Speech and Writing: Essential Concepts

Status of Speech and Writing

• Speech is naturally acquired, we are taught to read and write
  • Linguists refer to primacy of speech as such
• Writing is traditionally more prestigious; literacy was originally confined to an elite and therefore showed social superiority
  • More permanent and favoured over verbal agreements
• 20th Century and beyond; near-universal literacy means writing no longer as elite

Permanence

• Vast majority of speech is transient, except for recorded utterances
• Writing is a more permanent record of events
  

Relationships: Speaker, Writer and Audience

• Writing less restricted by time and space
  • Physical separation from audience; speakers and audiences are simultaneously present in speech and are directly addressed
    • Instant feedback from speech, delayed (if any) feedback in writing

Structure and Style

• Writing is more structured whilst speech has a loose structure; more digressions and repetitions are present
• Speech is spontaneous - make up as we go along
  • Writer can take time an re-draft if necessary
• Speech more informal; colloquialisms and slang present
• Speech reinforced by body language and prosodic features; only orthography in writing
  

Speech and Writings' Influence on Each Other

• Growth of literacy has encouraged standardisation of speech
• Neologisms in writing suggest they are more permanent
• New technology breaks down speech-writing divide; e-mails and texts contain elements of speech within them

Speech versus Writing

• Question of superiority is artificial; we are rarely forced to make a choice whether to use speech or writing
• Each mode is appropriate to different situations
  • We favour speech for purposes of social interaction
  • Writing is used to express complex ideas and is preferred for permanent records

REMEMBER: Use language appropriate to speech if given a writing task that involves the production of a spoken text

Dialects

• Mutually intelligible version of speech (anybody who speaks English can understand another person, even if they have a different dialect)
• Dialect is the vocabulary and grammar of speech, accent is only the pronunciation
• Standard English is the British prestige variety of dialect

Idiolects

• Language use of a single individual
• Affected by social, regional, educational and other influences
• Physical quality of voice, habitual lexis usage and favoured grammatical constructions

Dialects in Speech and Writing

• Dialect literature such as Trainspotting imitates spoken dialects
  

Sociolects

• Variety of language associated with a particular social group, influenced by the following:
  • Socio-economic status
    • Higher incidence of regional features in lower-class speech
    • Higher-classes have Standard English forms and Received Pronunciation speeech
  • Age
    • Teenagers have large, ever-changing lexicon of slang
    • Strengthens identity as a social group, separates them from adults
  • Occupation
    • Jargon associated with profession along with slang between members of that trade for humour or to shorten Standard English for economical reasons
      • Reinforces exclusivity of group
  • Gender
    • Women's speech is closer to SE and RP; they are more cooperative in speech than men

Influences on Register

• Field
  • Topic/subject being discussed; the field of discourse strongly affects the choice of vocabulary
• Manner
  • Relationship between participants; different levels of formality are adopted
• Mode
  • Written and spoken modes
    • These can also be subdivided, with their own conventions and characteristics

How Registers Differ

• Lexis
  • Complex technical vocabulary, or specific lexical fields, may be used - legalese and journalese
• Grammar
  • Sentence length and structure
  • Repetition, ellipsis and passive voice
• Phonology
  • Trudgill (1983): in formal situations, our speech moves closer to RP; less contractions are used and the -ing ending of certain words is pronounced
• Importance of Register
  • How has context and the situation influenced the participants' use of language?