difference between speech and writing in linguistics

2 Chapter 2. A Crash Course in Linguistics

Adapted from Hagen, Karl. Navigating English Grammar. 2020. Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License .

Language is an extremely complex system consisting of many interrelated components. As a result, learning how to analyze language can be challenging because to understand one part you often need to know about something else. In general, this book works on describing English sentence structure, which largely falls under the category of syntax, but there are other components to language, and to understand syntax, we will need to know a few basics about those other parts.

This chapter has two purposes: first, to give you an overview of the major structural components of language; second, to introduce some basic concepts from areas other than syntax that we will need to make sense of syntax itself.

We can think of language both in terms of a message and a medium by which that message is transmitted. These two aspects are partly independent of one another. For example, the same message can be conveyed through speech or through writing. Sound is one medium for transmitting language; writing is another. A third medium, although not one that occurs to most people immediately, is gesture, in other words, sign language. The message is only partly independent of the medium because while it is certainly possible to express the same message through different media, the medium has a tendency to shape the message by virtue of its peculiarities.

When we look at the content of the message, we find it consists of a variety of building blocks. Sounds (or letters) combine to make word parts, which combine to make words, which combine to make sentences, which combine to make a discourse. Indeed, language is often said to be a combinatorial system, where a small number of basic building blocks combine and recombine in different patterns. A small number of blocks can account for a very large variety indeed. DNA, another combinatorial system, uses only four basic blocks, and combinations of these four blocks give rise to all the biological diversity we see on earth today. With language, different combinations of a small number of sounds yield hundreds of thousands of words, and different combinations of those words yield an essentially infinite number of utterances.

The major components that have traditionally been considered the ‘core’ areas of linguistics are the following:

• Phonology : The patterns of sounds in language.
• Morphology : Word formation.
• Syntax : The arrangement of words into larger structural units such as phrases and sentences.
• Semantics : Meaning. Semantics sometimes refers to meaning independent of any particular context, and is distinguished from pragmatics , or how meaning is affected by the context in which it is uttered. For the purposes of this book, we will work under the assumption that there really is no such thing as completely decontextualized meaning.

Section contributors: Saul De Leon, Jodiann N. Samuels and an anonymous ENG 270 student.

Language varieties sound different from one another because they have different inventories of speech sounds. The sounds that you hear—combined into words that make sense—is called phonology . There is no clear limit to the number of distinct sounds that can be constructed by the human vocal apparatus. To that end, this unlimited variety is harnessed by human language into sound systems that are comprised of a few dozen language-specific categories known as phonemes (Szczegielniak). Phonology is the systemic study of sounds used in language, their internal structure, and their composition into syllables, words, and phrases. Sounds are made by pushing air from the lungs out through the mouth, sometimes by way of the nasal cavity (Kleinman). Think about this: All humans have a different way of pronouncing words that produce various sounds. Tongue movement, tenseness, and lip rounding (rounded or unrounded) are some examples in which sounds or even words are produced in different ways. Consider, for example, the sound of the consonant /ð/ represented by the written <th> in the English word <the>—this sound does not exist in French, but we can understand someone whose first language is French when they pronounce the same word with a /z/. Phonology seeks to explain the patterns of sounds that are used and how different rules interact with each other. Phonology is concerned more about the structure of sound instead of the sound itself; “Phonology focuses on the ‘function’ or ‘organization’ or patterning of the sound” (Aarts & McMahon pg. 360)

Every language variety has an inventory of sounds (essentially, they have different numbers of phonemes) and rules for those sounds. By way of illustration, in English, the phoneme /ŋ/, the last sound in the word sing , will never appear at the beginning of a word, but in some other languages, words can begin with /ŋ/.

Throughout this section, we will use the conventional / / slashes to indicate International Phonetic Alphabet representations of phonemes (the sounds of language) and < > brackets to indicate orthography (the way things are spelled in the standardized English writing system).

Say the following out loud: Vvvv. It has a “buzz” sound that ffff does not have, right? Keep in mind that the “buzz” sound is caused by the vibration of your vocal folds.  Speech sounds are produced by moving air from the lungs through your larynx, the vocal cords that open to allow breathing—the noise made by the larynx is changed by the tongue, lips, and gums to generate speech. Most importantly, however, sounds are different from letters that are in a word. For example, a world like English has seven letters (<English>), six sounds (/ɪŋɡlɪʃ/), and two syllables (eng·lish). We often tend to think of English as a written language, but when studying phonology, it’s important not to conflate sounds and letters. This is more often true in English than in many other languages that use alphabets for their scripts; not only are the correspondences between sounds and letters not always one-to-one, sounds are often pronounced in many ways by different people. When you are speaking to someone, you automatically ignore nonlinguistic differences in speech (i.e., someone’s pitch level, rate of speed, coughs) (Szczegielniak).

Phonemes are a vital part of speech because they are what dictates how a sound of letter or word is distinguished which differentiates the meaning of words. Sometimes a letter represents more than one phoneme (<x> is often pronounced /ks/) and sometimes two or three letters are used to represent a single sound (like <sh> for the phoneme /ʃ/ ).

The sounds of a word can be broken down into phonemes , the smallest units of sound that distinguish meaning.  These basic sounds can be arranged into syllables and a metrical phonological tree can be used to simplify breaking up a syllable  (AAL Alumnae, Gussenhoven & Haike).

There are about 200 phonemes across all known languages; however, there are about forty-four in the English language and the forty-four phonemes are represented by the twenty-six letters of the alphabet (individually and in combination). The forty-four English sounds are thus divided into two distinct categories: consonants and vowels. A consonant gives off a basic speech sound in which the airflow is cut off or restrained in some way—when a sound is produced. On the other hand, if the airflow is unhindered when a sound is made, the speaker is producing a vowel. (DSF Literary Resources). Even with diphthongs, or sequences of two vowels, your tongue changes when you say a different vowel.

A syllable consists of an initial sound or onset and followed by another sound called a rhyme.  A rhyme is further split into a nucleus which are the vowel sounds and the coda which are the consonants that come after the nucleus.  The onset is simply the consonants before the rhyme.  These aspects are all brought together to identify the differences of languages due to each language’s unique phonemes and syllable structures.  (AAL Alumnae, n.d.).

Phonology and Phonetics

The study of phonology is closely related to another field, phonetics .  Phonetics involves the study of the way sound is produced by certain parts of the body.  The synchronous use of body parts like the mouth, teeth, tongue, voice box or larynx, and pharynx are involved with making speech sounds and what sounds exist in a language, and in sign languages, the shape and position of fingers and hands serves a similar purpose.  Phonology and phonetics together can even analyze the distinction between distinctive accents or challenges native speakers may face attempting to acquire another language when facing phonemes that are not a part of their language (FSI, n.d.; Gussenhoven & Haike, 2017, p. 17).

Minimal Pairs and Allophones

Understanding how to pronounce and to make a clear distinction of letters is essential to the structure of a language sound system. In English and other languages, there are many words that sound similar to one another, but differ in a single sound, like ‘pit’ and ‘bit’, or like ‘leap’ and ‘leave’. Linguists call these minimal pairs. “Minimal pairs are word that differs in one phoneme” (McArthur Oxford Reference). Even though they end identically both words are completely unrelated to each other in meaning. Minimal pairs are useful for linguists because they provide comprehension into how sounds and meanings coexist in language. They tell us which sounds (phones) are distinct phonemes, and which are allophones of the same phoneme.

Allophones are a related concept, in which a single phoneme can be produced differently in different circumstances. For example, the phoneme /k/ in the word ‘kite’ is aspirated, meaning it’s accompanied by a puff of air. But in the word ‘sky’ there is no puff of air along with the /k/ sound. We still think of these as the same sound, and they don’t occur in the same positions, which makes them allophones of a single phoneme.

Allophones are determined by their position in the word or by their phonetic environment. Speakers often have issues hearing the phonetic differences between allophones of the same phoneme because these differences do not serve to distinguish one word from another. In English, the /t/ sounds in the words “hit,” “tip,” and “little” are all allophones (Britannica)—they are all realizations the same phoneme, though they are different phonetically in terms of how they are produced.

The relationship between syntax and phonology

Syntax and phonology are both structural components of language, but it is common to think of them as parallel levels of structure that do not often interact. What they both address at their core is the structure of the language, but we could consider morphology (described in the next section) to mediate between the two.

Citations and Further Reading:

• AAL Alumnae.  “Why Study Phonology”.  University of Sheffield.  2012a. https://sites.google.com/a/sheffield.ac.uk/aal2013/branches/phonology/why-study-phonology    Accessed 09 September 2020.
• Anderson, Catherine.  “4.2 Allophones and Predictable Variation.”  Essentials of Linguistics, McMaster University, 15 Mar. 2018, https://essentialsoflinguistics.pressbooks.com/chapter/4-3-allophones-and-predictable-variation Accessed: 21 September 2020.
• Bromberger, Sylvain, and Morris Halle. “Why Phonology Is Different.” Linguistic Inquiry , vol. 20, no. 1, 1989, pp. 51–70. JSTOR , www.jstor.org/stable/4178613 Accessed 7 Sept. 2020.
• Collier, Katie, et al. “Language Evolution: Syntax before Phonology?” Proceedings: Biological Sciences , vol. 281, no. 1788, 2014, pp. 1–7. JSTOR , www.jstor.org/stable/43600561. Accessed 7 Sept. 2020 .
• Coxhead, P. “Natural Language Processing & Applications Phones and Phonemes.” University of Birmingham (UK) , 2006, www.cs.bham.ac.uk/~pxc/nlp/NLPA-Phon1.pdf
• Encyclopaedia Britannica. “Allophone.” Encyclopædia Britannica , Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc., 26 Feb. 2018, www.britannica.com/topic/allophone .
• FIS.  “Phonetics and Phonology.” Language Differences – Phonetics and Phonology .  Frankfurt International School.  https://esl.fis.edu/grammar/langdiff/phono.htm Accessed 09 September 2020.
• Goswami, Usha.  “Phonological Representation.”  SpringerLink , Springer, Boston, MA.  https://link.springer.com/referenceworkentry/10.1007/978-1-4419-1428-6 Accessed: 21 September 2020.
• Gussenhoven, Carlos, and Haike, Jacobs.  Understanding phonology .  London New York: Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group, 2017.  https://salahlibrary.files.wordpress.com/2017/03/understanding-phonology-4th-ed.pdf  Accessed: 05 September 2020.
• Hayes, Bruce. Introductory Phonology . John Wiley & Sons, 2011.
• Hellmuth, Sam, and Ian Cushing. “Grammar and Phonology.” Oxford Handbooks Online , 14 Nov. 2019, www.oxfordhandbooks.com/view/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780198755104.001.0001/oxfordhb-9780198755104-e-2
• Honeybone, Patrick, and Bermudez-Otero, Ricardo.  “Phonology and Syntax: A Shifting Relationship.”  Lingua, 22 Oct. 2004, pp. 543-561.  www.lel.ed.ac.uk/homes/patrick/lingua.pdf Accessed 21 September 2020 .
• K12 Reader.  “Phonemic Awareness vs. Phonological Awareness Explained.”  Phonemic Awareness vs Phonological Awareness.  K12 Reader Reading Instruction Resources, 29 Mar. 2019.  www.k12reader.com/phonemic-awareness-vs-phonological-awareness/  Accessed 21 September 2020.
• Kirchner, Robert. “Chapter 1 – Phonetics and Phonology: Understanding the Sounds of Speech.” University of Alberta , https://sites.ualberta.ca/~kirchner/Kirchner_on_Phonology.pdf .
• American Speech-Language Hearing Association. “Language in Brief.” American Speech-Language-Hearing Association , www.asha.org/Practice-Portal/Clinical-Topics/Spoken-Language-Disorders/Language-In–Brief/
• Kleinman, Scott. 2006. “Phonetics and Phonology.” California State University, Northridge , www.csun.edu/~sk36711/WWW/engl400/phonol.pdf
• Szczegielniak, Adam. “Phonology: The Sound Patterns of Language.” Harvard University , https://scholar.harvard.edu/files/adam/files/phonology.ppt.pdf
• Aarts, Bas, and April McMahon. The Handbook of English Linguistics. 1. Aufl. Williston: Wiley-Blackwell, 2008. Print.
• De Lacy, Paul V. The Cambridge Handbook of Phonology. Cambridge University Press, 2007. Print.
• McArthur, Tom, Jacqueline Lam-McArthur, and Lise Fontaine. Oxford Companion to the English Language. Oxford: Oxford University Press USA – OSO, 2018. Print.
• Philipp Strazny. Encyclopedia of Linguistics. 1st ed. Chicago: Taylor and Francis, 2013. Web.

