Tekstuele

Tekstuele is a term used in linguistics and media studies to describe the texture of written language in digital communication. It focuses on how typography, layout, punctuation, emoji use, line breaks, and other textual features shape meaning and interpretation beyond the words themselves. The concept treats text as a multisensory artifact whose form participates in rhetorical effect.

Origin: Tekstuele is a neologism that emerged in scholarly discussions in the 2010s to address the interplay between content and presentation in online texts. While not tied to a single author, it has been used in studies of online forums, social networks, and educational platforms to analyze how readers perceive tone and intent from textual cues.

Core components: textual texture includes readability, syntactic complexity, cohesion devices, typographic choices (font, size, color), layout (paragraph length, line breaks), and paralinguistic marks such as emojis and punctuation sequences. Researchers examine how these features influence perceived credibility, emotion, and engagement.

Applications: in digital humanities, marketing, UX design, and education, Tekstuele informs interface design and instructional materials by emphasizing the role of form in comprehension. Analysts use qualitative coding and quantitative measures, including readability formulas, gaze-tracking, and computational text analysis, to study Tekstuele in large corpora.

Criticism and limitations: as a broad umbrella term, Tekstuele can risk vagueness without clear operational definitions. Some scholars call for standardized metrics to compare textual texture across platforms. Nevertheless, the concept highlights that form and content interact in digital text.