Some brief considerations on the writing

Writing constitutes an essential invention in human History. As a matter of fact, we are entitled to refer to History just inasmuch as written records are firstly kept. Hence a singular epistemological status is bestowed on writing. Perhaps in no other context can we observe it as neatly as in the place (or lack thereof) writing has found in Linguistics since the modern foundations laid out by Ferdinand de Saussure. The study of writing has been excluded from Linguistics in its narrow sense ever since. The present paper discusses, through the consideration of several significant case studies, the conceptual advantages which the Theory of Language and General Linguistics may draw from the analysis of data from different cultural traditions.