Contributors: Paul Junior Prudent and an anonymous ENG 270 student

Morphology is a branch of linguistics that deals with the structure and form of the words in a language (Hamawand 2). In grammar, morphology differs from syntax, though both are concerned with structure. Syntax is the field that studies the structure of sentences, which are composed of words, while morphology is the field that studies the structure of the words themselves (Julien 8). Unlike phonology, covered earlier, morphology is more directly related to syntax, and will see some coverage in this textbook.

In language, some words are made up of one indivisible part, but many other words are made up of more than one component, and these components (whether a word has one or more) are called morphemes. A morpheme is a minimal unit of lexical meaning (Hamawand 3). So, while some words can consist of one morpheme and thus be minimal units of meaning in and of themselves, many words consist of more than one morpheme. For example, the word peace has one morpheme and cannot be broken down into smaller units of meaning. Peaceful has two morphemes, peace the state of harmony that exists during the absence of war, plus -ful , a suffix, meaning full of something. Peacefully has three morphemes: peace + – ful + – ly , with the final morpheme – ly indicating ‘in the manner of’. So really, peacefully contains three units of meaning that, when combined, give us the meaning of the word as a whole. Words can have a lot more than three morphemes, however (Kurdi 90).

Comparative Morphology

In some languages, there are only simple words and straightforward compounds, and therefore very little morphology—most of the grammatical complexity is syntactic in these languages. Languages like these are referred to as having an isolating morphology . On the other end of the scale, languages that combine many morphemes to produce words are referred to as polysynthetic . Polysynthetic essentially means that the language is characterized by complex words consisting of several morphemes, in which a single word may function as a whole sentence. Other types of language morphology in between are fusional (where morphemes often encode multiple meanings or grammatical categories at once) and agglutinative (where morphemes are added on to each other to create long words, but generally have individual meanings). Modern English is closer to the isolating end of the spectrum, while still having a productive morphology on some morphemes. Languages like this are known as analytic languages, in which sentences are constructed by following a specific word order.

Types of morphemes

Morphemes can be further divided into several types: free and bound. Free morphemes are the morphemes that can be used by themselves. They’re not dependent on any other morpheme to complete their meaning. Open-class content words (generally speaking, nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs) such as girl , fish , tree , and love are all considered free morphemes, as are closed-class function words (prepositions, determiners, conjunctions, etc.) such as the , and , for , or it (Hamawand 5). Bound morphemes are another class of morphemes that cannot be used by themselves and are dependent on other morphemes, like the -er in worker .

Bound morphemes are further divided into two categories: affixes and bound roots (Kurdi 93). Bound roots are roots that cannot not be used by themselves. For example, the morpheme -ceive in receive , conceive , and deceive cannot stand on its own (Aarts et al. 398). Affixes occur in English primarily as prefixes and suffixes. Prefixes are morphemes that can be added to the front of a word such as pre- in preoccupation , re- in redo , dis- in disapprove or un – in unemployment . Morphemes that can be added to the end of a word (a suffix) such as – an , -ize , -al ,or -ly . In other languages, there are morphemes that can be added to the middle of a word called infixes, and morphemes that can be added to both sides of a word called circumfixes. English also has limited infixation, usually in casual speech and involving taboo language: consider abso-goddamn-lutely or un-fucking-believable .  In terms of function, affixes can be divided into two categories of their own: derivational affixes and inflectional affixes (Hamawand 10).

Types of affixes

Derivational affixes are affixes that when added to a word create a new word with a new meaning. They’re called derivational precisely because a new word is derived when they’re added to the original word, and often, but not always, these newly created words belong to a new grammatical category. Some affixes turn nouns into adjectives like beauty to beautiful , some change verbs into nouns like sing to singer , and  some change adjectives to adverbs, like precise to precisely . Still others turn nouns to verbs, adjectives to nouns, and verbs to adjectives. Other affixes do not change the grammatical category of the word they’re added to. Adding -dom to king yields kingdom , which is still a noun, and adding re- to do yields redo , still a verb. We use derivational affixes constantly and they’re a very important part of English because they help us to form the majority of words that exist in our language (Aarts et al. 527-529).

In English, the other type of affix, inflectional affixes, are suffixes that when added to the end of the word don’t change its meaning radically. Instead, they change things like the person, tense, and number of a word. English has a total of eight inflectional affixes:

• (on verbs) the third person singular – s as in Anakin kill s younglings ,
• (on verbs) the preterite (and participial) -ed as in Ron kiss ed Hermione ,
• (on verbs) the progressive – ing as in Han is fall ing into the sarlacc pit ,
• (on verbs) the past participle – en in  the Emperor has fall en and cannot get up ,
• (on nouns) the plural – s in vampire s make the worst boyfriend s ,
• (on nouns) the possessive -‘s in that’s Luke’ s hand isn’t it ,
• (on adjectives) the comparative – er in the car is cool er than Kirk , and
• (on adjectives) the superlative – est in that’s the sweet est thing I’ve ever seen.

Compared to other languages English has very few inflectional affixes. (Aarts et al. 510), but they’re a common point where confusion emerges, particularly in writing. For example, the third person singular -s, the plural -s, and the possessive -‘s are all pronounced identically, but the possessive often uses an apostrophe.

The Relationship between Morphology and Syntax

Morphology and Syntax are closely related fields in English grammar. Syntax studies the structure of sentences, while morphology studies the formation of words. However, both domains must interact with each other at a certain level. On one level, the morpheme should fit a syntactic representation or a syntactic structure. And on another level, the morpheme can have its syntactic representation. That notion is called “the syntactic approach to morphology” by Marit Julien (8).

• Aarts, Bas, and April McMahon. “The Handbook of English Linguistics.”  The Handbook of    English Linguistics , 1. Aufl., Wiley-Blackwell, 2008.
• Hamawand, Zeki. Morphology in English Word Formation in Cognitive Grammar. Continuum, 2011.
• Julien, Marit.  Syntactic Heads and Word Formation A Study of Verbal Inflection . Oxford University Press, USA, 2002.
• Kurdi, Mohamed Zakaria. “Natural Language Processing and Computational Linguistics 1: Speech, Morphology and Syntax.”  Natural Language Processing and Computational Linguistics 1 , John Wiley & Sons (US), 2016.

Speech vs. Writing

Section contributors: Terrell McLean and two anonymous ENG 270 students.

We first learn to speak when we are children, and we do this for at least five years of our lives before we learn to write. Once we learn to do both of these, we think we have mastered the ways of communicating, forgetting that: 1) these two are not the only ways we communicate, and 2) the line, in some cases, is blurred concerning the difference between speech and writing.

Linguists have given more attention to oral communication, giving it more authority and validation, which suggests that written communication is secondary—we learn to speak before we learn to write. However, both speech and writing are forms of language use and deserve equal amounts of recognition.

Differences between Speech and Writing

Let’s take a deeper look at writing and speech. What are some of the distinctions between them? Writing is edited; we can more easily delete or rewrite something over again to make sure how we want to come across is shown in our writing. We can prewrite and brainstorm, which is an effective way of writing (Sadiku 31). This is something we cannot do as we speak. Another reason writing is different from speech because writing is not something everyone can do. Literacy, or the ability to read and write, is not universal, though it is more common today than in previous eras. In some communities today, there are individuals who do not have the skill of writing amongst their neighbors who can. Among the 7000+ languages that exist in the world, more than 3,000 do not have a written language (“How Many Languages in the World Are Unwritten?”) and only 23 languages are spoken by half the population of the world (“Languages in the World”). Written language has historically been seen as a mark of prestige.

The majority of people learn how to speak by the time they are two years old. As we communicate through speech, we have the option of speaking informally or formally. Someone who only speaks formally might find that others say, “You talk like a book” (Bright 1); the book being a textbook or some form of an academic book. However, we all lean towards informal speech when we are surrounded by people we are comfortable with or when we want to be casual.

A greater range of expression is available when using speech because you can use the tone of your voice to express how you feel when you talk about a certain topic. However, the way you use your voice can have many meanings. For example, shouting can mean that you are angry, excited, or surprised. Sometimes you might have to use an extra sentence to connect your tone of voice to how you feel. With writing, a lot of this paralinguistic content (pitch contours, tone of voice) is not available to the reader, but there are strategies writers use like writing in all capital letters or using various forms of punctuation (not a feature available in speech) to compensate.

Finally, a distinction of writing is its durability. Composed messages are passed on through time as well as through space. With writing, we can keep in touch with somebody nearby or on the opposite side of the world (although advances in communication technology have made this true of speech as well).

Similarities between Speech and Writing

In the sections above, we’ve examined differences between speech and writing, but these two forms of language and communication do have similarities as well. Let’s take the example of formal and informal writing and speech. As mentioned before, we can talk informally—talking casually in conversations, or when you’re talking to someone close to you—and this can be done by using slang, short words, and a casual tone of voice. While writing is often thought of as formal by nature, informal writing can also be acceptable in a number of contexts, like freewriting. This is one of the ways we can write informally. In this form of writing, we can write down all the things that come to mind, however we want to write it; it doesn’t matter the quality of the writing or how we produce sentence structure (Elbow 290). Informal writing can also be found in much of what is called Computer-Mediated Communication, or CMC. One example is personal blogs, which are often different from more formal news articles. Blog posts have more flexibility to be informal because most people write with a conversational tone to appeal to their audience.

Writing has often been differentiated from speech by the nature of its participation. According to classical views, when we write, we write by ourselves; writing is done independently. Speech on the other hand is understood to take more than one person because we need at least two people to hold a conversation; therefore, speech is dependent on another person. However, technology has blurred the lines here as well. For example, take the CMC mode of the internet forum (Elbow 291). This media is a form of constant writing where we can continuously respond to people without interruption. This has been set in place since the 70s and one that is popular today that has a collection of forums pertaining to different topics is Reddit. YouTube is also a great example of this because while we watch a video on a particular topic, we can then respond in the comment section immediately and give our own opinions. This conversation can continue with the person in the video and other people that may agree or disagree with you.

Speech, Writing, and Syntax

Syntax is the way words are arranged to form sentences, and is a part of all linguistic communication, regardless of whether it is written or spoken. However, there can be differences in the syntax of speech vs. writing. In a study with 45 students, Gibson found that speech “has fewer words per sentence, fewer syllables per word, a higher degree of interest, and less diversity of vocabulary” (O’Donnell, 102). In another study that Drieman did in Holland, he found that speech, compared to writing, has “longer texts, shorter words, more words of one syllable, fewer attributive adjectives, and a less varied vocabulary” (O’Donnell, 102).

While many think of prescriptive rules applying primarily to written grammar, speech is seen as more lenient, allowing for fluidity nor replicated in written works. However, it comes with own fair share of complexities and rules that need to be managed, one of them being syntax. Syntax is the structuring of words and their overall arrangement in relation to each other. Even though grammar isn’t as strict when it comes to writing a lot of the same principles follow, words need to flow in a cohesive manner that is understandable to others. Even with slang and regional dialect coming into play, syntax creates a cohesive use of language during a conversation. Even in complex usages of language such as code-switching (the use of multiple language varieties in a single discourse event) the necessity for clear structure and communication lies under all of that. In Code Switching and Grammatical Theory the idea is presented that even with code switching in the middle of a sentence, there is a grammatical structure: “In individual cases, intra-sentential code switching is not distributed randomly in the sentence, but rather it occurs at specific points” (Muysken, 155).

Even though both speech and writing require the use of syntax to remain cohesive, the differences between writing and speech are clear and abundant; as Casey Cline writes, “Speech is generally more spontaneous than writing and more likely to stray from the subject under discussion.” (Cline, Verblio ). Written works, on the other hand, are usually seen as something that must stay grammatically correct, thus not being able to always mimic the freedom of speech. As put in Grammar for Writing? “… Grammar is frequently presented as a remediation tool, a language corrective.” (Debra Myhill, 4). However, formal speech and informal writing have existed for a long time, and new communications technologies have increasingly challenged the distinctions between speech and writing.

