english in speech and writing: investigating language and literature (interface (london, england).)

English in Speech and Writing

In this activity-based textbook, Rebecca Hughes invites the reader to examine thedifferences between spoken and written English. Instead of presenting the studentreader with a bewildering array of ‘facts’ about these two modes ofcommunication, this book asks students to investigate the differences forthemselves.

English in Speech and Writing:

• Provides an indispensable guide to the basic methods of analysis.• Promotes an awareness of the differences between spoken and written

language.• Enables the student to distinguish between standard and non-standard forms

of English.• Uses examples such as boxing commentaries, detective novels and film

scripts, and compares actual speech patterns with literary ones.• Includes end-of-chapter activities and suggestions for further reading and

follow-up study, as well as a comprehensive glossary of terms.

Having worked through this book, students will have considered a wide range ofspoken and written varieties and will be able to formulate their own opinions asto the differences present. English in Speech and Writing will be an essential textfor students of language, linguistics and communication studies, as well as non-native speakers of English and their teachers.Rebecca Hughes is Deputy Director of the Centre for English LanguageEducation, University of Nottingham.

The INTERFACE Series

This statement, made over twenty-five years ago, is no less relevant today, and‘flagrant anachronisms’ still abound. The aim of the INTERFACE series is toexamine topics at the ‘interface’ of language studies and literary criticism and indoing so to build bridges between these traditionally divided disciplines.

Already published in the series:

THE DISCOURSE OF ADVERTISINGGuy Cook

LANGUAGE, LITERATURE AND CRITICAL PRACTICEWays of analysing textDavid Birch

LITERATURE, LANGUAGE AND CHANGERuth Waterhouse and John Stephens

LITERARY STUDIES IN ACTIONAlan Durant and Nigel Fabb

LANGUAGE IN POPULAR FICTIONWalter Nash

LANGUAGE, TEXT AND CONTEXTEssays in stylisticsEdited by Michael J.Toolan

THE LANGUAGE OF JOKESAnalysing verbal playDelia Chiaro

LANGUAGE, IDEOLOGY AND POINT OF VIEWPaul Simpson

A LINGUISTIC HISTORY OF ENGLISH POETRYRichard Bradford

LITERATURE ABOUT LANGUAGEValerie Shepherd

TWENTIETH-CENTURY POETRYFrom text to contextEdited by Peter Verdonk

TEXTUAL INTERVENTION

A linguist deaf to the poetic function of language and a literary scholarindifferent tolinguistic problems and unconversant with linguisticmethods, are equally flagrantanachronisms.—Roman Jakobson

Critical and creative strategies for literary studiesRob Pope

FEMINIST STYLISTICSSara Mills

TWENTIETH-CENTURY FICTIONFrom text to contextPeter Verdonk and Jean Jacques Weber

VARIETY IN WRITTEN ENGLISHTexts in society: societies in textTony Bex

The Series EditorRonald Carter is Professor of Modern English Language at the University ofNottingham and was National Coordinator of the ‘Language in the NationalCurriculum’ Project (LINC) from 1989 to 1992.

iii

English in Speech and Writing

Investigating language and literature

Rebecca Hughes

London and New York

First published 1996by Routledge

11 New Fetter Lane, London EC4P 4EE

This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2005.

“To purchase your own copy of this or any of Taylor & Francis or Routledge’s collectionof thousands of eBooks please go to www.eBookstore.tandf.co.uk.”

Simultaneously published in the USA and Canadaby Routledge

28 West 35th Street, New York, NY 10001

© 1996 Rebecca Hughes

The author has asserted her moral rights in accordance with the Copyright, Designsand Patents Act 1988

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted orreproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic,

mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafterinvented, including photocopying and recording, or in any

information storage or retrieval system, without permission inwriting from the publishers.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication DataA catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Library of Congress Cataloguing in Publication DataEnglish in speech and writing: investigating language and literature / Rebecca Hughes.

p. cm.—(Interface)Includes bibliographical references (p.) and index.

I. English language—Discourse analysis. 2. English language—Spoken English. 3. English language—Written English. 4. English

language—Syntax. 5. English language—Variation. I. Title.II. Series: Interface (London, England)

PE1422.H84 1996420′. 141-dc20 96–4246

ISBN 0-203-97812-9 Master e-book ISBN

ISBN 0-415-12480-8 (hbk)ISBN 0-415-12481-6 (pbk)

To my late father, John Cledwyn Hughes

Contents

List of figures ix

List of tables x

Preface xi

Acknowledgements xii

List of abbreviations xiii

Introduction 1

Intended readership 1

Outline of the book 2

Notation 3

1 Properties of speech and writing 4

Introduction 4

Analysis of sample discourse from speech and writing 14

Discussion and conclusion 30

Exercises 32

Further reading 34

2 Interactions on the page 35

Introduction 35

Actual versus literary interactions 36

A case-study: parliamentary interactions 52


Exercises 61

Further reading 62

3 Individuals in speech and writing 63

Introduction 63

Real versus fictional individuals speaking 75

A case-study: parliamentary speakers in transcription 86


Exercises 93

Further reading 93

4 Analysing speech and writing in context 94

Introduction 94

Analysis of paired texts 99


Exercises 121

Further reading 122

5 Issues in the study of speech and writing 124

Introduction 124

Theoretical approaches 124

Empirical approaches 141

Appendix: approaching language analysis: a brief beginners’guide and glossary

146

Introduction 146

Glossary 146

Paths to further study 162

Notes 165

References 170

Index 174

viii

Figures

3.1 Development of mode awareness 734.1 Nouns in lexical set associated with boxing 1044.2 Verbs in lexical set associated with boxing 1054.3 Verbs from commentaries (not in boxing set) 1074.4 Distribution of reference to fighters in spoken and written

commentaries 107

4.5 The Consul’s nouns 1174.6 Quincey’s nouns 1174.7 The Consul’s verbs 1184.8 Quincey’s verbs 118A.l Approaches to language study 147A.2 Example of phrase embedding 158

Tables

1.1 Breakdown of discourse contributions for three speakers in Sample 1(casual conversation)

18

1.2 Grammatical features of Sample 1 (casual conversation) 211.3 Analysis of clause structure for Sample 1 (casual conversation) 21.4 Clause structure of Sample 2 (radio broadcast) 241.5 Sample analysis of noun phrase structure for Sample 2 (radio

broadcast) 24

1.6 Clause analysis of Sample 3 (academic text) 282.1 Elimination of discourse categories in transcription 562.2 Discourse categories ranked by token totals 572.3 Token fall between Text Sl and Text W by discourse category ranked

according to difference as percentage of Text Sl 59

2.4 Discourse categories ranked according to percentage of differencesbetween Text S and Text W accounted for by speaker error

59

3.1 Divisions of idiolect 643.2 Clause analysis of Sample 18 (blackberry narrative) 773.3 Clause analysis of Sample 19 (accident narrative) 773.4 Clause analysis of Lord Emsworth’s speech 823.5 Clause analysis of McAllister’s speech 833.6 Number and percentage difference Text W from Text S for twenty

speakers (ranked according to difference) 87

3.7 Clause structure of a low-token-loss speaker 904.1 Action versus evaluation in spoken commentary 1014.2 Action versus evaluation in written commentary 1024.3 Sample clause analysis of spoken commentary 1084.4 Sample clause analysis of written commentary 108

2

Preface

I came to the study of language through studying literature and found that thenew way of looking at language that linguistics entailed provided both achallenge and a novel perspective. I was frequently wrong-footed by thedifferent assumptions in the latter sphere, and in particular found the reductivetendency in much of linguistics—for example the notion that within or beneath(depending on the school of thought) a sentence there was a more basic sentencewith which it held identity—was hard for the student of literature in me toswallow. In time, I came to see that a fairly consistent tool for comparing texts wasnot without its benefits, either in the study of language or of literature.

This book is partially a result of this journey of transition which I have madefrom one field of study into another. I hope that I have retained enough of asense of my early bewilderment in language study to have provided a text whichI could have understood as a beginner in the subject. Additionally, I hope that theissues raised are of sufficient interest for the more advanced reader to wish tocontinue to study in the often intangible and shifting interstices between speechand writing, in literary and nonliterary contexts.

Acknowledgements

Many thanks are due to many people who have assisted me both on the road fromliterature to linguistics, and more specifically with the production of this book. Inparticular I would like to thank Ron Carter for his support and advicethroughout, and more generally for his faith in me; Suzanne Romaine and DavidCram for their constant support and advice during the preparation of the case-study material; Margaret Berry, who taught me how to explain grammar; myhusband, Kieron O’Hara, for patience and organisational skills beyond the call ofduty. Finally, but by no means last in my thoughts, warm thanks to mycolleagues at the Centre for English Language Education, and Department ofEnglish Studies, Nottingham University, whose teaching and administrativeloads were increased during the preparation of this book.

I would also like to express my thanks to Cambridge University Press forallowing me to use data from the corpus of spoken English, and to the Editor andstaff of the Official Report, House of Commons, for their invaluable help withthe sections devoted to parliamentary language.

The author and publishers would like to thank A.P.Watt Ltd on behalf of theTrustees of the Wodehouse Estate for permission to reprint extracts from ‘LordEmsworth and the Girlfriend’, taken from Blandings Castle and Elsewhere byP.G.Wodehouse. Extracts from George Orwell’s Keep the Aspidistra Flying arereprinted by permission of Copyright © The estate of the late Sonia BrownellOrwell and Martin Secker and Warburg Ltd.

While the publishers have made every effort to contact copyright holders ofmaterial used in this volume, they would be grateful to hear from any they wereunable to contact.

Abbreviations

Passages used for exemplification are given with the following abbreviations.

BC Conan Doyle, A. (1981) 'The Adventure of the Beryl Coronet',in The Penguin Complete Sherlock Holmes, Harmondsworth:Penguin.

CUP/Nottinghamcorpus

Corpus of spoken English prepared by Nottingham University(Department of English Studies) in collaboration withCambridge University Press.

KAF Orwell, George (1962) Keep the Aspidistra Flying, London:Penguin. (First published 1953.)

LEG Wodehouse, P. G. (1990) 'Lord Emsworth and the Girlfriend',in Muir, Frank (ed.) The Oxford Book of Humorous Prose,London: Guild Publishing.

MC Dickens, C. (1867) Martin Chuzzlewit (revised edn), London:Hazell, Watson and Viney.

MSFS Høeg, Peter (1994) Miss Smilla's Feeling for Snow, London:Flamingo.

OR The Official Report ('Hansard') debate on Televising theCommons, 8 February 1988.

TF Mailer, Norman (1975) The Fight, London: Penguin.

TQ Bush, C. (1953) The Case of the Tudor Queen, London:Penguin.

UV Lowry, Malcolm (1977) Under the Volcano, London: Penguin.(First published 1947.)

WFM Wright, Crispin (1980) Wittgenstein on the Foundations ofMathematics, London: Duckworth.

Introduction

INTENDED READERSHIP

This book aims to give students an outline of the major issues and points ofcontrast between speech and writing, as well as an introduction to a means ofcomparison which they can carry further themselves.

For the professional scholar there is interest in the form of the underlyingargument that the relationship between speech and writing is more problematicthan is sometimes thought, and also in both the presentation and the results of theextended application of channel-based comparison to a variety of discourse in bothliterary and non-literary contexts, including a corpus of parliamentary languagedata.

This book aims to provide insights for the student of literature as well as thoseinterested in the differences between speech and writing more generally. Noprior knowledge of linguistics is assumed and an extensive glossary has beenprovided in the Appendix.

As well as addressing newcomers to the study of language, it is hoped that thedescription of the linguistic and grammatical aspects of the data in a variety ofcontexts will provide a cross-disciplinary juxtaposition of ideas that is of interestto a more advanced and more general audience.

For the student there are the following features:

• a detailed glossary of terms which includes examples in context whenappropriate

• numerous summaries both of arguments and of main factual content• a variety of sample material, ranging from conversations between friends to

boxing match commentaries, from Dickens to detective stories• end-of-chapter exercises to provide further work in the area under discussion• a progression of ideas from introductory material to theoretical issues and

areas for discussion• in addition to the usual references and further reading sections, there is a

‘Paths to further study’ section (see Appendix) which suggests sourcesand starting points for students’ own work in the area.

For the professional scholar there are the following:

• a comparison of speech and writing which retains channel at the centre of thediscussion

• discussion of the implications of transferring dialogue from one channel toanother: from live interactions to exchanges represented on the page; fromnovel dialogue to film soundtrack

• corpus-based case-studies on transcription of parliamentary discourse• the application of linguistic insights in literary contexts which could form the

basis of a one-semester module on the topic of speech and writing• sample material and exercises which can form the basis of undergraduate

work, theoretical discussion which can be raised with more advanced students.

OUTLINE OF THE BOOK

This outline aims to give indications to the two main groups of readersmentioned above of which chapters they will find of most interest.

Chapter 1 should be the starting point for students. It looks at highlycontrasted samples of speech and writing, and introduces the distinction betweenchannel and mode which underlies the approach of this book. The subsequentfour central chapters deal with fundamental points at which salient contrasts canusefully be drawn between speech and writing. The chapter concludes with asummary of spoken and written mode features.

Chapter 2 moves on to look at similar interactions represented in speech andwriting, and would be of interest to the professional scholar both for theunderlying discussion and for the comparison of actual conversation with literaryexchanges. It pays particular attention to the problems of representingspontaneous interaction on the page and the uses which creative writers make ofthis transference.

Chapter 3 deals with contrasts between individual speakers and writers, andraises the difficulty of comparing the written form, influenced as it is byconventionalising and standardising educational and ideological factors, with thespoken. The discussion of this topic would again be of interest to more advancedstudents and professionals. Real individual speakers are contrasted with literaryspeakers, and the problem for the creative writer of conveying individual voiceson the page is considered.

Chapter 4 gives more practical application of the approach suggested in thebook, and looks at the influence of the context of production on samples ofdiscourse in speech and writing. Students may wish to read this chapter inconjunction with Chapter 1 to be provided with an overview of typical featuresof the two modes, and ways of comparing them. Matching texts in differentcontexts are analysed—live, spoken commentary on a sports event compared to asubsequent written commentary; screen dialogue from a film soundtrackcompared to the original dialogue in a novel—and the limitations on speakers

2 INTRODUCTION

and writers in the light of the contexts of production and reception areconsidered.

Chapter 5 is a more theoretically demanding chapter which looks at some ofthe wider issues of the nature of speech and writing in relation to the study oflanguage. Professionals and more advanced students may be better equipped tofind interest in the implications of this discussion.

