Alphabets (seen in profile)

"This article has two main purposes. The first one is to prove that the alleged superiority of the alphabet to other writing systems (syllabic and logosyllabic ones) is an ethnocentric prejudice and that the optimality of a writing system has to be measured following a series of criteria which cannot be reduced to the faithful mapping of sounds. The second one is to incorporate into the graphemic theory external data and new approaches to develop new methods of investigation and to emancipate graphemics from phonology. The structure of the article is composed of seven parts. First of all, we discuss some definition problems; then, in the introduction, the main points of view about the alphabetic principle are exposed and in chapter 2 the relationships between writing systems and language perception are investigated. In chapter 3 we attempt to define some criteria to judge the degree of optimality of the different writing systems. In chapter 4 we try to find some patterns of predictability of the degree of opacity and transparency of some of the main European writing systems (the opaque English, French and Danish orthographies and the shallow Finnish and Italian orthographies). In chapter 5 we shortly examine the natural evolution of writing in recent times: Internet, SMS and new writing systems. Finally, in chapter 6 we try to draw some temporary conclusions."

Writing Development in Struggling Learners, 2017

Becoming literate is part of an individual's linguistic development, and learning to write is an essential component of literacy. Children who have difficulties in acquiring writing are at risk in their linguistic and educational development. In this chapter, we review crucial landmarks in children's acquisition of writing in alphabetic systems, providing a developmental framework within which to characterize writing disabilities/difficulties, which may range from tracing a letter-shape to producing a coherent text. This diversity of areas of ability reflect the multiple meanings of writing, which can refer to the set of graphic signs used to represent an utterance, the method used for producing such signs (mode of production), or the linguistic features that characterize the resulting output. Each of these meanings corresponds to a domain of knowledge that children need to master in order to become competent writers: the forms and function of the signs of writing, the modality of production, and the written products. In the following, we discuss these and our developmental perspective on the evolving knowledge in each of these domains. The Meanings of Writing The Graphic Signs Expressions such as writing systems illustrate the first sense of what we mean by "writing": symbol systems formed by a finite set of visible and enduring graphic elements that represent an utterance that can be understood without the intervention of the utterer (Daniels & Bright, 1996). Alphabetic, syllabic, or logographic systems are broad categories of writing systems; all represent language in an arbitrary and conventional way (i.e., without an iconic or direct resemblance between the graphic elements and the objects or events they refer to) (Sampson, 1985). Writing systems are realized in language-specific orthographies (e.g., English, French, or Spanish, all use the same set of graphic marks, letters, but obey different rules of pairing letters to sounds for representing utterances). Learners of writing must acquire not only the alphabetic principle-that individual signs represent categories of sound-they must also gain language-specific orthographic knowledge.

Since the beginning of the 20th century, all over the world, several authors not associated by common paradigms, started to explore new forms of language which are nowadays referred to as "asemic writing". As of the '20s, for example, Henri Michaux (Alphabet, Narration, 1927), one of the milestones of asemic writing, started to experiment surrealism models which he will never abandon for the rest of his career.

Journal of Near Eastern Studies, 2020

There is no comparable survey written by a top specialist with the purpose of revealing structural similarities in language encoding by writing systems and dispelling several key misconceptions along the way. Its conclusions are thought-provoking and consequential. This book is a must-have, although its actual audience is somewhat narrower than intended. As a course textbook, however, it requires contextualization and extra readings

Art And Design, 2020

Writing has never been more exicting than before, although the asemic writing that emerges has to be understood as the amorphous form of any common alphabetical writings. Asemic writing intends to explore the field that has not yet been distinguished, when the practice has not yet separated by definition between anulis (writing) and anglukis (painting). Nevertheless, it may be assumed that it was being written in a language we are not yet familiar with. Unaware of those asemic movement, two of Indonesian prominent artist has been practicing the mode of mark making verisimilitude asemic writings. Made Wianta (1949-2020), Balinese Indonesian master of painting, poet and calligrapher, turned his painting into realm of calligraphy and vice versa. another prominent Chinese Calligrapher in 2020, Tjuju Widaja 79 year old from Bandung, get her doctoral degree from local public university by releasing the strokes of chinese characters from its origin meaning into experimenting layers in surfaces calligraphic painting. This article here intends to convey a number of concepts that are expected to be related in the effort to cultivate the asemic writing as language as well as images. The interplay between visible and invisible give much more mistery than it may seems. The truthful of meaningful world seem hiding behind the visible, it awaitings in ways that are more drawn out be recognized, yet once it occurs to surface, all of sudden it shades away back to the edge, challenging us to figure out what was it anyway. Asemic is becoming of a system without structure, a meaningful with no grounded semantical meaning.

