Lectures on Topology of Words
  We discuss a topological approach to words introduced by the author. Words on an arbitrary alphabet are approximated by Gauss words and then studied up to natural modifications inspired by the Reidemeister moves on knot diagrams. This leads us to a notion of homotopy for words. We introduce several homotopy invariants of words and give a homotopy classification of words of length five. 
Vladimir Turaev