Abstract
This chapter investigates medieval English glossaries via the lens of Mark Sebba’s framework for a multimodal analysis of multilingual texts. The analysis focuses on the visual/spatial arrangement of bi- and multilingual material in six glossaries dating from the 7th to the 13th centuries. Glossaries, the medieval precursors of modern dictionaries, represent a text genre with a highly salient layout. They systematically exploit visual/spatial features as a semiotic resource to identify different information categories or to highlight different codes and thus rely on complex literacy practices. The very different layouts attested in medieval glossaries reveal different conceptualisations of the glossary text.
Seiler, Annina