• Bailey, Trevor. Jones, Susan. Myhill Debra A. “Grammar for Writing? An investigation of the effects of contextualized grammar teaching on students’ writing”. University of Exeter , 2012.
• Brewer, Robert L. “63 Grammar Rules for Writers”. Writer’s Digest , 2020, pp. 4. https://www.writersdigest.com/write-better-fiction/grammar-rules-for-writers/
• Bright, William. “What’s the Difference Between Speech and Writing.” Linguistic Society of America . https://www.linguisticsociety.org/resource/whats-difference-between-speech-and-writing . Accessed 22 September 2020.
• Chafe, Wallace, and Deborah Tannen. “The Relation between Written and Spoken Language.” Annual Review of Anthropology , vol. 16, 1987, pp. 383–407. JSTOR , www.jstor.org/stable/2155877 . Accessed 22 September 2020.
• Cline, Casey. “Do You Write the Way You Speak? Here’s Why Most Good Writer’s Don’t”. Verblio , 2017. https://www.verblio.com/blog/write-the-way-you-speak/ .
• Elbow, Peter. “The Shifting Relationships between Speech and Writing.” College Composition and Communication , vol. 36, no. 3, 1985, pp. 283–303. JSTOR , www.jstor.org/stable/357972 . Accessed 22 September 2020.
• “How Many Languages Are There in the World?” Ethnologue: Languages of the World. https://www.ethnologue.com/guides/how-many-languages
• “How Many Languages in the World Are Unwritten?” Ethnologue: Languages of the World. https://www.ethnologue.com/enterprise-faq/how-many-languages-world-are-unwritten-0. Accessed 6 October 2020.
• Muysken, Pieter. “Code-Switching and Grammatical Theory”. One Speaker, Two Languages: Cross-Disciplinary Perspectives on Code-Switching . Cambridge: Cambridge University Text, 1995 pp.155.
• O’Donnell, Roy C. “Syntactic Differences Between Speech and Writing.” American Speech , vol. 29, no. ½, 1974, pp. 102–110. JSTOR , https://www-jstor-org.york.ezproxy.cuny.edu/stable/3087922 . Accessed 22 September 2020.

Semantics, or the study of meaning in language, is one of the most complex subfields of lingusitics. Semantics can be approached on the word level, examining the meanings of particular words ( lexical semantics ), or on the level of compositionality , in which the way in which meanings interact and compose larger meanings is examined.

Lexical Semantics

Adapted from Anderson, Katherine. Essentials of Linguistics.  10.1 Elements of Word Meaning: Intensions and Extensions

One way to define the meaning of a word is to point to examples in the world of things the word refers to; these examples are the word’s denotation , or extension . Another component of a word’s meaning is the list of attributes in our mind that describe the things the word can refer to; this list is the intension of a word.

If someone asked you, “What’s the meaning of the word pencil ?” you’d probably be able to describe it — it’s something you write with, it has graphite in it, it makes a mark on paper that can be erased, it’s long and thin and doesn’t weigh much. Or you might just hold up a pencil and say, “This is a pencil”. Pointing to an example of something or describing the properties of something, are two pretty different ways of representing a word meaning, but both of them are useful.

One part of how our minds represent word meanings is by using words to refer to things in the world. The denotation of a word or a phrase is the set of things in the world that the word refers to. So one denotation for the word pencil is this pencil right here. All of these things are denotations for the word pencil .  Another word for denotation is extension .

If we look at the phrase, the Prime Minister of Canada , the denotation or extension of that phrase right now in 2017 is Justin Trudeau. So does it make sense to say that Trudeau is the meaning of that phrase the Prime Minister of Canada ? Well, only partly: in a couple of years, that phrase might refer to someone else, but that doesn’t mean that its entire meaning would have changed. And in fact, several other phrases, like, the eldest son of former Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau,  and  the husband of Sophie Grégoire Trudeau , and the curly-haired leader of the Liberal Party all have Justin Trudeau as their current extension, but that doesn’t mean that all those phrases mean the same thing, does it? Along the same lines, the phrase the President of Canada doesn’t refer to anything at all in the world, because Canada doesn’t have a president, so the phrase has no denotation, but it still has meaning. Clearly, denotation or extension is an important element of word meaning, but it’s not the entire meaning.

We could say that each of these images is one extension for the word bird , but in addition to these particular examples from the bird category, we also have in our minds some list of attributes that a thing needs to have for us to label it as a bird. That mental definition is called our intension . So think for a moment: what is your intension for the word bird ? Probably something like a creature with feathers, wings, claws, a beak, it lays eggs, it can fly. If you see something in the world that you want to label, your mental grammar uses the intension to decide whether that thing in the word is an extension of the label, to decide if it’s a member of the category.

One other important element to the meaning of a word is its connotation : the mental associations we have with the word, some of which arise from the kinds of other words it tends to co-occur with. A word’s connotations will vary from person to person and across cultures, but when we share a mental grammar, we often share many connotations for words. Look at these example sentences:

(1) Dennis is cheap and stingy.

(2) Dennis is frugal and thrifty.

Both sentences are talking about someone who doesn’t like to spend much money, but they have quite different connotations. Calling Dennis cheap and stingy suggests that you think it’s kind of rude or unfriendly that he doesn’t spend much money. But calling him frugal and thrifty suggests that it’s honorable or virtuous not to spend very much. Try to think of some other pairs of words that have similar meanings but different connotations.

To sum up, our mental definition of a word is an intension, and the particular things in the world that a word can refer to are the extension or denotation of a word. Most words also have connotations as part of their meaning; these are the feelings or associations that arise from how and where we use the word.

Compositionality and Ambiguity

Adapted from Anderson, Katherine. Essentials of Linguistics. 9.1 Ambiguity

One core idea in linguistics is that the meaning of some combination or words (that is, of a compound, a phrase or a sentence) arises not just from the meanings of the words themselves, but also from the way those words are combined. This idea is known as compositionality : meaning is composed from word meanings plus morphosyntactic structures.

If structure gives rise to meaning, then it follows that different ways of combining words will lead to different meanings. When a word, phrase, or sentence has more than one meaning, it is ambiguous . The word ambiguous is another of those words that has a specific meaning in linguistics: it doesn’t just mean that a sentence’s meaning is vague or unclear.  Ambiguous means that there are two or more distinct meanings available.

In some sentences, ambiguity arises from the possibility of more than one syntactic structure for the sentence. Think about this example:

Hilary saw the pirate with the telescope.

There are two interpretations available here: one is that Hilary has the telescope, and the other is that the pirate has the telescope. Later in this course, you will be able to explain the difference by showing that the prepositional phrase (don’t worry about what that is yet) with the telescope is connected to a structure controlled by either pirate or by saw . This single string of words has two distinct meanings, which arise from two different grammatical ways of combining the words in the sentence. This is known as structural ambiguity or syntactic ambiguity . Structural ambiguity can sometimes lead to some funny interpretations. This often happens in news headlines, where function words get omitted. For example, in December 2017, several news outlets reported, “Lindsay Lohan bitten by snake on holiday in Thailand”, which led a few commentators to express surprise that snakes take holidays.

Another source of ambiguity in English comes not from the syntactic possibilities for combining words, but from the words themselves. If a word has more than one distinct meaning, then using that word in a sentence can lead to lexical ambiguity . In this sentence:

Heike recognized it by its unusual bark.

It’s not clear whether Heike recognizes a tree by the look of the bark on its trunk, or if she recognizes a dog by the sound of its barking. In many cases, the word bark would be disambiguated by the surrounding context, but in the absence of contextual information, the sentence is ambiguous.

This chapter, excepting the sections under ‘Semantics’, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International license.

Chapter 2. A Crash Course in Linguistics Copyright © 2022 by Matt Garley; Karl Hagen; and The Students of ENG 270 at York College / CUNY is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

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Introduction: “Speech” and “Writing”

• Published: March 2012
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This section explores the various advantages of both speech and writing as ways of using language. It considers three realms or dimensions in which speaking and writing operate: speaking and writing as different physical activities, as different physical modalities or media, and as different linguistic products.

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Original research article, the third dimension. on the dichotomy between speech and writing.

• Faculté des Lettres, University of Lausanne, Lausanne, Switzerland

This paper introduces a more complex and refined articulated view than the classic and simple dichotomy of linguistic production. According to the traditional doxa, what is linguistically articulated is either spoken or written. Forms of written language have previously been considered a secondary representation of spoken forms and, at least in the alphabetic system, the only properly linguistic form. I argue that there exists a third dimension of language, which is internal. This internal form is lexically, phonetically and grammatically articulated, without being spoken in a proper sense, but which can be seen as the pre-condition for both spoken and written production. In other words, linguistic production does not necessarily imply the presence of two interacting speakers (or writers/readers). Production can be seen as the simple effect of an internal activity, and can be described without reduction to spoken or written forms. A consideration of this third dimension in a systematic way could enrich and strengthen approaches to many types of texts and help to productively integrate the traditional schemes adopted in Sociolinguistics, Historical Linguistics, Philology, Literary Criticism, and Pragmatics.

Introduction

Speech in classical linguistic doctrine: saussure.

According to Saussure’s Cours de linguistique générale (from here on CLG , 27 Saussure, 1967 ), the act of parole is an individual one, but is realized as the minimum requirement of two “people who are speaking”:

“Pour trouver dans l’ensemble du langage la sphère qui correspond à la langue, il faut se placer devant l’acte individuel qui permet de reconstituer le circuit de la parole. Cet acte suppose au moins deux individus; c’est le minimum exigible pour que le circuit soit complet. Soient donc deux personnes, A et B, qui s’entretiennent”: Figure 1 .

FIGURE 1 . “Le circuit du langage” (from Saussure 1967 : CLG 60).

Thus, ideographic systems of writing directly represent the idea of words, and phonetic systems represent their sound ( CLG 47 ss.). Consequently (alphabetic) writing is the representation of the sounds of words, which is manifested in the act of a closed circuit shown above, which assumes two interlocutors. According to Saussure, there exists a connection from a concept to an acoustic image, then to phonation, and finally in inverse order, from a reassociation of the sound to an acoustic image, and then back to the concept Figure 2 .

FIGURE 2 . Phases of saussurean Circuit ( Saussure 1967 : CLG 60).

The written dimension is subordinated, both ontogenetically and phylogenetically, with respect to speech (the latter is identified with language tout court , with an almost imperceptible but crucial deviation). One reads in the CLG 45:

‘Langue et écriture sont deux systèmes de signes distincts; l’unique raison d’être du second est de représenter le premier; l’objet linguistique n’est pas défini par la combinaison du mot écrit et du mot parlé; ce dernier constitue à lui seul cet objet. Mais le mot écrit se mêle si intimement au mot parlé dont il est l’image, qu’il finit par usurper le rôle principal; on en vient à donner autant et plus d’importance à la représentation du signe vocal qu’à ce signe lui-même. C’est comme si l’on croyait que, pour connaître quelqu’un, il vaut mieux regarder sa photographie que son visage ( CLG 45).’

Typical of pre-nineteenth century linguistics was the centrality of writing and written language. Twentieth-century linguistics, then, pushed writing to one side, focusing on the only other perceived dimension, speech. Bloomfield’s famous statement (1935, p. 21) “Writing is not language” became necessarily integrated, in the American structuralist’s perspective, with the notion that the spoken dimension is the only one which duly qualifies as language .

From CLG 45 one can read an entire history of twentieth-century linguistics, which appears to have always taken for granted the dependence of written language on spoken language. This perspective is succinctly highlighted by Martinet, (1972) , p. 70): “a graphic code exists, writing, but apart from this there is no other code: there is language”, obviously referring to speech. There exists almost no twentieth-century treatize which does not define spoken and written language in terms of a dichotomy, and as being the primary (originally, only) and secondary (derived from the first) dimensions of linguistic activity respectively. And there is no work, even among the most recent and attentive studies to questions of the relationship between writing and speech, which does not tend to consider speech simply as the motor of innovation of writing, excluding interference or the role of any other dimension.

Ultimately, according to the model hypothesized by Saussure, spoken language is crucially super-individual. It presupposes at least two individuals, as discussed above. Alphabetic written language is simply a secondary (and often distorted) representation of spoken language, which constitutes the only object of linguistics properly understood (that is, the linguistics of langue , as per the explanation in CLG 38–39).

Twentieth-Century Criticism of the Dichotomy Between Speech and Writing

The dichotomy between speech and writing is discussed at several points during the 20th century. Strictly speaking, this dichotomy is not one of the greatest Saussurian dichotomies, given that Saussure does not theorize it with the same articulation with which he outlines other oppositions, such as those between Langue and Parole, or even Diachrony and Synchrony etc. One reason may be due to the fact that, from his point of view, the written dimension is simply external to the field of linguistics. Already from a structuralist perspective à la Hjelmslev (1966, pp. 131–32), in fact, we see how written and spoken language are not derived from each other, but are simply two manifestations of the same form. In this account, the priority for speech over writing had already been questioned—not from a historical point of view, but from an axiological and epistemological one.

Among the most important discussions, there has been some attempt to refine the sharpness of the boundary between the two fields, highlighting the elements of continuity and, in part, intersection. This is the case of the Koch-Österreicher (1990) model: to the simple distinction between written language vs. spoken language, the two German Romanists oppose a model based on the concepts of distance vs. closeness. These concepts allow, on the one hand, a further realization of the sociolinguistic aspect of situations devoid of writing, and on the other hand, allow us to frame those phenomena which are clearly mixed or hybrid.

