Lenguaje Y Escritura

Reading Psychology, 27:263–311, 2006 Copyright C 2006 Taylor & Francis Group, LLC ISSN: 0270-2711 print / 1521-0685 online DOI: 10.1080/02702710600846803

WRITTEN LANGUAGE IS AS NATURAL AS SPOKEN LANGUAGE: A BIOLINGUISTIC PERSPECTIVE
P. G. AARON Indiana State University, Terre Haute, Indiana, USA R. MALATESHA JOSHI Texas A&M University, College Station, Texas, USA

A commonly held belief isthat language is an aspect of the biological system since the capacity to acquire language is innate and evolved along Darwinian lines. Written language, on the other hand, is thought to be an artifact and a surrogate of speech; it is, therefore, neither natural nor biological. This disparaging view of written language, even though propounded by some renowned linguists and biologists, has notgained universal acceptance. Dissenters such as linguists from the Prague circle who claim that written language is an independent system that deserves a status equivalent to that of spoken language have developed their argument along linguistic parameters. The present article also endeavors to show that written language is as natural as spoken language but does so from a biolinguistic perspective.Biolinguistics defines language as a product of biological adaptation in the Darwinian sense (Givon, 2002) and considers language to be innate and species specific (Jenkins, 2000). The present article presents evidence to show that, similar to spoken language, written language has adaptive value, evolved over time, and is relatively independent of spoken language. The Egyptian hieroglyphic writing,which has a history of about 4,000 years, is used for examining the proposition that written language evolved along Darwinian lines as much as spoken language did. It is concluded that written language is yet another manifestation of the natural endowment of the human mind and may not be treated as a proxy for speech. The educational implication is that, in literacy instruction, written languageshould be given as much importance in today’s schools as elements of spoken language, such as phoneme awareness and phonological awareness.

The present article proposes the thesis that language is a human endowment that can express itself in more than one form and that spoken language and written language are two manifestations of the human mind. This view is somewhat unorthodox and is notAddress correspondence to P. G. Aaron, Department of Educational and School Psychology, College of Education, Indiana State University, Terre Haute, IN 47809. E-mail: paaron@isugw.indstate.edu

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P. G. Aaron and R. M. Joshi

endorsed by many linguists who consider that writing is not a natural endowment but is a human invention and a cultural artifact. Such a view has historical roots.Darwin, for instance, wrote in his The Descent of Man (1871) that man has an instinctive tendency to speak, as we see in the babble of young children, while no child has instinctive tendency to write. Expressing his opinion about written language, the linguist Saussure (1916) declared that the sole reason for the existence of writing is to represent speech. Drawing a distinction between spoken andwritten languages, Bloomfield (1933) asserted “writing is not language, but merely a way of recording speech by visible marks” (p. 21). More recently, Pinker and Bloom (1990), after remarking that the use of natural language belongs more to the study of human biology than human culture, stressed the contrast between the two modes of communication by stating that “language is not like writing orthe wheel” (p. 707). The belief that written language is an artifact and invention is so old and buttressed by the weight of authority and tradition that it has come to be accepted as dogma without critical examination. In spite of the impressive array of authorities who have relegated written language to a lower station, the view that written language is there to merely garnish spoken language is...