Language Without Sound

This working paper argues that human language is not reducible to sound and that literacy should be understood as a durable symbolic layer built on accessible language. Spoken language, signed language, tactile language access, print, and Braille show that language and literacy can travel through different embodied pathways. The paper applies that distinction to signed languages, which are fully linguistic while often lacking widely adopted, native-facing written pathways of their own. Video and research transcription remain essential, but they do not provide the same read-write symbolic affordances as ordinary text. Sutton SignWriting is presented as a durable written pathway for signed languages and as a foundation for corpora, teaching, research, search, annotation, and long-term stewardship.