As well as the wide variety of discourse from which short exemplifyingmaterial is taken, a further aspect of the book is the inclusion of case-study datain two of the early chapters (Chapters 2 and 3). These case studies are taken froma larger project on transcription in the British House of Commons, and areintended to provide not only interest in themselves, but also a chance to seeconclusions about speech and writing in the context of a larger sample of data(around eighty thousand words). These case-studies are based on the comparisonof actual speech during a debate on televising the Commons, and the writtenrecord made of it in Parliament, for the Official Report (‘Hansard’).

NOTATION

Unless otherwise indicated the following notation is used:

| phrase boundary

|| clause boundary

() embedded phrase

[] embedded/subordinate clause

< > co-ordinated phrases

S grammatical subject

V verb

C complement

A adverbial

NP noun phrase

VP verb phrase

AdvP adverb phrase

AdjP adjective phrase

PrepP prepositional phrase

[…] section of text omitted

(.) micro pause

(..) longer pause

* an ungrammatical or ‘ill-formed’ sentence

INTRODUCTION 3

Chapter 1Properties of speech and writing

…an identical spoken and written language would be practicallyintolerable. If we spoke as we write we should find no one to listen:and if we wrote as we speak we should find no one to read. The spokenand written language must not be too near together, as they must notbe too far apart.

(T.S.Eliot)

INTRODUCTION

Although it may seem a truism to say it, speech and writing are different, andthis is the underlying assumption in this book. Writing shares manycharacteristics with a mountain: permanent, clearly delineated and readilyavailable for inspection. We see the marks relevant to our language’s system oforthography (the letters of an alphabet, the symbols of an ideographic script) andcan return to them repeatedly if need be, finding the words they represent eachtime exactly as they were on the page during our last reading. Our understandingof the words may change, as, say, we grow older; or our opinion of their importmay alter—we may, for example, change our opinion of the ending of GreatExpectations or come to understand a line of poetry differently—but theexistence of written text permits us to meet identical words again and again ondifferent occasions.

Words on the page stand separate from one another, and, if we are reading thetext of a competent writer writing non-experimental prose, they usually formthemselves into well-ordered and punctuated units beginning with a capital letterand ending with a full-stop, units which we know as sentences. These units inturn form themselves into coherent texts in which the visual qualities ofpresentation and demarcation assist our understanding. For example, a readersoon becomes so familiar with the meaning of the conventions of punctuation,paragraphing, margins, headings, print size and so on that they cease to think ofthem as significant aspects of a text. Although, as will be seen, people differ inthe emphasis they place on the connection between orthography and the soundsystem of a language (see Chapter 5 for further discussion of this), the process of

reading, for a competent reader, is primarily visual, and the written form oflanguage is anchored in the world of visual perception.

When we come to consider speech the position is quite different. Here, ratherthan a physically unchanging mountain, the more appropriate metaphor is that ofthe ocean: mutable, shifting, and difficult to capture and define. Speech is astrictly linear process: as each sound is uttered one after another this orderingcannot be altered. When a word is spoken, it cannot be taken back or altered, aswe sometimes know to our cost. It may be repeated, or corrected, but eachiteration of it gives us a new and different sample of language.

Two primary channels

As may be gathered from the opening metaphors, this book takes as its startingpoint the assumption that the two primary channels for human communication:the visual and the oral, are fundamentally dissimilar, and that this affects theforms of language found. A second assumption is that in a literate society ourconception of language is strongly influenced by the visual medium in which weare able to communicate. A third principle underlying this work is that thetransference of language items from speech into writing and vice versa is by nomeans a neutral one. The tendency is to think of the process as similar to, say,the translation of a computer file from one wordprocessing system to another.The process has to be undergone for the information to be conveyed in adifferent context, but the resulting text is unchanged (if the conversion issuccessful!). This model of unchanged text on either side of a process (in thecontext of speech and writing the process being transcription/dictation) is amisleading one. A better model is one which hinges on the notion oftransmutation, for example, the formation of ice cubes from water. A child soonlearns the relationship between water and ice, and knows the level of identitybetween them; nonetheless, the substances on either side of the process offreezing are quite different, and are fit for quite different purposes. Literatepeople, who are the describers and analysts of language, can freeze and unfreezelanguage very easily, so easily in fact that we often lose sight of the sophisticatednature of the process.

This chapter explores the influence of the way in which spoken and writtendiscourse is produced by speakers and writers, and perceived by listeners andreaders, on the type of language which is used. In addition, some of the problemsof comparing speech and writing hinted at above are considered in more detail.For example, the fact that the two forms are very different manifestations oflanguage—the one transient and the other more permanent, the one primarilyfounded on the aural sense, the other on the visual—raises questions as to theextent to which like can be said to be being compared with like when samples ofthe two forms are placed in opposition.

PROPERTIES OF SPEECH AND WRITING 5

Some preliminary definitions

The central concepts of channel, medium and mode are introduced in this sectionas sources of insight for the study of speech and writing. These are terms whichare used with varying definitions by different linguists, the first two terms(channel and medium) being at times interchangeable. In the present approach,the terms are kept separate and have distinctive meanings. This is due to the factthat when two forms of language are being compared and contrasted, and whenthe study is undertaken on the basis of samples of actual language data (asopposed to a more abstract, theoretical approach), a clear distinction needs to bedrawn between two ideas concerning the way language is produced.

The first of these ideas is the notion that the spoken and written forms oflanguage differ at their most fundamental level in terms of the way in which theyare transmitted and perceived. Speech is primarily an aural/oral process whichtakes place through the dimension of time in a strictly linear fashion, and cannotpersist through time without a secondary recording apparatus, such as a tape-recorder. Writing is a visual/motoric process which, although it is producedthrough the dimension of time (as all human actions are), has the inherentpotential to persist through time, and for different sections to be revisited in thesame form, but in a different order, as when we go back and re-read part of aparagraph or sentence when we do not understand.

The term used in this book to talk about these two ways of communicating(the aural/oral in opposition to the visual/motoric) is channel. Throughout, thephrases ‘the spoken channel’ or ‘the written channel’ should be interpreted asfocusing in broad terms on the means of production and reception of the sampleof language in question.

However, a fundamental assumption of this book is that the way in whichdiscourse is produced and received has a strong influence on the nature of thelanguage used, and therefore at times a more ‘fine-grained’ discussion of the wayin which the discourse is communicated is relevant. For this the term medium isreserved. This term is used to refer to the precise method and/or materialsubstances used to convey the discourse, that is to say, in terms of the spokenchannel the sample being analysed might take place over the telephone, on a filmsoundtrack, or over a public announcement system. As would be expected, givenits greater material substance, and the variety of texts (books, electronic screens,shopping lists, graffiti and so on) in which it can occur, discourse in the writtenchannel can be produced via more diverse media than the spoken tends to be. Forexample, in different circumstances we can choose to hand write or not, to createpermanent (or at least less mutable) ‘utterances’ on stone as memorials, or sendsemiephemeral correspondence via electronic mail.

The necessity for these preliminaries about the precise use of terminology isthat underlying the approach to the study of speech and writing presented herethere is an assumption that some important conclusions about the relationsbetween them and the nature of each can be drawn by moving beyond the one-to-

6 PROPERTIES OF SPEECH AND WRITING

one comparison of samples of language from the two forms, although this initself is not a fruitless exercise. As language users we choose between one formof communication and another depending on the limitations of the circumstancesand the communicative objectives we have in hand. If, say, we want informationto be stable through time and easily available for retrieval we do not go to greatlengths to memorise it, or repeat it, unless we do not have the appropriatemedium available; in a literate society we create a permanent record via thevisual/motoric (for short, the written) channel. This primary channel-orientedchoice will in turn have ramifications for the precise medium-oriented choiceswe make, in terms of the actual means of producing the language. And thesechannel/medium choices fundamentally affect the potential for typical languageuse in the two forms. This last concept, the most difficult to pin down but themost interesting, is referred to as mode in the rest of the book, and is returned toin the summaries after the analyses in this chapter.

Listeners and readers

Another way of looking at these distinctions, and of underlining their relevanceto the study of speech in opposition to writing, is to consider the very differentneeds of listeners and readers who are on the receiving end of language andtrying to make sense of it.1 Listeners are under pressure to understand quickly,and in many cases, to respond adequately. A delay in response or aninappropriate reply can have significant and immediate interpersonal results.Several factors influence the capacity of a listener to comprehend adequately,but of central importance is sufficient shared knowledge between speaker andhearer for the latter to ‘get the point’. It can be hard for the outsider to gauge (orunderstand) the relevance of what is said. This is a problem which non-nativespeakers often ascribe to linguistic failings on their own part, for example notknowing enough vocabulary, or people speaking too fast for them to understand,but it is a problem which is shared to some extent by anyone not ‘in the know’.

For example, if the following is considered:

Question: ‘Where’s Rona?’Answer: ‘It’s Thursday.’

it is not possible to judge whether this contains an appropriate response in theabstract. Initially, it might seem an unlikely answer, since stereotypically we tendto think of a ‘wh’-question of place as requiring a location indicator in theanswer; probably we would predict some kind of adverbial phrase: ‘she’s athome’ However, the implication of the reply in the example might make it anadequate answer which would expand to something like: ‘it’s Thursday and atthis time every Thursday as you know she goes to her car maintenance class.’

The purpose of this example is not so much to begin an exploration of the deepwaters of implicature, but rather to make the more general point that listeners areoften in the position of having to get the point, assess their own view, express


some reply, offer another gambit, and so on under the constraints of discoursewhich takes place face-to-face with immediate processing and time constraints.If they miss the point, they either have to continue to listen passively in the hopethat they will gather from some later utterances what is meant, or they have toask for an explanation. Equally, if they do not time their response accurately,they may miss the opportunity for taking a turn in the conversation, and havedifficulty in bringing the discourse back to their topic of interest,

The spoken channel is closely bound up with high levels of interactivepotential, and listeners, as well as speakers are involved in something akin to‘performing’ as they seek to comprehend what someone else has said, and thenconstruct and utter their own contribution. In the process of speaking a personmust not only consider the informational content of what they are saying(whether, say, it is correct and relevant) but also try to project their own ideasappropriately and effectively, and present themselves to the world of their listenersin a way which engages their attention. That communication is a two-wayprocess involving active participation on the part of recipients is far easier to seein the spoken channel.2

Readers, on the other hand, are in a different relation to the discourse whichthey are comprehending. They are generally under fewer time constraints andunder less pressure to respond actively and immediately to what they have read.The reading-writing process is, to some extent, temporally independent, andalthough the act of reading takes place in actual time, and in an actual context oflocation, setting and so on, it does not happen under the same dynamic andmutable circumstances of listening. There are differing schools of thought on thelevel of influence of context on written discourse, and of the relationshipbetween readers and texts, but in contrast to the spoken channel, the lowerpotential for immediate response in the written channel (for an interruption, say,or for a request to explain part of a text) brings with it typical features of thelanguage used. For example, since the reader is not usually in the position to askthe writer for an explanation, the writer needs to consider what the potential(often anonymous) reader needs to be provided with in order to understand thetext. Whereas a listener can gather the meaning of ‘It’s over there’, and, if theycannot, are in the position to ask for clarification, the same clause in the writtenchannel needs either to be contextualised with care, or expressed using full nounphrases and adverbial phrases: ‘The front door key is under the flowerpot’ (fordefinitions of terms used in grammatical analysis see Glossary, pp. 149–64).Creative writers may choose to make life difficult for readers (considerthe opening of The Sound and the Fury or Finnegans Wake) but the key point isthat competent writers learn to take readers into account, whether or not theysubsequently treat them to a dose of confusion for artistic purposes.


Some problems of comparison

In a literate society we are surrounded by the visual impressions made on us bythe written form, and it is difficult to believe that language is anything but astable and permanent entity. Dominated as our conception of language will tendto be by the tangible form rather than the less permanent one, it is hard to realisethat the spoken channel is fundamentally temporally dependent, and that there isan important imbalance between the two forms, a skewing which makes directcomparison between them problematic.

Some sense of the problem can be arrived at if we ask ourselves which form wecan have access to more of if we want to analyse the two: speech or writing? Ourimmediate response might be ‘speech’, because, if we consider all the billions ofpeople in the world, and the fact that only when there is some pathologicalreason does the normal child not learn to speak, an unimaginable number ofutterances are produced every minute of the day on this planet. However, even withmodern recording techniques, only the tiniest fraction of any moment’s spokenmaterial taken as a whole throughout even a single community can be capturedand analysed. And this brings us up short in our answer, since we can only havedirect access to a tiny amount of spoken material, whether in our own immediateexperience, or, as a professional analyst, a slightly extended sample of recordedmaterial. We know that billions upon billions of words are being spoken at anymoment, but each contribution is transient and after it has been uttered few canremember the precise wording, even only seconds after it has been spoken. Whenwe speak, the major part of what we say passes out of time without a trace,usually lasting little more than our breath does on a mirror.

In contrast, texts produced in the written channel accumulate, willy-nilly,through time. Indeed, this is the most salient and practically useful aspect of thewritten form. Whereas a deliberate effort has to be made in the spoken channel inorder to capture discourse (mechanical sound-recording and transcription, forexample), it takes a specific act to eliminate written material. Even in theelectronic age, words on paper dominate life in a literate or even semi-literatesociety, and any reader can have access to words written in other ages, and otherplaces, if they have the capacity and inclination to read them. Therefore, in termsof which form we have access to, and have samples of in the medium for whichit was intended, the written is the inevitable winner.

In attempting to answer the question ‘which is there more of for analysis’ wehave immediately come up against a basic problem of comparability between thetwo forms due to the channel differences which exist between them. And thisdoes not exhaust the problems we encounter in answering the question ofquantity. If we turn to the medium of recorded speech and look for a point ofcomparison in the written, the first thing which springs to mind is the printedbook. Both present language in a medium which can be reduplicated time andagain. Yet this process of reduplication which is the physical manifestation of theact of capturing or publishing someone’s language does not happen equally in both


channels. When we value someone’s words highly we tend to translate them fromthe spoken channel, in order to capture them. For example, we transcribe greatspeeches, or write down a child’s amusing utterance.

The written is seen as not only a more convenient means of capturing andkeeping discourse, it also carries with it a cultural and ideological valueassociated with education, publishing and the arts. Discourse in the writtenchannel has, as it were, a built in ‘recording mechanism’ and is therefore theoptimal means of conveying and storing ideas which a society wishes to transmitover time. The spoken, on the other hand, is primarily suited to the ‘one off’utterance which serves a purpose in a particular context, but which is not neededin its exact form at a later date.