The Koch-Österreicher model proposes a scale of distance (and of the quantity of interlocutors included by the single linguistic act) whose minimum value is in fact 1. The conditions of communication are identified, in the first instance, in the Grad der Öffentlichkeit («für den die Zahl der Rezipienten—vom Zweiengespräch bis zum hin zur Massenkommunikation», Koch-Österreicher 2011, p. 7, Italics mine). In short, as in the Saussurian model, there does not appear to be an inferior degree with respect to communication when two are present.

Linguistics in the late 20th century elaborated the concept of diamesic variation (a term invented by Mioni 1983 , extending a series of analogous categories from Coseriu). But it struggled to demonstrate that there exist various “intermediate” positions between these two poles. Apparently, the poles are not united (as instead occurs for similar polarities, such as the classic dimensions of sociolinguistic variation).

A further contribution to overcoming the exclusive and rigid dichotomy between writing and speech was provided by the twentieth-century development of studies on sign language (SL). It is thanks to this line of research and the continued appreciation of SL as an alternative channel to spoken and written language, that traditional expressions such as “spoken or written language” are often substituted with other ones. In recent studies, a trinomial “spoken, signed or written language” (for example, as recently as in Haspelmath 2020 , p. 2) has entered the literature. In short, one finds an all-encompassing category of verbal language in addition to the traditional dichotomy of spoken/written language. This category synthesizes, rather than supersedes, the old contraposition (notwithstanding the distinct nature of signed languages, which can be acquired spontaneously, with respect to writing, and which are the fruit of cultural transmission and learning).

In sum, twentieth-century linguistics approaches the polarities of written vs. spoken language both in a theoretical perspective as well as in a specifically sociolinguistic perspective. Linguistics aimed to overcome this conception as an exclusive dichotomy, placing greater emphasis on those elements of continuity which overlap. This approach was favored also by the emergence of new methodologies of communication. A further contribution to superseding the written/spoken duality was provided by research on sign language: dealing, as it does, with phenomena that cannot be reduced to either category, nor to either one of the polarities.

The Internal Text of G. R. Cardona

Among the few contributions which properly highlighted the linguistic question posed by an internal text, and taking inspiration from both literary and non-literary texts, is the work of Giorgio Raimondo Cardona, (1986 , reprinted Cardona, 1990 ). Published 2 years before his unexpected and premature death, the article deals with “mental text” as an indispensable premise for the production of any oral, but especially written, text.

Let us consider in particular one of the crucial passages of Cardona’s essay: “There is no analytic thread (whatever its itinerary may be) that can be exempt from choosing internal discourse as a point of departure: apart from some cases of automatic writing or trance or similar, no external communicative activity can be disregarded from endophasic, mental and communicative discourse”.

Cardona, (1986) begins from an examination of the literary manifestations of internal speech, bringing to light suggestions from the field of semiotics (and particularly from Lotman et al., 1975 ). He focuses on criticism from genetics and on twentieth-century variationist linguistics, before moving to what he considers a particular type of text, understood as a preparatory and evolving phase that precedes the development in written form, but also its spoken realization. In this way, “the various genres, written and spoken, open up into a natural typology, widening to become waves from the nucleus of internal discourse”.

Another fundamental passage from Cardona consists in recognizing internal discourse (or “interior text”) as the essential absence of a pragmatic dimension, beyond an extreme simplification of syntax (“in one’s thought for oneself, the combination can be reduced to its minimum, the mental nuclei find their minimal linguistic expression. It can, at times, be substituted or integrated by images, as per the manuscripts of Leonardo da Vinci”). Cardona’s examples usefully extend to textual and typological instances that are quite varied.

Cardona’s gifted intuition has been recognized by Italian studies of general linguistics, by history of the Italian language, and literary criticism, which occasionally quote him (among the most important studies, see D’Achille 1990 : 18, who dedicates a note to him). But it has never been explored in full and, in fact, it has not led to any substantial new analysis in the general study of written and spoken language. Significant, for example, is the absence of any reference to him in the best work of German Romance studies in the new century, from Kabatek (2000) to the second edition of Koch-Österreicher (2011) . Furthermore, Cardona’s work does not appear to have been recognized even by contemporary French linguistics, which has, on several occasions, returned to the notions of langage and parole intérieur(e). This includes within the traditional studies of psychology, which we will take up below (exemplary in this regard is Bergounioux 2001 ). In terms of Italian linguistics, which has always been attentive to the social dimension of language and its recent evolution, historians of the Italian language have concentrated mainly on the opposition between spoken and written speech (see, for example, the studies following the work of Giovanni Nencioni, later published in Nencioni 1983 ). Up until now, Cardona’s work has mainly influenced the realm of literature (for example, Bologna 1993 ).

The Perspective From Generative Linguistics

Linguistics in the past few decades has opened up a debate with particular vigor, especially in the field of studies on the origin of language and its biological foundations, which can be summarily characterized by the following two extremes: 1) language is studied primarily as an instrument of communication; 2) language is studied primarily as a form of organization of thought.

Generative grammar resolutely derives from 2) within a theory of externalization. This theory identifies the human specificity of language in its internal, computational (syntactic) capacity (that is, in what Chomsky calls internal language, I-language) and not in the interaction between it and the materiality of phonation. As for the executive function of neurons, the human species shares this aspect with various other animals (hence the computational-syntactic capacity is exclusive of homo, cf. for example Berwick, 2013 ). Generally speaking, only syntactic characteristics are assigned to I-language, dealing as it does with a computational system, that is, with the product of a mental apparatus.

In a partially complementary position, a recent string of neurolinguistic studies (for example, the various works by A. Moro and others, cf. Magrassi et al., 2015a ) has made it possible to observe the cerebral traces of the mental representation of words with the tools from clinical observation. These observations occur not just during the listening phase, but also in the phase of production. In particular, they are visible in those areas of the encephalon that are crucially non acoustic, such as the Broca area. This has highlighted the many affinities between spoken language and “thought language”: the latter showing a great number of elements in common with the former, and thus comprising something similar to what Saussure had already called the acoustic image of words. In short, to summarize with an efficient phrase from Moro, (2016) , p. 89: “when we think without speaking, we are putting the sounds of words in our thoughts”.

One consequence of the theories and of the hypotheses (even though partially divergent) of what we have just said, is that recent linguistics has made it possible to ascertain a certain finding of linguistic dimension preceding phonation, but still within the domain of linguistics. This is due to the fact that we are dealing not only with syntactic structure, which must be considered the specific nucleus of the very faculty of language, but also of a phonetic and phonic consistency at the level of the neural networks. It is, therefore, a recognition in terms of the language(s) involved. In other words, we do not only think linguistically but (at least in certain situations), rather in a very well defined language .

Therefore, not only does language have a foremost interior dimension, if it is understood as the disposition of a computational system with a mainly syntactic nature. It also has a further dimension, still internal, but to which we can add the application of universal syntactic parameters as well as characteristics that are already fully recognizable as single languages. There exists, that is, a form of thought which is already proprerly articulated (and is even formed with features of a single language). At the same time, it is independent from an external, phonic expression in the same language, with which it also maintains strong relations even at the level of activation of neural networks linked to hearing.

The Perspective From Textual Criticism and Philology

The existence of forms of linguistic production that are independent both from acts of phonation, and from writing, has always been known in an intuitive sense. Nevertheless, the received wisdom has tendentially merged or even confused the mental articulation of language with the dimensions of speech or writing. This appears to be the case with metaphors of daily language such as “I said to myself” (in order to introduce the content of a thought that is not truly “said”, but simply “thought”), or “I made a mental note”. Therefore, mental content exists that is linguistically articulated but which is neither “said” nor “written” in the true sense of these two words.

Even literary production has always considered the purely internal dimension of language, and not in a written or spoken sense. Literary works have given conventional representations which, once again, are mainly anchored in the traditional forms of dialogic speech: the form of an (interior) monologue assumes, in an earlier literary tradition, elements such as allocution to oneself (such as those of epic or tragic heroes, as well as lyricists of Antiquity). These elements represent the endophasic dimension as a variation of speech in which two interlocutors coincide.

More recent forms of literary representation (for example, the twentieth-century stream of consciousness) have allowed an attempt to give an autonomous and more “realistic” representation of such phenomena to emerge. In recent years, French stylistique has deepened the literary reflexes of the late nineteenth-century psychological debate (especially in France, as detailed below) on langage intérieur (for example, Rabatel 2001 , Martin-Achard 2016, Dujardin 1931 , Pettenati 1961 ). The in-depth analyses of literary criticism are numerous in these fields (for example, Philippe 2001 ; see above for G. R. Cardona’s particular linguistic view on variationist linguistics).

In fact, the (at least) partially autonomous nature of the articulation of internal language appears to have slipped away attention from its spoken form. This does not mean they are completely separated from it. Little attention has been given to the fact that the same act of writing (autonomous or as a form of copying) assumes a formalized pre-elaboration of content which is not spoken at all, but only thought.

In recent times, before the neurolinguistic studies discussed above, even a particular phenomenon such as transference— via copying—of a written text to another written text has been studied within philology. Indeed, philology has considered phenomena such as the so-called internal dictation in a profound way during the course of the 20th century (see the fundamental studies by Alphonse Dain (1975) ; on “internal pronunciation”, and cf. also Avalle’s considerations 1972, p. 34). Philology has identified a great number of indices which refer us back to a form of “listening” and internal “repetition” (in an acoustic sense) of a graphic sequence that is looked at during the first act of copying, and then transcribed in the second. Most copying errors that are ascribable to defects of internal dictation can be traced, in fact, to the acoustic nature of such repetitions. These errors, nevertheless, do not assume any sound if only that “of thought”, to return to Moro’s expression.

The Perspective From Psychology

The category of internal language was investigated in the fields of psychology and medicine before linguistics. The research conducted by Victor Egger (1881) , Egger (1904) and by Georges Saint-Paul (1892) , Saint-Paul (1904) , Saint-Paul (1912) during the last twenty years of the 19th century, has a seminal value. Partly adopting contrasting perspectives, they proposed establishing a typological classification of the forms of endophasy, bringing attention to the faculty of hearing, as well as visual and verbal-kinetic aspects of the internal representation of language. Until then, these aspects were not able to be investigated simply through introspection (Egger) or interrogation of witnesses (Saint-Paul). The latter originally used a questionnaire which was also distributed among writers; for a historiographical overview of this debate, see Carroy 2001 .

As is general for other aspects of linguistics, the approach that is based on the study of child language acquisition has allowed us to untangle that which appears difficult to ascertain in adults. According to Lev Vygotsky (1966) , whose theory on the formation of internal language is widely accepted, language in the child has a function for social interaction with people in immediate surrounding. Then an egocentric phase from which socialized and internal language derive.

In this particular area, Vygotsky’s model is accepted in substance by Jean Piaget, while reinterpreting the Vygotskian theory. Despite some cases of divergence on specific points, even the theoretician of genetic psychology agrees with the hypothesis that egocentric child language is the point of departure for the development of internal language. This phase is found during a successive stage of development, and is parallel to the formation of “socialized” language (it does not follow it, therefore, and is not derived from it either).

To the general category of internal language can be traced, in the adult, both endophasy (which does not assume any phonation), as well as solitary speech, which represents a sort of medial point between the proper dimension of internal language and the typical dimension of speech in the presence of an interlocutor.

Despite the debates outlined above in the field of psychology, a conspicuous part of general linguistics has continued (more or less) to explicitly reduce internal language to a simplified form of dialogue, in which two interlocutors coincide, through a sort of duplication of the subject into two interlocutors. In fact, this is the point of view, for example, that Benveniste, (1974) , p. 85 adopts in considering monologues: “le monologue procède bien de l’énonciation. Il doit être posé, malgré l’apparence, comme une variété du dialogue, structure fondamentale”. The example is valid also in showing a much broader tendency as well.

Writing, Speech, Thought

In reality, it is obvious that most linguistic production however it is understood occurs outside the domains of speech and writing. Most content that is articulated in a linguistic way (and, as we have said, this includes also mental content, in every sense) happens in thought, and precedes—literally—any form of external expression, spoken or written.

The way in which language is articulated internally is still largely unattainable. This explains the reason why its perception has always turned out to be fleeting, and its nature confused with other forms. If this is the case, the same relationship between spoken language and written language has been read in a completely different way from other graphical cultures (for example, Chinese, on which see the recent paper by Banfi 2020 ). This relationship has been consistently characterized by a tradition that adopts graphemes of a phonetic nature, and in a modern way.

The fact that “thought” language is attainable only in a difficult way, and describable only in specific forms, does not mean that it does not exist, however. The recent findings from neurolinguistics (which have created the possibility of tracing the recognition of syntactic structures independent from sound in the brain, as Moro et al., (2020) have recently done) open up interesting perspectives on the concrete attainability of the thought dimension of language. But even other elements may be involved, in the same sense.

