Exceptionalism is most often associated with the political posturing of certain nation-states, but it refers more generally to any discourse that exaggerates the significance of peculiarities in order to set one group apart from, and above, others. The problem with any type of exceptionalism is not that the entity making the claim is not exceptional in the sense of being unique in some way. At some level every group has unique features or qualities. But proponents of exceptionalisms maintain in effect that theirs is an exceptional exceptionalism that has a greater significance and impact than other, less exceptional exceptionalisms, and often that this significance gives their group a moral imperative that justifies certain attitudes and actions vis-à-vis other groups. This type of exceptionalism claims superiority (whether implicitly or explicitly) in large part based on the assumption that the group's values are universal. Explicit national exceptionalisms are relatively easy to debunk (see Hodgson; Sachs), but not all exceptionalisms announce themselves as such. A similar kind of exceptionalism appears implicitly in the way we think about writing and orality and about literate versus so-called oral societies. While the political implications differ, the structure and the effect of the alleged exceptionalism of societies with writing are essentially the same.

People often feel compelled to point out that a particular society did not have writing. This apophatic statement, which defines a society in negative terms, is not necessarily inaccurate. Whether or not it is accurate depends on the definition of writing that one adopts. Those who make these statements define writing narrowly as glottography—that is, as a representation of elements of oral language. Of course, the basis for this definition is the fact that the term writing and its equivalents in other languages (écriture, escritura, scrittura, Schreiben, etc.) refer to the alphabetic systems developed by the societies that employ those languages. The semantic field of writing is determined by the nature of alphabetic writing. The fact that the term is delimited in this way is merely a function of the culture-specific nature of language. On one level, this is obvious and should go without saying. But on another level, the cognitive pattern created by this circularity makes it difficult to see that our culture-specific terms and concepts are relative and that this relativity makes apophatic statements about the absence of writing in other societies problematic.

The apophatic statements regarding the lack of writing are often accompanied by a “but” clause when the society in question developed a medium of communication that is not considered to be a form of “true” writing but that functioned in some way analogous to it: the Aztecs had no writing, “but” they developed a so-called iconographic or pictographic system; the Incas had no writing, “but” they employed knotted, colored strings called quipus; and so on. These qualifications are considered necessary because the Aztecs and the Incas established highly complex civilizations. Many scholars may have moved beyond the simplistic dictum that glottographic writing is a necessary precondition for the development of complex civilization, but these apophatic statements indicate that this belief continues to hold considerable sway.

The rationale—often implicit—for describing a society in apophatic terms is that the deficiency has a significance greater than itself. Nobody bothers to point out that the Incas and the Aztecs had no pizza because pizza does not constitute a benchmark of civilization in the way glottographic writing does. The link between civilization and glottographic writing is so well established that it is not even necessary to state explicitly. And the link is real, but only for those societies that actually developed glottographic writing. Glottographic writing, and alphabetic writing in particular, is seen as a benchmark of civilization because we do not see the alternatives as viable. We tend to believe that alternatives to alphabetic writing such as some Mesoamerican scripts or the Inca quipus are inferior because they did not lead to the same types of socioeconomic and political institutions that alphabetic writing did. But this assumes not only the universal value of glottographic writing but also the universal value of the particular socioeconomic and political institutions that developed in conjunction with it.

The problem with apophatic statements about the nonexistence of writing, then, is that they are value-laden. Alphabetic writing is a historically important invention that was conducive to the development of complex civilizations in the Middle East and Europe, and many technological advancements would have been impossible without it. The narrative in which the invention of glottographic writing is seen as a major achievement is perfectly valid in analyses of societies that developed this type of writing system, but this narrative should have no significance for our understanding of other societies. Apophatic statements imply a deficiency in relation to societies that did have glottographic writing. They implicitly assert an exceptionalism of glottographic societies based on the application of a universalized standard of value against which all societies are judged: writing and those who write are exceptional because we value the nature of our own civilization. Apophatic statements about writing, then, serve no real purpose other than to impose a foreign standard of value and teleology on other societies.

