Scripts, Spelling, and Identities Mark Sebba IN MEMORIAM ALEXANDRA (“MISTY”) JAFFE, 1960–2018 WRITING AS IMAGE: ORTHOGRAPHY AND SCRIPT The written word is pervasive in the contemporary world—probably the most important method of conveying information, conducting social relations, and regulating behavior. But writing is much more than that. Writing, and what we do with it, is fundamentally bound up with our identities. As individuals, we 7 are identified partly by what kinds of literacy we engage in, the kinds of writing we do, how we learn to do it, and the purposes for which it is done. What is true for individuals is also true for larger social groupings, such as nation-states, which are strongly identified with the specific languages—and, in particular, the written languages—they use. While the relevance of written language to identity may be obvious, the role of orthography is less so. In fact, scripts and spellings play a crucial role in identity creation by making choices available at different levels of language structure and different levels of social organization, as this article will show. A well-established principle of sociolinguistics is “where there is choice, there is social meaning.” The choices that people make when they write are part of the process of constructing an identity, both for themselves and for their readers. Unlike spoken language, the written mode always depends on some set of symbols. By definition, there can be no “written language” which does not Mark Sebba works at the Department of Linguistics and English Language, University of Lancaster. His current research focuses on written bilingual and multilingual texts. He co-edited Language Mixing and Code-Switching in Writing: Approaches to Mixed-Language Written Discourse and his book Spelling and Society: The culture and politics of orthography around the worldwas published in 2009 (Cambridge University Press). Copyright © 2018 by the Brown Journal of World Affairs Fall/Winter 2018 • volume xxv, issue i Mark Sebba have physical form. The choice of those symbols, and the variations in their use, provide one of the key links between written language and identity. A set of symbols (characters) used systematically to represent one or more languages is known as a script or writing system. The set of rules for adapting a script to write a specific language is called an orthography. For example, the Roman script, which was originally developed for the purpose of writing Latin, is currently used to write a large number of languages, each with its own set of orthographic rules which regulate spelling. In English, the symbol <x> is used to represent the final sounds of “box,” but it represents the first sound in “shoe” in some other languages. The word “kick” contains the same consonant before and after the vowel, but this consonant is conventionally spelled in two different ways, <k> and <ck>. In other English words the same sound occurs, spelled dif- ferently, as in “cat,” “lacquer,” and “tech.” English orthography, like that of other languages, prescribes a set of conventional language-specific correspondences between sounds and spellings, as well as other more detailed rules, such as those regarding letter positioning. In other languages, some of these correspondences may be the same as in English, while others are not. For example, the letter <k> occurs very rarely in Spanish, French, and Italian. This sound is usually repre- sented by <c> or <qu> in Spanish and French and <c> or <ch> in Italian. Thus 8 key, qui (French/Spanish), and chi (Italian) have quite similar pronunciations. The orthographies of some languages are notably complex: Japanese, for example, routinely uses three different scripts—characters for words as in Chi- nese and two sets of characters representing syllables—and sometimes a fourth (the Roman alphabet). This allows users of Japanese some scope for variation. For example, some words that are usually represented by Chinese characters (kanji), can also be written by representing the sounds of their syllables using one of the other scripts, hiragana or katakana. While these will be read as the same word, they do not necessarily fulfill the same function—for example, the syllabic representation may be suitable for children or foreign learners but would not be expected from fully competent writers. Choosing between alternative forms is one way a reader or writer constructs an identity. In the case of French or Spanish, if a writer chooses to write a form like <ki>, it could be seen as a mistake, but is more likely to be interpreted as an intentional transgression of the rules of the standard language. For the writer, it could be an attempt to create an identity which is oppositional to the mainstream, as in the Spanish anarchist subculture described below. In the case of Japanese, using syllabic characters (kana) rather than word characters (kanji) may suggest that either the writer or the reader has limited literacy in