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 Why that form?
within texts
Functional Speech Acts Communicative acts How to do things
with words?
Ethnography of Communication as cultural How does discourse
Communication behaviour reflect culture?
Interactional Social and linguistic What are they doing?
Sociolinguistics meanings created during
communication
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:
a.Written discourse has a high level of
nominalization: i.e. more nouns than
verbs.
b.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:
a. Spoken discourse lacks organization and is
ungrammatical because it is spontaneous,
whereas written discourse is organized and
grammatical.
b. Spoken discourse contains more
uncompleted and reformulated sentences.
c. Topics can be changed.
d. Speakers may interrupt and overlap
 Rebuttal:
Spoken discourse is organized, but it is
organized differently from written
discourse.
7. Repetition, Hesitation, and
Redundancy
View:
a.Spoken discourse contains more
repetition, hesitations, and
redundancy because it is
produced in real time (i.e. on the
spot).
b.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 (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.
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:
A. Grammatical Complexity
Tightly packed
and integrated
---------------------------------------------------------------Fragmented
B. Detachment/inter-personal
involvement
Detached-------------------------------------------------------------
Interpersonally-
involved
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.