A Visual Interpretation of Dialogism By Soheil Ashrafi Abstract The notion of heteroglossia, developed by Bakhtin, refers to extralinguistic aspects of languages such as perspective or ideological positioning. Heteroglossia is a way to conceive the world as constructed by a continuous mass of languages, each of which stands for distinctive values and presuppositions in mutual relation or dialogue with others. In Bakhtin’s view dialogue knows no sublation or centredness of bodies, rather separateness and simultaneity are known as basic conditions of dialogism and existence. However, in a world where languages are inevitably ideologically freighted with often conflicting social, political and cultural values, how can non-centredness of bodies and consequently a shared experience be realised in cross-cultural dialogue? Could two written languages be interfused in one orthographic system? Could a text be designed so that simultaneously the users of both languages can read and understand it? In this paper the notion of heteroglossia as a cardinal facet of dialogism is metaphorically employed to analyse visual manifestation of the United Nations’ universal declaration of human rights, as a common ground, in two (divergent cultures) written languages: English and Farsi. To this end, the paper proposes a coding system that is able to demonstrate ‘graphemic convergence’ of the two given languages. The outcome is a symbiotic composition where the legibility of one language depends upon other, and users of the two languages come across a neutral point at which two languages merge as non-centred bodies. It is a demonstration of one spatio-visual plot and multiple voices, of two languages that occupy simultaneous but different space. Key Words: typography, dialogism, heteroglossia, discourse analysis, cross- cultural interaction. ***** Introduction The crucial role of typography and its material formation in generating and sustaining the relations of power particularly in cross-cultural interactions are what this paper focuses on. The cornerstones in our study are Bakhtin’s concepts of dialogism and heteroglossia as contrasting response to an ideologically unified world, which can shed light on some overlooked aspects of typographic communication. A proposal for an alternative coding system in response to the