pictographic writing, for example, where the writing attempts to show a tree and is gradually reduced in more abstract form. Or ideograms in which arbitrary symbols—
McLuhan: In Chinese, honesty is the figure of a man standing, physically standing, beside his work. That means honesty. A man stands by his work. Two things: figure, ground.
Forsdale: So you’re saying that the phonetic alphabet, the one which derives from speech, is the alphabet that we should be concentrating on in thinking about the major effects of writing on the human psyche. Why?
McLuhan: Because when you translate from sound into sight, you pull out the physical ground in the situation and
