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Coulmas's new book, Writing systems , is intended as a textbook for use in upper-level undergraduate and graduate-level courses dealing with written languages and literacy from the standpoint of linguistics and anthropology. The book provides an excellent and comprehensive introduction to the linguistic analysis of writing, and it offers detailed illustrations of the world's major writing systems and their social consequences, ranging from the birth of graphic signs as mnemonics to social stratification resulting from issues of literacy in modern society. Geared particularly toward the interests of linguists, the book places strong emphasis on the multiple levels of the form-sound nexus and the structural complexities of various writing systems around the world. It is accompanied by a concise exposition of the history of writing and a review of current investigations into reading and writing in psycholinguistics and sociolinguistics. Overall, Coulmas does a first-rate job of linking the origin, development, and spread of writing to the growing interest in the linguistically motivated analysis of writing and its relation to the mind and society. Although the chapters cut across several layers of writing analysis, the historical, educational, and ideological issues of literacy are given less attention than might be expected, owing to the author's focus on the linguistic aspects of writing. At the end of each chapter, exercises are provided for mastery of basic concepts and issues discussed.
The first two of the twelve chapters eloquently introduce the origins and philosophical exegesis of writing. Chap. 1, "What is writing?," starts with a revealing exposition of historical changes in the conceptualization of what "writing" is, the answer to which is, as shown by the claims of major scholars of writing, contingent upon historical and cultural circumstances. Coulmas traces the ways in which concepts of writing have shifted (and largely stayed the same) from the time of Aristotle, the most articulate Western proponent of writing as the surrogate for speech, to the contemporary view of Saussure, who upheld Aristotelian surrogationalism, which implies the assumed supremacy of spoken words and a dichotomous split that sees writing as conceptually distinct from speech.
Chap. 2, "The basic options: Meaning and sound," juxtaposes two ideals of writing - semiography (meaning-based writing) and phonography (sound-based writing, which culminated in the International Phonetic Alphabet, or...