Not only is the written by nature more permanent, and more amenable toanalysis, it is also, because of these very characteristics, the medium throughwhich the major part of linguistic analysis takes place. It is very difficult, even ifthe object of study is particular speech sounds, to undertake description andanalysis directly from the sound medium without recourse to some system ofrepresentation in the written channel. Quite apart from any intuitive sense that ourimpression of language is strongly influenced by the written form, thisrepresentational fact alone makes the relationship between the two forms offundamental importance and interest in the study of language (see Chapter 5 forfurther discussion).

Speech and writing in society

In the previous paragraphs an asymmetry was pointed to as existing between thetwo forms in temporal terms, with the spoken form’s transient nature beingbrought to the fore in contrast to the more permanent and recording functions ofthe written channel. Continuing the discussion which focuses on readers andhearers as an important factor in determining mode choices, a second area ofimbalance, and therefore of potential influence on the two forms, is the process ofthe production and reception of texts in a society.

Yesterday I read a variety of written material from among the following: partof a novel, e-mail messages, instructions to a CD timer, parts of a newspaper,students’ essays, correspondence relating to work, the label of a wine bottle,notices relating to changes in library opening times. These are texts which springto mind because they were actively read. In addition to them, I would also havebeen surrounded by thousands of written words to which I paid little or noattention—book-titles on shelves; slogans on billboards; lettering on vans andlorries; road signs and a plethora of other graphic representations of language.

The navel-gazing exercise of contemplating the texts read by myself serves thepurpose of highlighting some of the paradoxes thrown up in analysing therelationship between speech and writing. The first of these relates to theimbalance between producers and recipients of written texts. Even in the mostliterate societies the texts that are read are produced by fewer people than are


expected to read them. Whereas speaking usually takes place to a small numberof known listeners, the writer is generally conveying ideas to a larger number ofrecipients, who may well be unknown and anonymous. Furthermore, wherereading and writing are the skills of an educated élite, then the readers andwriters of texts are more likely to be the same small section of the populationwhose literacy skills separate their communication from the majority of thepopulation. These factors serve to keep the mass of spoken language different interms of structure, style and content from written mode.

The second point brought out by a consideration of the nature and variety ofwritten texts around us is that the ability to read ‘switches on’ an access to textswhich is only restricted by such things as legibility. The conventionalisedspelling and presentation of written texts (especially in the printed medium)3

allows the person who has been through a process of education in a literatesociety to comprehend a wide selection of texts, even texts which are not aimedat him/her as reader. Once the text is launched into the public domain, specialsteps need to be taken if access to it is to be restricted. This fact applies even toprivate material such as diaries or letters, which, unless a conscious act is takento destroy or hide them, can remain available to any reader in future time. Vastquantities of written material are ephemeral and have a limited ‘shelf life’:newspapers, junk mail, shopping lists, and so on. Nevertheless, it is in the natureof discourse in the written channel to have the potential for permanence, apotential which means that, while a writer may produce a text with regard to aspecific reader or readers, once it has been produced the text takes on a degree ofindependence from the text producer who cannot later easily control or evenknow the recipients.

The process of becoming a competent writer is partly that of gaining an abilityto assess the needs of an often anonymous reader, and frequently a set of people,rather than an individual. These factors contribute to the general tendency for thewritten form to be less dependent on immediate context, more explicit in the wayideas are expressed and less personally oriented, both in terms of the textproducer and the reader. That is to say, since a text may have to be read andunderstood by people with a very different perspective on the world, the writermust at the very least take this fact into account when producing language in thewritten channel.

The visual/motoric nature of writing, and its concomitant greater permanenceand tangibility serve to make it more suited to the public sphere ofcommunication, to the expression of ideas which require a degree of permanence,to the dissemination of ideas to a wide and diverse audience. To put it morestrongly, discourse in the written channel is fundamentally defined by thesecharacteristics and therefore is inextricably linked to the public, institutional orestablishment aspects of communication as opposed to private, individual orinnovative ones. This is not to say that the written channel does not serve theselatter aspects at times, but the point is rather that the distinctive nature of writingcreates a set of potentialities and limitations on writers and readers in terms of


what can be expressed and understood. These in turn have a ‘knock-on’ effect onmode, that is, the type of language produced.

Dependent as it is on a set of fairly stable conventions such as punctuation,spelling and generally standard grammar, writing that is extremely individualisticruns the risk of quickly becoming incomprehensible to all but the text producer(and even to the text producer if some time passes between the writing of the textand the subsequent re-reading—we have all experienced the incomprehensibilityof our early student lecture notes, taken at speed and with random abbreviationsand utterly meaningless by the time revision comes around). This discussion istaken up again in more detail in Chapter 3, when I turn to how individualsexpress themselves in the two channels. For now, the point is that the definingcharacteristics of the written channel tend to make discourse in it more explicit,impersonal, conservative and oriented towards a status quo which reflects thepowerful societal influences of education and the printed media.

When we turn to a consideration of discourse in the aural/oral channel (asbefore, this will be referred to for short as ‘the spoken channel’), the situation israther different. Unlike writing, which has its basis in a system of clearlydelineated graphical signs which, if they are to ‘work’, must adhere to public,pedagogically sustained conventions, speaking, as was noted above, is essentiallyintangible in its substance and is the optimal channel of interpersonal, privatediscourse. Furthermore, the nature of the spoken form, mutable and passing frommouth to mouth, often beyond the reach of standardising influences, means thatit sustains a far greater diversity of forms.

All humans naturally learn to speak, and the spoken channel is the primarymeans of communication between people. Although the process of becoming afully fledged speaker in fact takes many of our formative years, it is shaped largelyby non-institutional forces, such as family and influential peers, and is generally(in a literate society) not regarded as part of education as such.4 The way inwhich we speak, therefore, tends to be more strongly marked by the speechpatterns (both in terms of sounds—accent and intonation; and in terms of form—word choice and grammar) of family and friends than is the way we write.Paradoxically, therefore, although the primary means of communicating, and theone to which all members of a society have access is speech, the greater tendencyfor diversity in the spoken channel means that even speakers of the samelanguage can misunderstand one another quite easily. This incomprehensibilityof speech may not only stem from a speaker having a marked accent, such asGlaswegian, but also from the private speaker-listener orientation of much casualspeech. The nuances, and sometimes even the basic meaning, of utterances in aprivate conversation can be difficult for an outside observer to grasp.

Summary of introductory discussion

The written form of language is frequently thought of as a parasitic, secondarysystem which is a direct reflection of the spoken form. In terms of human


development (both of humankind and of the individual), the written channel isundeniably a later development, relying as it does on delicate motor skills. It isnot the place here to go into an extended discussion of theoretical points aboutthe nature of the relationship (this is undertaken in more detail in Chapter 5), butrather to approach the concept of channel as an influential, if not defining, factoron the type of language used. That is to say, to use insights about channel to helpus find more general points about typical mode in the two forms.

To summarise, so far the nature of the two channels—primarily aural/oral andprimarily visual/motoric—has been taken as the starting-point for aninvestigation of factors underlying the discourse produced via the channels. Thisled to the conclusion that the salient facts about the spoken channel are that it isproduced in a strictly linear fashion through time and is essentially transient. Incontrast, the written channel was defined as being fundamentally less transientand therefore amounts to a means of not only conveying information, but alsorecording it. Two further aspects of the way in which the two forms of languageare produced were noted as being definitive. The first was that the spokenchannel has a high potential for immediate interaction between producers andrecipients and that this leads to the spoken channel being a medium for theprojection of, and the reflection of, personality and personally orientedbehaviour. This was contrasted to the second factor: the lower interactivepotential of the written channel and the concomitant potential for impersonality.These areas of underlying contrast in the way in which language is producedwere also considered in terms of the difficulties they lead to in terms ofcomparison.

The previous discussion suggested that the nature of channel can lead us topreliminary conclusions about speech and writing, and that these conclusions canbe reached without recourse to separate concepts of, say, appropriateness or styletypical of a genre. These latter concepts tend to muddy the waters in anycomparison of speech and writing, and draw atten tion away from aninvestigation of the nature of the two forms per se. It is tempting to say suchthings as ‘speech is informal’ and ‘writing is formal’, or less baldly, ‘writing ismore formal than speaking’. But if we stop to think about these statements, itbecomes clear that they are hard to justify. We can easily find examples ofinformal writing, and of formal speaking. If we rephrase the statement in awatered down form—‘most speech is less formal than writing’, or somethingsimilar—then we may be closer to the mark. However, the aim of this book is toinvestigate essential differences between speech and writing, as opposed toassessing the probability that any given sample from either mode will show aparticular characteristic. The reasons behind this are discussed in more detail inChapter 5.


ANALYSIS OF SAMPLE DISCOURSE FROM SPEECHAND WRITING

The rest of this chapter will take the notions about the nature of the two formswhich were generated by our discussion of channel and contrast samples oflanguage in terms of these. Two of the samples are taken from contexts whichshow speech and writing at the ‘extremes’ of discourse in terms of the factorsseen as underlying channel: permanency versus impermanency; private andinterpersonal versus public and abstract. In order to show these contrasts the mostephemeral type of discourse—a private, casual conversation—is contrasted witha sample from a printed academic textbook, which is chosen to represent thepublic, impersonal and less transient end of the spectrum. The strengths andweaknesses of this approach are then discussed.

The spoken channel

This section looks in more detail at the nature of primarily aural/oralcommunication in terms of the influence of the way the discourse is produced(i.e. the channel, as defined above) on the type of discourse that is produced (i.e.the mode). Spoken discourse is primarily aural in terms of its reception, and oralin terms of its production. This is not to say that aspects other than the aural/oraldo not play a large part in many instances of communication, for example gazeand body language in face-to-face conversation, or the actions which are seenaccompanying a sports commentary, or the gestures of an air-hostess as thesafety features of an aeroplane are explained to passengers. Indeed, there arerelatively few situations where one has to depend solely on the aural in order tounderstand what is being said. Some people even find it less easy tocommunicate via the telephone where there is no recourse to the visual.Nonetheless, it is useful in a study of speech in opposition to writing to considerthe aural/oral aspects separately from any other accompanying visual features.As before, this primarily aural/oral means of producing and understandingdiscourse will be given the shorthand title ‘the spoken channel’. The notion ofother influential contextual features is returned to in Chapter 4.

Casual conversation

The data in this section are based on a short sample originally produced in thespoken channel (and now transcribed into the written channel for analysis)5—anextract from a spontaneous conversation between friends. The extractexemplifies non-public and interpersonally oriented language use, and has a highpotential for interactivity. Furthermore, the content was essentially ephemeral(the friends are discussing what to do that evening). The sample chosen will bediscussed briefly in the light of these factors, before a detailed analysis of theway the channel-based factors influenced the type of language that was produced.


While the nature of the written channel makes it ideal for the dissemination ofideas for public consumption in a stable, standardised and conventional form, thespoken channel, being essentially transient and usually shaped by its producers‘on the hoof’ (see pp. 8–10 for a fuller discussion of this), is more suited to non-public and interpersonally oriented discourse. The present example is clearly inthis category.

A second aspect of channel which was isolated above was that of the differentlevel of potential for interaction which is offered by language used in the twochannels. The spoken was seen as having a high potential for immediateresponse by an interlocutor, whereas the nature of the written channel means thatis has a far lower potential for such a response. In this casual conversation,within certain limits of politeness and turn-taking, the three speakers have anequal opportunity to contribute to the discourse.

While the original casual conversation was typical of a style of discoursewhich is not intended to have a ‘shelf life’ beyond the immediate functions andconcerns of the participants (the arrangements for the evening, and theexpression of opinion about opportunities for going out), the fact of transcriptionhas transfixed the exchanges and fossilised them for an observer. However, wecan gain a sense of the transient, interpersonally oriented discourse of the originalchannel.

Three levels of comparison—discourse, grammar and lexis—are eachexamined in turn, and the influence of the way in which the language isproduced, the original channel, is considered. The aim, in general, is to show howthe original channel of production works to limit and shape the discourse,producing the typical mode features which we are interested in.

The three speakers in the first extract, Sample 1, are friends who are havingtea together and chatting casually about their plans for the evening. They areyoung women, students, who know one another well. The contributions havebeen numbered for ease of reference.

Sample 1

1 <S 01 > Shall we go down the pub tonight or2 <S 03> Yeah3 <S 01 > What, Coracles or the Blue Boar4 <S 02> The Blue Boar5 <S 03> Don’t like the Coracles very much6 <S 01 > I don’t really not really much happening7 <S 03> No…no nice blokes [inaudible]8 <S 01> [Laughs]9 <S 02> [Laughs]

10 <S 03> There isn’t anywhere in Carmarthen though is there11 <S 01> I don’t know12 <S 02> You can hardly talk can you


13 <S 01 > Ooh ooh ooh gossip there isn’t any gossip is there14 <S 02> [Laughs]15 <S 03> If there’s a man and Carmarthen there’s gossip16 <S 02> [Laughs] true true

(CUP/Nottingham corpus)

A casual conversation between friends depends on co-operation between thecontributors whose input creates the discourse. It is not usually a matter of whocan say the most, but rather a process of eliciting and giving the right kind ofresponses. A pause, or a lack of a response to an observation or comment can bea sign that there is a problem in the conversation. The high potential forinteraction which was noted at being a defining characteristic of the spokenchannel means that in conversational settings the distinctive texture of thediscourse is created by more than one person, and the shape which theconversation takes on reflects the dynamics existing between the participants. Thisis unlike institutionalised forms of spoken discourse such as a political speech, anacademic lecture, or a business presentation, where a dominant speaker isallocated the active speaking role, and members of a passive listening audienceabdicate their rights to contribute during the event.

The nature of casual conversation is bound up with the nature of the spokenchannel. In the face-to-face, spontaneous interactions of human beings we canwitness the means by which personalities are projected on to the world andrelations developed. The contributions—the initiating remarks, responses, jokesand laughter—which can be seen in Sample 1 show little evidence of pre-planned speech, and, while the talk does conform to some of the typicalregularities of exchanges (question and answer, and so on), the precise nature ofthe sample and the way it unfolds are governed and shaped by the people whoare involved.

