Scritto e parlato. Incroci e confini nella storia delle lingue (e delle scritture)

In this paper the historical relationship between written and spoken language is analysed, using english as an exemplary case study, due to the wellknown gap between the alphabetic conventions and the pronunciation of words. the definition of a graphic standard during the history of english goes together with the development of non-standard graphic systems for special purposes: scribal abbreviations in the ancient and medieval age, pasigraphies and shorthandsin the modern age, texting and emoji in the age of the internet, mixing alphabetic with pre-alphabetic practices. a comprehensive perspective of the coexistence of different writing techniques leads to evaluate the undisputed instrumental role of writing for the reproduction of the linguistic sign, no less than its ideological function as a language-indipendent system.