Ayumi Kubo / Unsplash Celeste Rodriguez Louro , The University of Western Australia I remember the first time I attended a linguistics lecture as an undergraduate in Argentina. The lecturer asked a simple question: where does language come from? My instinctive answer was: books. After four decades researching language and linguistics, that response now seems almost absurd. But it reflects a common bias among those of us raised in text-based cultures. We tend to view written language as the ultimate form of expression, knowledge transmission and even thinking itself. Yet linguists know that speech comes first – historically, developmentally and cognitively. Writing is a relatively recent technological invention layered on top of something much older and more fundamental. Swiss linguist, semiotician and philosopher Ferdinand de Saussure puts it best: Language and writing are two distinct systems of signs; the second exists for the sole purpose of representing the first.…