| Popis: |
Writing has a large number of definitions, each referring to a distinct conception of the phenomenon. The definitions oscillate between two poles: a glossographist conception, for which written language is nothing more than a transcoding of spoken language, and a autonomist conception, which insists on the spatial semiotic character of writing. This opposition is well-known and has been a matter of endless controversy. I suggest here an epistemological approach to the question, testing the robustness of the two theses by pushing them to their ultimate implications, which are actually aporias (the negation of the spatial specificities of writing on the one hand, and the subsuming of writing under the whole field of spatial semiotics on the other). The nodal point of the problem is obviously to specify what place language can (or must) have in the definition of writing, and under what conditions a relationship between language and writing is possible. This critical examination leads to a dialectical definition of writing, formulated in semiotic terms and emphasizing both its spatial character and its link to the linguistic realm. |