The process of transcribing a section of a conversation has the effect ofpresenting it for analysis as a completed artefact. However, for those involved inthe production of the discourse the outcome of their remarks — whether theywould be understood, whether there would be quick agreement or prolongeddiscussion, whether their funny comments would be well received—cannot beknown at the moment when they are speaking. In this way, spontaneous spokendiscourse, of which casual conversation is the archetypal example, directly reflectsthe personalities of those involved as they seek to understand one another and, attimes, control the thread of the conversation or elicit a particular response. Theimmediacy of contact, the split-second timing, the potential for loss of face ifthere is a misunderstanding, the nuance of emphasis and intonation, which are allbound up with communicating in the spoken channel, are largely lost in thetranslation of the living conversation on to the page.

Creative writers often have a strong sense of the conversational interaction asa chance to convey characters’ personalities, and use the representation of speechas a tool for conveying important features of their key figures. However, there


are several interesting and problematic aspects to the creation and presentation ofimaginary dialogue. The problem for the writer of dialogue in the novel or forthe screen and stage is that not only does some of the dynamism which is lost inthe process of taking an interaction from one channel and placing it in the otherneed to be replaced, but the writer also has to work within the conventions ofreader expectation. These points are dealt with in more detail in the subsequentchapters. The present issue is that the artefact we examine as outsiders,particularly when it is presented via the visual written channel, is a very differentkettle of fish from the conversation as it happened. It is impossible for theanalyst to gain anything but a flavour of the event, and even when analysing aconversation in which one has taken part it is hard to regain a sense of thespecific interpersonal dynamics which took place.

Having said all this, there now follows an analysis of some of the discoursefeatures present in the textual artefact: the transcript we are considering.

Discourse features

In the present example, the discourse falls naturally into two halves (1–9 and 10–16) each marked at their end by laughter as a response to an intentionally funnyremark by Speaker 3. As such, Speaker 3 is a dominant and influential speaker,despite the fact that the turns are shared more or less equally between the threecontributors (Speaker 1 making six contributions and the other two speakersmaking five), since it is she who shifts the discussion away from makingarrangements, by interpreting Speaker 1’s ‘not much happening’ as relating to‘blokes’:

6 <S 01 > I don’t really not really much happening 7 <S 03> No…no nice blokes [inaudible]8 <S 01> [Laughs]9 <S 02> [Laughs]

and evades the same speaker’s request for ‘gossip’ with another humorousremark:

15 <S 03> If there’s a man and Carmarthen there’s gossip16 <S 0> [Laughs] true true

In the first stage (1–9) Speaker 1 is the main explicit initiator who both instigatesthe discussion ‘Shall we go down the pub tonight’ and tries to make the decisionmore specific: ‘What, Coracles or the Blue Boar’. On the other hand, Speaker 3becomes the more overt ‘leader’ of the conversation in the second half when shetries to initiate a more general discussion of the shortcomings of Carmarthen’snightlife:

10 <S 03> There isn’t anywhere in Carmarthen though is there


Speaker 2 is notable for having a mainly reactive role in the discourse. Thedifferent number and type of contributions to the discourse can be seen clearly ifthey are tabulated (see Table 1.1).

Column three of Table 1.1 shows turns (i.e. contributions to a conversation)which have a ‘pivotal’ status, being uttered as responses to an earliercontribution, but in themselves acting as response elicitors. Speaker 3 againshows some dominance in having two such ‘hidden’ initiating moves.

The complex interplay between these friends even in this short example fromthe spoken channel brings out the strongly interactive and personality-oriented(as well as personally-oriented) nature of spoken discourse. In it we can see howthe course of a conversation can be changed or moved tangentially by adominant speaker, and how the spoken channel helps to carry forward andconfirm roles and relationships between people.

Grammatical features

The complexity of the grammatical features found in casual conversation oftenstems from a high incidence of a characteristic called ellipsis. This is a complexconcept which basically hinges on the notion that something is ‘missing’ from anutterance or clause, but that it can be understood because of the surroundingdiscourse and context. In the written channel, where ideas tend to be expressed incomplete sentences with an initial capital letter and a closing full-stop, the idea isrelatively straightforward, and in some cases it is obvious in the spoken what couldbe ‘recovered’ (‘missing’ (ellided) elements are placed in square brackets):

5 <S 03> [I] Don’t like the Coracles very much

Table 1.1 Breakdown of discourse contributions for three speakers in Sample 1 (casualconversation)


However, many of the contributions that are made to spontaneousconversation need their contextualising topic and/or initiating move in order forthe ‘missing’ items to be understood, and even then the analyst often has avariety of choices with which to fill the ‘gaps’. If we take contribution 6 from theextract—‘I don’t really not really much happening’—a possible interpretation is:

I don’t really [like the Coracles either?]. [There is?] not really muchhappening [there?].

But other wordings could be possible:

I don’t really [like it]. [I think that] not really much [is] happening [at theCoracles at the moment].

And in some cases the recovery job, while capturing the sense of what thespeaker probably intended, has to create an entire clause from, say, part of aprepositional phrase, as in contribution 4:

4 <S 02> [I would prefer to go to] The Blue BoarIn the spoken channel language users can afford to be extremely economical in

the way they construct utterances. Indeed, were they to express their ideas in thefull forms suggested above, they would sound like non-native speakers who tendto cling to full sentences as being ‘correct’ when their communication would beimproved by using less complete clauses. However, most, if not all, systems ofgrammatical description are based upon complete, isolated sample clauses(which tend to be closer to written mode). Therefore, spontaneous interactivediscourse presents the analyst with particular problems. The first of these iswhether and to what degree the gaps should be filled in, and the second is how tomatch the distinctive complexities of an utterance like:

10 <S 03> There isn’t anywhere in Carmarthen though is thereto the frequently less than appropriate grammatical apparatus available.These two problems relate to one another, and to the higher-level issue that the

grammatical system as presently described seems more geared to discourse in thewritten channel than in the spoken.

If a principled decision is taken to analyse the utterances delivered in thespoken channel as they stand, then some new way of treating an expression like:

6 <S 01 > I don’t really not really much happeningwhich contains verb phrases which are ‘incomplete’ by ordinary standards

(‘don’t like’ and ‘is happening’) is necessary. On the other hand, if a descriptionis made which is based on ‘filled out’ clauses, there comes a point at which theobject being described is altered to such an extent that one has to questionwhether it is the same entity.

The problem can be fleshed out by an attempt to analyse the extract in somedetail (see Table 1.2). The principle here is to describe the utterances with standardgrammatical terms. Single-word utterances such as ‘Yeah’ and laughter have


been omitted from the analysis. Rather than attempting to recover a largequantity of ellided material, where a noun phrase is used without anycontextualising clause the term ‘noun phrase topic unit’ has been coined in orderto capture the functional status of the words.

The important point to note is that each of these contributions to theconversation is non-standard in some way, if one does not try to ‘recover’ anunderlying structure.6 These ‘deviant’ forms range from the structurally standardclause ‘I don’t know’, which simply contains an abbreviation that is typical ofspoken mode, to ‘I don’t really not really much happening’ which is nearlyincomprehensible when transcribed and without the contextualising exchange.

The spoken channel permits and favours structures which reflect the highlyinteractive nature of the channel. These include unfinished clauses, the use ofnoun phrases in place of complete clauses and question forms, with particularuse of ‘tag-questions’.

These latter types of clause, which take the form of an appropriate auxiliary ormodal verb (be, have, do, can, would, etc.) followed by a repetition of thesubject of the associated previous clause, are usually dealt with briefly instandard grammars. They are strongly associated with spoken mode, particularlysince the meaning of structurally identical questions is altered by the choicebetween a falling or rising intonation pattern (a falling intonation tends tosuggest that the speaker expects the listener to agree, whereas a rising intonationcan imply surprise, hesitancy or doubtfulness).

In the extract from the conversation between the women three tagquestionclauses are used in quick succession (one by each of the participants):

<S 03> There isn’t anywhere in Carmarthen though is there

<S 02> You can hardly talk can you<S 01 > Ooh ooh ooh gossip there isn’t any gossip is thereThe use of these structures marks the discourse as constructed interactively,

with each speaker explicitly seeking a response by using a tag-question as aprompt for further comments. This phase of the conversation is ended when thespeaker who dominates the exchanges by provoking laughter rounds off thesection with the epigrammatic ‘If there’s a man and Carmarthen there’s gossip.’

When utterances contain a verb, the usual criterion for a section of language tobe called a clause, the clause is generally short (see Table 1.3).

Not only are the clauses short, with the longest containing seven words, butthe phrases which make up the constituents of the clauses are also short, with theco-ordinated complement ‘a man and Carmarthen’ being the longest. Thegrammatical subjects are particularly simple, consisting of pronouns or the‘dummy’ subject ‘there’ of existential sentences.

To summarise, the grammatical features which are marked in this example ofspontaneous conversation are: a high level of ellipsis, for example noun phrasesworking as complete utterances (‘The Blue Boar’, ‘gossip’), ‘missing’ subjects(‘Don’t like…’) and verb deletion (‘I don’t really’); expletives (‘Ooh’); tag-


questions; existential clauses; and non-standard forms (such as ‘what’ instead of‘which’, ‘is’ instead of ‘are’).

Several of these very common features can be ascribed to the nature of thechannel. For example, expletives or tag-questions are indicative of interactivediscourse; the deletion of clause elements is only possible when language-usersare confident that the people they are communicating with can ‘fill in’ themissing elements, and for this to be the case the interlocutors need to be able toknow instantaneously if there is a break in understanding. The simplicity of thegrammatical subjects, the shortness of the clauses and the propensity forexistential clauses are typical of discourse created without time for greatreflection, planning or editing. These are the types of grammatical feature,together with lexical features (which I deal with below), which relate strongly to

Table 1.2 Grammatical features of Sample 1 (casual conversation)


the way in which the discourse is produced (the channel) and go to make upspoken mode.

Lexical features

The extract shows the low lexical density typical of spontaneous, interactivespeech, with over twice as many grammatical words being used as lexical words(51 to 23) (for definitions of ‘grammatical’, ‘lexical’, etc. see Glossary, pp. 149–64). The extract is too small for any useful statistical conclusions to be madeabout the type/token ratio, but a non-statistical description shows up lexical‘echoing’ of the central topic items (Blue Boar (2), Coracles (2), gossip (3)). Interms of word length, the majority of the items are below three syllables/eightletters and are simple, core vocabulary. As would be expected, Speaker 3, whoshows a greater propensity for the performance aspects of speech, uses both thecore term ‘man’ and the non-core ‘blokes’. As was seen with the grammaticalfeatures, the channel of production can be seen influencing the type of languageproduced, with a tendency for simplicity over complexity in terms of the lexicalchoices made.

The vast bulk of daily speech is of the kind shown in Sample 1 (p. 17), butthere are several speech contexts where simple clauses and vocabulary will notbe appropriate, for example an academic lecture or business discussion, and inthese contexts pressure is put on language producers to create language whichgoes beyond the norms of spoken mode, despite being presented in the spokenchannel. The following sample shows a speaker working under these kinds ofpressure.

Radio broadcast

Sample 2

Table 1.3 Analysis of clause structure for Sample 1 (casual conversation)


The (.) moral imperative (.) of providing (.) short-term assistance in theform of humanitarian aid (.) has (..) in a funny way come to occupy (.)centre place in policy making and prevented the emergence (.) of actual (.)policies about (.) what (.) should be done in regard to the larger conflict (..)er a very (.) clear illustration of this is the way in which (.) the delivery ofhumanitarian aid in (.) Bosnia has been (.) used and very understandably soas a justification (.) for not engaging in tougher military action…

(Professor Adam Roberts, speaking on Analysis, BBC Radio Four,5 Oct. 1995)

Here the brackets indicate short pauses, with a single dot indicating a ‘micro-pause’ and the double dots indicating a longer pause.

Discourse features

The radio broadcast of a recorded contribution to a discussion has a longer ‘life’than a casual conversation (not least because the programme was repeated ontwo different days, and would then become part of archive material with apotential for reproduction). The contrast here is between discourse which,although it has been recorded, was produced by speakers with little thought totheir words existing beyond the lifetime of their interaction, and moredeliberatively produced discourse spoken with a view not only to a publicaudience, but also to an audience removed in time.7

This example, since it was produced for public consumption and has a lowpotential for interaction, has many points of contrast with the previous samplefrom the spoken channel (p. 17). It is produced by one speaker for an audiencemade up of a primary listener, the interviewer, and a more influential set ofsecondary listeners, the subsequent audience of the broadcast programme.

The speaker produces this discourse under the twin pressures of knowing thathe is being recorded and that his speech must be fluent, error-free, and coherent,and that his audience is wide.

Grammatical features

In terms of grammar, the discourse is more complex than the casual conversation,and the difficulty of constructing some of the sections is reflected in the micro-pauses (indicated by (.)) as the speaker assesses the acceptability of the nextphrase he is going to utter. The underlying structure is relatively simple with twoco-ordinated clauses linked by ‘and’, followed by a main clause with the verb‘is’ (‘a very clear illustration…is…’) (see Table 1.4).

However, within the clause constituents of subject and complement a lot ofinformation is crammed (see Table 1.5):

In this case the main headword of this grammatical subject is ‘imperative’which is post-modified by a series of nested prepositional phrases culminating in


the lowest head word ‘aid’, and the words ‘assistance’ and ‘form’ are also pre- orpost-modified. The difficulty of constructing this complex subject in the spokenchannel is reflected in the three micro-pauses the speaker has to make. Thecomplement of the final clause is again highly complex. It begins at ‘the way inwhich…’ with a relative clause post-modifying ‘way’ and then complex nounphrases at subject and complement position within this clause.

This level of complexity is not typical of spoken mode, and as well as thepauses which indicate the effort of producing this type of discourse in the spokenchannel, the speaker uses various strategies to hedge what he is saying. While theexample is notable for having no adverbial constituents of time, cause, place andso on, it does have phrases similar to sentence adverbials or adjuncts whichindicate the speaker’s opinion or stance towards the information he is giving.Thus, this speaker pauses quite noticeably before stating that ‘the moralimperative…of…humanitarian aid’ is the first priority in policy making andmakes the statement less categorical by adding ‘in a funny way’. Similarly, whenhe is pointing out that humanitarian aid has been used as a justification foravoiding military action he adds ‘and very understandably so’. These asides andcaveats would not appear in this form in a written version of these ideas, as anauthor would have the time to phrase the information in such a way that hisstance was obvious and he would have greater confidence that the discourse wassaying precisely what he intended with little room for misconstrual.

