Handbook of Semiotics

Writing

Writing Except for its historical dimension, the study of writing has been a neglected field of language studies. Etymologically, the terms language and linguistics are related only to spoken language (Lat. lingua 'tongue'). Although languages have traditionally been studied mainly on the basis of written records, many linguists have shared Bloomfield's view that "writing is not language , but merely a way of recording language by means of visible marks" (1933: 21). Against this phonocentric view of language , Derrida has recently argued that a new semiotics should henceforth be based on the study of writing and no longer on speech. Within a semiotic framework, the specific features of writing in relation to other signs and the semiotic structures of writing systems have to be determined. The semiotics of writing has further dimensions of interest to philosophy, cultural anthropology , and (mass) media studies. For related topics in the psychology and pedagogy of writing, see Kolers et aI., eds. (1979-80) and Assmann et aI., eds. (1983). For some explicitly semiotic approaches to the study of writing, see also Watt (197 5~ 1980~ 1981, 1988), Baron (1981), Zeitschrift fur Semiotik 2.4 (1980), and Kodikas/Code 9.34 (1986). 1. The Evolution of Writing and the Basic Options Studies in the history of writing have a long scholarly tradition 0ensen 1935, Fevrier 1948, Gelb 1952, Cohen 1958, Diringer 1962, Foldes-Papp 1966, Friedrich 1966, Trager 1974, Schmitt 1980, and Harris 1986). According to the standard interpretation , writing systems have evolved in progressive stages from primitive pictography to alphabetic writing. The general validity of this account and the related claim for the general semiotic superiority of alphabetic writing has more recently been contested. 1.1 Precursors of Writing The earliest precursors of writing are iconic or symbolic signs deSignating individual concepts of a specialized vocabulary or giving a holistic pictorial representation of a scene of social life. In both cases, the messages do not yet correspond systematically to spoken language, being either too specialized or too global in their correspondence to speech. These precursors of language are either three-dimensional artifacts or graphic representations. 1. THE EVOLUTION OF WRITING AND THE BASIC OPTIONS • 251 1.1.1 OBJECT SIGNS AND EARLIEST PRECURSORS OF WRITING Examples of message-carrying artifacts which belong to the precursors of writing are counting stones, notched tally sticks (cf. Menninger 1958: 223-56), quipus (knotted strings of the Incas), and wampum belts (of the Iroquois). Among these object signs are the earliest known precursors of writing: Mesopotamian clay tokens dating back to the ninth millennium B.C. According to Schmandt-Besserat (1978), these object signs were used as a system of accounting. These early counting stones represent numerals or objects, such as cow, wool, granary, or oil. Their shape is very similar to the characters of Sumerian writing which were developed later, toward the end of the fourth millennium B.C. (cf. Fig. WI). Schmandt-Besserat points out that a large proportion of these early counting stones are not iconic. From this observation, she derives the theory that writing had symbolic elements from its very beginnings. 1.1.2 PICTOGRAMS Examples of two-dimensional precursors of writing are paleolithic petrograms (rock paintings ), petroglyphs (rock engravings), pictographs , and pictograms, Le., pictorial messages corresponding to whole propositions or texts (cf. Gelb 1952: 250). The prelinguistic character of pictograms, for example, is illustrated in Figure W 2, which is included in Mallery's (1893) documentation of pictograms of the North American Indians. 1.2 The Basic Options and Evolutionary Stages The writing systems of the world have evolved from several independent sources. This evolution has not always led to the development of an alphabetic script. There are other types of writing in the world, and some of them have proved to be equally valid options for the visual representation of languages. 1.2.1 PLEREMIC AND CENEMIC WRITING There are two basic options for the development of a writing system: the signs of writing, the graphemes, may refer either to semantic or to phonetic units of the language. In the first case, the graphemes are pictographs, ideographs , or logographs; in the second case, the graphemes represent phonemes or syllables. Based on this distinction, Trager distinguishes between sememographic and phonemographic writing (1974: 382-83). Sampson, following r; l»»»l R [] iP ~ ~ ~ Ij LJ ~ GRANARY ......... MAT, RUG DOG BED (?) @ ED E8 !~ \J C> (/) ~:~:/~~. ' .. ' . .,,'8 NUMERAL SHEEP ·i NAIL GOOD. 36,000 SWEET Fig. W 1. Symbolic (1 st row) and iconic (2nd row) Mesopotamian...