This glottographic exceptionalism creeps into both popular and academic discourse because we are homo alphabeticus: the prominence of alphabetic writing in modern society has conditioned us to think of visual systems of communication in alphabetic, or more generally glottographic, terms. The apophasis described above is a kind of cognitive differend (see Lyotard): the epistemological conditioning of homo alphabeticus delimits the possibilities of conceptualizing, not to mention describing and theorizing, other forms of media. The solution to this problem is not to argue that glottographic societies are not exceptional. They are exceptional. But this exceptionalism is only significant because we use our own standard of value and impose it on other societies. Arguing about whether glottographic societies are exceptional remains within the terms of the hegemonic discourse. The solution, then, is not to directly refute the validity of glottographic exceptionalism but rather to deconstruct the value system that makes the validity of such claims possible in the first place. Here I propose three strategies that contribute to deconstructing this standard of value implied by the bias of homo alphabeticus.

The first strategy is to reject the narrow definition of writing and literacy as glottographic in favor of a broader definition that includes semasiographic systems—that is, systems whose signs convey meaning without necessarily passing through language. Ignace Gelb's highly influential A Study of Writing (1952) begins with just such a broad definition of writing: “a system of human communication by means of conventional visible marks” (12). However, Gelb only defines writing broadly because he sees the development of writing in teleological terms. The broad definition allows him to include within the field of grammatology what he sees as the evolutionary antecedents of writing (12; Boone 29). He refers to pictography and other nonglottographic systems as “stages” in the evolution of writing, but he does not consider them to be “true” writing. Gelb categorizes nonglottographic systems as “forerunners of writing,” and he uses qualifiers when referring to them (e.g., pictographic, semasiographic). He distinguishes between different types of glottographic writing too (e.g., alphabetic, syllabic), but for him and more recent scholars like John DeFrancis, Peter Daniels, and Gordon Whittaker, alphabetic writing is generally an unmarked category referred to simply as “writing,” while nonglottographic systems, when referred to as “writing” at all, are marked categories (e.g., “iconographic writing,” “partial writing”). Elizabeth Boone implicitly counters this bias by using marked terms for all systems (29–31). As a strategy against the glottographic bias, the broader definition places semasiography on the same level as glottography. Thus, all forms of writing require a qualifier, even, or especially, alphabetic writing (see also Gaur 3–29).

The long tradition of using writing to refer to glottography and as a benchmark of civilization makes it difficult for homo alphabeticus to avoid the glottographic bias and the implicit exceptionalism that accompanies this term. In his recent book Deciphering Aztec Hieroglyphs: A Guide to Nahuatl Writing, Whittaker brilliantly explicates thoroughly for the first time the glottographic principles of the Aztec writing system. But he also adopts the narrow definition of writing and its value system right along with it. The very first sentence of the book begins by making a universalist declaration that writing, by which is meant glottographic writing, is “a supreme cultural achievement” (7). Whittaker's analysis is appropriately motivated by a desire to correct the characterization of the Aztec script as primarily “iconographic,” or worse, “pictographic,” “with but a veneer of incipient writing” (8), and he explains that his analysis “will show that Aztec glyphs do not represent, as has previously been suggested, mere ‘writing without words’” (10; my emphasis). But the reference to “supreme cultural achievement” and the word mere, which modifies “writing without words,” indicate that Whittaker's analysis of Aztec script does not simply correct the inaccurate or incomplete analyses of other critics; it defends the script against claims of inferiority by demonstrating that it is glottographic after all. And this defense implicitly accepts that nonglottographic writing is inferior, and thus buys into the value system of homo alphabeticus.

Jacques Derrida, Boone, Walter Mignolo, and Albertine Gaur, among others, have pointed out the ethnocentric nature of the narrow definition of writing. Derrida explains that this ethnocentrism presupposes “a sort of graphic monogeneticism that transforms all differences into divergences or delays, accidents or deviations” (91). Mignolo rejects the relevance of Derrida for understanding indigenous American writing systems, but he makes a similar argument about how the coloniality of power transforms “differences into values” (Local Histories 13). Proponents of writing as glottography seem to believe that to expand the definition of writing loses the important distinction between glottography and semasiography (Boone 29). But even they must subcategorize in order to distinguish between alphabetic and syllabic writing, for example. A more expansive definition of writing can easily employ subcategories in order to distinguish between glottographic writing and semasiographic writing. The strict adherence to the orthodoxy of writing only as glottography is really just another manifestation of the glottographic bias of homo alphabeticus that values glottography, and alphabetic writing in particular, over any other system.

