phonocentrism
phonocentrism noun: the idea that sounds and speech are inherently superior to (or more natural than) written language.
Noun
phonocentrism (usually uncountable, plural phonocentrisms)
- The idea that sounds and speech are inherently superior to (or more natural than) written language.
- In other words, social Darwinism was inextricably connected to phoneticism or, more precisely, what would a century later be criticized as "phonocentrism" - an understanding of language that gives primacy to spoken language as a spontaneous expression of the human mind, thus reducing written...2015, Minae Mizumura, translated by Mari Yoshihara and Juliet Winters Carpenter, The Fall of Language in the Age of English, Columbia University Press., page 124
Forms of phonocentrism
| plural | phonocentrisms |
|---|
Origin of phonocentrism
From phono- + -centrism.
Questions about phonocentrism
- What does phonocentrism mean?
- Phonocentrism means the idea that sounds and speech are inherently superior to (or more natural than) written language.
- What part of speech is phonocentrism?
- Phonocentrism is a noun.
- What is the plural of phonocentrism?
- The plural of phonocentrism is phonocentrisms.
Words near phonocentrism in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: phonocentrism (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.
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Cite this entry: “phonocentrism.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/phonocentrism. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.