Utterance unmoored: The changing interpretation of the act of writing in the European Middle Ages
Jeffrey Kittay
ABSTRACT Work in the ethnography of communication has barely begun to look at writing, despite fact that status writing bas recently preoccupied much literary theory. The search locate how functions among a culture's communicative practices can involve identifying domains are unique it, for example, where some kinds attain standing such they not meant be understood as transcription testimony or other oral act. Such possibility is part our culture but many others, and is, things, significant cognitive development. This article takes diachronic perspective, back moment own past when certain class writings began demand kind understanding different from demanded by up time. I Middle Ages examine, inter alia , written document putting into question prevailing temporal indices; move act away an identification with constatable acts toward more oblique less committed relation those acts; biblical exegesis elaborating new stance through its practice gloss; teaching skills professionalization writer; significance renewed use cursive hand. changing both encouraged implicated appearance legitimizing set utterances (and behind them) seen beneficially unmoored rather than moored, space time their own. (Ethnography communication, grammatology, medieval studies, writing)
Language in Society