Rethinking written culture

Abstract

For most of its history, modern linguistics viewed writing as a poor relation to speech, at best a tool facilitating the study of historical change and documenting contemporary spoken language. Only in the last few decades has written language been accepted as an object of study in its own right, thanks to the efforts of a variety of classicists, anthropologists, historians, and linguists. One of those linguists is Roy Harris, whose book Rethinking Writing chronicles and challenges traditional theories of the relationship between the written and the spoken word. Harris casts his analysis within the framework of integrational linguistics, arguing for the need to go beyond the study of isolated signs (whether spoken or written) to a model that sees meaning as a product of the sign as used in a situationally specific context. Building on the integrational notion that context plays a critical role in establishing meaning, this essay explores the larger issue of the written culture in which a writing system is situationally embedded. Among the questions the essay grapples with are: What is a written culture? In the modern west, what challenges has written culture encountered, especially over the past century? And what prospects does written culture face in the century ahead? While the essay focuses on the United States, its conclusions will resonate in other contemporary societies in which similar technological and social variables are at work.