As acknowledged in the Preface, this book is a general study of writing by a specialist in Chinese. It is in fact a continuation of DeFrancis's efforts to correct flawed views of the Chinese writing system, as wittily expounded in his 1984 The Chinese Language: Facts and Fantasy, as well as a perspective from which to examine writing in general. The book is an attempt to "get our facts straight about Chinese in particular and about writing in general" (p. xii). As in his previous book, it is an effort to "separate myth from reality," or fact from fantasy. Some of the myths under attack are that some languages are inferior for communicative purposes because they are lacking in some area of the lexicon or have a simpler grammar, that the origin of the Chinese writing system is pictographic, and that the present-day system is ideographic or even morphographic. Instead, the thesis that the Chinese writing system is a syllabic system and that it has been so from the beginning is defended. (One additional myth -to which DeFrancis himself fell victim -is in need of debunking. Eskimo is NOT "rich in specialized terms for various kinds of snow," and English is NOT "poor relative to Eskimo in regard to snow" (p. 10). In fact, there may be more terms in English than in Inuktitut for various kinds of snow (see Pullum, 1989). Inuktitut has only two -Aputik and qanik. All reference to snow is derived from one or the other, as in English. Like English, it also has words for blizzard, etc. which are not really kinds of snow but rather weather conditions or actions and entities involving snow, and are likewise formed with roots not related to snow.)
Visible Speech can serve as a good introduction to the variety of writing systems and the history of their development. Chinese, Japanese, and Korean, are given more detailed treatment than other languages. The book is divided into three parts, each containing two or three chapters. Part I explores various kinds of communication and the nature of writing. At the outset, the author introduces a clear dichotomy between partial writing and full writing, the former being used to convey only some thought, the latter to convey any and all thought. Part II explores more specifically full writing systems, syllabic, consonantal and alphabetical systems. Part III is a critique of previous treatments of writing. It concludes by expounding the message of the book, namely, the essential oneness of full writing. Three universals of writing are proposed: (1) The primary defining feature of writing is the representation of speech, i.e., the primary function of all systems of writing is to make visible the sounds of the languages represented; (2) all systems of writing contain both morphemic and phonetic