Mignolo argues that this ethnocentrism developed in conjunction with European colonial expansion in the early modern period (Darker Side); but in an initial stage, the alternatives presented by Asian and Amerindian societies induced in European thinkers at least for a brief moment a kind of cultural relativity and an openness to alternative technologies and modes of thought, albeit without actually posing a risk to European superiority. We can read both this moment and its foreclosure perhaps most clearly in Discourse on Method, where René Descartes acknowledges that even the cannibals use reason “as much as or more than we do” (9). And this realization came to Descartes as a result of the exposure to alterity that he experienced in his travels—as limited as they were. However, Descartes only levels the epistemological playing field in order to reestablish European superiority, this time not based on the presence or absence of reason but rather on the effectiveness of the method that he develops for reasoning.

This same cultural relativity manifests itself in the way seventeenth-century universal language theorists like John Wilkins and Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz took an interest in Egyptian hieroglyphs and Chinese characters. They believed that a truly ideographic writing that bypassed speech would be far superior to glottographic writing. But as Derrida notes, their conceptual apparatus was not equal to the task of adequately theorizing writing, and contact with nonoccidental writing systems did not effect the radical changes in this apparatus that it should have (81–82).

John Guillory explains that early modern thinkers desperately needed, but had no recourse to, the concept of a “medium of communication” (321). He argues that this concept only emerged in the nineteenth century as a result of the heightened awareness brought about by the invention of new technical media, and more specifically by the remediation of content from one medium into another (324).Footnote ¹ Guillory points out that remediation also occurred with the invention and proliferation of printing in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, but it did not result in the same conceptualization that occurred in the nineteenth century (324–25). I would argue that this did not happen for two reasons. First, as Derrida argues, the phonetic nature of writing reinforces the metaphysics of presence that views writing as merely supplemental to speech. Second, the isomorphic move from handwritten alphabetic writing to printed alphabetic writing, while revolutionary in many respects, was not particularly radical in terms of remediation. Remediation into an isomorphic medium would not effect the same level of awareness regarding the media involved as heteromorphic remediation such as that which occurred with the new technical media of the nineteenth century (e.g., the telegraph and the phonograph).

While the proliferation of print did not result in the conceptualization of “medium of communication,” Paula McDowell argues that in the eighteenth century it did lead to the invention of the modern notion of orality in opposition to alphabetic literacy and print culture in particular. I have argued that the social effects associated with alphabetic writing and subsequently alphabetic print are due not only to the nature of the script but also to the fact that so many communicative functions are concentrated in it (Brokaw, History 9 and “Indigenous American Polygraphy” 123). All societies distribute communicative functions across multiple media. Modern alphabetic societies tend to concentrate a higher proportion of these functions in alphabetic texts with a corresponding reduction in the communicative significance of other media. The technology of print had a greater impact than the use of handwritten alphabetic script because the mass production of texts facilitated the spread of alphabetic literacy, generated new communicative functions, and thus acquired a greater prominence in the material culture of society. This prominence then reinforced the conditioning that produced the alphabetic bias. And the ethnocentric and reductive crystallization of this concept of orality in binary opposition to alphabetic writing served as the basis of what would become orality-literacy studies.

The second strategy that contributes to the deconstruction of the value system of homo alphabeticus, then, is to deconstruct the binary model of orality and literacy through which we think about writing and its effects. Reconceptualizing orality and literacy in the broader context of “media of communication” will help us do this.

