From writing to alphabet

Writing is an integral part of our world. It is one of the foundations not only of education, but also of the first version of the Internet. Before coming to us, it existed for many, many years. It was created and recreated by different civilizations, and has come down to us as one of the most complex phenomena ever conceived by mankind.

What is the history of writing?

"The origins of writing can be traced back to the early pottery phase of the Neolithic period, when clay tokens were used to record specific quantities of livestock or goods. The tokens were gradually replaced by flat tablets, on which signs were recorded with a stylus. Real writing was first recorded in Uruk, at the end of the 4th millennium BC, and shortly afterwards in various parts of the Near East.

The Mesopotamian poem "Enmerkar and the Lord of Aratta" tells the earliest known story of the invention of writing.

Historians distinguish between prehistory and the history of primitive writing, but disagree on when prehistory becomes history and when proto-writing becomes real "writing", as this definition is largely subjective. Writing, in its most general terms, is a method of recording information and is made up of graphemes, which can, in turn, be made up of glyphs.

The emergence of writing in a given field is generally followed by several centuries of fragmentary inscriptions. Historians mark the historicity of a culture by the presence of coherent texts in that culture's writing system(s).

The invention of writing is not a one-off event, but a gradual process initiated by the appearance of symbols, perhaps initially for cultural purposes".

Writing emerged from successive collective needs, whether simultaneous or not, in the four corners of the globe. It is one of the mysteries of collective cognitive flows, and a fundamental step in the structuring of human beings and civilizations. In each case, it's the appearance of what we now call a new technology which, in order to exist, is going to reformat people by reformatting their environments and their thinking. It's also the physical formalization of thought, the invisible becoming visible to all.

From body to medium

"What has this new technology brought? Since the work of anthropologist Jack Goody, in particular, we know what graphic reason is. What access to the new intellectual technology of writing has brought, among other things, is a reflection on information and its organization: writing ensures the transition from the auditory to the visual domain, offering a spatial rather than temporal medium for manifestation, making it possible to examine in a different way, to manipulate, reorder and rectify sentences and even isolated words: this is what we call the possibility of decontextualization: written knowledge is more abstract than oral knowledge, insofar as it lives outside any context.

In fact, one of the benefits of writing is that it spatializes language and gives it an atemporal dimension, enabling us to subject a discourse, a sentence, a chronology or a list to greater manipulation, free from its original context.

It not only enables those who know how to write to reclassify information and legitimize reformulations in the eyes of those who know how to read. It also transforms illiterate people's representations of the world (their cognitive processes).

If the invention of writing (scripturization) is the first major event in the history of language sciences, it's because it is characterized by three essential processes:

• decontextualization: because writing fixes language, it objectifies otherness: language becomes an object, and a linguistic tradition is born;

• formalization: this makes knowledge explicit and invariable;

• externalization: this enables the creation of linguistic tools external to the individual.

Writing is therefore external to the individual. It's the choice of an externalized mode of expression.

Let's stay with invention stories. In West Africa, many indigenous scripts have been invented. Here, as elsewhere in the world, many cultural and natural phenomena that cannot be explained or explained logically are attributed to divine or supernatural intervention. Many religions and scriptures are said to be "revealed". There is a discourse built around these phenomena, most often in the form of a dream. This is the case of the system we have chosen: the invention of writing by King Njoya.

It is generally accepted that it was as a result of contact with both German missionaries and Islamized Fulani that King Njoya was led to invent a writing system and to write three books in this system from 1897 onwards. The advantages seemed so great that he felt the need to create a script, but a script rooted in the ancestral symbolic logic of Bamum, and thus inscribed in the historical development of his people, and signs resulting from a phonological analysis of the Mum language.

But to serve the royal ideology, to confer power on an individual, this script had to be internal to him, then external. The dream is the operator. There is a dramaturgy, in the form of a dream, linked to the creation of graphic signs:

In the past, the Bamum couldn't write. The writing they now use was devised by King Njoya. One night, he had a dream; a man appeared before him and said: "King, take a planchette and draw a man's hand, wash what you have drawn and drink". The king took the planchette and drew a man's hand as instructed. Then he passed the planchette to the man, who wrote it down and gave it back to the king. Many people were seated there; they were all students with writing boards in their hands, which they then gave to their brothers.

The next day, the king took a planchette and drew a man's hand; he washed the planchette and drank the water that had been used for this washing, as had been indicated to him in the dream. The king called many people and said to them: "If you draw many different things and name them, I'll make a book that will speak without being heard. - What's the point," said the people, "no matter what you do, you won't succeed. - If you think hard enough, it will succeed," said the king. - No, it can't succeed. - Go and think carefully".

Some time later, the king called his people. Well," he said, "what did you think about this book? - No matter what we do, we won't succeed.

