In his chapter “The Written Word: An Eye for an Ear,” Marshall McLuhan argues that the invention of the Greek alphabet initiated the rise of “civilized” humanity. He sets up a binary of civilized/uncivilized, and suggests that cultures that use non-phonetic alphabets don’t have access to the freedom that individuality affords the West. He claims that “only the phonetic alphabet makes such a sharp division in experience, giving to its user an eye for an ear, and freeing him from the tribal trance of resonating word magic and the web of kinship” (84).

McLuhan also suggests that the phonetic alphabet has enabled the West to “master connected lineal sequences as pervasive forms of psychic and social organization,” which lead to the creation of military industrial complexes (85). However, the “uncivilized” and/or tribal cultures that he points to specifically are India and China, and I think it goes without saying that both India and China are plenty industrialized. Did either of these countries just acquire a new means of communication?

While he concedes that these societies may be richer in terms of culture, McLuhan maintains that their societal “configuration” is somehow lacking:

Tribal cultures like those of the Indian and the Chinese may be greatly superior to the Western cultures, in the range and delicacy of their perceptions and expression. However, we are not concerned with the question of values, but with the configuration of societies. Tribal cultures cannot entertain the possibility of the individual or of the separate citizen (84)

McLuhan claims that visual forms of language are inefficient because it may take many pictures (or signs or whatever) to communicate oral meanings. Phonetic language, on the other hand, “involved the separation of both signs and sounds from their semantic and dramatic meanings” (87), something that McLuhan claims no other writing system has been able to accomplish. This separation, he says, while sacrificing much sensory experience, allows individuals freedom from “clan and family.” I think this logic is suspect, and I wonder if its results are even desirable.

McLuhan does make some valid and interesting points, pointing out, for instance, that languages that comprise derivative of Graeco-Roman letters employed (word choice?) a “unique separation of sight and sound from semantic and verbal content [which] made them a most radical technology for the translation and homogenization of cultures” (87). However, I have concerns about his premise in general and, while he seems to present historically accurate analyses of primitive cultures, I maintain that he’s misguided in applying his conclusions to contemporary cultures.

Of course, I realize that McLuhan was writing in 1964, and the word was a very different place in 1964. I suspect that he was writing from a position that described a world that was experiencing the increasing ubiquity of television and film, realizing the enormous change the culture was undergoing, and experiencing and expressing anxiety about the culture’s future and the future of written language.

Finally, I’m supposed to link to someone else’s blog. since I don’t have links to many blogs, and since no one whose blog I do have a link to has written about McLuhan yet, I’ll just try to link to their blogs–the same ones that Joe linked to. Diana, Aden, Kelly, and Sarah.