The purpose of this unit is to examine the differences between spoken and written language. We will look at differences in context and purpose and relate these to linguistic differences. We will finally analyse a set of data to test hypotheses about differences in structure between spoken and written language.
ACTIVITY 1 a) Look at the paragraph below. It is fairly obviously part of the transcript of a spoken text. What is there that enables you to identify it as such? In fact I'm quite a good traveller normally. But this was erm- er - not on a long journey no. It was about twenty miles. And erm corning - on the way back, it was a very small boat and it was very hot, and me and the rest of the family were on this very - in the inside of the boat. And it was just like being in a - on a cork carried by the water. And my brother started first and then it just sort of spread like the plague. b) The following text is fairly clearly taken from a written source. I suspect that it would be rather difficult to process in the spoken form. Why do you think this is? When two people with different social backgrounds meet, there is a tendency for their speech to alter, so that they become more alike - a process known as accommodation or convergence. Modifications have been observed in several areas of language, including grammar, vocabulary, pronunciation, speech rate, use of pause, and utterance length. Everyday examples are the slower and simpler speech used in talking to foreigners or young children; the way technical information is presented in a less complex manner to those who lack the appropriate background; the rapid development of catch phrases within a social group; and the way many people cannot stop themselves unconsciously picking up the accent of the person they are talking to. |
ACTIVITY 2 a) The following statements refer to the features of spoken and written language. Can you complete them appropriately by referring to spoken or written language? a) ...................... contains many incomplete sentences. It is often simply a sequence of phrases. b) In ...................... the packaging of information related to a particular referent can be very dense as in 'As the May enquiry into the collapse of the Guildford and the Maguire Seven convictions concluded....' c) In ...................... we typically use a lot of generalised vocabulary: lots of...; things like that...; and stuff.... d) ........................ uses co-ordinators like when; because; since; although. ......................... has a predominance on co-ordinators like and, but and then. e) In ...................... we often replace and expand references as we go along: This guy, this fella I was telling you about, this old man... f) Passive verbs are more frequent in ........................ . g) There are a lot of interactive checks (You know; You see ) in ..................... b) Can you cite examples of some of these differences from the texts in Activity 1? |
ACTIVITY 3 These statements refer to the context and purpose of written and spoken language. Can you complete the statements? a) ................. is produced in real time, ............. is not. We have to compose a ................ message as we are actually ................ We have time to compose the .................... message, to rephrase it and revise it. b) ................. is permanent - on record - in a way that .............. is not. c) ................. is produced face to face in a shared environment. d) ................. is overtly interactive, .................. is not. It is true that .................... is produced for a third party, but that third party is not present so their presence does not have to be constantly acknowledged. e) ................. can make use of stress, intonation, changes in pitch and volume, facial expression, gesture. ................ has punctuation, typeface, layout. f) There is often a lot of shared knowledge, between participants in a ................... encounter. g) ..................... is more concerned with social relations than is ......... ........ . |
ACTIVITY 4 a) On the basis of activities 3 and 4 above draw up a list of the features of spoken language, and a list of the contexts and purposes. Can you relate one list to the other? For example, there are a lot of incomplete sentences in spoken languages (one of the features) because spoken language is produced in real time (a difference in purpose/context). Spoken English needs interactive checks (feature) because it is produced face to face in a shared context. |
So far we have made a number of common-sense observations about spoken and written language. Our observations have been supported by our intuitions about language and, to a limited extent, by language data. Let us go on to see if we can make more precise statements about spoken and written language and then go on to test these statements against data.
Let us begin by dividing the words of the language into two groups. We will call one group lexical words, and the other group structural words. The lexical words belong to open sets and the structural words to closed sets. Nouns, for example, are open set words. If we look at the text in this paragraph we can list a number of nouns: words; language; groups; sets; nouns; text; paragraph; number.... We could easily pick up a book and list the nouns in that, and we would add to our list considerably. It would be very difficult to reach a stage at which we could say we had listed all the nouns in the language. The same applies to adjectives, adverbs and to most verbs. When it comes to pronouns, on the other hand, we have a closed set. It is possible to list all the pronouns in English: I; you; he; she; it; him: her; we; us; they; them; myself; yourself; himself; herself itself... etc. Because it is possible to list all the pronouns we say that the pronouns form a closed set.
