Chapter 6 Spoken vs Written Language
2) Point out the most conspicuous difference between spoken texts and written texts in terms of the levels of language.
Spoken texts differ from the written on
Grammatically in spontaneous spoken texts, sentences tend to be short and incomplete and elliptical, and loosely connected clauses often used. However, in written language, sentences are usually complete and longer and clauses are closely connected. Besides, in written language, the subject position of a sentence is often filled in by a noun. The structure of the nominal group can be complex and the relative clause within the group usually retain the relative pronoun.
In terms of lexical features, speech tends to use, simple words and idioms, phrasal verbs, vague terms, lexical hyperbole and slang, while in writing, vocabulary tends to be carefully weighed and accurate in meaning. There can be many learned words and technical terms in written texts.
In terms of phonology and graphology, speech makes full use of phonological features, such as stress, intonation, pitch height and pitch range, pause and tempo to help convey more information. On the contrary, writing makes use of the multitude of graphological devices such as punctuation, paragraphing, capitalizing, italics and so on. Sometimes, strange-looking spellings (eye dialect) is often employed to give a hint at the local flavour of a character’s speech.
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