Logocentrism

"Logocentrism" is a term coined by the German philosopher Ludwig Klages in the 1920s. It refers to the tradition of Western science and philosophy that regards words and language as a fundamental expression of an external reality. It holds the logos as epistemologically superior and that there is an original, irreducible object which the logos represents. It, therefore, holds that one's presence in the world is necessarily mediated. According to logocentrism, the logos is the ideal representation of the Platonic Ideal Form.

With the logos as the site of a representational unity, linguistics dissects the structure of the logos further and establishes the sound of the word, coupled with the sense of the word, as the original and ideal location of metaphysical significance. Logocentric linguistics proposes that "the immediate and privileged unity which founds significance and the acts of language is the articulated unity of sound and sense within the phonic." As the science of language, linguistics is a science by way of this semiotic phonology. It follows, therefore, that speech is the primary form of language and that writing is secondary, representative, and, importantly, outside of speech. Writing is a "sign of a sign" and, therefore, is basically phonetic.

Jonathan Culler in his book Literary Theory: A Very Short Introduction says:

This notion that the written word is a sign of a sign has a long history in Western thought. According to Aristotle (384BC-322BC), "Spoken words are the symbols of mental experience and written words are the symbols of spoken words."Jean-Jacques Rousseau similarly states, "Writing is nothing but the representation of speech; it is bizarre that one gives more care to the determining of the image than to the object."

Ferdinand de Saussure (1857–1913) follows this logocentric line of thought in the development of his linguistic sign and its terminology. Where the word remains known as the whole sign, the unification of concept and sound-image becomes the unification of the signified and the signifier respectively. The signifier is then composed of an indivisible sound and image whereby the graphic form of the sign is exterior.

According to Saussure in his Course in General Linguistics, "The linguistic object is not defined by the combination of the written word and the spoken word: the spoken form alone constitutes the object." Language has, he writes, "an oral tradition that is independent of writing."

French philosopher Jacques Derrida (1930–2004) in his book Of Grammatology responds in depth to what he believes is Saussure’s logocentric argument. Derrida deconstructs the apparent inner, phonological system of language, stating in Chapter 2, Linguistics and Grammatology, that in fact and for reasons of essence Saussure’s representative determination is ‘...an ideal explicitly directing a functioning which...is never completely phonetic’. The idea that writing might function other than phonetically and also as more than merely a representative delineation of speech allows an absolute concept of logos to end in what Derrida describes as infinitist metaphysics. The difference in presence can never actually be reduced, as was the logocentric project; instead, the chain of signification becomes the trace of presence-absence’.

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