- Well, I accept what you say, but I want to try myself, and if I don't succeed, I'll leave it. Go and draw different things and bring me what you've done.

They went and did what they were told, then came to present their work to the king. The king himself had done some tests of his own. He called Mama and Adjia to come and help him compare the work that had been done on both sides. Five times the king tried, but in vain, to obtain a result; it was the sixth attempt that succeeded. The writing had been found. The king called in many people and taught them the new characters. The people learned well, much to King Njoya's satisfaction.

The role of the dream is to narrativize and dramatize this process: both to make writing something internal to man and to externalize it. This is what the one we might call the destinator says to Njoya: "Wash what you have drawn and drink it"; this is the process of "internalization": transfer of skills and legitimization of the demiurge. Then comes the return to real life: but Njoya is no longer the same as before, and the world that now has access to writing is no longer the same either (cf. the graphic reason).

Here, the dream is an operator of status transformation. The dream is the ultimate relay for the metamorphosis of image into writing. "If you draw many different things and name them, I'll make a book that speaks without being heard," says Njoya. The image is the material realization of a dream of transgressive communication, of man's desire to reach out and possess the invisible through the visible, to establish a permanent physical link between his society and that of the gods, who only ever manifest themselves to him through ambiguous one-off revelations - "signs" - or through more or less decipherable abstract networks (starry skies, divination, dreams, etc.).

Dreams, then, are a return to the image, to scenic figuration, a return to the origin, but they are also the locus, the operator of a change in status:

• from the invisible to the visible ;

• from gods to men;

• from the interior to the exterior (writing);

• from a "screen way of thinkingwe move to a "physical support" (the planchette in Njoya's dream).

These examples show that the medium is the operator of conversion from spoken to visual language: there is an interiority, and writing is the choice of an external/externalized mode of expression. However, the way things are presented, we could be led to believe in a new version of the representative vision of writing. Is writing and its medium simply a copy of spoken language and its physical support (the body)?

What makes writing effective?

What makes sense is that this externalized choice of expression is constrained by practical (not linguistic) rules. For the essential characteristic of the medium is its interface structure: the medium has two sides - that's what makes it an "interface" - : "(i) a "textual" side, in the sense that it is a syntagmatic device for organizing the figures that make up the text (this is what we might call the "formal support", i.e. the "inscription dimension" nature, the selection of limits and rules of inscription - syntax), and (ii) a "praxis" side, in the sense that it is a sensitive material device that can be manipulated in the course of practice (this is what we might call the "material support").

It is this interface structure that enables integration at the level of practice. For us, then, it's a question of describing the articulation between the "formal support" (turned towards the lower level, that of the text-statement) and the "material support" (turned towards the higher level). In short, explains Jacques Fontanille, "interface transitions, between planes of immanence, can be described globally as the articulation between the 'formal face' and the 'substantial-material face'".

Source : Penser l'écriture : corps, supports et pratiques - Isabelle Klock-Fontanille -
In Communication & langages 2014/4 (N° 182), pages 29 to 43 -
https://www.cairn.info/revue-communication-et-langages1-2014-4-page-29.htm

But can writing really exist if it is emptied of meaning?

The example of hieroglyphs is interesting to study. Having lost their meaning, there was no in-depth research; their design gave them their own sacred existence (horror and fascination). It was also a language of the gods. Underlying this, perhaps, was the fear of awakening these same gods by unravelling the mysteries of their writings: a vanished civilization replaced by new ones. In a way, it had to be left to sleep.

"Born on the banks of the Nile at the end of the 4th millennium BC, hieroglyphic writing was used to record all kinds of texts written in the language of the Egyptians. By the end of Antiquity, this script was confined to temple libraries, where it became the instrument of a refined theology.

Classical Antiquity had an ambiguous relationship with Egypt, at once repulsive and fascinating. It was against this backdrop that historians, geographers and, above all, philosophers, most often belonging to the Platonic school, took an interest in the writings of ancient Egypt. We owe them the terms we still use today to describe the different states of this writing: hieroglyphic, hieratic, demotic.

A general system for interpreting the world

Classical antiquity never sought to understand how the hieroglyphic system worked. Philosophers preferred to integrate a certain image of hieroglyphic writing into a general system for interpreting the world. This was understood as a system reserved for temple hierogrammatists, used to record the highest secrets of religion and philosophy to which the lay public was not to have access. Neo-Platonist philosophers also saw in it a form of writing that functioned in a symbolic mode, disconnected from any linguistic realization. Moreover, at the time, there was little distinction between signs of writing, in the restricted sense, and monumental iconographic compositions, which were susceptible to a symbolic reading.

This exclusive focus on one aspect of hieroglyphics culminated in Horapollon's Hieroglyphica, a treatise on the symbolic interpretation of certain hieroglyphic signs dating from the 5th century CE at the earliest. Rediscovered in the early 15th century, this text conditioned the perception of Renaissance humanists and blocked any serious attempt at deciphering it for several centuries."

