phonocentrism

English

Etymology

phono- +‎ -centrism

Noun

phonocentrism (usually uncountable, plural phonocentrisms)

1. The idea that sounds and speech are inherently superior to (or more natural than) written language.
   • 2015, Minae Mizumura, translated by Mari Yoshihara and Juliet Winters Carpenter, The Fall of Language in the Age of English, Columbia University Press., page 124:

     In other words, social Darwinism was inextricably connected to phoneticism or, more precisely, what would a century later be criticized as "phonocentrism" - an understanding of language that gives primacy to spoken language as a spontaneous expression of the human mind, thus reducing written language to the status of mere representation of spoken sounds.

See also

• logocentrism