Article Title
Pages
1-12
Abstract
From a linguistic perspective the development of orthography for a language is often taken as a scientific endeavor involving the adoption of a set of graphic conventions for mapping the phonemic system of a language. In this paper I unpack how orthography development and use is necessarily wrapped up in socio-political debates. Approaching orthography graphically, I demonstrate how spelling itself frequently carries implicit metacommentary connected to these debates. Next, looking at orthography’s link with speech I argue that ideologies of language in departmentalized linguistics ignore and obscure the way orthography interacts with register phenomena within a language.
Recommended Citation
Donaldson, C. (2015). The Social Life of Orthography Development. 30 (2), Retrieved from https://repository.upenn.edu/wpel/vol30/iss2/1