On the other hand, even the spoken dimension of language (obviously much more relevant than written language) has long been neglected, since it is more difficult to obtain with respect to written language. Today, speech can be observed in various forms–that is, one can not only transcribe, but also record. This means that it has been considered as an autonomous subject.

Describing the study of the thought dimension, even in linguistic studies, could have further consequences for the way in which the two tangible dimensions of writing and speech are evaluated. We know that these dimensions influence each other. Koch and Österreicher have produced the most refined model, perhaps, to describe such reciprocal influence. But we do not know exactly what the relationship between them and the third dimension is.

The representation of the relationship that has traditionally been conceived between speech and writing can therefore be summarized in a simple dependency of one on the other:

SPEECH(language proper).↓Writing.(conventional representation of speech, «non language»)

The model proposed by Koch-Österreicher energizes and complicates such a representation, while maintaining an eminently communicative vision of language, shifting the focus toward the notions of Distance and Conception: Figure 3 .

FIGURE 3 . Spoken vs Written Language according to Koch-Österreicher 1990 : 13.

Cardona (1986) adopts an even broader and more articulated perspective, producing a model that is formally similar to those that were being elaborated contemporaneously in various subdisciplines of sociolinguistics (e.x., the well-known Berruto, 1987 model for contemporary Italian): Figure 4 .

FIGURE 4 . Spoken vs Written Language (and Internal Language) according to Cardona (1986) .

The direction which Cardona had already invited us to consider, and which the combined perspectives of twentieth-century psychology and recent neurolinguistics appear to endorse, is that of an even more decisive integration of the internal dimension in the study of language and languages. The consideration of thought language appears to be inevitably presupposed to the study of every manifestation—spoken and written—of language itself. One can attempt to supersede, in this way, the traditional, hierarchical vision which subordinates speech to writing on both of the traditionally identified dimensions. Both appear to be subjected, and equally so, to the overriding internal elaboration of language.

In this sense, the persistent idea loses some force that speech should take on a priority role in both the description and the realization of language. Speech is, certainly, the most direct and immediate projection of thought, but perhaps not the necessary cause of every manifestation of writing. Rather, in many cases it continues from thought in a much more plausible way. Naturally, this does not prevent the idea that the conception (in the sense intended by Koch-Österreicher) of text can bring the dimensions of speech and writing into communication. In the views which we have summarized here, they do not necessarily seem to be in a relationship of direct derivation: Figure 5 .

FIGURE 5 . Thought, Speech, Writing according our hypothesis.

In this model, the different length of the sides of the triangle refer to the diverse nature of spoken forms, as is natural, with respect to written forms, which are cultural and obviously negotiated. A possible representation of what is signed in this model would lead to a further derivation from thought which, in turn, would be independent from speech.

Possible Prospects: Outside Literature

Among the consequences of a possible autonomous recognition of the thought dimension of language, distinct from both speech and writing, is the question of overcoming an automatic act which appears to be reasonably widespread. This act derives from the consideration of written language as a simple reflection of speech. If what Saussure had already observed concerning alphabetic writing is irrefutable (that is, that writing reproduces more or less efficiently the phonic substance of words), then it is also true that a certain tendency can be observed to attribute the least characteristic or marginal facts of written language to a pure and simple influence of speech. In the elaboration of writing, thought generally appears much more decisive than speech proper.

In reality, there are various forms of written production that are difficult to interpret as representations of corresponding forms of speech. At the most simple level, what is obvious in forms of elementary text (the oldest attested forms in the development of writing) such as lists, notes, or annotations written down from memory, the writer does not address others but rather him or herself. Nor does the author intend to be comprehended by people other than themselves. It will be useful to recall that among the earliest manifestations of writing throughout history, we find functional texts that are not intended for interpersonal communication, nor for the reproduction of spoken discourse, but rather computational ones. In other words, numbers are born well before letters and “the code of abstract ideas, in particular the numerical code, seems to have performed an essential role from the first stages in the appearance of writing, and perhaps in the very idea that concepts can be written down” ( Deahaene 2009 , p. 211).

In general, a large part of so-called “semi learned” texts, which have been the object of linguistic enquiry for just a short time, present a linguistic phenomenology that is perhaps inappropriately described as being influenced by speech. A much more persuasive explanation of its various phenomena is provided by referring to the dimensions of thought, rather than to speech.

Cardona (1986 , p. 80) has also investigated this aspect of language. With respect to the category of ‘semi learned’ persons, he alludes to the modality of “writing down in real time one’s own mental discourse which is first and foremost—due to a lack of other models—an oral discourse”. But the priority of oral discourse appears dominant here too, when it appears necessary to shift toward a description of the syntax of thought in an analogous way that, for the syntax of speech, has allowed us to re-read and re-interpret such phenomena of written production coherently (as well as programmatic, in this sense, see Sabatini 1990 ).

Therefore, it can be useful to reconsider in a systematic way the elements which in non-literary writing (and particularly in less attentive writing) have traditionally been considered as reflexes of spoken language. One may ask whether these elements should not be removed from that dimension, and restored to the proper category of internal language. To quote one of the clearest and most recent formulations, it is a common opinion that “semi learned writing is characterized by an integral and large adoption of spoken structures” ( Testa 2014 , p. 107). But semi learned writing also includes the modality that Trifone 1986 has aptly described as being “writing for oneself”. Whether this type of writing simply integrates elements and styles of spoken language is a partially equivocal notion. It is created by a lack of features, made up of traits that are external to spoken language, and includes elements both of speech proper and elements of thought. Diaries, notes, jottings made out of necessity or from memory: those who write for themselves (and more so if the writer is semi learned) do not necessarily rely on speech, but more likely draw on the most immediate form of their linguistic production: thought.

Possible Prospects: Literary Production

Some elements of thought language have been highlighted by criticism and literary theory. But in terms of linguistic studies applied to literary texts, there seems to remain a certain reluctance to consider the relationship between internal language and literary language.

We have often borne witness to an appreciation of the literary reproduction of speech. In other words, the mimetic capacity of some literary production (especially in prose) reproduces phenomena in written form that are (or would be) unique to orality. This is one line of research that has been very productive, and which has the merit of clearly distinguishing between that which pertains to the written dimension (studied longer and in a deeper way) from that which does not pertain to it. In a certain sense, it is as if the term “speech” has long indicated simply “that which is not written”, or whatever is different from writing.

Among literary texts that best lend themselves to an indirect investigation of the typical characteristics of thought language, we find also poetic texts (especially lyrical ones), in which the subject, at the center of the discourse, does not seem to have any interlocutor. These texts can be placed alongside prose, discussed above on the flow of conscious and internal monologue.

Economy of syntax, omissions of references to context, advances of the text free from association of ideas without explanations, and a centering of the ego: these are just some of the elements which distinguish a part of poetic production—particularly modern poetry—from more traditional forms of poetic discourse, founded above all on the adoption of canonical verse and metrics. A conspicuous part of modern poetry seems to distinguish itself from prose above all for its privileged link, even if implicit, with the internal dimension of language, that is with thought language.

In this way, some stylistic traits unique to poetry—especially recent poetry—can be explained in an even more persuasive way if one attempts to describe them as outcomes just in terms of thought language. These forms have been typically characterized as an implausible reproduction of speech. This is a parallel, but distinct, step with respect to what we have said above in terms of non-literary writing. In both cases, it is a question of overcoming the almost seamless, and unwarranted, process of assigning phenomena that occur in certain forms of written language only in a marginal and peculiar way to an implausible flow of speech.

In conclusion, the intersection between literary writing and thought language deserves to be explored more attentively, with tools appropriate to linguistics. The noteworthy study of tracing reproducible elements, more or less consciously, of speech in literary texts could also be applied in identifying elements of thought language in literary writing proper. In modern poetry, the ongoing relaxation of the canonical, formal requirements seem to be compensated by an ever stronger relationship between poetry and thought language, whose syntactic, textual, and pragmatic points deserve further definition and articulation.

Data Availability Statement

The original contributions presented in the study are included in the article/Supplementary Material, further inquiries can be directed to the corresponding author.

Author Contributions

The author confirms being the sole contributor of this work and has approved it for publication.

Conflict of Interest

The author declares that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

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Keywords: language, spoken (and written language), written, psycholinguistic, linguistic variation

Citation: Tomasin L (2021) The Third Dimension. On the Dichotomy Between Speech and Writing. Front. Commun. 6:695917. doi: 10.3389/fcomm.2021.695917

Received: 15 April 2021; Accepted: 06 May 2021; Published: 07 June 2021.

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Copyright © 2021 Tomasin. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

*Correspondence: Lorenzo Tomasin, [email protected]

Linguistics: Between Orality and Writing

• First Online: 22 August 2022

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• Harvey J. Graff 2  

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In the beginning, there was the Word. The word was spoken. Our knowledge of this comes through writing. It also comes through centuries of translation and conflicting interpretations: a set of relationships that plagues understanding. We have a long legacy of formulaic divides surrounding “ from oral to written or literate” that assume a historical, evolutionary trajectory. The linguistic bases of literacy studies swing from presumption of antecedent to subsequent.

The basic study of language divides over the primacy and determinative influence of either the oral or the written. Linguistics’ roots in religion and foundations in philology are not appreciated.. This is part of their neglect—or the presumption—of history, and of their acceptance of the primacy of a foundational shift from oral to written.

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I first used this rhetorical formulation in Legacies of Literacy (1987). The similarity between this formulation and the opening of the first chapter in Jack Goody’s Logic of Writing ( 1986 ) is entirely coincidental. Yet the differences between our interpretations of this logocentric view are consequential. While I immediately underscore the principal issues and sources of confusion in understanding literacy, Goody turns a complex historical transformation into a formula.

Brockmeier’s version of his “episteme” is deeply ahistorical; none of these formulations pays attention to context. Claims of its novelty are self-serving. Brockmeier and Olson’s use of evidence is flawed. They confuse and conflate social, psychological, and intellectual issues; the general and specific; and literacy and writing. For one critique of Olson and his presumptions, see Halverson, “Olson on literacy” ( 1991 ); Halverson, “Goody and the implosion of the literacy thesis” ( 1992 ).

Brockmeier and Olson’s “Literacy episteme” ( 2009 , 9), declares the existence of a “field” after 1960, but that is not the same as an episteme.

For an interesting perspective, included in one of the testaments to the literacy episteme that, looking to the “future of writing” rather than the past and present, actually argues somewhat contradictorily against part of the accepted narrative, see Harris, “Literacy and the future of writing” ( 2002 ). See also Cook-Gumperz and Gumperz, “From oral to written culture” ( 1981 ), Cook-Gumperz, Social construction , 1986 .

In “Are there linguistic consequences of literacy?” Biber argues: “For example, researchers such as O’Donnell (1974), Olson (1977), and Chafe (1982), argued that written language generally differs from speech in being more structurally complex, elaborated, and/or explicit” (Biber 2009 , 75).

See the classic work of Basil Bernstein, Dell Hymes, Erving Goffman, William Labov, and their students. For introductions, see Bauman and Briggs, “Poetics and performance” ( 1990 ); Goffman, Forms of Talk ( 1981 ); Hymes, “Introduction: Toward ethnographies of communication” ( 1964b ); Koerner, “Toward a history of modern sociolinguistics” ( 1991 ); Labov, Sociolinguistic patterns ( 1972 ); Shuy, “Brief history of American sociolinguistics,” 1990 ; Szwed, “Ethnography of literacy” ( 1981 ).

Finnegan quotes then Director-General of UNESCO, Réné Maheu, speaking of the “apparent association between non-literacy and illiteracy” and asserting “one apparent consequence of nonliteracy: lack of literature” ( 1973 , 113).

Among her major targets are Goody, Ong, Havelock, and McLuhan.

Yugoslavia was the name of the country when Lord published The Singer of Tales in 1960.

See for example, Lord’s chapters on “Writing and Oral Tradition” and “Homer” in Singers of Tales (1960). Compare on one hand with Havelock’s work and on the other hand with Finnegan, Literacy and Orality (1988). See also Lord, Singer of Tales , 2000 ; Parry, Making of Homeric Verse ( 1971 ).

Havelock and Marshall McLuhan were colleagues at the University of Toronto. Among the many influential works on the alphabetization of the brain that acknowledge a debt to Havelock is Maryanne Wolf’s Proust and the Squid ( 2007 ). Havelock’s work, which is pervaded by such slippages, is often cited on the “great transmission” or the revolutionary remaking of the human brain.

Compare with Lord, Singers of Tales (2000, 130) and the extended example of Yugoslav oral poets. Havelock, Literate revolution in Greece ( 1986 , 167), refers to “erosion of orality.”