Lexical features

In terms of lexis, this sample again is more complex and diverse than theprevious example from the spoken channel. The balance of lexical words togrammatical words is closer to half-and-half (38 lexical to 40 grammatical,counting ‘come’ as a semi-auxiliary) and, whereas the casual conversation

Table 1.4 Clause structure of Sample 2 (radio broadcast)

Table 1.5 Sample analysis of noun phrase structure for Sample 2 (radio broadcast)


contained mainly simple one- or two-syllable words, this sample shows a varietyof polysyllabic vocabulary. Further evidence of the speaker ‘performing’ underthe pressure of the context of a broadcast is the tendency to redundancy, forexample ‘the emergence of actual policies’, ‘in regard to‘or ‘the way in which’.

Summary of spoken channel features

The spoken channel is by nature mutable, and although we can analyse acomplete conversation in the static written channel it must be remembered thatthis is not the entity which was originally produced. Casual conversation is proneto the vagaries of topic change, misunderstandings, and gen eral evidence ofinterpersonal factors working on the discourse. While much conversation followsa degree of patteraing, particularly at moments of greeting and parting, theprecise turns which it will take are in the hands of the participants who maychoose to keep silent or respond, question or comment, attempt to initiatelaughter or change the topic. When spontaneous discourse from the spokenchannel is presented as an artefact for analysis in the written channel, it isdifficult to recall that at the moment when (particularly initiating) moves aremade the speaker is doing something akin to performing to an audience, and thatthis audience’s response in itself creates and demarcates the potential for ensuingmoves.

This mutable and temporally bound aspect of speech allows the discourse toreflect the dynamics of the relationships between the participants particularlyclearly. A transcript of a spontaneous conversation shows evidence of thedirection the discourse took—which topics became central, whose jokes worked—and as such retains a sense of the interpersonal orientation of the spokenchannel, despite the representation in the written channel for purposes ofanalysis. In Sample 1, the three participants had differing levels of contributionto the conversation, and one speaker tended to dominate, if not in terms of volumeof words, then in terms of steering the discourse and its topics.

The fact that conversation takes place in ‘real time’ means that the participantshave little opportunity to rehearse their contributions, and indeed, theunpredictable nature of much spoken discourse means that there is no potential torehearse what to say. This in turn means that the spoken channel favours theexpression of ideas in a ‘performance-oriented’ manner. That is to say, if a speakeris to get air time, and be listened to, he/she needs the capacity to direct thediscourse towards the relevant topic, and then make a relatively concisecontribution before the floor is taken by another speaker. These capacities arestrongly dependent upon personality, whereas the written channel promotesskills which are quite different in nature (see below and Chapter 3 for furtherdiscussion).

Many of the distinctive qualities of the grammatical structures employed—‘unfinished’ clauses, abbreviations, short clauses and simple phrases — reflectthe pressures of language production and reception in the spoken channel.


Equally the simple vocabulary and repetition of items show the influence ofdiscourse being produced spontaneously with little time to edit utterances. Suchfeatures can be outweighed in less casual contexts, for example, the interviewcandidate will weigh their words with care, and may try to impress with theirarticulateness. This was seen in the radio broadcast sample above, where thespeaker managed to produce complex constructions and densely packedinformation in the spoken channel. Nonetheless, however careful the speaker is,the spoken channel does not allow a word to be taken back once uttered, andeven when one is reading from a prepared script or delivering rehearsed lines, thetongue may slip. Speaker concerns about the construction of the discourse andthe reception of the content were evident in the more formal discourse of theradio broadcast and showed themselves in the tendency for hesitation and thecomments explaining speaker stance to the topic.

In a conversational setting the speaker does not know how long the listenerwill allow the floor to be held, and therefore the tendency will be for shortphrases which get the message over quickly. This was reflected in the tendencyfor short clauses with few words per contribution in the conversational data. Thedifferent context of reception of the radio broadcast provided the speaker withthe opportunity to ‘hold the floor’, which in turn put him in the position ofhaving to speak articulately and fluently. Under these circumstances there is atendency for speakers to fall back on redundancies in order to give themselvestime to think.

Analysed after the event, these features of speech which can be interpreted asproducts of the pressure of the channel on language users, supportgeneralisations such as ‘speech is less grammatically complex than writing’ or‘speech conveys ideas in a simpler fashion than writing’. Nevertheless, whileeach individual clause of a conversation may be simple when it is written downand analysed, there is a highly complex process of interactivity and ellipsis at workbetween the language producers. This issue is taken up again in Chapter 2.

The written channel

In the section dealing with samples from the spoken channel (pp. 15–28) thenature of the means by which language is produced and comprehended weretaken as a starting-point for an investigation of aspects of discourse, grammarand lexis which could be ascribed to typical spoken mode. In this section dealingwith the written channel a similar approach is taken. As in the discussion of thespoken channel, a short sample is analysed which is chosen to show the channelfactors at their most extreme.

The written channel is primarily visual and static. While there exist marginalexamples of moving text (for example, electronic public notices or some sub-titling on television) it is the nature of most written text to be based on the visualrecognition of combinations of elements from a finite set (a relatively small set in


the case of alphabetic scripts) along a stable vertical or horizontal axis(depending on the conventions of the language being written).

Just as it is possible to translate speech into the written channel, it is equallypossible to articulate written words in the spoken channel, that is to say, to readaloud. Nonetheless, the defining characteristic of the written is not this potentialfor presentation in the oral channel, but rather that its stable visual qualities allowit to perform elaborately non-oral functions.

The stable nature of written text permits close comparison both inter- andintra-textually. That is to say, once a sample of text is created it maybe compared, word by word and sentence by sentence, with another text, and,equally, sections within a text may be re-read and compared with other sections.Such detailed comparisons are not characteristic of the spoken channel, and aredifficult to carry out without recourse to sound-recording equipment and, usually,the written channel.

The following example shows the effect of these features of the writtenchannel working at their most extreme, since the text is from a permanent andpublic printed medium—the published book—and, second, the text is difficult tocomprehend without repeated readings.

Academic text

A single sentence from an academic text will be sufficient to exemplify many ofthe points to be made about the written channel, although for a more detailedconsideration of cohesion, a longer sample would be needed. (See also end-of-chapter exercises for further discussion.)

Sample 3 is from a philosophical work, Wittgenstein on the Foundation ofMathematics, discussing a relationship between the philosophy of mathematicsand the philosophy of language.

Sample 3

Both views will regard our acceptance of the necessity of a statement assignposted by an abrogation of the ordinary practical standards ofdefeasibility for a generalisation postulating the availability of asatisfactory, conflict-dissolving explanation for any situation in whichthings are prima facie other than as the statement in question requires.

(WFM Chapter XXI)

Lexical features

The densely informative nature of this academic text is reflected in the lexiswhich has a high incidence of polysyllabic words of non-Anglo-Saxon origin(‘abrogation’, ‘postulating’, ‘conflict-dissolving explanation’ and so on). Inaddition, the ratio of lexical words to grammatical words is high (28 to 24) with


nearly half the total tokens being accounted for by content words as opposed tostructural words. As before, the sample is too small for any useful statisticalconclusions, but whereas in the first spoken sample (the conversation) several ofthe lexical items were repeated (approximately 40 per cent), less than 20 per centof these types occur more than once. When a comparison is made of the natureof the types which are repeated the spoken conversation again contrasts with thewritten, showing repetition of central topic nouns (names of places etc.), a higherincidence of the verb ‘be’ and the marker of existential sentences ‘there’. On theother hand, the written sample shows little repetition of nouns (‘statement’ (2)),and there are no occurrences of the verb ‘be’. Additionally, whereas Sample 1shows no occurrence of the indefinite article (a/an), which marks a use of nounsin a less concrete way than the definite article (the), it is used four times withinthe space of a single sentence in the written passage.

There is significantly less contrast between the spoken discourse which wascreated for public consumption, and with a non-present audience in mind. Indeed,the proportion of lexical words is, perhaps surprisingly, lower in this sample ofacademic prose than in the radio broadcast. Nevertheless, the presentation of thelexis with some repetition and redundancy, and the grammatical context with theinformation presented in separate clauses makes the radio broadcast data appearless dense. Grammatical features

The most distinctive feature of Sample 3 is that it takes the form of a single,fifty-two-word sentence. Not only is the informational content abstract andsophisticated, it is also presented in a way which is difficult to assimilate withoutrepeated readings.

The basic structure is that of subject, verb and complement (Table 1.6) withthe addition of a highly complex structure (‘as signposted…requires’) whichmakes up the bulk of the sentence, and the function of which is difficult toanalyse at first.

Table 1.6 Clause analysis of Sample 3 (academic text)

Initially, this ‘as-structure’ gives the impression of being adverbial in function(since it answers the question ‘how’). Nevertheless, the structure is obligatory(i.e. for the sentence to be grammatically complete), since the meaning of theverb would change if the sentence ended at ‘necessity of a statement’—compare:

Jane regarded the view from her window (regard=look at)Jane regarded the comment as an insult (regard=to have a view on)This is an example of ‘circumstance as object complement’ (that is to say, it

gives further information about the first complement—in this case ‘ouracceptance of the necessity of a statement’—which is termed the ‘object’ intraditional grammar). The bulk of the information and the complexity of this


sentence falls in this part of the clause, and can be shown by bracketing theelements which go to make it up (verbs are italicised and their clauses shown bysquare brackets):

[signposted by an abrogation of the ordinary practical standards ofdefeasibility for a generalisation [postulating the availability of asatisfactory, conflict-dissolving explanation for any situation [in whichthings are prima facie other than as [the statement in question requires]]]]

There are four clauses nested within the structure (marked by [] above), two non-finite and two finite. This fact, in addition to the many levels of embeddedphrases, makes the text difficult to comprehend. As the numerous brackets at theend of the sentence suggest, the reader has to retain a sense of which words aremodifying which head nouns over the distance of many prepositional phrases.

Although a speaker might utter this sequence of ideas in this form, indeed, thesentence can perhaps be better understood if it is read aloud with differentintonations for different parsings, few, if any, listeners could comprehend it afterone hearing. The text depends on the potential for close and repeated readings ina way which the spoken channel cannot easily permit. Additionally, the reader ofsuch a difficult text is in a less interpersonally demanding position than the listenerwould be. Faced with such an abstract and complex series of ideas the hearermust choose to accept that they cannot understand or show theirincomprehension by asking for a repetition and explanation. On the other hand,the reader can return to a difficult passage many times, even over a period ofyears, and develop their individual understanding of the ideas it contains in theirown time and without a need for any loss of face in direct communication withthe producer of the ideas. In this way the written channel not only permits thepresentation complex ideas in a dense format, ideas which could only beexpressed and understood with great effort in the spoken channel, it also allowsideas and information to be assimilated with little or no direct personalinvolvement between the producer of the ideas and the recipient.

The present example was chosen because it was an extreme case of thecomplexity with which information may be presented in the written channel.Nonetheless, however simple and reader-friendly the text may be, the samechannel-based factors hold. The essential characteristic of the written channel isa stable, graphically presented medium (whether printed or handwritten) whichpersists through time without alteration and is amenable to close re-reading andreduplication if necessary.

Discourse features

The permanency of the written channel, and the potential it presents for extendeddiscourse such as the novel or the academic text, lead to contrasts at discourselevel in terms of a comparison of speech and writing.


Whereas it is a characteristic of the spoken channel to permit a high level ofinteraction, and for samples of spontaneous discourse to show evidence ofinteractivity, the written channel places high value on the individual languageproducer, and permits sustained contributions from one individual which showlittle evidence of interactivity (either in the process of producing the final text, orthe final text as found). Although the text of a book usually undergoes severalrevisions, is commented on by expert readers and editors, and then rewritten, theproduct which is finally presented to the public is largely free of evidence of thisprocess. Acknowledgement of assistance is generally handled within setconventions and the responsibility for the text remains with one (or, lessfrequently, more) named author. In this way the published book sustains thenotion of prolonged, coherent and densely informative language use by anindividual who creates a highly accurate and polished text in isolation.

Summary of written channel features

A short sample of material from the written channel has presented some typicalmode features which can be pointed to as reflecting the pressures andpotentialities of the written channel. Most evident was the dense presentation ofinformation in embedded clauses and phrases, rather than the more easilycomprehended forms of separate clauses and less embedding more typical ofspoken mode.

While it is possible to present ideas in this compact and complex manner inthe spoken channel, it is rarely possible for even a highly articulate speaker to dothis without some evidence of the performance pressures this entails—forexample, in the radio broadcast sample the ideas fell into distinct ‘chunks’bounded by hesitations and pauses, and the speaker felt it necessary to entersome caveats to explain his stance towards the ideas.

DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSION

This chapter began with a discussion of the terms channel, medium and mode asthey are used in this approach to speech and writing. In particular, the influenceof the way discourse is produced and perceived by language users, whether it isprimarily visual/motoric as in writing, or aural/oral as in speaking, wasconsidered as a factor affecting and limiting the type of language produced.Whereas it is relatively straightforward to discuss channel, which is a factassociated with any sample of language, the associated mode features are moreabstract and difficult to pin down. However, if we are going to be able to sayanything that is true of all or most cases of spoken discourse, or of writtendiscourse the term is a useful one.

On the basis of the discussion of channel pressures and potentialities, togetherwith samples from the two channels, some mode features have been brought out,


and these are listed below, together with some other typical features which werenot evident in the small samples discussed.

Spoken mode features:

Grammar:

• the tendency to ellipsis ((0) don’t mind)• the abbreviation of verbs (he’s)• the ability for phrases, particularly noun phrases to stand as complete

utterances• simple and short clauses, with little elaborate embedding (particularly within

noun phrases)• high incidence of co-ordinated clauses• the use of ‘and’ as a loose continuation marker• problematic clause analyses, for example ‘topic and comment’ structures: ‘my

mum she’s great’• active verb forms

Lexis:

• low lexical density• tendency for less abstract vocabulary• tendency for more generalised and simpler vocabulary, and semantically

‘empty’ prefabricated fillers, such as ‘you know’• use of terms that depend on the context of production for their understanding

Discourse:

• discourse produced by more than one participant• high incidence of markers of interpersonal dynamics (tag-questions, discourse

markers, interruptions and unfinished clauses)• repetition and echoing between speakers• reformulation and refinement of utterance, sometimes by co-operation

between speakers• indication of the presence of the author of the discourse, either because of the

nature of topic, or in more formal settings the tendency to hedge ideas andshow stance

Written mode features:

(Many of these can be assumed to be the opposite of the spoken mode featureslisted above, for example, passive constructions.)


