) can have different numbers of phonemes, or individual sounds. To speak of a sound system of any language is to refer to the way a particular language classifies which sounds are seen as similar to each other and which sounds are seen as different from one another. This might seem rather an abstract area, but in fact phonological classifications can help us not only to understand some significant aspects of language learning, but also to analyse how representation and stereotyping work. For example, if speakers want to imitate a particular accent, they will emphasise one or two sounds that are distinctive in that language variety
eBook - ePub- Roger Waldeck(Author)
- 2019(Publication Date)
- Wiley-ISTE(Publisher)
7 Approaches to and Applications of GraphemicsWe will look at an example of interdisciplinarity by interdisciplinary models, according to Livet’s typology (Chapter 1 ). The main subject will be writing: the discipline of linguistics builds a structural model of the act of communication, the one of statistics a mathematical model of computerized writing, steganography a mathematical model of the variation of computerized writing to insert hidden information, and biometrics a physical model of the act of writing on the keyboard. By rediscovering common notions, all these disciplines are driven to ask new questions and, in some cases, to develop new formalisms.7.1. Writing and linguistics
Writing is a modality of representation of human language and therefore primarily a linguistic matter. However, linguistics has long denied it, discriminated against it, and cursed it: it is sufficient to quote the founding father of linguistics, Ferdinand de Saussure, who would have said in his lectures:Language and writing are two distinct systems of signs; the second exists for the sole purpose of representing the first. The linguistic object is not both the written and the spoken forms of words; the spoken forms alone constitute the object. But the spoken word is so intimately bound to its written image that the latter manages to usurp the main role. People attach even more importance to the written image of a vocal sign than to the sign itself. A similar mistake would be in thinking that more can be learned about someone by looking at his photograph than by viewing him directly. (Saussure 1972, p. 45)
eBook - ePubWriting Systems and Their Use
An Overview of Grapholinguistics
- Dimitrios Meletis, Christa Dürscheid(Authors)
- 2022(Publication Date)
- De Gruyter Mouton(Publisher)
In any case, as the remarks above imply, given the assumption that (abstract linguistic) structure remains unaffected by concrete materiality, it is the aspect of use rather than structure that we find at the centre of a grapholinguistic investigation of handwriting. This is why the two perspectives of psycholinguistics (for aspects of processing) and sociolinguistics (for aspects of communication) come to the forefront. The former examines primarily the physiological and cognitive processes involved in writing by hand but also the ones relevant in perceiving handwritten utterances. Here, the fact that people’s handwriting is utterly individual, i.e., practically differs in appearance for every person (even if in some cases only in details), results in a remarkable degree of visual variation that poses challenges to the human perceptual system. 47 On the other hand, the sociolinguistic perspective deals with specific practices and products of handwriting (such as letter writing and letters) and the attitudes, beliefs, and ideologies associated with them. Interestingly, the sociolinguistic perspective in certain ways subsumes the psycholinguistic questions just mentioned since the lively discourses on handwriting include, for example, debates on fine motor activity and the cognitive benefits handwriting is assumed to have, especially when compared to typing
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