The example of hieroglyphs shows that it's possible to come into contact with writing without wanting or knowing how to make sense of it. Writing then becomes a set of mysterious decorative symbols, feeding their own legends and creating their own protective barriers. If we look at our times and our globalized system of writing, the question arises as to why this is so, by exploring how the brain works.

Can writing be dissociated from reading?

"The human brain is not designed for writing! Humans have been speaking for 2 million years, and during that time, their brains have modified themselves, adapting as best they can to handle oral language.

Written language, on the other hand, appeared barely 4,000 years ago. A very short time in evolutionary terms. Even today, we come into the world with the same brain as our Homo Sapiens ancestors of 50,000 years ago.

In other words, a brain biologically designed to speak, but not to read and write. This is why, unlike the spoken word, writing, a recent invention of mankind, does not come naturally and is the result of a long apprenticeship.

One brain, two hemispheres

It's interesting to know that our brains operate with two quite distinct systems of thought. One resides in the right hemisphere of our brain, the other in the left.

The right hemisphere of our brain is the seat of emotion, creativity and imagination, and processes information instinctively and globally. It always considers things from a general point of view, without concern for detail.

Highly intuitive, it is able to proceed by approximation. For example, with the right brain, we can recognize someone from the detail of a photo, the few features of a caricature. It's also our right brain that enables us to hum a tune as soon as we hear the first notes of a piece of music.

It's the specialist in non-verbal communication. It can quickly translate the body and emotional language of an interlocutor, from eye movements, general body posture, hand and foot gestures, changes in skin color, as well as intonations, voice inflections and even the finest smells. Schematically: we write with our left brain, but we read, first with our right brain, then with our left.

Conversely, or rather symmetrically, the left hemisphere is the seat of reasoning, processing information analytically, with mathematical logic. In other words, it is logical and sequential: it thinks things one after the other, starting with the first, then following with the second and so on. The great functional specificity of the human left hemisphere is speech.

But it is also competent in the fields of thinking, reading, writing, arithmetic and calculation. But these skills are not innate, they are acquired.

If this brain knows how to read, write and count, it's because it has learned and recorded these skills over the years, as part of the primary and secondary school curricula.

The brain's role in writing

To put it very simply (because brain function is obviously much more complex), the right brain perceives things, shapes and forms. The left brain translates them into concepts or language.

To put it more simply

• the left brain is into detail, while the right brain remains global.

• the left brain inspects the terrain while the right brain senses the atmosphere...

• To write, we all use the left hemisphere of our brain.

• To read, we first use the right brain, then the left. We'll see that this differentiated functioning is a key to understanding the full value of the expression you've no doubt already heard: "put yourself in your reader's shoes"."

Reading is interrelated with writing. If writing can survive on its own across the ages, this is not the case for reading, which will disappear into the meanders of history if it is no longer practiced. It can then die or wither to extinction, as is happening to Latin. There is decoding, which is the last stage of survival, as with Latin itself. But decoding a language does not make it a living language. A living language is a language that becomes one with the individual who uses it.

How your brain reads a text.

"When your eye sees a text, it doesn't read anything at all. It simply scans the text, a bit like a scanner, to find shapes and clues that will enable the right brain - the intuitive, global, creative brain - to collect enough information to send to the left brain - the logical, sequential brain - for analysis and reading.

As already mentioned in "How does our brain read", the right brain is highly intuitive. It proceeds by resemblance and comparison with similar objects it has seen in the past.

Here's an example of what it's capable of. Reading: a matter of anticipation

Look at this sentence taken from a letter received after an online purchase: one word is missing.

- Please note. In-store collection must be made by the holder of the ... credit card used for payment.

Our brains can read a word that isn't written! Instead of the little dots, you've probably already "seen" the missing word: "card". How can the brain read a word that doesn't exist? In fact, unconsciously, you and especially your right brain have been picking up clues to meaning, given by the context.

Context is what enables the brain to situate the text as precisely as possible in the world of the written word: a newspaper article? an advertising letter? a dunning letter? a recipe?

We're talking here about a commercial transaction, which you've understood without even knowing that this text is an extract from a letter following a purchase. Thank you right brain!

This prompted you to choose the most likely word, i.e. "card", while at the same time excluding many other words such as racket, satchel, plate... and even words using almost the same signs, the same letters, such as carp or cape.

Then there was a syntactic clue. This syntactic clue was given by the use of "la". "La" is an article that necessarily calls for a feminine word. As a result, you excluded the word "chèque", which was another perfectly plausible means of payment in the .... context. But since "chèque" is masculine, it's an option your brain didn't consider!

Here, it's your left brain that's had the most work to do, since it's the one that's the repository of the whole database of words and expressions you know.

