Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
The linearity of speech becomes more evident when transformed into
written form:
This feature appears immediately when they are represented in writing, and a
spatial line of graphic signs is substituted for a succession of sounds in time.
(Saussure 1916/1983, 70)
The treatment of linearity includes explicit analogies with written lan-
guage and implicit influences from writing. The particular conception of
time as a sequence, with strong analogies to extension in space, is only one
conception for time (Harris 1987, 77), which could itself be reinforced
and made to appear natural by the diffusion of graphic representations of
temporal sequences founded on the analogy of time with spatial linearity
and directionality. Crucially for the purposes here, written language can
be understood as a line sequentially composed of letters and other marks,
including punctuation marks, and grouped into words divided from one
another by spaces.
The linear materiality of writing is acutely revealed by an established
pedagogic technique for exemplifying the distinction between syntagma
and paradigm. Words are cut from a sheet of written paper,
2
a proc-
ess more complex than it might first appear. First, the syntagma can be
isolated by cutting the line of writing as a single, physically continuous
ribbon from paper with conventionally arranged writing on one side
or surface of the sheet of paper. Forming a continuous material ribbon
requires a zigzag cut. In modern practice, the semiotic sequence of the line
of writing is already broken at the end of each line, and these breaks are
retained in the continuous ribbon. Historically earlier forms of writing—
such as the boustrophedon, or the way the oxdrawn plow moves—would
have yielded a simpler line of writing for cutting, semiotically continuous
and more readily materially isolated. Once the syntagma has been cut as
a continuous material ribbon, units of the paradigm can then be isolated
and removed from it by cutting words from the line of writing. In the
modern line of writing, words characteristically have boundaries, indi-
cated by spaces or punctuation marks. Earlier forms of writing, including
the boustrophedon, did not necessarily separate words and appeared as
an unbroken line of writing more strongly analogous to the continuity of
oral speech extended over time. The technique is rooted in the materiality
of premodernity: the writing on the paper is the object of labor and scis-
