Differences between Spoken and Written Discourse Lecture # 24

Discourse as a System of functions ? (Review) e.g. “what’s the time?” Phatic function (opens a contact) Emotive function (conveys the need of the speaker) Conative function (asks something of the addressee) Referential function (makes reference to the world outside the language) PROBLEM: Discourse analysis may turn into a more general and broader analysis of language functions.

Objects of discourse (Review) ‘Discourse’ refers to any utterance which is meaningful. These texts can be: - written texts - oral texts (‘speech’/’talk’) - mixed written/oral texts (e.g. Internet chat) Discourse does not depend on the size of a text (“P” and “Ladies” can both be analysed as discourse)

The scope of discourse analysis (Review) Discourse analysis is not a discipline which exists on its own. It is influenced by other disciplines and influences them as well. It is a two-way process … For this reason discourse analysis examines spoken and written texts from all sorts of different areas (medical, legal, advertising) and from all sorts of perspectives (race, gender, power) Discourse analysis has a number of practical applications - for example in analysing communication problems in medicine, psychotherapy, education, in analysing written style etc.

Approaches to Discourse (Review) Deborah Schiffrin “Approaches to Discourse” (1994) singles out 6 major approaches to discourse: the speech act approach; interactional sociolinguistics; the ethnography of communication; pragmatic approach; conversation analysis; variationist approach.

Summary of approaches to discourse Approaches to Studying Discourse Focus of Research Research Question Structural CA Sequences of talk Why say what at what moment? Variationist Structural categories within texts Why that form? Functional Speech Acts Communicative acts How to do things with words? Ethnography of Communication Communication as cultural behaviour How does discourse reflect culture? Interactional Sociolinguistics Social and linguistic meanings created during communication What are they doing? Pragmatics Meaning in interaction What does the speaker mean?

Review How do you analyse discourse? Various ways. Depends on what sort of discourse you’re interested in. Constituting an object vs realising a social action

Types of Discourse (Lecture 24) There are many ways to classify discourse: According to whether it is written or spoken According to the register (level of formality) According to the genre (communicative purpose, style, audience) According to whether it is monologic (one speaker/writer produces an entire discourse)/ or dialogic/ multiparty (two/more participants interact/ construct discourse together).

Distinction between Written and Spoken Discourse The distinction between speech and writing is often referred to as channel (D. Hymes) or medium as speaking and writing involve different psychological processes.

Distinction between Written and Spoken Discourse Spoken and written discourse differ for many reasons. Spoken discourse has to be understood immediately; written discourse can be referred to many times

I. General Differences 1. Grammatical intricacy 2. Lexical density 3. Nominalization 4. Explicitness 5. Contextualization 6. Spontaneity 7. Repetition, hesitations, and redundancy

1. Grammatical Intricacy View: Written discourse is more structurally complex and more elaborate than spoken discourse . In other words, sentences in spoken discourse are short and simple, whereas they are longer and more complex in written discourse.

1. Grammatical Intricacy But Halliday argues that spoken discourse is NOT less organized. He claims that spoken discourse has its own kind of complexity. In spoken discourse clauses are long and spread out => Spoken discourse can be grammatically intricate as well.

2. Lexical Density Lexical density refers to the ratio of content words (i.e. nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs) to grammatical or function words (e.g. pronouns, prepositions, articles) within a clause. View: Spoken discourse is less lexically dense than written discourse. Content words tend to be spread out over a number of clauses, whereas they seem to be tightly packed into individual clauses.

3. Nominalization Nominalization refers to presenting actions and events as nouns rather than as verbs. View: Written discourse has a high level of nominalization: i.e. more nouns than verbs. Written discourse tends to have longer noun groups than spoken discourse.

4. Explicitness View: Writing is more explicit than speech. Rebuttal: -This is not always true. -It depends on the purpose of text. A writer/speaker can state something explicitly or infer it depending on many variables.

5. Contextualization Contextualization refers to the extent knowledge of context is needed to interpret a text. View: Writing is more decontextualized than speech: Speech is more attached to context than writing because speech depends on a shared situation and background for interpretation.

5. Contextualization Rebuttal: This may be true of conversations, but not in all types of spoken discourses. Some types of written discourse may show high dependence on shared contextual knowledge, e.g. personal letters between friends.