Finnegan writes: “When we speak of both ‘orality’ and ‘literacy’ one or more of three main aspects may be involved: composition, performance, and transmission over time. These three do not always coincide. Thus it is possible for a work to be oral in performance but not in composition or transmission, or to have a written origin but non-written performance or transmission. These various combinations constitute a background to considering different patterns of transmissions…. The differing patterns do not coincide neatly with the distinction between oral and written traditions” (1988, 171–172). See Heath, Ways with words (1983); Schieffelin and Gilmore, Acquisition of literacy ( 1986 ); Tannen, Spoken and written language ( 1982 ). For examples of inattention to context and oral-literate relationships, see Canagarajah, Translingual practice (2013); Blommaert, Grassroots literacy ( 2008 ).

On letter writing, see popular South American films; Besnier, Literacy, emotion and authority , 1995 ; Cancian, Families, lovers, and their letters ( 2010 ); Henkin, Postal age, 2006 ; Kalman, Writing on the plaza ( 1990 ); Lyons, Readers and society , 2001 ; Lyons, Reading culture and writing practices ( 2008 ); Lyons, Writing culture of ordinary people ( 2013 ); Romani, Postal culture ( 2013 ); Scribner and Cole, Psychology of literacy ( 1981 ); Vincent, Literacy and popular culture ( 1989 ); Vincent, Rise of mass literacy ( 2000 ).

Contrast the Maori’s experience with that in Fiji described by Clammer, Literacy and social change ( 1976 ). According to Tagupa, “Education, change, and assimilation” ( 1981 ), missionaries and officials in Hawai‘i presumed that an alphabetic translation and print led directly to mass literacy and expected that cultural and social changes would necessarily follow.

For Central and South America, Salomon, “How an Andean ‘writing without words’ works” ( 2001 ), Hanks, Converting words ( 2010 ), and Rappaport, Politics of memory ( 1990 ) form excellent case study material. See also Seed, “‘Failing to marvel’” ( 1991 ). For great divide views, see Mignolo, Darker side of the Renaissance ( 1995 ); Boone and Mignolo, Writing without words ( 1994 ). For North America, recent scholarship on native peoples and their encounters with colonists informs the same fundamental questions and follows the same trajectory. Less sophisticated and less influenced by both linguistics and anthropology but now developing rapidly, Native American literacy studies has also been less influenced by scholarship in literacy studies. Regardless, it is ripe for revision with more sustained attention to the interaction between forms of orality and forms of literacy. It also speaks to the importance of non-alphabetic literacies, as Iroquois rituals, Dakota winter counts, and Pacific Northwest coast “totem poles” attest to other forms of record-keeping and a myriad of interactions that demonstrate cross-fertilization between oral and written forms. The colonizers also made deliberate use of cultural misrepresentation as a technique of coercion. Cessions of land, which the indigenous signatories thought of as temporary grants of use rights but which the English enforced as the entire alienation of all property rights, are well-known examples; for a survey, see Calloway, Pen and ink witchcraft ( 2013 ). For case studies, see Bross and Wyss, Early Native literacies ( 2008 ); Cohen, Networked wilderness ( 2010 ); Cushman, Cherokee syllabary ( 2011 ); S. Lyons, X-marks ( 2010 ); Morgan, Bearer of this letter ( 2009 ); Wyss, Writing Indians ( 2000 ).

For example, Canagarajah, Translingual practice ( 2013 ), repeats such catchwords and phrases as translingual, translocal, global, and cosmopolitan. Jan Blommaert’s 2008 pseudo-ethnography, Grassroots literacy , also slights these fundamental linguistic dimensions.

See also Cook-Gumperz and Gumperz, “From oral to written culture” ( 1981 ).

Among the large literature, see Schieffelin and Gilmore, Acquisition of literacy ( 1986 ); Tannen, Spoken and written language ( 1982 ); Heath, Ways with words ( 1983 ); Dyson, Multiple worlds of child writers ( 1989 ); Dyson, “‘Welcome to the jam’” ( 2003 ); Olson and Torrance, Cambridge handbook of literacy ( 2009 ).

For both examples of oppositions and differences, see Tannen, Spoken and written language ( 1982 ). The seminal work of Dell Hymes, Richard Bauman, and especially William Labov merits reopening by students of literacy.

See Street, Literacy in theory and practice ( 1984 ). For more on the debate over the New Literacy Studies, see Chap. 3 .

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Graff, H.J. (2022). Linguistics: Between Orality and Writing. In: Searching for Literacy. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-96981-3_2

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Differences between writing and speech

Written and spoken language differ in many ways. However some forms of writing are closer to speech than others, and vice versa. Below are some of the ways in which these two forms of language differ:

Writing is usually permanent and written texts cannot usually be changed once they have been printed/written out.

Speech is usually transient, unless recorded, and speakers can correct themselves and change their utterances as they go along.

A written text can communicate across time and space for as long as the particular language and writing system is still understood.

Speech is usually used for immediate interactions.

Written language tends to be more complex and intricate than speech with longer sentences and many subordinate clauses. The punctuation and layout of written texts also have no spoken equivalent. However some forms of written language, such as instant messages and email, are closer to spoken language.

Spoken language tends to be full of repetitions, incomplete sentences, corrections and interruptions, with the exception of formal speeches and other scripted forms of speech, such as news reports and scripts for plays and films.

Writers receive no immediate feedback from their readers, except in computer-based communication. Therefore they cannot rely on context to clarify things so there is more need to explain things clearly and unambiguously than in speech, except in written correspondence between people who know one another well.

Speech is usually a dynamic interaction between two or more people. Context and shared knowledge play a major role, so it is possible to leave much unsaid or indirectly implied.

Writers can make use of punctuation, headings, layout, colours and other graphical effects in their written texts. Such things are not available in speech

Speech can use timing, tone, volume, and timbre to add emotional context.

Written material can be read repeatedly and closely analysed, and notes can be made on the writing surface. Only recorded speech can be used in this way.

Some grammatical constructions are only used in writing, as are some kinds of vocabulary, such as some complex chemical and legal terms.

Some types of vocabulary are used only or mainly in speech. These include slang expressions, and tags like y'know , like , etc.

Writing systems : Abjads | Alphabets | Abugidas | Syllabaries | Semanto-phonetic scripts | Undeciphered scripts | Alternative scripts | Constructed scripts | Fictional scripts | Magical scripts | Index (A-Z) | Index (by direction) | Index (by language) | Index (by continent) | What is writing? | Types of writing system | Differences between writing and speech | Language and Writing Statistics | Languages

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FAQs about Language and Linguistics in Writing

by  Laura Aull and Shawna Shapiro

Critical Reflection

The two authors of this piece come from distinct institutional contexts: Laura Aull works at a large, public, research university, and Shawna Shapiro at a small, private, liberal arts institution. We each think a lot about language and writing as we do our work—Laura while training new writing instructors in a large writing program and Shawna amid multi-institutional outreach, for example. We both share training in writing as well as linguistics—Laura especially in corpus and applied linguistics, and Shawna especially in sociolinguistics and TESOL. We both believe in (and write about) supporting linguistic knowledge as part of students' rhetorical agency, and in our work, we regularly hear questions and concerns from writing educators about language and linguistics. The most common queries we hear from colleagues at our institutions and elsewhere, including through the CLA Collective ( http://clacollective.org/ ), relate to three frequently-asked questions, which we explore here by drawing on linguistics and writing research.

Many writing instructors, administrators, students, and scholars share important questions about how rhetoric and linguistics are similar and different, what linguistics offers to writing studies, and how to support writing development and linguistic equality. We've consolidated the most common queries we receive into the following three FAQs.

• What does linguistics add to rhetorical approaches to writing?
• What linguistics insights might be most useful for writing teachers and researchers?
• How can linguistics help us to work more effectively and equitably with student writers?

It is understandable that these questions come up so regularly. A number of writing studies scholars have pointed out that especially since the 1970s, language study has had a tenuous or unclear position in US writing studies research and teaching, which tends to focus on writers, writing contexts, and language ideologies, more than on language itself (Connors, 1997; MacDonald, 2007; Aull, 2015). Below, we answer these three FAQs in an effort to provide foundational knowledge about linguistics and language that build on conversations in our field. We have structured our responses to each question as a set of concise points, followed by an “upshot” summary at the end of that section.

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1.  What does linguistics add to rhetorical approaches to writing?

Training in rhetoric and writing pedagogy focuses on important macro-level writing concepts and sociocultural and sociopolitical concerns. Macro-level concepts, for instance, include audience, purpose, and genres as social actions, or, in some composition textbooks, rhetorical modes such as narration and description. Sociocultural concerns include language-related themes in curricular content, such as language ideologies (e.g., monolingualism, native-speakerism), language policies (e.g., English-only legislation in the U.S.), or reflections on first-hand language experiences (e.g., in literacy narrative assignments).

Although social and political aspects of language are also prevalent concerns for linguists, linguistics also offers tools for systematic examination of language itself, including micro-level patterns (word and phrase, or lexicogrammatical patterns, such as noun phrases) and meso-level patterns (sentence and paragraph patterns, such as subject/verb coordination or rhetorical moves) as they inform or challenge language ideologies. When instruction in writing studies does address paragraph or sentence-level concerns, it often focuses on insights from analyzing one text at a time rather than on insights from patterns analyzed across many texts. This leads to rich insights about situated language use and rhetorical concepts in a few texts, but it doesn't necessarily guarantee that writing instructors or students have writing knowledge regarding systematic language norms and patterns (Matsuda et al., 2013; Eckstein & Ferris, 2018; Aull, 2020; Gere et al., 2021; Rossen-Knill & Hancock, 2021).

Here are some pedagogical trends related to a greater emphasis on macro-level concepts and sociocultural concerns:

• Teachers are often told to "focus on writers, rather than writing itself," as in the recent NCTE position statement on writing instruction in school .
• Teachers are often encouraged to "focus on meaning, not form."
• Teachers might feel unsure how or whether to focus on students' language use in writing assessment (Lee, 2016; Matsuda, 2012).
• Teachers (and/or students) might conduct or read a rhetorical genre study focused on style and audience in one or a few texts, rather than lexicogrammatical patterns and moves across dozens of examples.
• Teachers might discuss characteristics of language use in a particular genre or type of writing (e.g., "avoid passive voice in academic writing"), but these ideas might not reflect actual practices (Junqueira & Payant, 2015; Lea & Street, 2006; Olinger, 2021).

Why these trends? A key historical reason is the US disciplinary and institutional divide between rhetoric/composition and linguistics/applied linguistics (Matsuda, 1999; Aull, 2015; Gere et al., 2021). The former has traditionally emphasized humanistic research methods and graduate training and been linked to English departments, while the latter has drawn from more social scientific theories and research methods. Today, these disciplinary separations tend to hold within the US, though there are important overlaps in commitments and student populations (e.g., support for students from diverse linguistic backgrounds) and there are several important exceptions—for example second language writing (e.g., Hyland, 2019; Wang, 2022) and discourse studies of student writing in and out of coursework and across disciplines (e.g., Cunningham, 2014; Nero & Stevens, 2018; Lancaster & Olinger, 2014). They include humanistic rhetorical insights as well as scientifically based information about what languages are, how they function, and how they are learned.

The Upshot of FAQ 1: Rhetorical traditions draw important attention to macro-level concepts, sociocultural details, and sociopolitical beliefs about language, with meaning in context as a priority. Linguistics traditions draw important attention to patterned language use as it follows descriptive rules and crosses contexts, with form and meaning systematically intertwined. Given their respective emphases, we have observed that linguistic traditions can complement rhetorical traditions in writing, and we address how they do so in the second FAQ.

2.  What linguistics insights might be most useful for writing teachers and researchers?

We have especially found that attention to language and linguistics helps us cultivate two areas of writing knowledge: (A) awareness of the difference between usage preferences, on the one hand, and what is grammatically possible and meaningful in English, on the other; and (B) evidence-based understanding of linguistic equality across all language use.

(A) Usage preferences versus what is grammatically possible and meaningful

First, linguistics insights help highlight the difference between usage preferences or norms (language choices often associated with "correctness") and what is grammatically possible and meaningful in English (all forms that are available within the constraints of English as a rule-governed system). While usage preferences are socially-constructed, what is grammatically possible is linguistically-constructed within the structure of English. This is true of all varieties of English, regardless of whether they are privileged in school assessment; all shared varieties follow rule-governed norms (Smitherman, 1986; Young & Barrett, 2018).

