Differences between Spoken and

Written Discourse

Report and Presented by:

Marjoe P. Manuel
MSEE Student
 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.