Chapter 1 "Conveying meaning in writing" of the book Neo-Eneolithic Literacy in Southeastern Europe PDF

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Section I - CONCEPTUAL AND HISTORICAL FRAMEWORK 10 1 CONVEYING MEANING IN WRITING Scholarly work on the definition and origin of writing has been pursued in the last decades in different cultural frameworks and disciplines. If writing is considered routinely the invention responsible for the great d...

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Section I - CONCEPTUAL AND HISTORICAL FRAMEWORK

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1 CONVEYING MEANING IN WRITING Scholarly work on the definition and origin of writing has been pursued in the last decades in different cultural frameworks and disciplines. If writing is considered routinely the invention responsible for the great divide in human culture between prehistory and history,1 scholarship acknowledges that there are no fully satisfying answers to the key questions about how and why it was developed and even what exactly it is.

1.A

Assessing signs: Concepts and sounds

The main challenging and long-standing divergence about the definition of writing technology is if it was invented to express the sounds of a language in a way that allows for an indirect transmission of information or in order to fix, store and convey mainly concepts and ideas. The straightforward answer from the traditional approach hangs the nature of writing to the loop of rope of the spoken language. Writing is a communicational system that supposedly secures a series of phonetic sequences (single sounds, syllables, or words) of an individual language on an established space (possibly on a surface) utilizing more or less permanent marks “in such a way that it can be recovered more or less exactly without the intervention of the utter” (Daniels 1996: 3). According to this restricted canon, ars scribendi is the practice of memorizing and expressing ideas connected to an individual language and systematically interrelated with the respective spoken language through a graphic manifestation (Kammerzell 2007). Therefore, understanding a text primarily means retranslating it into the represented oral language (Damerow 1999). Recording speech, writing cannot accept pictography2 and ideography3 as its internal components (Bloomfield 1933: 283; DeFrancis 1989: 20-64; Lounsbury 1989: 203; Coe 1992: 13; Unger and DeFrancis 1995). Trigger proposes to refer to pictography and ideography as recording and reserve the term writing for systems that represent language (Trigger 2004: 44). According to another and broader definition, the intent of writing is different. It is a system of intercommunication aimed to store and transfer specific information in a conventional manner by means of visible marks so that it can be reused (Gelb 1963: 253; Haas 1976; Salomon 2001; Sampson 1985). In order to define what writing is, no connection with the spoken code of a language is necessary. The association with ideas and concepts is enough. Of course, the knowledge conveyed through the oral language could be represented by means of a text. Nevertheless, creating a text refers primarily to fix concepts and this process 1

The conception according to which ars scribendi is a key diagnostic criterion to oppose history to primitivism and civilization to barbarism is a well studied and discussed issue in Historical epistemology. I am interested here to underline that this idea is usually connected with the concept of uniform, progressive, and necessary evolution and with the opinion that writing has to be treated as a technological achievement. Lewis H. Morgan, a nineteenth-century anthropologist and ethnologist with a major influence on the start-up of the sociological discipline, in his best-known book Ancient Societies distinguished the evolution of human culture into three basic stages set up by technological inventions and their effects on culture, subsistence, marriage, family, and political organization. Along a rigid succession, the proposed stages are savagery, barbarism, and civilization. Fire, fish diet, bow, and arrow typify the savage era. Pottery, domestication of animals, irrigated agriculture, metalworking epitomize the barbarian era. The phonetic alphabet is emblematic of the civilization era (L.H. Morgan 1877: 12). After a century, Gerhard Lenski, another very influential scholar on American sociology, in his Power and Prestige (1966) and Human Societies: An Introduction to Macrosociology (1974) connected humankind evolution to the amount and utilization of information and knowledge. The more information and knowledge (especially the technological know-how capable to shape and exploit the natural environment) a given society has, the more advanced it is. Therefore, he used the progresses in the history of communication in order to identify four stages of human development. In the first stage, information is passed by genes (in Human Societies, he designated it as “the common genetic heritage of human beings”). In the second stage, humans can learn and transmit information through experience. The third is characterized by the start-up in using signs and developing logic. In the fourth, humankind becomes able to create symbols, develop language, and invent writing. For further evolutionary theorizations on writing as primary innovation distinguishing civilization from primitivism, see Childe (1950), Sjoberg (1960: 32-34, 38), Gelb (1963: 221), and Goody (1986). 2 Stylized and simplified signs to represent in picture things or beings. 3 Signs of naturalistic root, generally stylized images, that conventionally express (individually or grouping) abstract concepts (beyond names, objects and quantities) according to a definite inventory. 11

