Writing Without Words

Author of Writing Without Words, Elizabeth Boone, argues that writing and art can be interchangeable because both convey meaning. In other words, writing can include symbols and pictures. She backs up this argument with the example of Pre-Colonial Native Americans who recorded their thoughts with pictures instead of words. In addition, she reasons that such subjects as math, music, and science are all better expressed as symbols than as words. So, writing using just letters can be insufficient. Writing according to Boone is 'a communication of relatively specific ideas in conventional manner by means of permanent, visible marks'.

Although Boone makes good points, I have to disagree with her overall thesis that the definition of writing is too narrow. Words are limited to the definitions culture gives them and writing as the world has come to know it is simply recorded speech. It is a form of expression and often a means of communication like art, but the two are not interchangeable. Referring to Native American's cave art as writing will confuse a listener because pictures are not what people think of when thinking of writing. Instead of arguing that art and writing are the same, I would argue both are found under the same category of either a way of expression or communication. It is interesting that Native Americans used pictures in place of words because an alphabetic system had not been thought up yet. This does not make their pictures writing, though. It only means writing did not exist yet in the culture. As to math, music, science, and other areas in which symbols better express meaning than words, they are no longer writing. These subjects are only 'writing' in their 'written form'. Otherwise, they have become something different even if they can still be categorized under expression or communication.