Writing as Tool and Sign

Abstract

People have been communicating through symbol systems for quite a long time. The abilities to speak and use language (distinctions made by anthropologists to refer separately to the ability to form sounds audibly and the development of a systematic organization of sounds and symbols into a patterned scheme of communication) have characterized both humans and their antecedent primates since early in their evolutionary development (Fitch, 2000) as a way to produce auditory symbols that represent objects, ideas, actions, and other nonlinguistic referents.