does not depend on how they may be expressed in spoken language and by its organizational rules. What actually stimulates the use of writing is its peculiar relationship with culture, which is the mission to establish graphic sequences of ideas, namely connections of concepts. This is a mental process that does not necessarily have (but could have and often have) to cope with the translation of speech sounds into visual marks, but with the cultural milieu of a society. Knowledge may have an oral expression and a written one; writing may embed information persistently from an oral language, but may also directly represent information. “Historical epistemology poses the questions of when, where, why and how writing was invented in view of the broader perspective of studying writing as a means of representation and the historical transmission of knowledge that may or may not be intimately linked to language as a means of oral communication” (Damerow 1999). From an abstract and ahistorical point of view, the boundaries of the traditionally defined technique of writing are clear: it does not belong to writing any sign that does not represent the sounds of a language on a surface. However, when we “write English, Italian, or German”, i.e. we record graphically these languages, we use marks such as $, &, @ and many others that do not represent linguistic elements. Even the most developed form of ‘speech writing’ is not capable to record the entirety linguistic code. From an historical point of view, writing is not a means developed toward an abstract optimum to serve the generic universal human need to build a linguistically based script, but a social process of knowledge representation based on human interaction and historical depth. It cannot be considered an incidental condition of the early systems of writing either that they represent knowledge in various ways that do not necessarily presuppose the ability to express oral language, or that they were initially used predominantly or even exclusively in specific domains such as to document administrative activities or to communicate with divinities. The use of signs for writing was oriented to the meaning of words (not their sounds) and to the distinction between concrete ideas and abstract concepts. The restricted context of application, which influenced the formal structure and semantics of the early scripts, is constitutive of their origin. The earliest experiments with ars scribendi, when it was utilized to store and transmit ideas rather than the sounds of language in which ideas were expressed, have to be considered as formative stages of development and not “pre-writing”. The definition of writing that is detached from its dependence on spoken language has a broad corpus of studies. Linguists like Haas (1976), Cardona (1981; 1990), Gaur (1984-1992), Twyman (1986), Larsen (1988), Crump (1990), and Haarmann (1995; 1998a; 2002c), semioticians like Harris (1995; 2000) and Rotman (sketching a “semiotic model of mathematics,” 1993, 1995), anthropologists (Aveni 1986; Wrolstad and Fisher 1986), graphic designers (Kress and van Leeuwen 1996), art historians (Elkins 1999; Boone and Mignolo 1994) and scientists (Drake 1986; Owen 1986) are proposing a broader view of writing. It “focuses more on writing’s communicative function and less on its relation to language ... The point being made is that writing should be recognized and studied as graphic communication system rather than solely as a speech-recording system” (Boone 2004).

1.B Constitutive features of writing At first, it is necessary to assess the concept of writing, because the absent or retarded acknowledgment of some ancient scripts such as the Indus script, the Danube script or in the recent past the Maya script is due to the inadequate definitional approach to writing technology. Writing technology is assigned a position among the different channels of a modeled communication system. This signifies that it does not convey packages of information in isolation, but regarding to a certain cultural milieu. It is component of a complex network of communication codes that include a mimicry system, a spoken language, information storage devices such as Ancient Near Eastern “tokens” or Peruvian quipus, and a graphic information processing. The latter is made up of symbols of identification (e.g. heraldic insigna), numerical systems (e.g., calendrical notation, measures and weights), and sign systems for specific uses, such as mathematics, traffic signals, laundry symbols, hazard symbols... One should not expect that a particular sign system would fit into a specific class straightforwardly. There is nothing that forbids the users combining several communicational codes within a single document, from integrating elements of dissimilar graphic systems or from utilize an element of a graphic system into another. Characters of a script may be used as livestock brands; written texts can be produced in a way that 12

their association with the original message becomes completely superseded by other factors as in Arabic calligraphy or Concrete Poetry. In the figure below, a typology of communication channels is delivered as example.