Although most verbs belong to an open set, there are a few verbs which belong to closed sets. These are the auxiliary verbs and modal verbs which work with open set verbs to make up the verb group. Thus, if we start with the verb give we can combine it with a limited number of other verbs to create new verb forms. We can combine it with the auxiliaries DO, BE and HAVE to form Do they give; they are giving; have they given; they have been giving and so on. We can also combine the verb give with the modal verbs: can, could; will, would; shall, should; may; might; must; ought to; have to in order to produce forms like I will give; they might give; they might have given, etc.
ACTIVITY 5 Which of the following words belong to open and which to closed sets: dog; if; big; so; yes; happy; punch; not; jump; flowers; right; in; gracefully; one; the; unfortunate; sorry; with; lexical; to; set; here; six; now; well. |
It is claimed that written text is lexically denser than spoken text. This means that written text has a significantly higher proportion of lexical words (open set words) than spoken text. If you think about it for a moment you will see that this is an entirely reasonable hypothesis. Spoken text is likely to have far more pronouns, for example - the words I and you, for example, are much more frequent in spoken than in written text, because the participants are face to face. Words like here and there, now and then are likely to be frequent for the same reason. Fillers like If you see what I mean have a high proportion of closed set words as do interactive markers like Haven't you? Right?. If you look through the list of features of spoken language you will see that many of these are likely to increase the incidence of closed set words, of structural words.
Let us now look at a few texts to test this hypothesis.
ACTIVITY 6 Here are two short texts, one written and one spoken. Calculate the lexical density for each text. You do this by counting up the total number of words, then counting up the number of lexical words and calculating what percentage of each text is made up of lexical words: (number of lexical words) x 100 (total number of words) Do your results bear out the lexical density hypothesis? |
Canale lists the components of communicative competence as:
Grammatical competence /: This relates to mastery of the language code - 'rules of the language such as vocabulary, word formation, sentence formation, pronunciation and linguistic semantics'./
Sociolinguistic competence /: This 'addresses the extent to which utterances are produced and understood appropriately in different sociolinguistic contexts depending on contextual factors such as the status of participants, purposes of the interaction, and norms or conventions of interaction.'/
Discourse competence /: This type of competence concerns mastery of how to combine grammatical forms and meanings to achieve a unified spoken or written text in different genres.'/ Canale elaborates this by drawing on the notions of cohesion and coherence./
Strategic competence /: This component serves two functions./ It compensates for breakdowns in communication, / and it adapts the way the message is carried/ in order to achieve the desired rhetorical effect.
(9 clauses)
Text 2: Casual conversation.
A: Are you a good sailor? / Have you ever been sea sick? /
B: Yeah I have been sea sick once./ But I haven't sailed much. / (Except in a -)
A: Was that on a long journey? /
B: Yeah./ In fact I'm quite a good traveller normally. / But this was erm- er- - not on a long journey no. / It was about twenty miles. / And erm coming - on the way back, it was a very small boat / and it was very hot, / and me and the rest of the family were on this very - in the inside of the boat. / And it was just like being in a - on a cork carried by the water. / And my brother started first / and then it just sort of spread like the plague./
A: Oh terrible./
B: It was ghastly./
(17 clauses)
ACTIVITY 7 Another way of calculating lexical density is to work out how many lexical words there are on average for each clause in the text. To help you with this I have divided the texts above into clauses with slashes (/). In Text 1 the slashes divide the text into twelve units. But I have counted the words sociolinguistic competence, discourse competence and strategic competence not as separate clauses, but as continuations of the first clause, so that we have Canale lists the components of communicative competence as: Grammatical competence ....sociolinguistic competence ....discourse competence .... strategic competence. I have, therefore counted Text 1 as having 9 clauses. Divide the number of lexical words in the text by the number of clauses to give you the average number of lexical items per clause. Now do the same with Text 2. Do these analyses bear out the lexical density hypothesis? |
