Digraphia

Abstract

This article focuses on the ethnography of writing. The ethnography of writing allegedly constitutes the first general discussion of a phenomenon which may be termed diagraphia, which is the use of two writing systems for representing a single language. The types of diagraphia include synchronic diagraphia, which involves more than one writing system used contemporaneously for the same language, and diachronic diagraphia, which includes more than one writing system used for a given language in successive periods of time. The study of the spoken language in modern linguistics since the 1930s has allegedly concentrated on the description of language as an autonomous system and has paid little attention to the ways in which it is related to the culture or the society in which it functions. From the thirties to the sixties, the written language was regarded by linguists as simply a second-hand version of the spoken language, distorted by the inexact medium in which it was represented. Such studies of writing systems as were produced concentrated on analyzing the internal structure of the systems by which the sounds of the spoken language were symbolized and made casual and unsystematic comments at best on the social factors behind the use of a particular script for the representation of a given language.