Grammar:

• full phrases and clauses with little abbreviation or ellipsis • standard grammar in terms of word order and sentence construction• longer and more complex clauses with embedded phrases and clauses,

particularly in the form of densely informative noun phrases• explicit and varied marking of clause relations, for example, use of

subordinating conjunctions between clauses (‘whereas’, ‘if’, ‘because’) orsentence adverbs (‘However’, ‘In addition’)

Lexis:

• high lexical density• complex vocabulary and the use of more abstract terms with a higher

incidence of words of Greek or Latin origin• greater variety in choice of vocabulary with lower levels of repetition

Discourse:

• explicit presentation of ideas to a non-present audience• few markers of interpersonal or personally-oriented discourse• explicit indication of text organisation, such as paragraphing or the term ‘see

below’• discourse presented as product of single participant

This is not to say that samples from either channel may not be found which showfeatures more typical of the mode associated with the other. The radio broadcastsample discussed above shows this at work. Equally, a writer may deliberatelyseek spoken mode in the written channel for some reason, for example, anadvertisement may be written in a ‘chatty’ style, or a creative writer may writenaturalistic dialogue which purports to present realistic speech in the mouths ofcharacters.

The aim in this chapter has been to show how channel can influence the type oflanguage produced. The next two chapters take some of the insights about modein speech and writing and relate these to broader issues in language and literature.

EXERCISES

Task:

Record a few minutes of conversation. If possible, do not tell the participantsthat you have done this until after the recording. Transcribe your sample using (.)to indicate short pauses and (..) to indicate longer pauses. Try to indicate whetherspeakers overlapped with one another by indenting the overlapping speech to more


or less the place where it started in the previous speaker’s utterance. You canmake this clearer by putting in a square bracket at the point where an overlapbegins:

Speaker 1 D’you want to go out tonight? [

Speaker 2 Yeah

(a) What problems did you encounter? (b) Did you find any of the spoken modefeatures discussed in the summary given above?

Task:

Prepare a five-minute talk on a topic that interests you. Present the talk (ifpossible to an audience). Record yourself. (Alternatively, if you can findsomeone to co-operate, ask them to prepare a talk, or you can find a formalbroadcast from the radio.) List any features which are similar to the radiobroadcast, and look for any spoken mode features.

Task:

Find four samples of writing from different contexts (for example, letters;advertisements; textbooks; novels). Do they resemble any of the examples so fardiscussed? Do any of the texts in the written channel show spoken modefeatures?

Task:

Look at the following extract, and assess it in the light of the conclusions ofthis chapter. How useful is the concept of mode in your analysis?

Well, the thing about our knowledge of the brain is this: If you look at the restof the body, we have a pretty shrewd idea of what everything does. We know whatthe kidneys do, and even what the thymus does, which is something we didn’tknow when I first started in these fields…(Interview with Francis Crick, transcribed in Journal of Consciousness Studies, 1/

1 (1994), 10)

Task:

People using the written channel for informal, personal communication oftenmimic spoken mode. Collect some examples of letters, postcards, e-mails fromfriends and analyse them for spoken mode features.

Task:

What problems does the fact that you can find spoken mode features in writingand vice versa bring to the issue of comparing speech and writing?


FURTHER READING

Biber, Douglas (1988) Variation across Speech and Writing, Cambridge: CambridgeUniversity Press.

Brown, Gillian and Yule, George (1988) Discourse Analysis (Chapter 1), Cambridge:Cambridge University Press.

Halliday, M.A. K. (1989) Spoken and Written Language (2nd edn), Oxford: OxfordUniversity Press.

McCarthy, M. and Carter, R. (1994) Language as Discourse, Harlow: Longman.Olson, David R. (1994) The World on Paper, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Olson, David R., Torrance, Nancy and Hildyard, Angela (eds) (1985) Literacy, Language

and Learning: the nature and consequences of reading and writing, Cambridge:Cambridge University Press.

Tannen, Deborah (ed.) (1982) Spoken and Written Language: exploring orality andliteracy, Advances in Discourse Processes, vol. IX, Norwood, NJ: Ablex.

Tottie, Gunnel and Bäcklund, Ingergerd (eds) (1986) English in Speech and Writing: asymposium, Stockholm: Almqvist and Wiksell.


Chapter 2Interactions on the page

INTRODUCTION

In the previous chapter I considered the influence of channel on the type oflanguage produced, and one of the features of the spoken channel which wasparticularly salient was the high potential for interaction permitted by thedynamic, face-to-face context of production of most discourse in the aural/oralchannel. This chapter takes this further, looking more closely at the nature ofspoken interactions, and discussing how these ‘translate’ into the written formwhen writers seek to show characters interacting verbally on the page in adialogue.1

While both speech and writing could be described as being fundamentallyinteractive, since both are produced in order for humans to communicate onewith another, the interactive potential for spoken discourse is far higher than it isfor written. Certain genres of writing, such as electronic mail, show that thechannel can be made to function in such a way that the interactive aspect ishigher, but in general the nature of writing means that it is not suited to theproduction of immediate ‘real time’ communication and response betweenpeople.

The process of writing is relatively laborious—we need a system of shorthand,excellent typing skills, or some other mechanised system of syllablereproduction, such as that used to prepare live sub-titling on television, if we areto produce it at anything like the same speed as speech. Additionally, a writtenmessage is a unit-like item which is generally complete and selfexplanatory,ready to be physically presented to the recipient, read and, if necessary,responded to. These features hold good even if the interlocutors are physicallynear, for example two students sitting next to one another holding a writtenexchange during a class or lecture when they are not allowed to speak. It isdifficult to interrupt a writer, partly because of this unit-like typical structure.Writers have a responsibility to produce something which they judge will needlittle elaboration/explanation since the process of message production, readingand response is quite tedious. These factors mean that written discourse is more

generally associated with, and ideally suited to, sustained, individual, non-interactive communication.

In the domain of speech, on the other hand, the process is usually not that ofneat, complete units being presented for examination by the recipient who in turnpresents a message as a response (although many models of linguistic interactionstill imply that this is the case, and until very recently English language teachingtexts presented conversation in the form A-B-A-B, with speakers indeedproducing rigorously distinct utterances, one after another, with no overlappingor half-finished sentences). Speech production is, generally, a less ‘labour-intensive’ process than writing. Speakers can produce many more words perminute than writers under normal circumstances, and in a conversational setting,there is the possibility of overlapping with another speaker, asking forclarification or repetition, interrupting, pausing, changing tack, and so on.

These differences in typical circumstances of production mean that theconcept of interactivity is a fruitful place to look for differences between the twoforms of language. When writers try to convey interaction they are representing aprocess that is alien to the channel which they are communicating in. They haveat their disposal a variety of visual and punctuation conventions to assist thesignalling of dialogue. In English prose-writing this is shown by the indentationof each speaker’s utterance, the starting of a new speaker’s speech on a new line,the use of ellipsis marks or dashes to show pauses or interrupting speech, and soon. However, as the rest of this chapter will show, these conventional signals toreaders serve more as a code to signify that dialogue is being represented, thanfaithfully to present a close reproduction of the actual process of dialogue as ittends to occur spontaneously. Moreover, when writers do present somethingcloser to real interaction, choosing to show hesitations, false starts, interruptionsand overlaps, these features are often used as a second coded message to conveyheightened emotion of some kind on the part of their characters, such as anger,fear or uncertainty.

The rest of this chapter is divided into four main parts. In the first sometypical features of real spoken interactions are discussed. These are thencontrasted with some examples of literary exchanges, and the issue of whathappens when spoken interaction is ‘translocated’ to the page for creativepurposes is considered. Then I look in rather more detail at a literaryconversation and discuss the manipulation by the writer of the presentation ofdisfluency features. I then move on in the final section to look at how the pointsmade about spontaneous exchanges and literary constructed interactions relate toa transcription of naturally occurring speech in a case-study of parliamentarylanguage and interaction.

ACTUAL VERSUS LITERARY INTERACTIONS

This section compares and contrasts actual interactions from a corpus of speechwith conversational exchanges found in literary contexts.

36 INTERACTIONS ON THE PAGE

Typical features of actual interaction in speech

Spoken discourse with a high interaction potential (as opposed to monologicdiscourse with a restricted interaction potential, such as the lecture) tends to be aprocess of ‘give-and-take’, with participants having the opportunity to assess thereaction of listeners, and work towards a consensus of meaning together as theyspeak. Since the speakers are physically in each other’s presence, they have animmediate sense of whether what is being said is understood, and this comesboth from non-linguistic actions such as gaze or eye-contact, and other,linguistic, reassurance (called back-channel) such as voiced agreement.Furthermore, if we move away from the A-B-A-B model of interaction belovedof language teaching books, where each person takes a neat turn in theconversation, we can see how actual interaction is a weaving together ofcontributions into a satisfactory whole which is the shared product of theinterlocutors.

Co-operation between speakers

The following brief extract from the CUP/Nottingham corpus of spoken English,showing an interaction between two friends, gives a typical example of howspeakers co-operate to create discourse. The speakers are two men, and they arechatting together in a beer-garden outside a pub. They are catching up on newsafter a period of not seeing each other:

Sample 4

<S 01> Are you still playing er<S 02> Gui-tar<S 01> Irish music, yeah<S 02> No I don’t play very much now, no, not at all

(CUP/Nottingham corpus)Analysing real spoken data can be confusing at times, and it is useful to stand

back from the exchanges you are investigating to look for any broader structuresyou can isolate. Here, the basic exchange of ideas could be seen as astraightforward question and answer:

Question: Are you still playing Irish music? (Speaker 1)Answer: No (Speaker 2)

We can call this the underlying structure,2 and use this as a starting pointfor our commentary on the exchange. The second speaker predicts what form thequestion will take, and the topic, and overlaps with the word ‘guitar’ before it isfinished. When it is written down, this intervention looks ‘messy’, and as if thesecond speaker has broken into the utterance of the first. However, suchoverlapping is often evidence of a well-oiled conversation,3 rather than aproblematic one, as, by predicting what will be said, and giving a suggested

INTERACTIONS ON THE PAGE 37

completion for an utterance, listeners show themselves to be ‘in tune’ with thespeaker (and also prove that they are listening!). By completing the utterancethey show that they have the confidence that they know enough about thespeaker to contribute in this way.

Over the interpolated utterance, the first speaker continues his question withthe word ‘yeah’ tagged on at the end. It is noticeable that the single speaker’sutterance of the words making up the question cannot stand alone if they areextracted (unlike the question in our putative summary given above):

Question: Are you still playing Irish music er yeah *

any more than the single word contribution ‘guitar’ by the second speaker canmake sense without its context. It might therefore be more accurate to representthe first stage of the interaction, the question, as having a shared source:

Question: [Are you] still playing (Irish music/guitar)? (Speaker 1,Speaker 2)

In his response to the question which he has helped to shape, the secondspeaker moves from ‘no’ through ‘I don’t play very much’ to ‘not at all’ as heformulates an answer. Once transcribed on to the page and available for scrutinythis reply takes on an ambiguity (i.e. the scope of ‘at all’) which it almostcertainly did not have for the interlocutors. The salient thing, and the point whichthe second speaker is going to go on to explain, is that the response is in thenegative, and whether the final meaning the speaker intended is ‘I don’t playvery much at all now’, or ‘I don’t play very much now, in fact, I don’t play atall’, is not relevant to the listener (who could, in any event, chip in with ‘what,not at all?’ to check he had understood correctly, and would have hadintonational clues to assist him).

Summary

To summarise, even in this very brief interaction several points about naturallyoccurring exchanges can be seen. The first is that that which looks chaotic on thepage is not necessarily evidence of a disrupted or messy conversation. Second isthe fact that whereas we tend to think of interaction in terms of speakers takingturns at speaking, and being individually responsible for a functional/informational structure (a model which writers tend to adopt when constructingdialogue), the process of actual communication disrupts this neat picture sincespeakers often co-operate to share, check or produce a meaning. Third is thenotion that transcribed speech retains strong evidence of the temporallydependent medium in which the original discourse was produced. Thus, althougha logician might have a nightmare about the semantics of the second speaker’sreformulated answer, moving as it does through negative, to qualified negative,to strongly negative, these stages only take on problematic status with the leisureand scrutiny permitted by the written channel. It should always be remembered,


when analysing speech-written-down, that, for most speakers, if they have arough idea of what the other speaker meant—a kind of working interpretation—they are usually more interested in the current utterance (whether their own oranother’s) and seeing whether this fits in with their understanding of thediscourse being produced, than in scrutinising the last thing said in any greatdetail. In this sense, comprehending conversation in which you are involved is aprocess of accretion and accommodation between speakers, as an understandingof what is being said builds up through the lifespan of the interaction. Thisprocess is not the same for a third party uninvolved in the interaction, and I willbe returning to this point below, when considering how writers representinteractions for readers.

Sharing responsibility for an utterance

In the following example of spontaneous interaction (Sample 5) similarprocesses can be seen at work, but in a rather more elaborate way, and with aneven more marked blurring of the ‘responsibility for utterance’ lines. In this casethe two speakers are young women. The setting is once more informal: they arehaving a cup of tea together with another friend (who does not join in this part ofthe discourse), and chatting. They are sitting on the floor. One of them finds abroken earring and holds it up for the others to see. They give their opinion of it,and assess how it would have looked before it was damaged. They decide that ithad another part originally to make it symmetrical (‘even’):

Sample 5

1 <S 02> It’s an earring it’s an earring2 <S 03> Oh lovely oh, lovely3 <S 02> It’s fallen apart a bit but4 <S 03> It’s quite a nice one actually, I like that, I bet, is that supposed to be

straight5 <S 02> Yeah6 <S 03> Oh I think it looks better like that7 <S 02> And there was another bit as well another dangly bit8 <S 03> What, attached to 9 <S 02> The top bit

10 <S 03> That one11 <S 02> Yeah…so it was even


Looking for underlying structure here, the exchange could be interpreted asfollows:

Statement: Here is an earring (Speaker 2)


Assessment: It’s nice (Speaker 3)

It’s damaged (Speaker 2)

Conclusion: Originally there was another part which made it even. (Speaker 2, Speaker3)

As was the case with Sample 4, the interplay of contributions from thespeakers is more complex than this summary suggests, and the evidence ofspeaker co-operation towards shared meaning is even more marked than in theprevious example of the exchange between the two male speakers. This is shownby the need for a joint attribution to the two speakers of the ‘Conclusion’, even inthe initial summary.

