Caitlin Dewey, “Do We Even Need Words Anymore?” (Washington Post, The Intersect, Sept. 10, 2014)
“I watched the Apple event and was struck by the ‘post-linguistic’ nature of the communications Apple is now pushing,” said Ben Zimmer, a prominent linguist and language commentator. “It’s a canny direction for Apple to be heading, in large part because these visual cues are independent of any particular language and thus can work well in any market in the world.” …
“It’s not only ‘post-linguistic’ but ‘pre-linguistic’ as well, harking back to the pictorial systems that gave rise to early writing like Sumerian cuneiform and Egyptian hieroglyphics,” he said, of our increasingly visual messaging. “Surely semioticians will have a field day analyzing these emergent communications channels.”
Read the rest here.