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CALL: Irish Journal for Culture, Arts, Literature and Language
Charles Kay Ogden; Isotype; László Moholy-Nagy; Otto Neurath; Franz Roh; History of Linguistics; Modernism
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Writing In The Language Of Reality: Interwar Experiments In Language, Robin Fuller
Writing In The Language Of Reality: Interwar Experiments In Language, Robin Fuller
CALL: Irish Journal for Culture, Arts, Literature and Language
This paper examines projects in universal communication from the interwar period, including Charles Kay Ogden’s Basic English, Otto Neurath’s Isotype, and László Moholy-Nagy’s typo-photo. The projects under discussion — experiments in language reform, graphic design and photography — were all born from a dissatisfaction with the imprecise, arbitrary and historically-contingent nature of established languages and semiotic systems. A non-arbitrary mode of communication was sought, one that represented reality directly without translation through a cultural code.