Figure 3.5 shows a contrast: two girls, both about 3½ years old, engaged in writing/drawing. One, Sarah, living in Taiwan, has as her model a form of writing, that of Chinese characters, which differs fundamentally from that which Emily, living in England, has as hers, alphabetic writing. Both forms of writing are of ancient history, of about four thousand years. Both derive from picture-writing. In the case of Chinese that mode continues to this day, though of course four thousand years of use have superposed layer upon layer of abstraction and convention. Nevertheless writers of Chinese can, even now, show the pictorial/meaning origin of the characters they use. In the case of the (Roman form of the) alphabet the mode has changed. In the move from Egyptian hieroglyphic writing, and its successive borrowing and adaptation/ transformation, first in the immediate vicinity of Egypt, and then around the Mediterranean, to the north and the east towards Persia and India, a continuous process of abstraction moved the system from a picture-script to one in which (abstracted and reduced) images came to stand for sounds. Given that the script was borrowed continuously by people who spoke quite different languages from each other, this process of abstraction is understandable. In the case of the Japanese borrowing of Chinese script this did not lead to such a change, but preserved, in many fundamental ways, the pictographic nature of the script (though the development of Kanji is the same kind of move as is the move from hieroglyphics to alphabet). The point is that children start as pictographers: they have an idea— loosely speaking—and they look for some concrete, physical form of its expression. The ‘pillow-car’ on the floor is an instance of that as much as the dart-like car of Plate 1; or the camel with ‘that much humps’ (Figure 2.3).
If we compare the two kinds of writing in Figure 3.5 many differences are immediately apparent: the objects which the children engage with are so different that necessarily their readings are entirely different; Figure 3.5 represents the signs produced by them on the basis of their reading. What do their readings show about their understandings of the meaning, of the logic of each writing system? For the girl learning writing in the alphabetic environment, five characteristics of that logic seem quite clear: linearity, sequentiality, repeatability, connectedness, and relative simplicity of the individual elements. That is, relatively simple elements are repeated, they stand in a linear
sequence, and are connected. The contrast with the girl learning writing in the environment of pictographic (or ideographic, logographic writing systems) shows that what may go entirely unnoticed by staying in one system alone, is in fact a fundamental issue. The logic here seems to be quite different: linearity, sequentiality, discreteness, not repeatable but individually differing units, and complexity of the individual units. That is, individually complex units, which are not repeated, are in a linear, sequential arrangement, unconnected to each other though ‘adjacent’.
As a logic about the deep meaning of language each differs fundamentally from the other. I imagine that each produces far- reaching assumptions about the deep characteristics of language. The difference that seems most crucial is this: pictographic writing is a transcription of ideas; alphabetic writing is a transcription of sounds. For the one child language/writing is about ideas; for the other, language/writing is about sounds. Only at a second step, does pictographic writing associate sounds with those meanings. Similarly, it is at a second step that alphabetic writing associates meanings with sounds. The deep logic is fundamentally different: one writing system is oriented towards representing ideas in the visual form of pictures; the other writing system is oriented towards representing sounds in the visual form of abstracted graphic symbols.
The bodily act of making marks in the two systems differs considerably. In one it involves the repeated action of simple movement; in the other, the action of individually differentiated complex movement. In so far as ‘full command’ of a system depends on the fully habituated, ‘grooved’ chain of action from brain to muscle, to that extent the coding in the bodies of these two children will be entirely different. One body is oriented towards regular repetition of similar, simple units; the other body towards the individually differentiated drawing of distinct and complex units.
It might be thought that individual ability plays a part here, in that the child learning alphabetic writing may not have the drawing skills of the Taiwanese writer. Figure 4.7 is a drawing she produced at about this time. It shows both enormous powers of observation in making sense of the principle of construction of the model dinosaur, and great command in the execution of the drawing.
Pictographic script provides a path which enables the child to move from the drawing of ideas to the drawing of characters; from dinosaur drawing to dinosaur character. This is a move with great
abstraction and conventionalization, but one where the child remains on the same perceptual, cognitive, productive path. Alphabetic script forces the child to start again: the drawing of ideas has to be abandoned (for most children permanently), in order to learn to draw the various forms characteristic of alphabetic writing, the letters. Letters are pictures of sounds, not pictures of ideas. That opens up a vast conceptual-cognitive gap which is very difficult to bridge. That children manage to do so nevertheless is testimony to their persistence and tenacity, and their relentless application of the principle on which they base their meaning-making.
The pictorial representation of ideas is, it seems, the obvious, perhaps the natural form of representing ideas other than by direct use of the body—as in speech, gesture. Breaking that obvious mode brings with it great difficulty for children in their learning of writing. The question is: what advantages does it bring? What advantages does the natural mode bring with it? The answer lies somewhere in the domain of cognitive, affective distance, and in consequent forms of logic and rationality; those characteristics which we regard as archetypally characteristic of ‘western’ modes of thought and action. The real question is: although they served us well in the past, will they be sufficient in the decades ahead?
DISPLAY AND VISUAL SPACE: THE DESIGN