Stenography and Orality in Dickens: Rethinking the Phonographic Myth

Abstract:Drawing on Steven Marcus's claim that by learning and practicing stenography in the law courts Dickens had essentially become a "written recording device for the human voice," Ivan Kreilkamp has argued that Dickens brought the "phonographic innovations in voice writing" to the writing of the novel. The difficulty with this argument is that Dickens learned shorthand from a hybrid system—Thomas Gurney's Brachygraphy—that was radically different from the classic phonography of Isaac Pitman's Stenographic Shorthand. Unlike the Pitman system, which linked shorthand symbols directly to sound, the Gurney system mediated the link through letters—the learner had to memorize symbols which stood for letters rather than for sounds. This essay will argue that Brachygraphy's extra level of alphabetical mediation meant that Gurney shorthand was essentially, and unusually, a creative stenographic system. The nature of the creative language processing implicit in the learning of Gurney shorthand will be described and its implications for Dickens's writing processes will be discussed, drawing on examples which suggest that Gurney stenographic processes were themselves represented in Dickens's fiction and involved in episodes from his life. The overall influence of Gurney shorthand on Dickens's language processing suggests that theories regarding his legacy in relation to "orality," particularly his position and role in "phonographic" interpretations of nineteenth-century culture, may have to be reconsidered. At the same time, we should recognize the importance of the Gurney method in influencing Dickens's creative use of language.