 In the West, phonetic writing was considered as a secondary imitation of speech, a poor copy of the immediate living act of speech.Derrida argued that in later centuries philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau and linguist Ferdinand de Saussure both gave writing a secondary or parasitic role.In Derrida's essay "Plato's Pharmacy", he sought to question this prioritising by firstly complicating the two terms speech and writing.