Biological Writing: An Appendix to The Language Metaphor of Life
Ľudmila Lacková
The language metaphor of life has been proposed as an analogy to the linguistic model, where a specific biological level corresponds to a specific language level (DNA bases correspond to phonemes, triplets of bases correspond to words and genes correspond to sentences). This presentation is a reconstruction of the original language metaphor of life (Jakobson 1971) and will focus on two main axes. The two axes are built on a critical reading of F. de Saussure and the postulates of modern linguistics about speech as primary semiotic system and linearity as the second principle for language in CLG (1916). Firstly, Saussure’s privileging of speech over writing is reconsidered. Jakobson’s analogy starts with phonemes and naturally leads to replacing phonemes with written units of the genetic phonological alphabet, or the “letters of the genetic alphabet”. Here we unexpectedly bring the critique by Derrida (1967) or Harris (2000) of the overestimation of the phonological alphabets in the western cultures into biology, and propose an alternative to the Jakobsonian language metaphor of life: we can imagine for the genetic script, rather than phonological alphabet, some kind of pictographic or logographic writing system reminiscent of Egyptian hieroglyphs or Chinese characters. As proposed by Anton Markoš, in some cases DNA bases are not read base by base, but by the superficial structure of triplets, that is, by the spatial shape of a triplet. This observation leads us to understand the DNA script as composed not of discrete digital units of second articulation but of compositional units defined by first articulation only[1]. The second axis then develops the question of the supposed linearity of the genetic text. Jakobson’s original metaphor led to the reduction of complex genetic texts into digital linear strings transcribable by a computer. Privileging speech over writing misapprehends the genetic script as a phonological, discrete and digital text. With the proposal to replace speech by, ideographical or pictographic writing, linearity is no longer a condition for the genetic script. As a conclusion, it will be demonstrated that the language metaphor of life can be dimensional, processual and dynamic.
References
Derrida J. (1967). De la grammatologie.Paris: Editions de Minuit.
Harris, R. (2000). Rethinking Writing. Indiana University Press.
Jakobson, R. (1971). Selected Writings, Volume 2: Word and Language; Mouton: The Hague, s. 289–333.
Markoš, A. and Hajnal, L. (2007). Staré pověsti (po)zemské, Praha: Pavel Mervart.
Saussure, F. de. 1995 (1st ed.1916). Cours de linguistique générale (ed. by C. Bally and A. Sechehaye) Paris, Payot
[1] For the notion of double articulation see Martinet, A. 1967. Eléments de linguistique générale. Paris: Colin