You've also been helped by the sentence structure. Since "banker" is an adjective, your brain has, again unconsciously, been looking for a noun and not a verb or adverb or first name and so on.

The brain is always looking for predictive clues that will enable it to make assumptions about what is going to be read, based on what has already been read (or seen). And that's how your brain was able to read a word that wasn't written down.

Of course, this example may seem rather simplistic. However, whatever the text to be read, this is always how the brain of an experienced reader works (and when it comes to professional writing, we can assume that the reader of your work writings is indeed an experienced professional)".

If reading is a matter of anticipation, writing is above all a memory reservoir that will augment oral memory. This is a major evolution for humanity as a whole. We're moving from an individual-to-individual orality to the transmission of knowledge across groups with equal information and across time. The notion of space came later, with the emergence of the book, which enabled knowledge to be carried around.

Writing was not limited to transcribing the spoken word

"It was an intellectual tool that enhanced memory, fostered the elaboration of abstract and complex thought, and restructured thought. De Boeck argues that writing enabled the human mind to reach a new stage in its evolution.

Writing would be the equivalent of an external, collective memory, whose writing skills themselves enable ideas to be reformulated and continually perfected. It was only in the 16th century in the West, with the invention of the printing press and the secularization of knowledge, the democratization of writing, that a civilization of the written word really took hold.

What's the point of writing?

Writing is a means of disciplining your thoughts, clarifying them, ordering them and deepening them.

Putting letters on paper so that they become words, sentences, paragraphs... All of which form the work of your journey, the path of your thought, what you want to convey. The magic happens. You write without realizing it. Everything falls into place methodically, without any effort on your part.

You've learned a language that allows you to put your thousand and one thoughts down on paper. Your brain has the power to transmit to you all the information you have stored up during your life experiences. Writing is a powerful tool in your everyday life."

Writing is marvellous because it transforms our vision of the chaotic world through a mental structuring tool that has helped humanity evolve. But can we really talk about writing, or should we talk about scripts and their evolution, like the arrival of the alphabet?

Power of the arrival of the alphabet in processes

"Writing is wrongly seen as a homogeneous phenomenon that divides human history into "before" and "after". However, deep divisions run through it. Havelock proposes a classification of writing systems into two broad categories.

"Systems that attempt to record mental representations and those that attempt to record words or expressions. These are ideograms and logograms. These systems (very ambitious, since they attempt to go directly to psychic processes) are very old (5,000 to 4,000 BC). Their difficulty is that they require a considerable number of signs, and that each sign must be associated with an idea and/or a word: human memory is incapable of going beyond a few thousand (of the order of 10,000) recordings of this nature. It's a profession that requires a lifetime's dedication, and reading can't just be a popular activity - it's highly specialized and highly valued.

A major step forward in sign economy and ease of manipulation is taken when, abandoning the need to record ideas and words, we simply try to record the sounds emitted by speech. These are phonograms: the capture of the sound chain by visual signs.

Phonograms are characterized by their modesty: instead of trying to represent thought, we efforce ourselves to represent material phenomena (the sounds of a language) by other material phenomena (traced visual signs). The act of reading then consists in rendering sounds when we see the signs, it becomes mechanical: thought is no longer monopolized by the interpretation of signs and accesses the statement itself more directly...

...From the moment a child understands the principle of alphabetic sound articulation, and understands that this articulation notes intelligible sound chains, he can enter the infini universe of reading, freed from any tutor. The alphabet is probably the most powerful discovery ever invented to liberate minds. Yet it is because it abandons the ambition to represent thoughts, and because, unlike any other writing system, it makes the act of reading totally mechanical, that the alphabet deploys this power.

Consequence of the democratization of reading through the alphabet?

"The democratization of reading becomes possible. We no longer need the scribe who knows everything, nor the interpreter who tells us how to pronounce a written sign. This effet will only take on its full dimension with printing, but it would be impossible without the alphabet. The reader can become totally autonomous if an education system takes things in hand at the right time.

Another consequence is the desacralization of writing. The alphabet is totally mechanical; we don't think about it. Writing is no longer a screen and has no value in itself; it merely refers to the spoken language and is indifférent to the notated language: any language can be notated in an alphabetic system.

The alphabetic system does not favor "already known" forms, traditional literature with its repetitive formulas. This opens up the possibility of unprecedented development in everyday prose, which of course also means that we'll be able to write things of little value: the conditions for innovation are also those for mediocre production in greater quantity.

We're living in extraordinary times. We have writing, reading and the alphabet, which together enable us to make extraordinary journeys in multiple dimensions. The three form a tool, a gateway to other worlds, other thoughts, other technologies, other territories... But they are not an end in themselves. They are the beginning of a process of awakening to which all human beings should have access.

Image - Pixabay - KathleenPirroArts