Graphetics/Graphemics

In this chapter, we will deal with the written modality of language. We adopt the same (structuralistic) emic/etic approach as for the oral modality of language. We will first consider the etic approach, graphetics, and a special case: typographetics. Then we will move to the emic approach, graphemics, as well as a particular case, sinographemics, the graphemics of the Chinese writing system, used for Chinese and Japanese language (as well as Korean and historical Vietnamese).