The Verbal and Visual Dimensions of Market Dynamics: Legal Design, Consumer-Centric Contracts and Market Infrastructures

Drawing on the theoretical evolution of institutional change processes, this work introduces the role of the verbal and visual dimension of texts in the dynamics of market change. Within the research tradition of Science and Technologies Studies, in a perspective of analysis based on social semiotics to investigate the material basis of institutions, the research context concerns the introduction of legal design. The research focuses on the specific field of contract visualization/design, “a design-driven approach to legal innovation”. Evidence on the application of “human-centered design to the world of law” suggests the emergence of forms of institutional work through distinctive “affordances of verbal and visual text”. Communicative characteristics (argue; specify; narrate; abstract; infiltrate; spatialize; captivate; materialize) and institutional practices (initial placement; exposure; mobilization; typification; explanation; justification; taken-for-grantedness; translation) can be traced back to different phases of the institutionalization of “legal design”, and to different mechanisms that allow to conceptualize the institutional dynamics of the markets in terms of “market infrastructure” (“a materially heterogeneous arrangement that silently supports and structures the consummation of market exchanges”). The work suggests a research agenda for marketing studies and consumer research considering: (i) virtual artifacts related to their mnemonic, performative, interpretive, dialogic and documentary dimensions; (ii) and three research directions related to the evolution of Market System Dynamics.