In Sample 4 the second speaker was required to respond to a question elicitinginformation from him, and as such there was a relatively clear initialapportioning of the ‘responsibility’ for the source of ideas. The two speakersmight be concerned to show willingness to co-operate to sustain the conversation,as their overlap (‘guitar’—‘Irish music’) suggests, but there is one speaker whohas the primary role of questioner, and the other of respondent — an assessmentof the balance of contributions which is sustained by the continuation of theextract where the second speaker goes on to explain at some length about why heno longer plays. So, although there is some evidence of the speakers sharing theconstruction of utterance, the overall effect is of a clear source of the initialenquiry, and of the producer of the responding discourse being distinct.

There is no such clear-cut distinction between the speakers in Sample 5. Thethree informational/functional categories seen as underlying the exchange(statement drawing attention to the object—assessment of the object —conclusion) are not neatly shared out between the speakers. Particularly duringtheir movement from assessing the object to their conclusion as to how it lookedoriginally, the speakers combine their utterances through interruption andoverlap in order to show their opinions. Their ease with one another in thisprocess is signalled from the start of the interaction, the second speaker echoingthe repetition of the first:

<S 02> It’s an earring it’s an earring<S 03> Oh lovely oh, lovely

Bending the rules of conversation

When speakers are conversing informally with friends there is quite a degree ofleeway to ignore what might be considered the niceties of interaction (sometimesreferred to as conversational ‘maxims’; see Grice 1975): to speak when it is yourturn; to listen to what the other person is saying; not to follow your own train ofthought selfishly and speak over another speaker. While the second speakercould be forgiven for chiming in with ‘oh, lovely’ after the first ‘it’s an earring’


(not knowing there would be a repetition), there is less excuse for breaking inbefore the other speaker has a chance to finish her clause of contrast:

<S 02> It’s fallen apart a bit but<S 03> It’s quite a nice one actually, I like that, I bet, is that supposed to be

straightIn turn, the other speaker, <S 02>, does not enter in to the process of giving her

opinion of the object by responding to ‘I think it looks better like that’ with a‘yes’ or ‘mm’, but rather pursues her own train of thought as she visualises theoriginal state of the object. The continuation of this idea, and the lack of aresponding ‘move’ after the expression of positive opinion, is marked by the useof ‘And’:

<S 03> […is that…]<S 02> Yeah<S 03> [Oh I think…]<S 02> And there was another bit as well another dangly bit

As in the first example, there is evidence of the refinement of utterance:‘another bit’—‘another dangly bit’, and shared contributions (‘attached to’ —‘the top bit’—‘that one’) as they seek to clarify whether they agree on theoriginal shape:

<S 02> And there was another bit as well another dangly bit<S 03> What, attached to<S 02> The top bit<S 03> That one<S 02> Yeah…so it was even

Summary

In both these short extracts of transcribed real speech, lasting no more than acouple of seconds in each case, some of the complexities of interacting inEnglish can be seen. Two main points to be noted are that aspects of interactionwhich look ‘messy’ and incoherent in a written transcript, for example speakerstalking over one another or appearing to ignore what has just been said, were, inall probability, not in the least like this for the participants. On the contrary, suchfeatures can be evidence of a smoothly running conversation between peoplewho are in tune with one another. Second, and this is related to the latter point,spoken conversation gains its distinctive complexity and texture from the factthat it is the primary source of feedback to humans about their relations withother humans. Much of the content of daily interactions is banal in the extreme;nevertheless, during spoken interaction, particularly informal conversation, weproject ourselves on to the world of discourse and gain a sense of the extent towhich our perspective on things is shared by others. It is largely through theprocess of this type of communication, as opposed to the contents of theutterances, that we get a feel for how far we are ‘on the same wavelength’ asothers. That split-second pause before the answer to an invitation can tell us


more about ourselves in relation to our peers than we could gain from thecontent of their reply.

Spontaneous interaction, therefore, shows many features which are concernedwith sustaining the dynamics of the process of communication. Speakers monitorwhat they are saying, listeners show that they are listening and frequently theparticipants become speaker-listeners as they co-operate to communicate withothers. It is a process that requires (literally) splitsecond timing if we are to getour turn to speak, or if we are not to appear rude.

However, we tend only to recall the dynamics of a conversation when theprocess of accommodation and co-operation has failed—when we havemisunderstood a person’s meaning and have had to ask them for clarification,when we were interrupted unexpectedly, when the telephone conversation endsabruptly—in these circumstances we may have a very clear recollection of theexchange (usually at three o’clock in the morning), otherwise we carry awayfrom an interaction a ‘residue’ of what was said, but not an accurate recollectionof the actual process of communication with all the disfluencies caused by theintricate juggling act of speaking and listening.

In investigating speech we come up against a paradox. That which readers seeas chaotic on the page when actual speech is transcribed is not so for the originalproducers of the discourse. Overlapping and interrupting, changing tack andreformulating are normal features of interaction. Complete utterances divided offfrom those of the next speaker by pauses are much more likely to be a sign of a‘difficult’ conversation. The preconception of what smooth running discourse islike feeds into, and affects, what writers present (or are able to present) whenthey attempt to convey interaction in a literary setting. The next two sectionsshow the way this residual picture of how interactions work comes to berepresented, and manipulated, by writers.

Some literary equivalences

The following literary exchange (Sample 6), taken from Keep the AspidistraFlying by George Orwell, has some features in common with Sample 4 (p. 39)which was discussed as an example of actual interaction. Both involve ‘small-talk’ between two male friends; both open with a query about the other person.Both also include a ‘mismatch’ of understanding. In Sample 4 it is the very slightexample of the difference between ‘guitar’ and ‘Irish music’, here there is a moresignificant example of being at cross-purposes (the misinterpretation of thereferent of ‘work’):

Sample 6

‘How is your work getting on?’ said Ravelston presently.‘Oh, as usual. It’s a drowsy kind of job. Swapping backchat with old

hens about Hugh Walpole. I don’t object to it.’


‘I meant your own work—your writing. Is London Pleasures getting onall right?’

‘Oh, Christ! Don’t speak of it. It’s turning my hair grey’‘Isn’t it going forward at all?’‘My books don’t go forward. They go backward.’

(KAF Chapter 5)

In addition to being similar to Sample 4 in terms of interlocutor, this shortextract also shows a parallel in terms of exchange function in that it has anunderlying structure of question and answer, and could be represented by:

Question: How is your writing progressing? (Speaker 1)Answer: Badly (Speaker 2)

The foregrounding of misunderstanding

In Sample 4 the slight mismatch in terms of the scope of the question (rather thanthe instrument, the type of music is the topic introduced by the questioner), issmoothly incorporated into the discourse with the overlap suggesting co-operation between the speakers, and the questioner indicating that there is noneed to distinguish between the two terms really by using the word ‘yeah’ as hefinishes the question, and the respondent contributing to the formation of thequestion he is about to answer:

<S 01 > Are you still playing er<S 02> Gui-tar<S 01 > Irish music, yeah

The misunderstanding between the two men in the literary exchange takes onfar greater emphasis, and the structuring of the interaction hasimplications which link to broader issues of characterisation in the book as awhole. Additionally, there is no evidence of the blurring of the lines ofresponsibility for utterance seen in both the real exchanges described above.

The improbability issue

If we imagine this conversation happening in real time, it seems obvious that thequestioner, Ravelston (Speaker 1), would have realised fairly soon after theresponder (Gordon Comstock, Speaker 2) began his reply that Gordon hasmisunderstood his question. At the latest this would have happened when heutters the word ‘backchat’, which it is difficult to interpret as relating to writing:

‘How is your work getting on?’ said Ravelston presently.‘[1] Oh, as usual. [2] It’s a drowsy kind of job. [3] Swapping backchat with

old hens about Hugh Walpole. [4] I don’t object to it.’‘I meant your own work—your writing…’


Nevertheless, Ravelston lets him finish four ‘sentences’ (two of these do nothave main or finite verbs: ‘Oh, as usual’ and ‘Swapping backchat…’, but arepresented in graphic terms as complete items with initial capitalisation and a fullstop), before correcting him, and makes no attempt to interrupt him. Theexchange could have been written as follows:

Sample 6a

‘How is your work getting on?’‘Oh, as usual. It’s a drowsy kind of job. Swapping backchat…’‘I meant your own work—your writing. Is London Pleasures getting on

all right?’

However, there would have been two disadvantages to this version. First, from areader’s point of view, the broken-off utterance ‘Swapping backchat…’ isconfusing, and even annoying: we can hardly understand the two words inisolation from the completion of the sentence, and we are left feeling thatComstock might have been going to say something interesting, but we will neverknow. Second, from the author’s point of view we lose an opportunity for thecentral character to give his attitude to his work, and, perhaps more importantly,an opportunity for a pleasing formal contrast and balance in the writing(discussed below), a structural nicety which actual interaction rarely shows.

Using real speech as a model for literary exchanges

Indeed, if we used the actual spoken interaction discussed earlier as a model forthis literary exchange difficulties would arise:

Sample 6b

‘How is your ...?’‘Writing.’‘…work getting on, yes.’‘Oh, Christ! Don’t speak of it. It’s turning my hair grey.’

The first difficulty is deciding how to present overlapping speech, sincewithout the convention of layout adopted in linguistic transcripts this is hard toshow. The second difficulty is in the presentation of an overlap as part of anunmarked interchange between speakers. In transferring this kind of interactionto the page, Comstock is made to sound agitated, and unduly eager to break in.Finally, this presentation, as was the case with the previous rewriting, does notprovide room for the type of content the writer wanted to include to conveybroader implications.

To understand the larger significance of this misunderstanding between thetwo men, and the associated need for Comstock to go on at some length aboutthe job before being corrected, a little background from the story is useful.


Gordon Comstock, a poet, develops an almost pathological hatred of money, andgives up one ‘good’ job after another. The book traces his gradual decline as hisrefusal to take part in his society takes effect. At the end of the book, finding thathis girlfriend is pregnant, he ‘gives in’, marries her, and rejoins mainstreamsociety.

Given the difficulty with which the poet Comstock holds down a job, hisinterpretation of ‘your work’ as referring to his daily grind for money, rather thanhis pursuit of writing, is interesting. He speaks of the job in an airy, off-handway, as if seeking to impress Ravelston with his condescending attitude to the‘old hens’, his colleagues. This easy style is in marked contrast to his reactionwhen he realises what Ravelston was actually asking about: ‘Oh, Christ! Don’tspeak of it. It’s turning my hair grey.’ The casual tone of his initial responseneeds to be built up over a few sentences in order for the contrast to be broughthome. His ‘Oh, as usual’ is balanced by being transformed into ‘Oh, Christ’, andthe informal participle clause structure ‘swapping backchat…’ changes to asequence of ‘full’ sentences, culminating in the somewhat melodramatic andponderous: ‘My books don’t go forward. They go backward.’

As elsewhere in Orwell, much of the interest lies in the difficulty for thereader of distinguishing the attitude of the writer to his central character. Perhapsin this problematic interaction and the misinterpretation of Ravelston’s questionwe get a sense of Comstock’s real self, off-guard, as it were, and are given aprefiguring of what he will become when work will really, and always, mean hisjob rather than poetry.

Manipulating readers’ perceptions of speech

Another way in which writers can take advantage of the ‘translation’ ofinteractions on to the page is for the purposes of humour. In the following extractfrom Martin Chuzzlewit the two speakers have quite different understandings ofhow the discourse will proceed. Dickens manipulates readers’ perceptions ofspeech cleverly to promote the joke. The extract gives part of a conversationbetween the innocent Tom Pinch and Mr Fips. Tom has been given a mysteriousand delightful job (cataloguing a library, which, although it may not beeverybody’s cup of tea, is highly satisfying to him) by an unknown benefactor. Themystery surrounding the job exercises his imagination and each time he meetsthe intermediary who arranged the matter (Mr Fips) he hopes that he will learnmore of his employer.

Sample 7

‘Oh! by-the-by, Mr Pinch, you needn’t mention it, if you please!’Tom thought he was going to tell him a secret; so he said that he wouldn’t

on any account, and that Mr Fips might entirely depend upon him. But asMr Fips said ‘Very good,’ in reply, and nothing more, Tom prompted him:


‘Not on any account,’ repeated Tom.Mr Fips repeated ‘Very good.’‘You were going to say’—Tom hinted.‘Oh dear no!’ cried Fips. ‘Not at all’—However, seeing Tom confused,

he added, ‘I mean that you needn’t mention any particulars about yourplace of employment, to people generally. You’ll find it better not.’

(MC Chapter XL)

Despite the fact that Tom Pinch is simple almost to the point of imbecility, it ishard to imagine that had the words ‘you needn’t mention it, if you please’ beenuttered in the correct tone for Fips’ intended meaning (i.e. ‘don’t mention theprevious thing we talked about to anybody’) they could have led to thisconfusion. Pinch understands the pronoun ‘it’ as pointing forward to a referent tobe dealt with later in the conversation (an example of cataphoric reference),whereas Fips is referring beyond the discourse to the mysterious arrangementsabout Tom’s job (exophoric reference).

The word ‘it’ can be ambiguous, but speakers and listeners are generally verysensitive to this and are aware of intonational signals available to assist meaning.A speaker using ‘it’ cataphorically (pointing forwards) in the way Tom thinkswould usually not emphasise the verb ‘mention’ and would signal the clause asbackground/introductory by lowering the pitch and speeding up towards the realmeat of what they wanted to say. The ‘limitations’ of the page allow Dickens topresent as opaque that which would not be so off the page. It would beinteresting to know how Dickens would have treated this page-based trickery inone of his reading performances, where he would need to choose between Tom’sinterpretation and its accompanying intonation (thus making Fips a confusinglyinept speaker) or Fips’, (making Tom an incompetent listener). Such an effectcan only work if the reader does not pause to fully verbalise the utterance, and isan example of the hybrid nature of constructed dialogue.

Summary

As with much literary dialogue, the interaction between Tom and Fips, like theextract from Orwell, would not, and could not, occur in real life in quite the formit is found on the page. This is not a criticism of the writing. The need to bearreaders’ needs in mind, the limitations of the visual medium (for example, we donot have a conventionalised means of setting out overlapping speech in literarywriting, as opposed to linguistic transcriptions), together with the concerns of thewriter to show something significant in the dialogue, rather than the banalities ofdaily life, work together to keep literary and real interactions apart.

