Preface

THE ROOTS of this book are at once aesthetic, professional, and pedagogical. While much of the work presented here was not undertaken with the goal of integration into a functional analysis of linguistic representation, a chain of events over a period of three years made Speech, Writing, and Sign the logical outcome of my work on language.

While I was browsing in the Brown University bookstore several years back, a colleague pointed out the new Dover facsimile edition of the Codex Nuttall, a preconquest Mixtec manuscript which depicts the life of 8-Deer Tiger Claw, an eleventh-century military and political hero from central Mexico. To the untrained eye, the manuscript seems to be a series of pictures —hardly of professional interest to today’s linguist. Yet further examination of the “pictures” (plus an assist from the introduction) reveals that what we are looking at is not art but written language. Western linguists have displayed little interest in written representation, viewing spoken language as the primary object from which writing is a theoretically uninteresting derivative. But then Western linguists have dealt almost exclusively with alphabetic writing schemes. Intuitively, I sensed that the fantastic figures depicted in the Codex Nuttall, when viewed with a linguist’s eye, might help change the prevailing view that our understanding of human language can only be advanced by the study of speech. These intuitions, still inchoate, were strengthened when I had the privilege of viewing the original codex at the Museum of Mankind (the natural history branch of the British Museum).

Another visit, this time to the Rhode Island School for the Deaf, kindled a second intuitive fire. As I watched six- and seven-year-olds whose speech was unintelligible (or nonexistent) signing to one another, I again sensed that the linguistics profession had overlooked an important manifestation of human language. To paraphrase the comment of another member of the tour, “You see, you dont need phonemes to have language.” The burgeoning field of sign language research has begun to make inroads into “oralist” linguistics, but belief in the primacy of the phoneme still dominates much of linguistic theory.

The more professionally familiar strands of this book can be traced back to 1967 when, at a Summer Institute of the Linguistic Society of America held in Ann Arbor, I took my first course in historical linguistics. In innocence (or better, naïveté), I persisted in asking why the changes which language undergoes occur. Teleology is always a sensitive subject at best, but especially so in the intellectual milieu of the study of linguistics in the late 1960s. Nevertheless my interest in the whys of language persisted—initially why language changes, and then later why it is learned at all (and learned in the particular fashions that it is). This interest in language function, which was sparked and nurtured by Nikhil Bhattacharya, has dominated my thinking about language for the past seven years and forms the conceptual backbone of this book.

The timeliness of a book which is a functional analysis of linguistic representation was enhanced by two concomitant developments which began outside of the formal study of grammar. The first of these was the emergence of sociolinguistics and the second, the modern resurgence of semiotics. In the first instance, the work of such seminal figures as Dell Hymes (and later, within the bailiwick of linguistics, William Labov and Michael Halliday) helped make the study of language in use linguistically respectable. In the case of semiotics, despite Saussure’s initial claims that spoken language is but a branch of the broader study of semiotics, and Jakobson’s sustained interest in the linguistic sign, semiotics and linguistics have maintained separate professional residences throughout much of the century. Only in recent years, largely through the efforts of Thomas A. Sebeok, has a healthy working relationship between linguists and semioticians begun to flourish. One result has been that linguists have begun rethinking the assumption that the only relevant code for the transmission of language is speech. Annual meetings of the Semiotic Society of America and the international journal Semiotica have provided professional meeting grounds for scholars who ordinarily perceive themselves as semioticians or linguists.

In the last analysis, though, Speech, Writing, and Sign was written as a textbook. Yet a textbook of a special sort, namely, one which poses hypotheses and presents evidence about relationships between spoken, written, and signed languages. For three years I have taught a course at Brown entitled “Modes of Linguistic Representation.” It has been an introductory course in linguistics, but one which begins with presuppositions about what human language is and why its study is of interest. These presuppositions are different from those used in traditional introductory courses which present linguistics as the study of phonology, syntax, semantics, and diachrony. Speech, Writing, and Sign was written as a text for an introductory course which looks at language not only as an end in itself, but also, in Halliday’s terms, as “an instrument, a means of illuminating questions about . . . something else” (1978:3). While my own approach focuses on language as a social artifact, I would hope that more traditional courses studying language “in and for itself” will find this book of use as well. As Halliday cautions, linguists will do well to consider language as an instrument “not simply out of a sense of social accountability of the discipline . . . , but also out of sheer self-interest—we shall better understand language as an object if we interpret it in the light of the findings and seekings of those for whom language is an instrument, a means towards inquiries of a quite different kind” (Halliday, 1978:3).

The term text, however, should not be misconstrued. The present book formulates and develops an approach to the study of human language, proceeding by argument and example. This book is not a textbook in the sense of presenting (and only presenting) a summary and synthesis of the work of others. It attempts to pose, and to provoke its readers to pose, as yet unanswered questions about human language.

My intellectual and personal debts are many and varied. Nikhil Bhattacharya taught me most of what I know about human language by insisting that I ask questions which go beyond the existing dogma of the day. In the writing of Speech, Writing, and Sign, he is directly responsible for introducing me to problems of linguistic function and representation, as well as for coaxing me to see the book through to publication. I can only hope that like wine and cheese, the manuscript has improved with age.

Thomas A. Sebeok has been an invaluable friend and colleague, encouraging me to work toward developing an interface between linguistics and semiotics. As a bibliographic gold mine, he has also brought to my attention many sources I would not have seen otherwise. I am deeply grateful for his help.

Another source of encouragement has been Merald Wrolstad, editor of Visible Language. Our discussions and correspondence have taught me a great deal about the “blinders effect” in academia—how an issue (here, the visual dimension of human language) can seem so obvious to one group of professionals, but anathema to another. The journal Visible Language has also proved a fountainhead of ideas.

Brown University has generously provided me with administrative support during the formative period in the preparation of my manuscript and financial assistance in preparing the illustrations. I am grateful for the released time I was allowed for preparing the course from which this book grew. My thanks also to students in “Modes of Linguistic Representation,” who endured the setbacks along with accruing any advantages of working with a teacher who refuses to erect walls between university teaching and research.

The profusion of illustrations which appear in the book would not have been possible without the help of six people. I am grateful to Elizabeth Carmichael of the Museum of Mankind for helping me obtain a slide from the Codex Nuttall, and to Liliane Pasquet of Tapisserie de Bayeux for sending a reproduction from the Bayeux Tapestry. The Gallic connection was greatly facilitated by Yvonne Morin, who graciously translated my inquiries and responses into French. E. Rozanne Elder of Cistercian Publications was especially kind in tracking down the original negatives for the examples of Cistercian sign language. My thanks to Brian Garvey, who prepared many of the other illustrations in the book. Susan Sharpton is responsible for handling the small mountain of correspondence necessary to keep track of all these illustrations. I thank John Braunstein and Karen Landahl for assistance in preparing the author and subject indexes.

I should also add a final note on writing style. In my spoken language, I consistently identify individuals whose sex is not specified as “he or she.” In writing, I find the disjunction awkward. Therefore, I have fallen back on linguistic privilege by using the pronoun he throughout as the unmarked indicator of he or she. When English develops a common gender third person singular pronoun, I shall happily incorporate it into subsequent editions.