Writing and the Body was a thesis project resulting in an exhibition and publication. In order to begin with a common vocabulary for describing language, they read and discussed excerpts from Saussure’s Course in General Linguistics, from which each student found their own relationship between writing, the body, and design.

Christopher Evans compared the conceptual opposition between “speech” and “writing” with the opposition between “body” and “soul,” and charted the presence of the body in various Western and Eastern writing systems.

Ann Antoshak investigated language systems used by the deaf, including American Sign Language (ASL), oralism, and closed captions. Like speech, Sign is used in immediate conversation between individuals, but like writing, it makes language visible. ASL has raised some political issues: should deaf education center around such a separate language, or should it develop a system more like english?

Brian Boyce looked at advertising as a semiotic medium that reflects and directs our understanding of the body. Boyce examined how monogamy, celibacy, and safersex products are represented in advertising, public service announcements, and packaging.

Presented here is documentation from the publication and three photos from the exhibition.