Back

Studying Writing

Grammatology is the study of writing. Of writing in a narrow sense — abc…, αβγ… etc. —, but also of writing as a medium and as the symbol of knowledge.

Ignace J. Gelb coined the term in 1952 in his Study of Writing as a designation for a new discipline with the objective “to establish general principles governing the use and evolution of writing on a comparative-typological basis” (Gelb, Ignace Jay. A Study of Writing. Revised Edition, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1974, S. v).

Jacques Derrida used the same term in his 1967 De la grammatologie and extended it to a fundamental critique of Western thought. Since then these two points of view have coexisted.

Other terms are equally used to describe this area including grapholinguistics.

While certainly something of a niche area, grammatology has over the last years developed many of the trappings of a more established academic discipline including a biannual conference, Grapholinguistics in the 21st century, and publication outlets.

The areas in grammatology I'm personally particularly interested in are

alphabetic ordering - the story of order in writing systems from its very beginning in Sumer to today, and incidentally the subject of my dissertation, Geordnetes Weltbild / an ordered view of the world

open and closed writing systems

References

Learn more about Geordnetes Weltbild

Grapholinguistics in the 21st century

Open and Closed Writing Systems. Some Reflections

Mystic Messages – The Magic of Writing (Youtube video of the talk)