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grammatology

grammatology

1 9.9
Study of writing and its relation to language in philosophy
  • proper noun
  • /ˌɡræməˈtɑlədʒi/
  • Specialized
: Gramatología
  • Jacques Derrida's book Of Grammatology examines the profound connections between writing systems and language.
  • Derrida, Of Grammatology

And one of them was, you know, the Grammatology, right?

Examples

  • Derrida, Jacques. Of Grammatology. Trans. Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak. Baltimore: John Hopkins UP, 1997. Print.

    Academic text (2017)
  • Writing and Difference, a collection of essays originally published in journals like Tel Quel and Critique; and his masterwork, Of Grammatology.

    Blog text (14)
  • What was Of Grammatology about?

    Blog text (14)
  • See Derrida (Of Grammatology 173-74).

    Academic text (1992)
  • Few read the formidably dense Of Grammatology from cover to cover, but it acquired tremendous cachet; a year later, its cover made an appearance in Godard's Le Gai Savoir.

    Blog text (14)
  • It would be interesting to get a Derrida scholar who has no problem admitting to some kind of relativism on your podcast and discuss one of his key texts, like The Differance or Signature, Event, Context, or some bits from Of Grammatology.

    Blog text (33)
  • The field of grammatology involves analyzing how different writing systems impact the way we understand language.

  • In her lecture, she explained the principles of grammatology, highlighting its relevance in contemporary linguistic debates.

Surface Forms

Morphology

grammatology = grammat + ology

The word uses a classical form related to writing plus the academic suffix '-ology', but the specialized philosophical sense is not transparent to an average B1 learner.

Etymology

Grammatology comes from the Greek gramma 'letter' and -logy 'study', just like in grammar. That's why scholars, especially in philosophy, use grammatology to mean the study of writing and how writing shapes our ideas about language.