Writing:
How It Started, What It Does,
& How It Works

D. K. Jordan

Procursus

This essay began life as a set of lectures for a world civilizations sequence at Eleanor Roosevelt College, UCSD. The lectures aimed to cover, as briefly as possible the nature of “true”writing systems (which I jocularly defined as those by which a person could freely write a grocery list, a love letter, or a world civ exam. That definition, jocular or not, excluded other notational systems (such as music notes) as well as such proto-writing as Aztec codices.

I also tried to cover what is generally thought to be true of the transformation of western writing systems from logograms through syllabaries to alphabets and their elaborations, such as the system used in English.

To make sense of the evolution of western writing, it proved necessary to discuss diffusion more abstractly. This was especially valuable because diffusion is a critical theme in the study of world intellectual history. The lectures asked what writing systems could teach us about diffusion more broadly, including what anthropologists have long called “stimulus diffusion,” integrating the famous case of the Cherokee syllabary by way of helping to clarify a process that was probably far more widespread in human history than we are able to document.

Writing can be efficient or inefficient and can be so in various ways (learning time, reading speed, adaptation to machine handling, &c.), and that affects how and by whom it is used, a point that is easily lost if one casually refers to “literate” or “illiterate” societies.

The above issues are treated in Parts I-III of the present text.

Part IV addresses an issue most of my colleagues have tended to take for granted: Because knowledge of writing is distributed in different ways in different societies, it is not universally appealing. Indeed, despite its advantages, both real and potential, the presence of literacy in a society can have distinct disadvantages too (a point nicely argued in the work of anthropologist Paul Bohannan).

Part IV includes a section I provocatively called “Dominating the Downtrodden Through Literacy.” The point was that some writing systems (broadly including style as well as mechanics) amplify class and gender differences, sometimes so much so that political revolution brings in its wake script/style reform (conspicuous examples being Turkey and China). In class lectures, I liked to close by asking whether students’ struggles with their compulsory college writing classes might suggest that English, with its awkward spellings and extremely complex stylistic requirements might be bending so far from spoken language as to be ready for such reform itself. (This was timed so that the class ended and the question remained forever unanswered.)

Two examples of “picture writing” were somewhat awkwardly fitted into the lectures in early years to demonstrate that alphabets were not the only “real” writing (the kind capable of grocery lists, love letters, and exams) and also that pictures themselves did not constitute “writing.” I used two famous examples about which students typically held stereotypical but unhelpful views: Ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics and written Chinese. And I argued that beneath the hood they worked the same way. The examples, fascinating to the sort of mind that is fascinated by that sort of thing, tended to overwhelm the main point for most listeners, and they are therefore here presented as a two-part appendix.

A writing system, of course, is not the same thing as a language. This essay covers only writing. A separate introduction to the anthropological study of language in general, excluding writing, is available on this web site, under the title Esperanto: A Window on the Study of Language (And Vice Versa). Beginning from the question of how one might create a language, that essay discusses most of the issues that anthropological linguists have been exploring for over a century.

Procursus (This Page)

Part I. The Origin of Writing

Part II. Syllabaries & Alphabets

Syllabaries

Alphabets

Part III. Diffusion: The Flow of Innovation

Diffusion & Stimulus Diffusion

Efficient & Inefficient Writing Systems

Part IV: Who Needs Writing Anyway?

Dominating the Downtrodden Through Literacy

Appendix: “Picture Writing” Can Be Real Writing

Example A: How Egyptian Hieroglyphics Worked

Example B: How Literary Chinese Worked

Links to Review Quizzes (This Page)

Review Quizzes

Multiple-choice interactive review questions are available for this essay arranged in three ways, depending upon the number of items blocked in a single quiz. A separate quiz covers the appendix.

Wimp Version (7 items per quiz) Quiz 1, Quiz 2, Quiz 3.
Normal Version (10-11 items per quiz) Quiz 1, Quiz 2.
Hero Version (all items together) Quiz.

Appendix Quiz (9 items) Quiz.

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