Fig. 1.1 – A typology of communication channels. (Adapted after Haarmann 1997: 673). According to the system developed by the author, there are five essential features of ars scribendi that distinguish it from other communication channels employing signs used to store and transmit information. Even if one of the following criteria is missing, then one is in presence of another means of communication. A. The principle of one-to-one equivalence. A sign stands for a single idea or a sound; an idea or a sound is indicated by a single sign (Merlini 2004a). In pictographic writing, the formula contemplates one iconic sign to render one idea or concept. In syllabic writing, the formula is one sign (iconic as in Mycenaean Linear B or non-iconic as in cuneiform writing) as an equivalent for one syllable of a given language. In alphabetic writing, the formula is one abstract letter representing one sound of a given language (Haarmann 2008a: 24). The most ancient phase of writing technology demonstrates – in Mesopotamian, Chinese and Indus civilizations – the correspondence between a sign and an idea. A sign was not associated with a set of ideas, but with only one. For example, the controvert Walam Olum, that narrates the epic of the Leni-Lenape Native Americans from the creation of the world to the first contact with the Europeans in 1620, is usually considered a sequence of pictographs. However, it cannot be viewed as representative of a writing system, because a single sign can express an entire sentence (Haarmann 1995; Merlini 2004a). B. Writing expresses necessary concepts and only optionally the sounds of a language. The single idea represented by a sign is not unavoidably the graphic echo of the spoken language; it does not inevitably have a linguistic significance. If the written communication records ideas and not necessarily words, this implies the possibility of reading a text in a visual way, leaving aside its oral translation. Writing can be either completely or predominantly unrelated to language or it may be strictly language-oriented (Haarmann 2008a: 16-17). The dismissal of the concept of writing as a more or less truthful mirror of the spoken language, in order to link it to the world of ideas, breaks away from the traditional concept that signs are equivalent to sounds. Being acculturated to the western Latin-based writing systems, a Pavlovian reflex pushes us to make effort to 13

