Adinkra Symbols:

DuPonceau mocks the use of ideograms and Chinese linguists’ claim that their characters
are based on ideas rather than words. DuPonceau berates linguists and missionaries’
unwillingness to present an argument against the ideograph concept by saying that “it has
become the equivalent of an axiom which no one will venture to contradict”. In this way
DuPonceau echoes DeFrancis’s plea for the myth of the ideograph to be done away with.
For both DuPonceau and DeFrancis, ideographs are a baseless concept. Unfortunately it
is the only concept that will keep the claim that Adinkra is writing afloat because Adinkra
is not a pictographic or a phonographic system.
DeFrancis completely disregards ideographic writing systems, including Adinkra,
and identifies the other two systems as stages in development of a real writing system.
The first stage includes pictographs, which DeFrancis describes as the beginning stage of
writing. At first, DeFrancis hesitates to identify as pictographs as writing because
linguists cannot know what the symbols mean (137). On the other hand, phonographic
systems, which he categorizes Chinese writing as and also encompasses Western systems
of writing, are defined as in the advanced stage of writing and he considers these systems
real writing. Using the work of Gelb, DeFrancis claims that with regards to form, most
linguists would agree that writing began with pictures. However the problems lies in the
function of writing, in other words is writing used to evoke ideas or speech. According to
DeFrancis and many of his contemporaries there is no possible way for Chinese writing,
or any other form of writing, to represent ideas (138). He argues that Chinese characters
represent words, like all other ‘real’ writing systems, which are tied to sounds of speech.
By trying to fit Chinese writing systems neatly into the definition of phonographic
writing systems, DeFrancis is adapting all writing systems to a Western model. Chad
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