In the context of semiotics, the term “writing” refers to the process of spelling signs on a more or less lasting medium. The result of the process is, of course, a text made of words. The notion that when one is writing the text is made of words is an important one, as in semiotics a text is pretty much anything that could be read, that is, interpreted.
Traditionally the written text is considered a secondary sign system, as the written words themselves are signs for the spoken signs (which are, of course, speech).
In the last decades, the privilege of speech is a subject of challenges from the deconstructionist – Jacques Derrida.
Ecriture – the french word for writing is considered a pre-game of formal differences in which signs and their meanings arise.
One should not assume that writing in this sense could be identified with the writing in the common meaning, although similarities do exist.
In the English language, the words “language” and “linguistics” have a common ancestor – lingua, which is Latin for language, but also tongue. Thus, they aim more at speaking, than writing. Leonard Bloomfield who is an influential linguist goes as far as claiming that “Writing is not a language, but merely a way of recording language by visible marks.” (1933, 21)
In reality, this statement of Bloomfield is more of an echo of the position of Ferdinand de Saussure who said that “Language and writing are two different sign systems the second exists with the only goal to represent the first. The linguistic object is not both forms of the word – spoken and written – the spoken forms are constructing by themselves the object(of the linguistics).” (1916 [1966], 23-4).
In this context, language is considered a formal system of sound signs. That point of view is lately characterized as phonocentric (from the Greek – phonema – speech), as its main focus is linguistic signs as sound images or aural forms. Jacques Derrida‘s Grammatology – a “science of writing before and in speech” – is designed in order to challenge the phonocentric separation of the semiological study. For Derrida writing “means recording, and more precisely, giving durability to the institution of the sign” (1967, 44).
Interpreted in this manner writing (often called arche-writing) is becoming an equivalent of semiosis – the production, generation, and fabrication of signs.