capture a sound in any written character. This attitude makes difficult to conceive the option to read visually a text independently from its possible oral translation. However, as Aveni cautions "if we desire to understand the meaning of literacy in the context of other cultures, we must be careful not to confuse our tools and methods, our aims and goals, our world or cosmic view, with those of the people we study" (1986: 253). The non-fatal chain from signs to sounds of a language is not a theoretical utterance, but a historical observation made evident by a comparative view on the ancient scripts. The earliest experiments with writing and the increasing integration of its signs in coherent systems for readability were not intended to reproduce the segmental structure of the spoken language (word, syllable, or letter) or to express its grammatical system. Our ancestors were rather anxious to embed in the space the content of their thoughts. Lodging oral speech on clay or paper was a secondary goal, which prevailed only successively and in more developed phases. The Indus and the Danube civilizations declined before their systems of writing reached this step of maturity. Cuneiform and classic Chinese indicate that a written system, once hooked by the sphere of sounds, tends to employ a sign for a word, then for a syllable, finally for a single phoneme. 4 The alphabet (the identity of a single graphic character and a sound) corresponds to the last case. The beginning of writing does not coincide with that one of the alphabet, which also is not the measuring stick for all writing systems. The unnecessary correspondence between signs and speech sounds retrogresses the alphabet to only one amongst the numerous written codes and evidences that the invention of writing preceded its arrival by thousands of years.5 Instead, there is no point in organizing hierarchically the writing systems from less to more evolved, because each society directly expresses or adopts from the outside those types of writing that are suitable and necessary. For example, the Japanese system of writing is not alphabetic, but syllabic. However, it is employed by one of the most technologically advanced and successful country in the contemporary world. To sum up, according to a comparative view of ancient scripts, the earliest experiments with writing were not intended to reproduce the segmental structure of the spoken language (word, syllable, or letter) or to express its grammatical system. The description of writing as a graphic system which replicates the linguistic system is a historically hindsight judgment (Harris 1986). Even if the elementary principle of writing is not phonetic, assuming that the writer conveys a single concept through a single sign, it is not said that the reader cannot associate that sign to a sound (e.g., a word) of her/his own idiom. In ancient writings, the representation can be non-phonetic, but the reception can be phonetic. The sender can communicate a nugget of wisdom through signs that express its heart without the necessity to use words. The reader, however, is not mute. He conceptualizes ideas while reading, and speaks using language. Concepts communicated by signs are decoded and expressed according to the reader’s orality. Therefore, the sender elaborates and transmits a message in a completely different manner from how the reader receives and decodes it. Even in the Neolithic and Copper Age civilization that developed along the Danube and tributaries, the acts of writing and reading can be compared to a coin with two sides, and yet it is always the same object. In fact, the relationship that the writer has with the act of writing has to be distinguished from that one the reader has with the text while decoding the message. In the first case, the content plays a pivotal role and its phonetic rendering is a more or less significant option. In the second case, the oral actualization could be not less important. Once the distinction between writer/concept and reader/concept plus sounds has been made, one has to consider that if there might be content without a tangible phonetic expression, there is no phonetic expression without content. The writer uses the ideas and the reader uses the words, exactly like the two faces of a coin (Merlini 2004a). If the reader follows often the phonetic principle, why would the writer not have to do correspondingly the same? Since writing aims to express contents, the utilization of words and sentences is not required. Signs are directly able to communicate ideas through single distinct marks that conventionally indicate each of them. For example, a pictogram can be used to express the concept of “plow” regardless of the fact that the word for this farming implement varies in different languages (plow/plough in English, aratro in Italian, or charrue in French). Similarly, a child understands the concept of mother long before he/she pronounces the word “mom” for the first time. It simply means that he/she has finally associated that figure to a sound. Even before doing so, he/she knew exactly what the mother is for him/her.

4 5

See § 2.B.g “Writing fixes thought, not only sounds”. See § 2B.i “The beginnings of writing and alphabet do not coincide”. 14

Going on with examples from the ancient systems of writing, the Indus civilization wrote mainly according to the non-phonetic principle: each sign indicated a single idea and grammatical elements were not in use. The reader, however, decoded the signs reading them in the native language. In Sumer, half a millennium before the invention of the cuneiform, pictograms and logograms (semantic signs standing for concepts) have been used to write texts. In this phase, writing only expressed the key concepts and the reader could read them in his/her language. It was not a simple task to understand all the sentences, however, because only the conceptual core was marked and not, for example, the grammatical elements. Therefore, a great deal of pressure built up towards a phonetic landing of writing and a growing number of syllabic signs appeared in the cuneiform. In conclusion, the ancient systems of writing originated within a precise cultural and linguistic environment that included, amongst other features, asymmetry according to which the writer mainly represented concepts, decoded by the reader into words. Even if the beginning of ars scribendi lacked for phonetic associations and therefore the language spoken by the writer did not appear in the moment and manner of tracing signs, a certain language was spoken in the reader’s cultural environment and was used in the process of decoding. If a circle with rays stands for a concept of immediate understanding and it is not necessary to pronounce “sun” in order to understand what it represents, on the other hand the concept of sun can be connected to the word that utter it in one of the languages able to express that sign. From this point of view, it is important to distinguish between a message that can be optionally put into words and a message that is linguistically plugged (Coulmas 1989: 20). In a historical retrospective the distinction between “conceptually-oriented writing” (definable as “nonlanguage writing,” “visual writing,” “pictorial writing,” “iconographic writing,” or “figurative writing”) and “language-r...