Literacy Archives

This book examines some of the fundamental questions about writing. What is it? What is it for? How is it related to literacy? It’s also about the philosophy of information storage and transmission. A great deal of what Albertine Gaur has to say centres on the historic development of different writing systems. She shows how they emerged from numbering systems and pictographic records. She covers numeric as well as pictorial and non-linguistic forms of writing in a historical and cultural range which is simply breathtaking.

It’s a scholarly book, pitched at a fairly high intellectual level [well, I found it so] in which terms are left unexplained and you have to keep up with a compact and rapid manner of delivery. She admits that her particular approach of posing questions about the nature of writing raises problems rather than supplying answers, but in identifying gaps in our knowledge she challenges some widespread assumptions.

For instance, she raises a serious criticism of the UK’s current National Literacy Strategy based on what she sees as a fundamental misunderstanding about the nature of the phoneme – the supposed smallest possible unit in the sound system of any language.

Equally tenuous is the connection between language and writing. Speculation, for example, about how well (or how badly) the alphabet represents the English language is more or less spurious for the simple reason that the alphabet was never meant to write English in the first place. The present alphabet goes back some three thousand years via Etruscan and Roman forms of writing to a Greek alphabet which was, in turn, simply an adaptation of the Phoenician consonant script, to a time when the English language did not even exist.

The part of the book I found most interesting was the account of how contemporary writing systems (the Roman alphabet) developed historically from a common Proto-Semitic script. This leads into a consideration of why certain writing systems succeed (the rather difficult Chinese for instance) whereas others don’t. It usually comes down to politics.

Some people used to believe in a monogenesis theory of writing, rather like the monotheistic religious belief – one source, one author, one instant moment of creation. She comprehensively debunks this myth, but then very broadmindedly goes on to discuss examples of people who have actually invented scripts to fit spoken languages.

There are fascinating reflections which arise from asking such apparently simple but profound questions as ‘What is a book?’ The answers to this question, which involve the long transition from the scroll to the collection of separate pages called a codex reveals the origin of much of which we now take for granted: titles, tables of contents, pages, and page numbers.

It’s beautifully illustrated with pictures of rare texts, unusual scripts and printings, and examples of writing systems from all over the globe, Albertine Gaur was formerly head of Oriental Manuscripts and Printed Books at the British Library. It’s quite clear that she knows these objects intimately, and this book is her attempt to share her knowledge and enthusiasm for them. Anyone who is interested in the philosophy of writing or the book as a physical object will profit from the encounter.

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Albertine Gaur, Literacy and The Politics of Writing, Bristol: Intellect, 2000, pp.188, ISBN 1904705065

More on theory
More on typography
More on digital media

theoretical study of writing in the digital age

This is an investigation of the effect of new media on what Gunter Kress calls ‘alphabetic writing’. He is arguing that multimedia and the screen are starting to challenge the page as the natural medium of writing – and that this in turn is affecting the way we write. It’s certainly true that writing for the screen has to be more immediate and heavily chunked than writing for the page, and Kress also argues that the screen is making graphic images more important as a medium of communication.

He points out quite rightly that speech and writing are two completely separate systems (which is why many people have problems with writing). The alphabet is actually a loose transcription system for translating between them. His basic argument is that all communication (including linguistics) should be seen as a subset of semiotics. There’s actually not very much about new media discussed – merely an assumption that iconic or visual communication is challenging the dominance of writing.

However, he does make the interesting observation that computers put users in charge of page layout in a way which gives new emphasis to design, as well as providing interactivity between writer and reader.

Having argued that all texts are a result of ideological relationships between author and reader, he even attempts a quasi-political analysis of punctuation. This is not really persuasive, and founders in his attempts to explain or excuse his examples of what is no more than poor writing.

But he does end on an interesting topic of reading paths. That is, the manner in which readers have to construct their own navigational routes when confronting what he calls ‘multimodal’ texts – ones with pictures and words, such as magazines and web pages, for instance.

Although he claims to have left behind an academic style so as to communicate with a wider audience, he writes in a dense and rather abstract manner. The results will be of interest to linguists, educational theorists, and semiologists – though those approaching it with an interest in new media might be a little disappointed.

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