The most influential model in the field of orality-literacy studies has been what Brian Street calls the autonomous model of literacy associated most prominently with figures like Jack Goody (Goody and Watt; Goody) and Walter Ong. Street characterizes this model as a kind of technological determinism in which alphabetic writing functions as a causal agent in the transformation of society. Street, Ruth Finnegan, Maurice Bloch, and many other critics have argued that this model is wrong. Street gives an example of literate practices in colonial Fiji that have not led to the kind of cognitive and sociopolitical transformations identified by advocates of this model. More important, he identifies a bias in orality-literacy studies that equates literacy with progress. In other words, it is just as value-laden and teleological as the apophatic statements regarding the absence of writing.

Street proposes an ideological model of literacy that more accurately accounts for what he and others have observed among societies that have adopted alphabetic writing. He argues that the autonomous model treats writing as if it exists independent of its social, economic, and political context. The ideological model, on the other hand, attributes the nature of the use of writing and whatever effects might be associated with it to the ideologies inherent in social contexts rather than any independent power of the medium.

Elsewhere I argue that the organic development of writing by a society over a long period of time differs significantly from the adoption of a preexisting writing system by a politically subordinate society in a colonial context as in the example of the cargo cults from Fiji that Street uses in an attempt to debunk the autonomous model (“Indigenous American Polygraphy” 124). The kinds of transformations that the autonomous model attributes to literacy do not happen overnight; and the colonial context creates a very different dynamic that would interfere with any organic relationship between writing and social institutions. So if alphabetic literacy were an autonomous transformative force, its effects would not manifest themselves in a relatively short period of time in a society that adopts writing in a colonial context. Street is right to call attention to the role of ideology and social context, but this does not necessarily invalidate the argument that writing may be conducive to certain social transformations.

Furthermore, the ideological model of literacy does not inherently avoid the universalist teleology of the autonomous model; and the autonomous model is not inherently biased and teleological. In theory, one could accept writing as a transformative force without placing universal value on its effects or universalizing the particular historical trajectory followed by European society. But in practice, the conceptualization of the autonomous model is inflected with a bias that values glottographic writing and devalues other forms of media. Likewise, one could accept the ideological model while continuing to ascribe universal value to glottographic writing and the institutions with which it is associated. But Street formulates his ideological model as a critique both of writing as an autonomous force and of the value system associated with it. Thus, the ideological model appropriately calls attention to the role of ideology and social context, and it avoids imposing a standard of value. But it does not deconstruct that standard.

The ideological model of literacy remains within the binary opposition between orality and alphabetic literacy, and that opposition is grounded in the epistemological bias of homo alphabeticus. While not explicitly apophatic, the opposition between literacy and orality differentiates societies based on the presence or absence of alphabetic writing. It should be unnecessary to point out that all societies are oral insofar as they communicate through spoken language. Thus, there is no need to describe a society as oral unless it has a purpose other than pointing out the obvious. To label a culture as oral is implicitly apophatic because what it really means is “culture without writing.” This does not mean that the identification and analysis of oral traditions automatically impose the value standard of alphabetic societies. The problem, rather, is that to identify orality as one of the defining features of a society ignores the significance of the fact that all societies employ various forms of media.

The premise of orality-literacy studies is that the nature of alphabetic writing induces cognitive effects that in turn lead to social transformations. The implication of this premise is that other forms of media will effect their own changes in human cognition that would be conducive to other types of social transformations. But the orality-literacy binary acknowledges only the effects of alphabetic literacy. The opposition between literacy and the effectively apophatic category of orality completely ignores the significance of other forms of media—not to mention the diverse forms of orality itself (Biakolo)—or relegates them to “but” clauses of the type described above. It does this precisely because the teleological perspective of homo alphabeticus views other forms of communicative media either as evolutionary precursors to “true” or “full” writing or as evolutionary dead ends (Boone 29).

The invention and use of even more transformative technological media in the twentieth century further strengthened the concept of “medium of communication,” and gave rise to the field of media studies. But it did nothing to dismantle or even weaken the orality-literacy binary. Media studies and orality-literacy studies both took inspiration from Milman Parry's and Albert Lord's work on oral epic poetry, but they developed largely independently and along different lines (Brokaw, History 8–9 and “Indigenous American Polygraphy” 122–23). By that point, the concepts of “orality” and “literacy” were so firmly established in the episteme of homo alphabeticus that even the heightened awareness induced by new technologies did not undermine this binary opposition. This is perhaps why media studies has focused almost exclusively on modern technological media while orality-literacy studies remains focused on the anthropological and sociological implications of glottographic literacy. The fact that orality-literacy studies did not dissolve into, or become subsumed under, the broader field of media studies attests to the tenacity of homo alphabeticus.