In short, form and meaning always work hand-in-hand. Even if students’ linguistic or rhetorical choices diverge from what is typical or conventional in school assessments (i.e., according to usage preferences or norms articulated by teachers, handbooks, style guides, etc.), there is some form (i.e., some governing structure) being employed, because all shared language use is rule-governed. Language without form or structure (or any language knowledge) would be incomprehensible, and unlikely, because we learn language from the structures of language used by people around us. Form includes rule-governed options for words and sentences (i.e., morphology and syntax) as well as options for the structure of a paragraph or genre of writing (or speech).

When teachers and scholars express a concern about whether to attend to “form,” or they critique a focus on “form,” they are usually concerned about a prescriptivist view of form–i.e., the idea that there is one universal set of rules for “correct” language use regardless of context, or the idea that there is one inherently “correct” dialect of English. Linguists tend to take a descriptivist view—i.e., they look for patterns in language use (spoken, written, signed, etc.) that have social meaning within communities and contexts. Put another way, while prescriptivists are interested in what language users should do according to socially-constructed usage preferences and norms, descriptivists attend to what people actually do with what is grammatically possible in a language within particular contexts and communities (see, for instance, how the Linguistic Society of America addresses the issue of 'correctness' in language ).

(B) Evidence-based understanding of linguistic equality

A second and overlapping point is that linguistics insights can help us promote evidence-based understanding of linguistic equality across all shared language use. An evidence-based understanding underscores that all shared language use is rule-governed and responsive to community needs. The social value of different kinds of language use is socially-constructed, not inherent in the linguistic forms themselves.

• Linguistic equality means that all shared language use follows patterns that can be analyzed and learned through practice and exposure. There is no such thing as a language, register, or dialect that is more rule-governed than another, and there is no language, register, or dialect in which "anything goes" or no rules apply. Linguistic equality underlies Students’ Right to Their Own Language (SRTOL) and the # BlackLanguageSyllabus work spearheaded by scholars such as April Baker-Bell (2020) and Carmen Kynard (2007), whose work informed the 2020 demand for Black Linguistic Justice (NCTE/CCCC).
• Socially-constructed value is determined by contexts and communities and who has social power within them; and every language, register, and dialect is useful in some rhetorical contexts and not in others. Even though no dialect or register is inherently superior, there are people and contexts that value the norms of particular language varieties more. This means there is a much bigger world of language—and a lot more language knowledge—than what is represented in conventional school and test approaches to "correct" English, which are based on particular socially-constructed usage preferences and norms.

Linguistics insights and methods help us explore different language varieties in term of both linguistic patterns and socially constructed values. For example, Geneva Smitherman (1986), Staci Perryman-Clark (2013), and April Baker-Bell (2020) have investigated patterns and variation in the historical influences, purposes, genres, and linguistic patterns of African American or Black English. They observe context-specific variation, including both informal and formal registers (e.g. Dyson & Smitherman, 2009; Mufwene et al., 2021; Young, 2010), and they illustrate how we can describe (versus prescribe) linguistic patterns and social values associated with language varieties we explore. In other words, these studies explore language in terms of what/when rather than right/wrong.

We can similarly explore the what/when (versus right/wrong) norms and patterns in formal, standardized written English (SWE), the variety we are asked most about by writing instructors. Like Black English, SWE follows linguistic norms and is socially constructed to have value in some contexts and not others (Smitherman, 2017; Lippi-Green, 2012; Barrett et al., 2022). And like all language varieties, SWE varies by context, encompassing both formal and informal registers and both spoken and written genres .

Below, for example, are some features of SWE that have been identified in empirical studies by linguists:

• Historical influences: SWE has been rewarded in school learning and tests since English replaced classical language curricula during the 19th century. It includes standardized spelling conventions dating back to 15th and 16th century spelling reform in England, and standardized usage preferences dating back to 18th century usage guides in England and the US. Before these usage guides, more variation was expected and normalized in English (Lynch, 2009; Tieken-Boon van Ostade, 2010).
• Purposes: SWE commonly favors impersonal and informational language goals, which prioritize research processes and abstract concepts, versus personal and interpersonal language goals, which prioritize people, sensory experiences, and explicit connection between people (Biber & Gray, 2010; Thaiss & Zawacki, 2006).
• Genres: SWE favors genres such as college papers and academic research articles, versus genres such as text messages, emails, and social media posts (Tannen, 2013; Nesi & Gardner, 2012).
• Linguistic patterns: SWE favors more nouns than verbs (versus a balance of verbs and nouns), more independent and relative dependent clauses (versus more adverbial dependent clauses), more dense noun and prepositional phrases (versus common nouns), more rigid spelling and punctuation norms, and more hedges (such as perhaps, might suggest, or possibly) than boosters and generalization (really, totally, everyone). It tends to include first person pronouns focused on unfolding information (e.g., I will argue; we conducted three trials), rather than focused on connection or experience (e.g., I will never forget; we will be there). Example patterns like these relate to what many instructors mean when they say "concise" and "formal" (Aull, 2020).

Analysis of disciplinary writing has also found specific patterns within academic fields; for example, humanities writing tends to use first person pronouns to foreground one's own interpretive reasoning (e.g., I argue that; in my view), while natural sciences might use first person to emphasize the replicability of research activities (e.g., our results show that) (Hyland, 2005) (see all research based on the British corpus of Academic Written English ).

Exploring historical influences, purposes, and patterns is a way to describe (versus prescribe) language, approaching it as socially-constructed and linguistically-patterned. In the case of SWE, doing so can help us avoid vague messages, such as that academic writing is "concise" or "sophisticated,” when we really mean "phrasally dense" or "more hedged." Likewise, knowledge of social norms and linguistic patterns can help us avoid labels like "correct," "elegant," and "lucid" that are not only hierarchical but often mystifying for students, potentially making them fall back on school language rules (such as "don't use first person") rather than language knowledge (such as "informational or interpersonal first person"). No language variety is inherently more "correct" or "lucid." Instead, all shared language varieties are rule-governed and responsive to community needs—and can be a matter of informed choices, or rhetorical agency, which we return to in FAQ 3.

The Upshot of FAQ 2: No one kind of shared language use is linguistically better, or more systematic, than another. Knowledge of language patterns allows us to descriptively investigate language norms toward awareness and informed choices, rather than perceiving or labeling language norms according to hierarchical or unclear terminology. Language knowledge helps us say as well as show that all registers and dialects are linguistically equal, and helps foster informed choices about what we use and value.

3. How can linguistics help us to work more effectively and equitably with student writers?

Recognizing that form and meaning are inherently interconnected and that all language varieties are linguistically equal but have differing social value within communities, we can draw on linguistics to help us support thinking about language less in terms of following abstract, universalist rules (e.g., “Never use ‘I’; “Avoid passive voice”) and more about making rhetorical choices. In other words, our writing curricula and instruction should aim to build students’ rhetorical agency—i.e., their ability to make informed decisions as language users (Lorimer Leonard, 2014; Shapiro, 2022; see also Charity Hudley’s “ Students’ Right to Their Own Writing ”). With this agency, students can use evidence-based language knowledge to decide for themselves when and how they wish to conform to particular writing conventions and where there might be possibilities for divergence from those conventions. Some of the strategies we can use to build this agentive capacity include:

(A) Giving students opportunities, strategies, and tools for identifying and experimenting with a range of written linguistic norms (Aull, 2023). This is one way to help students make informed decisions about conforming, resisting, and playing with patterns associated with dialect, genre, style, and modality, from grammatical patterns in SWE and other varieties of English, to moves in media for academic and public audiences, to help expose students to the range of linguistic choices available to them. As we explore the differences across genres, we can also discuss standardization within historical and political contexts: What is it? How does it occur? Who benefits and doesn’t, from the privileging of standardized language at school and in larger society? Thus, we take an approach to standardized language that is both progressive and pragmatic (Curzan, 2014; Delpit, 2006; Shapiro, 2022).

(B) Teaching (explicitly!) the skills of linguistic analysis to make space for exploring language through rhetorical reading and critical response. For example, students doing narrative writing can examine writing samples that use past tense versus present tense verbs, noting how the former helps to create a linear sequence while the latter can engage readers differently. Whichever choice students make in their own writing, we encourage them to be consistent, to avoid confusing the reader. Students can conduct in-depth analyses of linguistic data as a focus for original research, using data from surveys/interviews, databases like  MICASE or MICUSP or COCA , and from their own lives—including online! Our goal is to help students see the range of possible variation within the discourses they are writing in, rather than to teach a single/universal set of “rules” for “good writing.”

(C) Investigating texts (written or otherwise) as cultural artifacts. Learning about linguistic norms and conventions can increase students’ understanding of academic cultures and communities. We know from decades of qualitative research that literacy education is a form of socialization—i.e., a means by which students come to see themselves (and come to be seen) as members of a community, whether it be an academic discipline or another community connected to students’ backgrounds, interests, or goals. Being able to analyze texts as cultural artifacts helps students to recognize community values, norms, and tensions (Bawarshi & Reiff, 2010; Duff, 2010; Lillis & Scott, 2007). For example, the use of passive voice in the Methods section of a scientific article reinforces a value of objectivity, by—literally—making the “object” the grammatical “subject” of the sentence. Of course, this value at times comes into tension with other values, such as the importance of recognizing who is providing the labor—which often gets obscured by passive voice. Conversations like these build on the rich tradition of WAC scholarship focused on making disciplinary genres and values more transparent (Thaiss & Zawacki, 2006; Wilder, 2012).

(D) Reflecting on our own language use —including our experiences with language and power—and modeling that reflective process for students. We can talk with students about the choices we make in our own writing, including the persona/tone we convey in our syllabi, during class discussion, and our feedback to students. Where appropriate, we may want to discuss the rhetorical choices in our scholarly work as well. We can convey a critical awareness of language and power by considering actions such as the following.

• Including a language acknowledgement statement in syllabus or during class (see also Mihut, 2019).
• Inviting the use of multiple languages and language varieties in course readings/media, writing assignments, and research.
• Bringing language explicitly into DEI, anti-racism, and other social justice work (See, e.g., the newly revised NCTE/CCCC position statement on Language, Power, and Action).

(E) Centering our feedback and assessment practices on rhetorical agency. Prioritizing rhetorical agency means that we emphasize concepts such as choice (versus intangible criteria such as “voice”—see Shapiro, 2022), clarity (vs. “correctness”) and effectiveness in our feedback practices. Strategies that are aligned with these emphases include:

• Providing feedback on different aspects of their writing as students progress through various stages of the writing process. Feedback on tone/word choice, style, and conventions is much more helpful after students have already had the opportunity to work on content and structure. We can therefore sequence our feedback to give them what is most useful at given points in an iterative writing process.
• Focusing on quality over quantity of feedback. We can guide our feedback according to answers to questions like the following. What are students' goals on a particular project? What linguistic choices might be helping or hindering achieving those goals? What comments will most help my students to grow as writers/language users, in terms of what language is doing and how it works (versus a single version of "correct" language)? And how can I get feedback to students in as timely a manner as possible?
• Taking reflection, growth, and labor (e.g., Carillo, 2021; Inoue, 2019) into account in assignment or course grades—while also offering language-focused feedback! We can ask students what kind of feedback they wish to receive, in light of their writerly goals, so that students get feedback they want on linguistic and rhetorical choices but are not penalized for being linguistically minoritized and/or having had less instruction in academic writing in the past. Attending to student writing goals, process, and language-level choices can help us work toward a fuller representation of writing in assessment (Poe et al., 2018; Aull, 2022).

The Upshot of FAQ 3: Descriptive attention to language allows students to recognize how form and meaning inform one another, including in SWE, so that they can make informed choices with awareness of patterns and variation. Attention to language itself supports students' rhetorical agency, our reflections on our own language socialization and use, and feedback practices that are effective and empowering for writers from a variety of language backgrounds.

Concluding Remarks

We hope the insights and strategies presented here, informed by insights from linguistics and writing studies, might empower instructors to attend to language with curiosity and criticality, recognizing the social and political tensions around linguistic patterns and norms while also building students’ (and our own) rhetorical agency vis-a-vis adopting, negotiating, and challenging those patterns and norms.

For readers who would like to learn more about working with language in the writing classroom and curriculum, stay tuned for a forthcoming Annotated Bibliography we are working on.

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Aull, L. L. (2020). How students write: A linguistic analysis . Modern Language Association.

Aull, L. L. (2022). Student interpretation and use arguments: Evidence-based, student-led grading. Journal of Response to Writing, 8 (2), 7.

Aull L. L. (2023). You can't write that…8 myths about correct English . Cambridge University Press.

Baker-Bell, A. (2020). Linguistic justice: Black language, literacy, identity, and pedagogy . Routledge.

Barrett, R., Cramer, J., & McGowan, K. B. (2022). English with an accent: Language, ideology, and discrimination in the United States . Routledge.

