Semiotic Efficiency of Notational Iconicity : (Negotiating Text Conventions and Text Functions in Interdisciplinary Editorial Teams)

Abstract Holste (2019) elaborates and modifies Roelckeʼs (2002a) quantitative approach to evaluate the efficiency of written communication, especially of written language, by broadening the definition of text genre and by developing a more explanatory measure for efficiency. First, he considers not only elements of writing (Roelcke 2002a) but also the notational iconicity (Krämer 2003) of multimodal texts (Bateman 2008), i. e., of written text “combined with and surrounded by visual characters” (Schmitz 2014: 295). Because of this image/text relations (Unsworth 2007), text design and typography gain importance. Second, Holste’s means to measure efficiency are the conventionality and functionality of such multimodal texts as they are negotiated in an interdisciplinary editorial team. In the present paper, a genre frequently used in German tender processes for public transport – the so-called Optimierungsvorschläge – is used to explicate the efficiency of notational iconicity and to describe how an interdisciplinary team edits multimodal texts on the basis of reciprocal expectations of expectations (Gloy 2012), i. e., on the basis of their expectations on the contracting authorities’ expectations.