Anideogram orideograph (fromGreekidéa 'idea' +gráphō 'to write') is asymbol that represents anidea or concept independent of any particular language. Some ideograms are more arbitrary than others: some are only meaningful assuming preexisting familiarity with some convention; others more directly resemble theirsignifieds. Ideograms that represent physical objects by visually resembling them are calledpictograms.
Ideograms are not to be equated withlogograms, which represent specificmorphemes in a language. In a broad sense, ideograms may form part of a writing system otherwise based on other principles, like the examples above in thephonetic English writing system—while also potentially representing the same idea across several languages, as they do not correspond to a specific spoken word. There may not always be a single way to read a given ideograph. While remaining logograms assigned to morphemes, specificChinese characters like ⟨中⟩ 'middle' may be classified as ideographs in a narrower sense, given their origin and visual structure.
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Pictograms are ideograms that represent an idea through a direct graphical resemblance to what is being referenced. Inproto-writing systems, pictograms generally comprised most of the available symbols. Their use could also be extended via therebus principle: for example, the pictorialDongba symbols withoutGeba annotation cannot represent theNaxi language, but are used as amnemonic for the recitation of oral literature. Some systems also useindicatives, which denote abstract concepts. Sometimes, the wordideogram is used to refer exclusively to indicatives, contrasting them with pictograms.[1]
The wordideogram has historically often been used to describeEgyptian hieroglyphs,Sumerian cuneiform, andChinese characters. However, these symbols represent semantic elements of a language, and not the underlying ideas directly—their use generally requires knowledge of a specific spoken language. Modern scholars refer to these symbols instead aslogograms, and generally avoid calling themideograms. Most logograms include some representation of the pronunciation of the corresponding word in the language, often using the rebus principle. Later systems used selected symbols to represent the sounds of the language, such as the adaptation of the logogram forʾālep 'ox' as the letteraleph representing the initialglottal stop. However, some logograms still meaningfully depict the meaning of the morpheme they represent visually. Pictograms are shaped like the object that the word refers to, such as an icon of a bull denoting the Semitic wordʾālep 'ox'. Other logograms may visually represent meaning via more abstract techniques.
ManyEgyptian hieroglyphs andcuneiform graphs could be used either logographically or phonetically. For example, the Sumeriandingir⟨𒀭⟩ could represent the worddiĝir 'deity', the godAn or the wordan 'sky'.[2] In Akkadian, the graph⟨
⟩ could represent the stemil- 'deity', the wordšamu 'sky', or the syllablean.
While Chinese characters generally function as logograms, three of the six classes in thetraditional classification are ideographic (orsemantographic) in origin, as they have no phonetic component:
Example of ideograms are theDOT pictograms, a collection of 50 symbols developed during the 1970s by theAmerican Institute of Graphic Arts at the request of theUnited States Department of Transportation.[4] Initially used to mark airports, the system gradually became more widespread.
Many ideograms only represent ideas by convention. For example, a red octagon only carries the meaning of 'stop' due to the public association andreification of that meaning over time. In the field ofsemiotics, these are a type of puresign, a term which also includes symbols using non-graphical media. Modern analysis of Chinese characters reveals that pure signs are as old as the system itself, with prominent examples including the numerals representing numbers larger than four, including⟨五⟩ 'five', and⟨八⟩ 'eight'. These do not indicate anything about the quantities they represent visually or phonetically, only conventionally.
A mathematical symbol is a type of ideogram.[5]
As truewriting systems emerged from systems of pure ideograms, later societies with phonetic writing were often compelled by the intuitive connection between pictures, diagrams andlogograms—though ultimately ignorant of the latter's necessary phonetic dimension. Greek speakers began regularly visiting Egypt during the 7th century BC.[6]Ancient Greek writers generally mistook the Egyptian writing system to be purely ideographic. According to tradition, the Greeks had acquired the ability to write, among other things, from the Egyptians throughPythagoras (c. 570 – c. 495 BC), who had been directly taught their silent form of "symbolic teaching".[7] Beginning withPlato (428–347 BC), the conception of hieroglyphs as ideograms was rooted in a broaderphilosophical conception of most language as an imperfect and obfuscatory image of reality. Theviews of Plato involved anontologically separateworld of forms, but those of his studentAristotle (384–322 BC) instead saw the forms as abstracts, identical in the mind of every person.[8] For both, ideography was a more perfect representation of the forms possessed by the Egyptians. The Aristotelian framework would be the foundation for the conception of language in the Mediterranean world into the medieval era.[9]
According to the classical theory, because ideographs directly reflected the forms, they were the only "true language",[10] and had the unique ability to communicate arcane wisdom to readers.[11] The ability to read Egyptian hieroglyphs had been lost during late antiquity, in the context of the country's Hellenization and Christianization. However, the traditional notion that the latter trends compelled the abandonment of hieroglyphic writing has been rejected by recent scholarship.[12][13]
Europe only became fully acquainted withwritten Chinese near the end of the 16th century, and initially related the system to their existing framework of ideography as partially informed by Egyptian hieroglyphs.[14] Ultimately,Jean-François Champollion's successfuldecipherment of hieroglyphs in 1823 stemmed from an understanding that they did represent spokenEgyptian language, as opposed to being purely ideographic. Champollion's insight in part stemmed from his familiarity with the work of French sinologistJean-Pierre Abel-Rémusat regardingfanqie, which demonstrated that Chinese characters were often used to write sounds, and not just ideas.[15]
Inspired by these conceptions of ideography, several attempts have been made to design a universal written language—i.e., an ideography whose interpretations are accessible to all people with no regard to the languages they speak. An early proposal was made in 1668 byJohn Wilkins inAn Essay Towards a Real Character, and a Philosophical Language. More recently,Blissymbols was devised byCharles K. Bliss in 1949, and currently includes over 2,000 graphs.[16]
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