The Tyranny of Writing: Ideologies of the Written Word
Constanze Weth & Kasper Juffermans (eds.), Bloomsbury, 2018
This book is the result of a long discussion on writing and tyranny at MLing starting in 2013. The book is inspired above all by Saussure’s argument against writing as an object of linguistic research and what he called la tyrannie de la lettre: Saussure denounced writing as an imperfect, distorted image of speech that obscures our view of language and its structure. Via Coulmas, we have taken the idea of the ‘tyranny of writing’ to serve as a heuristic for exploring ideologies of language and literacy in culture and society as well as the tensions and contradictions between the written and the spoken word, normativity and authenticity, and centres and peripheries in language and literacy practices.
As this book is the fruit of five years of collaboration, we would like to invite you to celebrate its publication with us during a book launch session/reception with a short presentation of the book’s central concept and the making-of.