1st Year Mrs.

Aida Abdessemed

2020/2021

Lesson 2

Aspects of Human Language

What's the Difference between Speech and Writing?

When we talk about 'language', sometimes we mean speech (spoken language),

sometimes writing (written language). How are they different? Globally, speech is spoken and
heard, while writing is written and read. But there are many other differences.

Before dealing with further differences, let’s start first with what is the most common
definition of both:

Speech is sounds, vibrations in the air arising from movements of the

human organs of speech under the control of the brain/mind (or of an electrical device
stimulating this). Sounds can be heard, but not seen directly.

Writing is marks on paper or some other surface, or patterns of light and

dark on a screen. Letters can be seen, but not heard directly.

Most contemporary linguists work under the assumption that spoken (or signed)
language is more fundamental than written language. This is because: Firstly, spoken language
is believed to predate writing by tens of thousands of years at least, and this is Age.
Age. Speech evolved before human beings invented writing. Speech goes back to human
beginnings, perhaps a million years ago. Writing is relatively recent, however; it was first

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invented by the Sumerians, in Mesopotamia, around 3200 B.C. Since then, the idea of writing
has spread around the world and different writing systems have evolved in different parts of the
world. This is The historical priority: By speaking, human beings have known speech before
writing. Moreover, there is no human society known to exist or to have existed at any time in
the past without the capacity of speech whereas some human societies have no writing system.

Universality. Speech appears to be universal to all human beings Humans capable of producing
and hearing it everywhere “can speak”; while, there have been many cultures and speech
communities that lack written communication. For instance, before the Sumerian invention,
people were no literate. Even now there are many non-literate groups (e.g. in New Guinea), and
many non-literate people in officially literate societies.

Acquisition. In the normal course of events, People (i.e. children) everywhere start speaking
during the first two years of life; many of the abilities involved are probably inborn rather than
learned that is to acquire a command of spoken language naturally (without special training).
Whereas reading and writing are special skills in which children are given special instruction
based upon their prior knowledge of the spoken language. This is The biological Priority .
Learning to write typically builds on learning to speak.Despite the early age in which people
start to use spoken languages , they also learn to speak and process them more easily than
writing;

Levels of Structure. Most of languages make use of an alphabetic writing system, which is an
association of particular shapes with particular sounds. Hence, speech consists of two types of
basic units: 'Phonemes' or units of sound, which are themselves meaningless, are combined into
'morphemes', which are meaningful units; so the phonemes /b/, /i/, /t/ form the word 'bit'.
Alphabetic scripts work the same way. In a different type of script, the syllabary, the basic unit,
corresponds to a spoken syllable; Japanese and Cherokee use this system. In logographic script,
e.g. Chinese, each character corresponds to an entire morpheme (usually a word). In this
respect, spoken language is structurally more basic than the written language. For example, a
sound which is not pronounced at all can be represented by a letter eg : talk, honest, should…etc.
This is The structural priority

Interdependence. Most literate people can convey the same messages in either speech or
writing, but speech typically conveys more explicit information than writing. Hebrew and
Arabic scripts indicate consonants but often omit symbols for vowels. In Chinese, the symbols
that correspond to words may give no indication of pronunciation, or only partial cues. The
spoken and written forms of a given language tend to correspond on one or more levels and
may influence each other—as when 'through' is spelled 'thru'. Conversely, in spelling
pronunciation, people may come to pronounce the 't' in 'often' even though historically it had
been lost. Some formal literary styles, like Classical Chinese, acquire a life of their own in
written form and have little direct relationship to speech.

Retrievability. Until the invention of magnetic recording, speech could not be captured or
preserved, except by fallible memories and by writing. But writing can be preserved for
millennia. Its permanence has made possible such human institutions as libraries, histories,
schedules, dictionaries, menus, and what we generally call 'civilization'.

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Literary Use. Non-literate societies have traditions—songs, rituals, legends, myths—
composed orally and preserved by memory. Such texts may be called oral literature. By
contrast, writing permits what is more often called 'literature', i.e. bodies of text which are much
larger and more codified than memory permits. Yet even in literate societies, dramatic
performance and reading aloud remain important traditions.

Prestige. The spoken language is used for a wide range of purposes than the written language.
Written language is associated with political and economic power, admired literature, and
educational institutions, all of which lend it high prestige. Another fact that contributed in its
prestige is its function. In many situations, written language serves as a functional substitution
for the spoken language in situations where auditory communication may be impossible or
inreliable for instance written tests are more reliable and more enduring than spoken ones.
Also, written language is often much more convenient for processing large amounts of linguistic
data. This is The functional priority A fact that greatly contributed to make of the written
languages more formal and prestigious in many cultures.

In literate societies, people often come to think of their written language as basic; they may
regard speech as inferior. Nevertheless, writing can be perceived as colder or more impersonal
than speech.

