What is the proper characterization of the alphabet? VII: Sleight of hand
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W. C. Watt
Abstract
Our signs are what we make them. To convey what they mean they must be interpreted, and how they’re interpreted depends partly on what form they take, misleading or otherwise. So the means by which we realize our interior signs into the exterior world must retain a perennial interest, because we can achieve such realizations only via our physiology, which affects our signs’ forms. Our mouths affect our spoken signs; our writing hands affect our written signs. (How could it be otherwise? Both tongues and fingers have limitations.) So a close look at how our writing hands realize our signs on the paper promises to be a good candidate for extending our understanding of how we physically realize our signs, and of how this both binds and frees us.
Acknowledgments
I thank Kate C. Watt for many helpful suggestions; Tracy Kennedy-Pearson for two more no less crucial; and a pretty barmaid at the “Hoot’n Howl” in Goodyear, Arizona, for another such.
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©2015 by De Gruyter Mouton
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