I have proposed a dialogic model of literacy, in an expansive sense (read media), that incorporates both the social context of a particular society and the way that the nature of its media of whatever type interact with social institutions (History 4–13; “Indigenous American Polygraphy”; and “Integrational Approach” 105–09). This model draws on media studies by building on the broader premise that any given medium has cognitive effects with social implications. Media studies is susceptible to the same accusations of technological determinism as the autonomous model of literacy. But the dialogic model of literacy/media does not attribute social transformations solely to the effect of the medium but rather to the dialogic interaction between the medium and the ideologies of social institutions. Thus, the dialogic model deconstructs the orality-literacy binary by expanding its focus to include any and all communicative media while at the same time acknowledging that social transformations result from the dialogic interaction between media and the ideology of a given social context.

The dialogic model of literacy/media deconstructs the orality-literacy binary, but it is not necessarily immune from the bias of homo alphabeticus. The dialogic model acknowledges that in certain circumstances alphabetic writing may be associated with more radical social transformations than those that tend to occur in societies that developed other forms of media. However, as noted above the significance of alphabetic writing in modern societies is not merely its alphabetic nature but also and perhaps more importantly that we have concentrated in it a greater number and a greater proportion of semiotic functions (History 11; “Indigenous American Polygraphy” 122–23). Different societies distribute semiotic functions across media in different ways, and these media form part of the material base that both shapes and is shaped by human cognition. The greater the concentration of semiotic functions in a single medium, the greater effect it has in its interaction with cognitive processes that in turn enter into dialogue with the development of social institutions. And such differences of degree are always highly susceptible to ascriptions of value. The deconstruction of the orality-literacy binary, then, is necessary but not sufficient for deconstructing the value standard of homo alphabeticus.

The third strategy is to simply refrain from making the kind of meaningless apophatic statements discussed above that a given society has no writing. Without these apophatic statements, readers will not assume that the Incas and the Aztecs had alphabetic writing any more than they will assume that they had pizza. But such apophatic statements can mislead readers into thinking that the society did not have other forms of media that played important roles in their social life. The media-studies approach of the dialogic model of literacy/media makes it evident that such apophatic statements are nonsubstantive and misleading, and it thus calls for cataphatic rather than apophatic descriptions. Cataphasis refers to the use of affirmative rather than negative descriptive statements. Rather than describe a society in terms of what it does not have and does not do, cataphatic descriptions focus on what it does have and what it does do.

As I have indicated throughout the discussion above, these strategies make it possible to avoid the bias of homo alphabeticus, but they do not in and of themselves make this avoidance inevitable. They resolve the differend by providing a discourse that is not delimited by the orality-literacy binary, but homo alphabeticus can always find ways to perpetuate its bias even while adopting the dialogic model, a broad definition of writing, and a cataphatic mode of description. The autonomous model of literacy, the narrow definition of writing, and the apophatic mode are not constitutive of the glottographic bias. They are merely vehicles that are more conducive to the manifestation and perpetuation of that bias. The bias itself is a manifestation of a deeply rooted value system.

The linguistic and conceptual strategies that I have outlined focus on the symptoms of this value system, but any permanent solution to this problem requires a change in the value system itself. Values are difficult to change because they operate on an unconscious level. Government agencies, businesses, and universities attempt to change value systems through unconscious or implicit bias training. Unfortunately, these trainings do not target the bias of homo alphabeticus. But if such trainings have taught us anything, it is that language matters. Calling attention to ingrained linguistic practices helps raise one's level of consciousness with regard to implicit biases. Addressing the symptom (biased language and associated conceptual models) at least helps make it possible to address the cause (the implicit value judgment that sees alphabetic writing as superior to nonglottographic systems).