Standardization. Spoken languages have dialects—forms varying across geographical areas

and social groups. But in complex societies that use writing, the needs of communication
encourage moves toward a single written norm, codified by governmental, educational, and
literary institutions. The prestige of the written standard is then likely to influence speech as
well.

Formality. Communication may be formal or casual. In literate societies, writing may be

associated with formal style and speech, with casual style. In formal circumstances (oratory,
sermons), a person may 'talk like a book', adapting written style for use in speech. Formal and
informal styles may be very distinct, e.g. in Arabic, and can virtually be different languages.

Change. Spoken language, everywhere and always, undergoes continual change of which
speakers may be relatively unaware. Written language, because of its permanence and
standardization, shows slower and less sweeping changes; the spelling of English has changed
much less than its pronunciation since Chaucer's time. This in turn is linked to the factors of
formality and prestige.

ADDITIONAL READING :
Further differences between Speech and Writing :

Speech Writing
One of the obvious distinction between speech Writing uses ’graphic substance’, typically
and writing is that speech uses the transmitting marks on a surface made by a hand using an
medium of ‘phonic substance’ implement.

But there is far more involved than this simple physical difference.

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Speech
Speech is time-bound, dynamic, transient.It is
part of an interaction in which both participants
are usually present, and the speaker has a
particular addressee(or several adderessees) in
mind.
The spontaneity and speed of most speech
exchanges make it difficult to engage in
complex advance planning. The pressure to
think while talking promotes looser
construction, repetition, rephrasing, and
comment clauses. Intonation and pauses divide
long utterances into manageable chunks, but
sentence boundaries are often unclear .
Because participants are typically in face-to-
face interaction, they can rely on such cues as
facial expression and gesture to aid
meaning(feedback). The lexicon of speech is
often characteristically vague, using words
which refer directly to the situation-
deictic(pron/daiktik/) expressions, such as that
one, in here, right now.
Unique features of speech include most of the
prosody . The many nuances of intonation,
loudness, tempo, rhythm, and other tones of
voice cannot be written down with much
efficiency.
Many words and constructions are
characteristic of (especially informal) speech.
Lengthy coordinate sentences are normal, and
are often of great complexity. Nonsense
vocabulary is not usually written, and may
have no standard spelling (whatchamacallit).
Obscenity may be replaced by graphic
euphemism. Slang and grammatical
informality, such as contracted forms, may be
frowned upon.
Speech is very suited to social or ‘phatic’ Writing is very suited to the recording of facts
functions, such as passing the time of day, or and communication of ideas, and to tasks of
Mrs. Aida Abdessemed
Writing
Writing is space-bound, static, permanent. It
is the result of a situation in which the writer
is usually distant from the reader, and often
does not know who the reader is going to be.
Writing allows repeated reading and close
analyses, and promotes the development of
careful organisation and compact expression,
with often intricate sentence structure. Units
of discourse (sentences, paragraphs) are
usually easy to identify through punctuation
and layout.
Lack of visual contact means that participants
cannot rely on context to make their meaning
clear ; nor is there any immediate feedback.
Most writing therefore avoids the use of
deictic expressions, which are likely to be
ambiguous. Writers must also anticipate the
effects of the time-lag between production
and reception, and the problems posed by
having their language read and interpreted by
many recipients in diverse settings.
Unique features of writing include pages,
lines, capitalisation, spatial organisation, and
several aspects of punctuation. Only a very
few graphic conventions relate to prosody,
such as question marks and underlining for
emphasis. Several written genres(e.g.
timetables, graphs) cannot be read aloud
efficiently, but have to be assimilated
visually.
Some words and constructions are
characteristic of writing, such as multiple
instances of subordination in the same
sentence, elaborately balanced syntactic
patterns, and the long sentences found in
some legal documents. Certain items of
vocabulary are never spoken, such as the
longer names of chemical compounds.
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any situation where casual discourse is
desirable. It is also good at expressing social
relationships, and personal opinions and
attitudes, due to the vast range of nuances
which can be expressed by the prosody and
accompanying nonverbal features.
There is an opportunity to rethink an utterance
while it is in progress( starting again, adding a
qualification). However, errors, once spoken,
cannot be withdrawn ; the speaker must live
with the consequences. Interruptions and
overlapping speech are normal and highly
audible.
Mrs. Aida Abdessemed
memory and learning. Written records are
easier to keep and scan ; tables demonstrate
relationships between things ; notes and lists
provide mnemonics ; and text can be read at
speeds which suit a person’s ability to learn.
Errors and other perceived inadequacies in
our writing can be eliminated in later drafts
without the reader ever knowing they were
there . Interruptions, if they have occured
while writing, are also invisible in the final
product.