2014

Text-Based Conceptual Art and Typographic Discourse I begin this discussion with a quote from Peter Osborne's book on Conceptual Art, where he notes how: At its best, "Conceptual Art was never quite sure where the work was:" because it was never just in one place, or even one kind of place… Making this apparent, in opposition to the monistic materialism of Greenberg's late modernist criticism, was the most critically productive use of written language in the art of the 1960s…However, this does not mean that the visual dimension of linguistic inscription is irrelevant, even when it is the function of such inscription to negate the intrinsic significance of visual form. On the contrary, it is precisely its "unmarked" or neutral visual quality that performs the negation. In… many [artworks] of the period, this was achieved via design decisions associated with "publishing," rather than with "art." 1 This quote is useful, not only because it introduces the emergence of text-based art works within this art historical period and situates them against the shifting critical discourse surrounding art at that time, but also because of the way in which it draws particular attention to typographic language and the activity of publishing as key factors in the ability of these works to, as Osborne puts it, "negate the intrinsic significance of visual form." Retrospective critical accounts of Conceptual Art are numerous and include comprehensive discussion of the motivations behind the adoption of published typographic formats as a means of producing and disseminating art. However, what has surprised me in my own consideration of the works is how these accounts are often supported by poor quality or misleading reproductions, or a failure to cross-reference examples to each other. What this becomes then is a general failure to adequately demonstrate the precise nature and evolution of these works, either by failing to provide a full picture of their operation within this activity of publishing or through not giving a clear impression of the various different typographic 1 Osborne refers here to Terry Atkinson's 1968 article, "Concerning the Article: 'The Dematerialisation of Art.'"

Journal of Linguistic Anthropology, 1999

I n an anthropological sense, writing includes all social practices that use systems of graphic (sometimes also material) signs, which are recurrent, combinable and conventionally linked to a linguistic content. From this perspective, one could say that writing has been with homo sapiens from the beginning. On the other hand, linguistic and philological approaches have expressed more limiting views of writing. In particular, three perspectives have emerged: the evolutionary one (e.g., Ignace Gelb's famous statement about the pictographic origins: "at the basis of all writing stands picture"); the linguistic one (i.e., the idea that writing must, or should, merely represent speech); and the vague (seemingly opposite) relativistic stance according to which "if all writing is information storage, then all writing is of equal value" (Albertine Gaur). These approaches share a view of the written sign as a static entity, informed by the logic of the alphabet (or rather by a partial, Western theory about it, as pointed out by Roy Harris). More recently, anthropologists have rethought the relationship between orality and literacy, rethinking, with Jack Goody's three-vertexes model, the "unilinear" Saussurean model of the language-writing ratio. One of the goals of the anthropological research on literacy has been to investigate psychocultural changes caused by the acquisition of (mostly alphabetical) writing skills in societies previously without writing. Such an approach shows several limitations, among which are a schematic binarism regarding the passage from orality to literacy; the assumption that equates literacy with alphabetical literacy, thus acritically accepting traditional linguistic typologies; and an emphasis on psychological effects (mainly in scholars such as Walter J. Qng). In these studies writing is frequently considered as a non-social activity (even if socially transmitted) that aims at improving individual skills and mental processes. The social side is highlighted mainly in the context of linguistic/orthographic policies implementing a standard written language in a given country.

Since the beginning of the 20th century, all over the world, several authors not associated by common paradigms, started to explore new forms of language which are nowadays referred to as “asemic writing”.