Rethinking Writing - Tapa dura

The traditional western view of writing, from Aristotle down to the present day, has treated the written word as a visual substitute. Eminient Swiss linguist Ferdinand de Saussure (1857-1913) was the first to provide this tradiional assumption with a reasoned basis by incorporating it into a more general theory of signs. In the wake of Saussure's work, modern linguistics has ignored or marginalized writing in favour of the study of speech. In this text, Roy Harris shows that Saussure's theory of writing was deeply flawed. Reversing the orthodox priorities, Harris argues that writing is a far more powerful mode of communication than speech could ever be.

Roy Harris is Emeritus Professor of General Linguistics at the University of Oxford.