Bawarshi, A. S., & Reiff, M. J. (2010). Genre: An introduction to history, theory, research, and pedagogy . Parlor Press; The WAC Clearinghouse. https://wac.colostate.edu/books/referenceguides/bawarshi-reiff/

Biber, D., & Gray, B. (2010). Challenging stereotypes about academic writing: Complexity, elaboration, explicitness. Journal of English for Academic Purposes, 9 (1), 2-20.

Carillo, E. C. (2021).  The hidden inequities in labor-based contract grading . University Press of Colorado.

Connors, R. (1997). Composition-rhetoric: Backgrounds, theory, and pedagogy . University of Pittsburgh Press.

Cunningham, J. M. (2014). Features of digital African American language in a social network site. Written Communication, 31 (4), 404-433.

Curzan, A. (2014). Fixing English: Prescriptivism and language history . Cambridge University Press.

Delpit, L. (2006).  Other people’s children: Cultural conflict in the classroom . The New Press.

Duff, P. A. (2010). Language socialization into academic discourse communities.  Annual review of applied linguistics, 30 , 169-192.

Dyson, A. H., & Smitherman, G. (2009). The right (write) start: African American language and the discourse of sounding right. Teachers College Record, 111 (4), 973-998.

Eckstein, G., & Ferris, D. (2018). Comparing L1 and L2 texts and writers in first‐year composition. TESOL Quarterly, 52 (1), 137-162.

Gere, A. R., Curzan, A., Hammond, J. W., Hughes, S., Li, R., Moos, A., ... & Zanders, C. J. (2021). Communal justicing: Writing assessment, disciplinary infrastructure, and the case for critical language awareness. College Composition and Communication, 72 (3), 384-412.

Hyland, K. (2005). Stance and engagement: A model of interaction in academic discourse. Discourse Studies, 7 (2), 173-192.

Hyland, K. (2019). Second language writing . Cambridge University Press.

Inoue, A. B. (2019). Labor-based grading contracts: Building equity and inclusion in the compassionate writing classroom. The WAC Clearinghouse; University Press of Colorado. https://wac.colostate.edu/books/perspectives/labor

Junqueira, L., & Payant, C. (2015). “I just want to do it right, but it's so hard”: A novice teacher's written feedback beliefs and practices. Journal of Second Language Writing, 27, 19-36.

Kynard, C. (2007). “I want to be African": In search of a Black Radical tradition/African-American-vernacularized paradigm for "Students' Right to Their Own Language," critical literacy, and "class politics.” College English, 69 (4), 360- 390.

Lancaster, Z., & Olinger, A. R. (2014). Teaching grammar-in-context in college writing instruction: An update on the research literature. WPA-CompPile Research Bibliographies, 24 , 1-22.

Lea, M. R., & Street, B. V. (2006). The "academic literacies" model: Theory and applications. Theory into Practice, 45 (4), 368-377.

Lee, J. W. (2016). Beyond translingual writing. College English, 79 (2), 174-195.

Lillis, T., & Scott, M. (2007). Defining academic literacies research: Issues of epistemology, ideology and strategy.  Journal of Applied Linguistics, 4 (1), 5-32.

Lippi-Green, R. (2012). English with an accent: Language, ideology and discrimination in the United States . United Kingdom: Taylor & Francis.

Lorimer Leonard, R. (2014). Multilingual writing as rhetorical attunement. College English, 76 (3), 227-247.

Lynch, J. (2009). T he lexicographer's dilemma: The evolution of 'proper' English, from Shakespeare to South Park . Bloomsbury Publishing USA.

MacDonald, S. P. (2007). The erasure of language. College Composition and Communication , 585-625.

Matsuda, P. K. (1999). Composition studies and ESL writing: A disciplinary division of labor. College Composition and Communication, 50 (4), 699-721.

Matsuda, P. K. (2012). Let's face it: Language issues and the writing program administrator. Writing Program Administration, 36 (1), 141-164.

Matsuda, P. K., Saenkhum, T., & Accardi, S. (2013). Writing teachers’ perceptions of the presence and needs of second language writers: An institutional case study. Journal of Second Language Writing, 22 (1), 68-86.

Mihut, L. (2019). Linguistic pluralism: A statement and a call to advocacy. Reflections: A Journal of Community-Engaged Writing and Rhetoric, 18 (2), 66-86.

Mufwene, S. S., Rickford, J. R., Bailey, G., & Baugh, J. (Eds.). (2021). African-American English: Structure, history, and use . Routledge.

Nero, S., & Stevens, L. (2018). Analyzing students’ writing in a Jamaican Creole- speaking context: An ecological and systemic functional approach. Linguistics and Education, 43 , 13-24.

Nesi, H., & Gardner, S. (2012). Genres across the disciplines: Student writing in higher education . Cambridge University Press.

Olinger, A. R. (2021). Self-contradiction in faculty's talk about writing: Making and unmaking autonomous models of literacy. Literacy in Composition Studies, 8 (2), 1-38. https://ir.library.louisville.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1533&context=facult y

Perryman-Clark, S. M. (2013). African American language, rhetoric, and students' writing: New directions for SRTOL. College Composition and Communication, 64 (3), 469-495.

Poe, M., Inoue, A. B., & Elliot, N. (2018). The end of isolation. In M. Poe, A. B. Inoue, & N. Elliot (Eds.), Writing assessment, social justice, and the advancement of opportunity (pp. 3-38). The WAC Clearinghouse; University Press of Colorado. https://doi.org/10.37514/PER-B.2018.0155.1.3

Rossen-Knill, D. F., & Hancock, C. (2021). Linguistic Knowledge, Effective Communication, and Agency: Moving Forward in Writing Pedagogy With A Progressive Agenda. Journal of Teaching Writing, 36 (1), 1-10.

Shapiro, S. (2022). Cultivating critical language awareness in the writing classroom . Routledge.

Smitherman, G. (1986). Talkin and testifyin: The language of Black America (Vol. 51). Wayne State University Press.

Smitherman, G. (2017). Raciolinguistics, “mis-education,” and language arts teaching in the 21st century. Language Arts Journal of Michigan, 32 (2), 3.

Tannen, D. (2013). The medium is the metamessage. Discourse, 2 , 99-117.

Thaiss, C. J., & Zawacki, T. M. (2006). Engaged writers and dynamic disciplines: Research on the academic writing life . Portsmouth, NH: Boynton/Cook.

Tieken-Boon van Ostade, I. (2010). The bishop's grammar: Robert Lowth and the rise of prescriptivism . OUP Oxford.

Wang, Z. (2022). From disciplinary diaspora to transdisciplinarity: A home for Second Language Writing professionals in composition. College English, 84 (5), 467-490.

Wilder, L. (2012). Rhetorical strategies and genre conventions in literary studies: Teaching and writing in the disciplines . SIU Press.

Young, V. A. (2010). Should writers use they own English? Iowa Journal of Cultural Studies, 12 (1), 110-117.

Young, V. A., & Barrett, R. (2018). Other people's English: Code-meshing, code- switching, and African American literacy . Parlor Press LLC.

Relationship and Difference Between Speech and Writing in Linguistics

Back to: Pedagogy of English- Unit 4

Many differences exist between the written language and the spoken language. These differences impact subtitling which is a practice that has become highly prevalent in the modern age. It is a process used to translate what the speaker is saying for those of other languages or who are deaf.

The main difference between written and spoken languages is that written language is comparatively more formal and complex than spoken language. Some other differences between the two are as follows:

Writing is more permanent than the spoken word and is changed less easily. Once something is printed, or published on the internet, it is out there for the world to see permanently. In terms of speaking, this permanency is present only if the speaker is recorded but they can restate their position.

Apart from formal speeches, spoken language needs to be produced instantly. Due to this, the spoken word often includes repetitions, interruptions, and incomplete sentences. As a result, writing is more polished.

Punctuation

Written language is more complex than spoken language and requires punctuation. Punctuation has no equivalent in spoken language.

Speakers can receive immediate feedback and can clarify or answer questions as needed but writers can’t receive immediate feedback to know whether their message is understood or not apart from text messages, computer chats, or similar technology.

Writing is used to communicate across time and space for as long as the medium exists and that particular language is understood whereas speech is more immediate.

The slippery grammar of spoken vs written English

Senior Lecturer in Linguistics, University of Waikato

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Andreea S. Calude receives funding from the Royal Society Marsden Grant and Catalyst Seeding Grant .

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My grammar checker and I are on a break. Due to irreconcilable differences, we are no longer on speaking terms.

It all started when it became dead set on putting commas before every single “which”. Despite all the angry underlining, “this is a habit which seems prevalent” does not need a comma before “which”. Take it from me, I am a linguist.

This is just one of many challenging cases where grammar is slippery and hard to pin down. To make matters worse, it appears that the grammar we use while speaking is slightly different to the grammar we use while writing. Speech and writing seem similar enough – so much so that for centuries, people (linguists included) were blind to the differences.

Read more: How students from non-English-speaking backgrounds learn to read and write in different ways

There’s issues to consider

Let me give you an example. Take sentences like “there is X” and “there are X”. You may have been taught that “there is” occurs with singular entities because “is” is the present singular form of “to be” – as in “there is milk in the fridge” or “there is a storm coming”.

Conversely, “there are” is used with plural entities: “there are twelve months in a year” or “there are lots of idiots on the road”.

What about “there’s X”? Well, “there’s” is the abbreviated version of “there is”. That makes it the verb form of choice when followed by singular entities.

Nice theory. It works for standard, written language, formal academic writing, and legal documents. But in speech, things are very different .

It turns out that spoken English favours “there is” and “there’s” over “there are”, regardless of what follows the verb: “there is five bucks on the counter” or “ there’s five cars all fighting for that Number 10 spot ”.

A question of planning

This is not because English is going to hell in a hand basket, nor because young people can’t speak “proper” English anymore.

Linguists Jen Hay and Daniel Schreier scrutinised examples of old recordings of New Zealand English to see what happens in cases where you might expect “there” followed by plural, (or “there are” or “there were” for past events) but where you find “there” followed by singular (“there is”, “there’s”, “there was”).

They found that the contracted form “there’s” is a go-to form which seems prevalent with both singular and plural entities. But there’s more. The greater the distance between “be” and the entity following it, the more likely speakers are to ignore the plural rule.

“There is great vast fields of corn” is likely to be produced because the plural entity “fields” comes so far down the expression, that speakers do not plan for it in advance with a plural form “are”.

Even more surprisingly, the use of the singular may not always necessarily have much to do with what follows “there is/are”. It can simply be about the timing of the event described. With past events, the singular form is even more acceptable. “There was dogs in the yard” seems to raise fewer eyebrows than “there is dogs in the yard”.

Nothing new here

The disregard for the plural form is not a new thing (darn, we can’t even blame it on texting). According to an article published last year by Norwegian linguist Dania Bonneess , the change towards the singular form “there is” has been with us in New Zealand English ever since the 19th century. Its history can be traced at least as far back as the second generation of the Ulster family of Irish emigrants .

Editors, language commissions and prescriptivists aside, everyday New Zealand speech has a life of its own, governed not so much by style guides and grammar rules, but by living and breathing individuals.

It should be no surprise that spoken language is different to written language. The most spoken-like form of speech (conversation) is very unlike the most written-like version of language (academic or other formal or technical writing) for good reason.

Speech and writing

In conversation, there is no time for planning. Expressions come out more or less off the cuff (depending on the individual), with no ability to edit, and with immediate need for processing. We hear a chunk of language and at the same time as parsing it, we are already putting together a response to it – in real time.

This speed has consequences for the kind of language we use and hear. When speaking, we rely on recycled expressions, formulae we use over and over again, and less complex structures.

For example, we are happy enough writing and reading a sentence like:

That the human brain can use language is amazing.

But in speech, we prefer:

It is amazing that the human brain can use language.

Both are grammatical, yet one is simpler and quicker for the brain to decode.

And sometimes, in speech we use grammatical crutches to help the brain get the message quicker. A phrase like “the boxes I put the files into” is readily encountered in writing, but in speech we often say and hear “the boxes I put the files into them”.

We call these seemingly unnecessary pronouns (“them” in the previous example) “shadow pronouns”. Even linguistics professors use these latter expressions no matter how much they might deny it.

Speech: a faster ride

There is another interesting difference between speech and writing: speech is not held up on the same rigid prescriptive pedestal as writing, nor is it as heavily regulated in the same way that writing is scrutinised by editors, critics, examiners and teachers.

This allows room in speech for more creativity and more language play, and with it, faster change. Speech is known to evolve faster than writing, even though writing will eventually catch up (at least for some changes).

I would guess that by now, most editors are happy enough to let the old “whom” form rest and “who” take over (“who did you give that book to?”).

• New Zealand
• Linguistics
• Spoken language evolution
• written language

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