A “dialectogram” is a large, detailed documentary drawing of place, drawing upon multiple viewpoints and guided by the feelings, impressions and relationships of those who live there, or use it. The word dialectogram is a neologism created from a pun on the word “diagram” created by inserting ‘dialect’ and later, ‘dialectic’. Having previously assumed this mostly was just a play on words I found that this pun reflected my attitudes towards formal ‘drawing languages’ and that this could be linked both through analogy and direct inspiration, to recent trends in Scottish literature and the post-colonial ‘abrogation’ of Standard English by writers such as James Kelman and Tom Leonard. Similarly, maps and other forms of technical drawing adopt a standard visual language derived from ‘colonial’ assumptions that are challenged by alternative traditions within drawing (de Certeau, 1988, Ingold, 2007). Dialectograms attempt their own abrogation by borrowing from these traditions in an idiosyncratic fashion to attempt a closer link between the subjects of the drawings and the ‘drawing language’ in which information about them is conveyed. When the dialectogram borrows the ‘totalising’ bird’s-eye view of the diagram to depict grounded, subjective and often idiosyncratic, detail of place, it is at its most dialectical. It creates a tension that encourages the viewer to make their own readings –and possibly syntheses - from the images, just as the characters of James Kelman insert their own language into those of the authorities to subvert it and find their own existential sense of reality. The paper argues that illustrators and other drawing practitioners can learn a great deal from the dialectical relationship between Standard and ‘non-standard’ language use, both verbally and visually.

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