Sing

We must also recall that the classical poetry of Homer, Dante, and Chaucer was meant to be spoken aloud, or even sung.

Tarpley

'The death of civilization of the book'

For Derrida, using a terminology that is borrowed from the linguist Ferdinand de Saussure, language is at  first the realm of "sign" and "signified." 

"The difference between sign and signifier belongs in a profound and implicit way to the totality of the g at epoch covered by the history  of metaphysics, and in a more explicit and more systematically articulated way to the narrower epoch of Christian creationism and infinitism when these appropriate the resources of Greek conceptuality. This appurtenance is essential and irreducible; one cannot retain . . . the scientific truth . . . without also bringing with it all its metaphysico-theological roots" (Of Grammatology, p. 13). 

In other words, Platonic Christianity is the basis for modem science, and that is the enemy Derrida seeks to liquidate by destroying language. The scientific tradition "begins its era in the form of Platonism, it ends infinitist metaphysics . " (Here Derrida is probably targeting Georg Cantor and the transfinite numbers.) Derrida is fully conscious that the exhaustion of language will bring with it nothing less than the "death of speech" and the "death of the civilization of the book" (Of Grammatology, p. 8).

Again following his Nazi guru Heidegger, Derrida focus es his destructive attention on the "metaphysics of presence" as this relates to language. The "presence" amounts to a solid grounding for certain knowledge, for the certitude  that something exists. Derrida is at pains to point out that "presence" of this kind is required as a precondition for the conceptual apparatus of western  philosophy  from the time of  e Greeks on down: "It could be shown that all names  related to  fundamentals, to principles, or to the center have always designated an invariable presence - eidos [action], arche [principle or  first cause], telos [purpose], energeia, ousia (essence, existence, substance, subject), aletheia, [truth] transcendentality, conciousness, God, man, and so forth" ("Structure, Sign and Play in the Discourse of the Human Sciences," pp. 279-280). In language, "the metaphysics of presence" is equated with a "transcendental signified" or "ultimate referent," which would  function as the ultimate guarantee of meaning. We see that for Derrida, all western  languages "metaphysical," since their key words and concepts are  permeated by Christian Platonism. They also metaphysical, he thinks, because the only way to   sure of the meaning of "Send over a pizza," presupposes the Christian Platonic foundations of the whole civilization. Derrida therefore sets out to destroy Platonism by destroying language, while hoping to destroy the civilization along with both.

Reason and speech

Derrida asserts that the western languages   "logocentric," that they are based on reason in this way. Logos can mean reason, but also law lness or ordering principle, but also word, discourse, argument, and speech. "With this logos," says Derrida, "the original and essential link to the phone [sound] has never been broken." In other words, hu man reason and human s ech   inextricably  und up together. The connection of speech and  reason is the organizing principle of Plato's dialogues and of all the literature based on them, through St. Augustine to the Italian Renais sance. The theatre of Marlowe, Shakespeare, and Schiller represents a continuation of this tradition in a slightly different form. We must also recall that the classical poetry of Homer, Dante, and Chaucer was meant to be spoken or sung aloud. If "the scar on the paper," were to replace all this, colossal cultural damage would of course be the result.

 Western  language is therefore not only logocentric, but also phonocentric: that is to say, western  language recognizes the primacy of the spoken language over the written language. "The system of language associated with phonetic alphabetic writing is that within which logocentric metaphysics, determining the sense of being as presence, has been produced" (Of Grammatology, p. 43).

        Derrida obviously cannot deny that spoken language "came first." He also cannot escape the fact that while the spoken word  (arole) is a sign, the written word (mot) is the sign of a sign. He tries to go back to a mythical form of writing in general that might have existed before Socrates and Plato came on the scene, calling this arche-ecriture, (arch-writing) but this is plainly nothing but a crude deus ex machina hauled in to substantiate a thesis that has nothing going for it. 

In the Book of Genesis, Adam creates language under the direct tutelage of God by giving names to animals and other objects. 

But Derrida is hell-bent on reducing every thing to writing and texts as the only sense data the individual gets from the world.