Visible Language

The structures and functions of writing have evolved in profound ways over the past several millennia. In the process, linkages between spoken and written language continue to change. This study explores symbiotic relationships between writing and cognition, social transformations, theories of pedagogy and technology, and hazards several projections about future development of the written word.

The author has counted the various kinds of “literacies” used by educational scholars as titles on papers indexed in the ERIC database 1980-1994. The resulting 197 different literacies are listed and divided into five categories: literacy on a topic (computer literacy), literacy among certain people (prison literacy), literacy for a certain purpose (functional literacy), the ability to handle materials in a certain format in literate ways (Braille literacy) and levels of literacy (basic literacy).

Over the last few decades, puns have become increasingly common in commercial texts ranging from print advertising (“Campbell’s has something that will bowl you over”) to T-shirts (“The Puck Stops Here”). The trend is surprising both because the pun is an intricate as well as a literary device and because advertisers usually avoid the risks of using humor as a selling strategy. The appeal of the pun appears to be its stylishness, which provided it with a place in the pop art movement and the culture of the 1960s, and its simultaneity, which has made it the print medium’s competitor of the attention-grabbing television commercial. Recent studies argue that the word play of T-shirts and bumper stickers represent a non-establishment, anti-elitist voice. But in this essay the author suggests that puns used by both corporate advertisers and car owners alike reflect a commercial influence on the language of public texts all across the culture, and a mingling of business and art that is characteristic of postmodernism.

Many utopia writers emphasized the book’s importance in any ideal world. Some imagined ways to enhance the book aesthetically. Many imagined new written languages ranging from sign systems analogous to Chinese ideograms to syllabic writing, modified alphabetic systems and phonetic languages. Though utopia writers asserted the value of their imaginary written languages for enhancing thought and communication, each system, if implemented, would alter the reading process profoundly. In some utopias, technological media supersede the codex. Those who incorporated the phonograph foresaw three possible futures for the phonographic book: in some utopias, the phonographic recording and the printed book coexist; in others, the phonographic book completely replaces the codex; yet in others, the phonograph is combined with telephonic or telegraphic communication.

Historically Gaelic, the vernacular language of a significant proportion of the population of Ireland, used a variation of the roman alphabet which consisted of just eighteen basic letters — the vowels and some consonants carried diacritical marks of accent and aspiration which extended the range of sounds they represented. With the introduction of cast metal moveable type the particular requirements of printing Irish language texts were met either through the production of specially prepared fonts of irish character types based on distinctive Irish manuscript models or alternatively through the use of existing or adjusted roman fonts. This account seeks to examine some of the significant attempts made at accommodating roman fonts to the perceived requirements of the Irish language in the context of various social and political considerations which were inevitably imposed on this process.