How can spoken language have features traditionally associated with writing according to Jacques Derrida?

According to Jacques Derrida, the traditional Western philosophical view treats speech as a primary, authentic form of language because it assumes a speaker's intentions are immediately "present." In contrast, writing is often viewed as secondary or derivative because it is considered remote or "absent" from the author.12

Derrida challenges this hierarchy by arguing that spoken language functions as a system of signs only because it shares the very features traditionally attributed to writing: "absence," "difference" (from the original context of utterance), and the possibility of being misunderstood. For speech to communicate, it must be repeatable in different contexts, even when the original speaker is absent. Because speech relies on these characteristics, Derrida contends that it is not fundamentally different from writing; rather, both are forms of a generalized "arche-writing" (archi-écriture). He further notes that philosophical texts often inadvertently describe speech using metaphors and examples derived from writing, revealing that the distinction between the two is a product of a logocentric "metaphysics of presence" rather than an inherent truth.12