Implications of the Relation between Language and Writing from a Developmental Perspective

Abstract

In this paper, I address the relationship between writing and language from a developmental perspective taking three dimensions into account: the analysis of the spoken chain into discontinuous units, the analysis that recomposes the continuity of speech and the transformation of speech itself. If writing is an analysis of the spoken chain, it enables the writers to analyze their language at different levels. In initial alphabetization, this process requires young children to rediscover the units that they use spontaneously in oral language, but are usually not spontaneously transferable to writing. Now, writing requires, moreover, the performance of a second analysis using marks specific to written languages, like punctuation, that are indispensable for rebuilding the continuity of speech and making salient the organization of what has been said. This meta-writing level is reachable when there is sufficient development in written language, linked to the forms that a discourse can adopt in any given community. Such a development supposes a transformation of the speaker’s lexis and syntax.

Keywords

• writing
• language
• learning
• psychology