52: Writing is a technology
Added 2021-01-21 19:48:34 +0000 UTCThere’s no known human society without language, whether spoken or signed or both, but writing is a different story. Writing is a technology that has only been invented from scratch a handful of times: in ancient Sumeria (where it may have spread to ancient Egypt or been invented separately there), in ancient China, and in ancient Mesoamerica. Far more often, the idea of writing spreads through contact between one culture and its neighbours, even though the shape of the written characters and what they stand for can vary a lot as it spreads.
In this episode, your hosts Lauren Gawne and Gretchen McCulloch get enthusiastic about writing systems, and how the structure and history of a language contribute to the massively multigenerational project of devising a writing system (a project which is still ongoing). We also talk about some of our favourite origin-of-writing system stories, including the invention of the Cherokee syllabary and Korean hangul.
For links to things mentioned in this episode: https://lingthusiasm.com/post/640950463320260608/lingthusiasm-episode-52-writing-is-a-technology
Comments
I studied literacy a bit and wanted to add that there used to be an idea in literacy studies of "the great divide," meaning that when a culture became literate, it changed people's brains so they were better capable of abstract thought. Now that idea is mostly rejected as overly simplistic and potentially racist/ethnocentric. It's true that literate people can do some specific tasks that non-literate people can't do, but it doesn't mean their brains are "better." I think Mark's explanation of "neuro recycling" explains this well.
2021-05-15 15:03:29 +0000 UTCthanks, Mark! Interesting!
mlc
2021-01-23 19:49:21 +0000 UTCOoh, I know something about this! So reading and writing is not a natural ability. It’s something that has to be actively learnt, the way using a computer does. But because literate people do it so much, the brain creates new neural pathways specifically to deal with that task. Interestingly, people always develop these neural pathways in the same area of the brain. The leading theory on this is something called “neuro recycling”; psychologists think the brain must be rewiring a piece of the brain that is for whatever reason already structurally close to what is needed for reading and writing. Essentially graham is right, the effort becomes unconscious because the brain creates new structures to deal with the task efficiently.
Mark Spark
2021-01-23 19:40:14 +0000 UTCI would imagine that the innate capability here is to be able to learn to do things instinctively by frequent practice, not specifically writing. For example, people who drive regularly have the experience of "going on autopilot" and making wrong turns, even though driving is a far more recently acquired skill than writing, so it would be preposterous to suggest an innate capability for driving.
Graham Hill
2021-01-22 05:55:54 +0000 UTCi really enjoyed this episode! One question, though: you mentioned at the beginning that you can just look at text in a language you know and easily know what it means. I suspect this experience is the norm for people who grew up literate, which implies that there must be some kind of innate human capability for literacy. Has there been any attempt that you know of to square this with the fact that humans were not, in fact, literate for most of our existence? Or is this a question that just doesn't make sense?
mlc
2021-01-22 01:05:30 +0000 UTC