Japanese. In this essay, the brown journal of world affairs Scripts, Spelling, and Identities I will be considering how orthography is relevant to identity construction at different levels of social organization, in particular individuals, nation-states, and ethnic groups. SCRIPTS AND ORTHOGRAPHIES AS CHOICES Users of written language have choices at several levels of society. Some of these choices are made at the group level and establish conventions that affect all users; for instance, users of the Greek language use the Greek alphabet, while users of Russian use the Cyrillic alphabet. Individual users have no say in this decision and in most cases are not offered an option. However, it is possible to act collectively to choose an alternative, as when some users of Greek write Greek in Roman script. Originally people needed to do this in order to write email or SMS messages as the early technology provided Roman but not Greek characters on the keyboard. More recently, Greek characters are readily available but users may still make a conscious choice to compose in Roman characters, exploiting its symbolic value as the “code of the internet.”1 On a larger scale, some languages have completely changed their writing systems, as in the case of Turkish, which will be discussed later. Other choices are more individual. Although conventional English spell- 9 ing is restrictive, there is still some possibility of variation: for example, one may write “grey” or “gray,” “jail” or “gaol.” As in the aforementioned Japanese case, these variants spell the same word, but they do not necessarily have the same meaning for writers: “gray” is the official American spelling while “grey” is preferred in Britain, though not exclusively; “gaol,” at one time used more frequently in Britain than the United States, is now obsolescent and suggests a deliberate attempt to evoke an older style.2 These variants convey social information about the writer: British or American, contemporary or archaic. In this sense, orthographic choices—like other linguistic choices—have social meaning. Furthermore, as the links between sound and symbol are conventional, we have some leeway to flout those conven- tions. For example, I can choose to write that my pet is a “kat” even though I know that the conventional English spelling is “cat.” Doing this may be a way of showing I am quirky or independent, or it may be a claim to membership in a like-minded group of people who have chosen, for whatever reason, to do the same. The rule-abiding majority of society may simply view it as a sign of ignorance, but they may also recognize it as a form of defiance or a badge of membership. In any case, they will have no difficulty understanding what word Fall/Winter 2018 • volume xxv, issue i Mark Sebba I have written, and they will know that I have broken the rules. To summarize, writing systems and orthographies allow choices at several different linguistic levels, relating to several different levels of social organiza- tion. Linguistically, choices may be made between scripts (Greek or Roman), different sets of correspondences between sounds and symbols (e.g., whether to write “cat” as in English or kat as in Dutch), or between different conventional variants (e.g., “labor” or “labour”). All of these choices are markers of identity and have the potential to increase or decrease the perceived difference between languages or language varieties. SCRIPTS AND ORTHOGRAPHIES AS MARKERS OF NATIONAL IDENTITY AND ETHNICITY Scripts themselves can be powerful indicators of nation. Though in theory the Greek script could be used for many languages, in practice it is strongly associated with Greek. Likewise, the Chinese script is strongly associated with Chinese, although “Chinese” is actually a collection of mutually unintelligible languages or dialects; it is only the script that identifies it as “one language.”3 In many cases, the preference for one script over another for the same language is a dividing line between two nationalities or ethnicities. For example, Serbian and Croatian 10 are very similar languages and were known officially as Serbo-Croatian when Serbia and Croatia formed two of the constituent states of Yugoslavia. Both the Latin and the Cyrillic script are suitable for writing either language. At the mo- ment, however, Serbian is mainly written using the Cyrillic alphabet like other languages spoken by groups who traditionally practice Orthodox Christianity, while Croatian is normally written using the Roman alphabet, which is more associated with Western Christianity and, in this case, Catholicism.4 Hindi and Urdu are likewise mutually intelligible spoken languages of northern India and were once collectively known as Hindustani. However, their scripts distinguish them, as Hindi is linked through its script to the Sanskrit Hindu scriptures, and Urdu to Islam through the Perso-Arabic script.5 In both these cases, script is linked to religion as an ethnic marker.