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The paper aims to provide insights into the use of semiotic modes used in the shop signs of culinary businesses in Greece and Cyprus. In this context, we examine, comparatively, culinary shop signs collected from the commercial centre of Thessaloniki and Limassol, two European, Mediterranean cities with a significant gastronomic traditin and a lively city centre. These semiotic modes are represented in a sample composed of shop signs whose verbal message constitutes verbo-cultural palimpsest or is written in a local dialect, as well as of shop signs that focus on their iconic visual message using intersemiotic translation or visual rhetoric to make their message appealing to consumers. The main conclusion is that the shop signs under scrutiny seem to be addressed mainly to the native people of the two countries who are considered in the common cultural practice much better consumers than tourists as concerns their culinary habits. The study also provides evidence of creative use of culinary shop signs in both cities. Intracultural interpretation, as well as the design of the verbal element, seem to make shop signs more appealing for the consumers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In Cyprus the introduction of printing coincided with the beginning of the British occupation. Thereafter, all printed documents had to address a multilingual audience as English, Greek, and Ottoman Turkish were in use. This article focuses on a distinctive characteristic of the local printing history namely the practice of multiscript printing and the visual appearance of multilingual documents that addressed a linguistically multifarious society. For comparative reasons two different kinds of documents are examined: multilingual administrative documents and advertisements. The analysis of the documents provides insights into the practice of multiscript printing, i.e. the technical resources (printing methods and available types), the skills of printers, and the typographic conventions applied on multilingual documents. In conjunction with archival evidence these documents become mirrors of political convictions, social norms, and commercial transactions that linked a peripheral printing trade with the European centres. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]