6. Spontaneity View: Spoken discourse lacks organization and is ungrammatical because it is spontaneous, whereas written discourse is organized and grammatical. Spoken discourse contains more uncompleted and reformulated sentences. Topics can be changed. Speakers may interrupt and overlap Rebuttal: Spoken discourse is organized, but it is organized differently from written discourse.

7. Repetition, Hesitation, and Redundancy View: Spoken discourse contains more repetition, hesitations, and redundancy because it is produced in real time (i.e. on the spot). Spoken discourse has many pauses and fillers, such as ‘hhh’, ‘er’ and ‘you know’.

Some more distinctions Spoken and written discourse differ for many reasons. Spoken discourse has to be understood immediately; written discourse can be referred to many times

Features of spoken discourse: Variations in speed, but it is generally faster than writing. Loudness/quietness. Example 1 Announcer: an the winner ↓iz:s

Spoken discourse: Gestures/ Body language (Mr. Bean) Intonation. Pitch range: ↑ - the shift to the higher pitch; ↓ - the shift to the lower pitch, V - a fall rise. Stress: underlined words in transcription: good.

Rhythm. Pausing and phrasing: (.) – a tiny gap, difficult to be measured, (7.1) – a pause of 7.1 seconds,a longer pause like (..)

Grammatically? Spoken discourse – fewer subordinate clauses fewer that/to complement clauses fewer sequences of prepositional phrases fewer attributive adjectives more active verbs.

Lexical characteristics? Spoken discourse longer, more repetitions the percentage of different words is below 40% (written discourse – above 40%)

shorter, less complex words and phrases shorter, less complex words and phrases (contractions, fewer nominalizations, more verb-based phrases, more words that refer to the speaker, less abstract words, more quantifiers).

Lexical characteristics? Spoken discourse has: More verb-based phrases: having treatment (W) – being treated (S) hospital care (W) – go to the hospital (S)

More predicative adjectives: misleading statistics (W) – statistics are misleading (S) frightening news (W) – news is frightening (S)

Lexical characteristics? Spoken discourse has: More pronouns (it, they, you , we). More lexical repetitions. More first person references. More active verbs.

In written discourse we often use passive when we don’t want to specify the agent. In spoken discourse we would use a subject like “people”, “somebody”, “they”, “you”.

Structurally? Spoken discourse is more fragmented. It contains more simple sentences and coordination words (and, but, so, because, etc.) Written texts exhibit a bewildering variety and richness of different structural forms.

Written discourse can be divided into chapters, sections, units, headings, subheadings, quotations, etc. Where the original text exploits typographical variety, a reproduction of the same text may lack the qualities of the original.  (eg ad on back of bus)

Halliday compares a sentence from a written text with a typical spoken equivalent: Written form: The use of this method of control unquestionably leads to safer and faster train running in the most adverse weather conditions. A typical spoken variant: If this method of control is used trains will unquestionably (be able to) run more safely and faster (even) when the weather conditions are most adverse. A more natural spoken version: You can control the trains this way and if you do that you can be quite sure that they’ll be able to run more safely and more quickly then they would other wise, no matter how bad the weather gets.

Brown and Yule: We use speech largely for the establishment and maintenance of human relationships (or we use it for interaction), whereas we use written language for working out and transference of information (primarily for the purpose of transaction).

Writing and speech interrelate (e. g Writing and speech interrelate (e.g. the doctor writes your symptoms, you write a telephone number). We can have written discourse that is intended to be spoken, and spoken language that is designed to be read. Marginal discourses: e-mails, SMS, texts, chats

A Continuum View (Summing up) McCarthy (2001) argues for a continuum view rather than simple, one-dimensional difference between spoken and written discourses. In other words, differences are viewed as being on a continuum:

Published academic writing A. Grammatical Complexity Tightly packed and integrated ---------------------------------------------------------------Fragmented Published academic writing Casual conversations

Published academic writing Prepared academic lectures Casual conversations

Published academic writing Prepared academic lectures Personal letters to friends Casual conversations

B. Detachment/inter-personal involvement Detached-------------------------------------------------------------Interpersonally- involved Published academic writing Public Notices Academic lectures Interviews Personal letters to friends Casual conversations

I. General Differences 1. Grammatical intricacy 2. Lexical density 3. Nominalization 4. Explicitness 5. Contextualization 6. Spontaneity 7. Repetition, hesitations, and redundancy

Biber’s(1988) corpus-based study: No absolute difference between speech and writing in English There are dimensions of variation for different kinds of texts (i.e. genres). Considerable variation may occur even within particular genres.