Partly, of course, this distinction is due to the fact that literary conversationsare constructed by writers for readers, rather than by interlocutors for oneanother. The effect of this is to highlight the interaction, for example amisunderstanding, even further, since readers know that in a literary context the


creator of the discourse has chosen to present this interaction, in this particularway, for their perusal. We may overhear such an interchange on the bus, but wefeel no inclination to interpret it beyond the immediate setting, as it is generallyfelt to be part of the random process by which we ‘rub up against’ the discourseof others in a public context.

Literary dialogues therefore are artefacts, and distanced from real interactionson two levels. Because of the lack of potential, we might even say theimpossibility, of representing the fluid process of spoken exchanges on the page,writers must adopt a conventional system for encoding interactions and allow thereader to feel as if they are ‘hearing’ an interchange between living people. Asecond factor which works to distance written, literary conversational exchangesfrom real ones is the fact that they are constructed with an ever-presenteavesdropper in mind, the reader. Therefore, many literary interactions are morehelpful to this third party than actual conversation overheard would be. In thenext portion of analysis the issue of the nature of the choices made by writers interms of how interactions are presented, and who is allowed to speak in them isdiscussed.

Further from actual dialogue

The example which follows is from a detective story called The Case of theTudor Queen by Christopher Bush. The extract has some features in commonwith the exchange between the two young women about the earring, Sample 5,(p. 41): two people assess a small object found on the floor. However in this casethe people involved are male, and rather than casual conversation the exchangesare between detectives looking at clues at the scene of a murder and assessingtheir import.

Sample 8

Travers drew Wharton’s attention to the smashed bead on the floor. TheGeneral ran his glass over it.

‘Doesn’t look like a bead to me,’ he said. ‘More like an earring. Wait aminute though. I know what it is. It’s the top of a fountain pen.’

[Travers draws his attention to another clue, a chip of paint, but anywords spoken by him in this process are not represented, and Whartoncontinues speaking]

‘Looks like a paint chipping to me. You’d better hang on to it till we seeif there’s any green paintwork in the house.’

(TQ Chapter 3)

The most immediate and noticeable difference between this extract and .theassessment in real life by the two young women of the earring is the fact that


only one speaker voices an opinion about the object. In terms of the underlyingstructure it could be pared down as follows:

Statement: Here’s an object (Speaker 1, non-verbalised)

Assessment: It’s not a bead (Speaker 2)

It’s more like an earring (Speaker 2)

Conclusion: It’s the top of a fountain pen (Speaker 2)

Statement: Here’s an object (Speaker 1, non-verbalised)

Assessment: It’s like a paint chipping (Speaker 2)

Conclusion: We need to keep it in order to identify it further (Speaker 2)

Dominance by one character

The second speaker dominates the interaction by means of the very fact that thefirst speaker’s words do not reach the page. The assessments and conclusionsabout the objects under discussion belong firmly to one speaker with the secondplaced in a passive role of quiet listener. The role of the first speaker, Travers, isto bring the clues to the attention of the other detective. We can imagine that hewould do this by means of spoken words, just as the speaker in the real-lifeinteraction about the earring in Sample 5 does—for example: ‘Here’s somethingyou might be interested in’—and might make some response or suggestionduring the musings of the other speaker, even if they come from a superiorofficer.

A charitable interpretation of this extract might see the exchange as mirroringthe power relations between these two men, or might see the reduction of thespoken discourse to that which is necessary to carry forward the story as merelyevidence of the process that is prevalent in literary conversations (that is to say,the removal of the often banal exchanges to do with maintaining discourse).However, the effect of this imbalanced interaction is quite deadly andmechanical. The presentation of spoken discourse between characters gives theopportunity for the writer to show them as beings independent from thenarrative. For the duration of the exchanges, the reader is asked to be directly inthe presence of the characters, to hear what they have to say for themselves, andhow they react to one another. This example wastes the opportunity, and thereader, rather like Travers, is left with a sense of being lectured at rather thanlistening to a real person in the process of moving towards an understanding ofthe nature of an object.

This is lazy dialogue-writing both in terms of interaction structure and thelanguage of the interaction. Within the space of thirteen lines on the page(original Penguin edn) the same gambits are repeated using very similarvocabulary: Travers indicates an object and the General responds. For the firstobject we have:


The General ran his glass over it.‘Doesn’t look like…’

while for the second we have:

Wharton ran his glass over it, frowned at it and gave it back.‘Looks like…’

Unlike the extract from Orwell, there is little sense of these parallel interactionsproviding a satisfying balance, or being manipulated by the writer for stylisticeffects to give some insight into character. Rather they seem stale repetitionsserving only to convey details for purposes of plot. This conclusion is supportedby an extract later in the book, when Wharton is again examining the evidence,and again holding the floor with a similar effect:

Sample 9

‘I must ask that maid in the morning if her mistress had a fountain pen likethis. By the way, you’d have thought that anyone who trod on it wouldhave known it and picked the pieces up. Just look here a minute.’

The two went over. Wharton explained.‘Looks a certainty that Ward trod on it. See the softness of the carpet,

and the thickness of this knobbly bit at the end of the pen?…’(TQ Chapter 5)

Summary

The structure of literary exchanges is unlike spontaneous interaction as seen intranscription. Spontaneous interaction is as much to do with sustaining andmonitoring the process of communication as it is with conveying ideas, opinionsor information. As such, it shows evidence of these pragmatic concerns. Thehesitations, overlaps and interruptions which often help to carry forward asatisfactory conversation as speakers accommodate their utterances to those ofothers are manifestations of the process of communication. In a literary context,these interpersonally generated features are not the primary concern, rather thedialogue seeks to convey information needed to carry forward the plot and/orrelate significant interactions to broader themes in the work as a whole.

There is also a contrast between the dynamic forces which shape realinteraction and allow speakers to become joint creators of contributions to aconversation and the independent utterances of distinct characters usually foundin literary settings. Ironically, actual speakers in transcripts of real interactionshave potentially less individuality in terms of being the sole creator of acontribution to the discourse than the shades we find in literary contexts(Chapter 3 deals with this further).


The process of looking at dialogue in literary texts and contrasting them withactual interactions can give some insight into why certain writers appear to beable to make a reader suspend disbelief and feel that real speech is in progresswhile others waste the potential of direct speech and leave us with somethingstale and lacking in vitality. While a writer might not wish to present all thebanal and often repetitive or verbose utterances we use to sustain and monitordialogue, the less successful examples shown above suggest that the totalremoval of interactive features is not advisable.

Literary exchanges showing features of spontaneousconversation

This section follows a rather more sustained interaction between two characters,and focuses particularly on the contrast between the presentation of troubled anduntroubled interaction. There are a variety of techniques at the disposal of awriter to indicate confusion, embarrassment or anger within a dialogue, but thesetechniques exist within fairly clear parameters of reader expectation. Prosewriters may experiment with breaking through these conventions, and readerscan quickly accommodate themselves to idiosyncratic representations of speechonce they realise the new ‘rules’ which the writer has adopted, but, in general,reader-friendliness wins the day.

As was suggested in the previous section, the interactions we find in books arenot like real interactions in many ways, primarily because they are artefactspresented in a constructed context. This does not mean that typical features ofinteraction—overlaps, hesitations or interruptions—are never shown in literaryexchanges, but rather these features take on a different significance on the page.The following example from Under the Volcano by Malcolm Lowry shows howthe presentation of these features can be manipulated for literary effect.

While out on a riding trip, two characters, a woman and a man, stop for adrink, and see a little girl playing with an armadillo. The woman, Yvonne, asksthe girl how much she wants for the animal, and a joking, smoothly runningconversation ensues between her and her companion, Hugh.

Sample 10

‘You don’t really want it, do you?’ […]Yvonne nodded in jest: ‘I’d adore it. It’s perfectly sweet.’‘You couldn’t make a pet of it. Neither can the kid: that’s why she wants

to sell it.’ Hugh sipped his beer. ‘I know all about armadillos.’‘Oh so do I!’ Yvonne shook her head mockingly, opening her eyes very

wide. ‘But everything!’(UV Chapter 4)


Here we have a ‘classic’ A-B-A-B interaction, with no hint in the presentation ofoverlaps, interruption or usual production errors such as false starts. Theimpression on the page is one of smooth running banter.

However, the joking soon stops, when an allusion by Hugh to the armadillo’ssinister propensities (‘…if you try to stop it [disappearing into a tunnel it has dug]it will do its damnedest to pull you down the hole too’) seems to remind them ofthe destructive tendencies of Yvonne’s ex-husband and Hugh’s brother, who iscalled Geoff. The conversation then moves on to more sensitive issues. Hugh,who has had an affair with Yvonne in the past, asks her whether she has reallydivorced Geoff and she replies:

Sample 11

‘Oh, I’ve—divorced him,’ she answered unhappily.‘But you don’t know whether you’ve gone back to him or not?’‘Yes. No… Yes. I’ve gone back to him all right all right.’

(UV Chapter 4)

Here the sensitivity of the issue, and Yvonne’s ambivalent attitude to herexhusband are indicated by the breaking up of her previously slick responses.Firstly there is the pause, suggested by the dash (‘Oh, I’ve—divorced him’) as ifshe is loath to use the word ‘divorced’. Secondly there is the contradictory ‘Yes.No’, and the second pause, indicated by the ellipsis marks, before she concludes:‘Yes. I’ve gone back to him’, ending with the (again ambiguous) repetition of‘all right’.

In this example we see something akin to the process by which actual speakersgrope for the best way to express their meaning (for example the ‘No I don’t playvery much now, no, not at all’ of Sample 4, or the ‘and there was another bit aswell another dangly bit’ from Sample 5). However, in the context of a craftedliterary dialogue, this not unusual process in real speech becomes a code to act asa signal of emotion or mental disturbance for the reader.

The ‘difficult’ interaction continues with Hugh offering to go away earlierthan he had planned to ease the situation:

Sample 12

‘…I’d been thinking of going to Oaxaca for a day or two anyhow —’Yvonne had raised her head at the word Oaxaca. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Yes, itmight [make things simpler for her]. Though, oh Hugh, I don’t like to sayit, only —’

‘Only what?’‘Only please don’t go away till we’ve talked it over. I’m so frightened.’

(UV Chapter 4)


Here interruptions are indicated, as well as broken off utterances (‘anyhow —’and ‘only—’) as Yvonne appears to leap eagerly at his suggestion then pausebefore admitting that she is frightened.

Back to banality

The surprising thing is that we do not learn the cause of her fear, because theinteraction is not sustained as we might expect. By the end of the last exchange,given above, Hugh is, somewhat unexpectedly, paying for the beers and thinkingabout the armadillo, rather than hanging on her every word. He does not respondto her confession of fear, and the conversation quickly moves on to banalitieswith Yvonne showing her local knowledge by explaining about bus routes, thehistory of the local town of Parián, and the development of the railway line.These ensuing conventional exchanges show little or no evidence of disfluencies.And, despite the fact that they subsequently return to the topic of Geoffs self-destructive drinking, this superficial interlude, together with Hugh’s apparentinability to sustain a ‘deep’ conversation, hint at the futility, in general, of theirattempts at constructive communication.

Summary

There are a variety of ways for a writer to show heightened emotional statesduring interaction between characters. However, the literary exchange tends toreserve the representation of normal disfluency features as a signal for readers ofemotional tension.

Since readers are ‘trained’ to decode the representation of disfluency featuresas being indicative of a problematic or heightened emotional state betweenspeakers, the preparation of verbatim transcripts of spoken interactions forpurposes other than academic analysis (for example, in the context of the policeinterview) becomes an issue. The next section deals with the topic of interactionswritten down by means of a case-study. This discusses the treatment ofinteractions in parliamentary discourse as spoken by Members of Parliament andas subsequently transcribed for a written record in the Official Report(‘Hansard’).

A CASE-STUDY: PARLIAMENTARY INTERACTIONS

So far in this chapter, we have looked at some examples of spontaneousinteractions, and some literary exchanges. These have in common the fact thatthe transcripts of the actual interchanges, and the fictional extracts all share acommon root, as it were, being generally informal, and from the domain ofconversation. Speakers in more formal settings usually have to adhere to moreexplicit conventions for utterance. Discourse produced in the setting of


Parliament is, at first sight, some of the least conversational, and in some casesmost arcane, of any in English.

Therefore, this discourse is unlike the interactions we have been looking at sofar: it is spoken with a large present audience, it is spoken with a wider publicaudience of voting constituents in mind, it follows the conventions of debate andthus has explicit rules of linguistic and physical behaviour (all speakers mustspeak through The Speaker, all speakers have to stand while they are giving theircontribution, speakers wishing to interrupt another need to be given way to by aspeaker who is holding the floor, and so on). However, within this formalisedframework there is opportunity for informal and unofficial asides andinterchanges; and in a broader sense, similar issues to those raised by therepresentation of interaction in literary settings can be seen.

The following case-study is based on a parliamentary debate about televisingthe House of Commons. There are three versions of this debate relevant to thischapter. The first is a verbatim transcript from sound recordings of the discourse(Text S); the second is the Official Report (‘Hansard’), version prepared byofficial transcribers at the House (Text W). The third version is the same as TextS, but with all disfluencies (repetitions, hesitations and so on) eliminated (TextSl).

The preliminary findings of the case-study showed that the volume ofdiscourse is significantly reduced when spoken language is transferred to the page.The word (or more technically ‘token’) total went down by just over 17 per centfor the debate in question. Translated into other terms the significance of thedrop was calculated to be equivalent to around forty-five minutes of speech‘gone missing’ or, in other words, the average contribution of three speakers to adebate.

This section shows subsequent work based on the hypothesis that thisreduction will not be constant across all categories of discourse. That is to say,that some types of language would show a greater reduction thanothers. Furthermore, in connection with the conclusions from the previousdiscussions in the present chapter, we might also predict that language with theprimary purpose of sustaining discourse will not survive in transcription, andneither would language showing disfluencies.

Categorising the sections of discourse

For the analysis the discourse was broken up into different discourse categories.These were based on the conventions governing discourse in the debatingchamber, such as the fact that all contributions to the debate have to beacknowledged by the person in charge of the debate (‘The Speaker’), just ascontributions during a committee meeting have to go through the ‘Chair’. As inmost cases where this convention is supposed to hold sway, the systemfrequently breaks down as contributors feel moved to speak, and to ignore theperson who is nominally in charge. Nevertheless, all discourse during a


parliamentary debate is shaped by the rules governing behaviour, and sections ofspeakers’ language can be defined in relation to this framework.

The following are the categories which were used in the study:

• ‘Discourse category’: Discourse section serving functional purpose and/ordistinct from surrounding discourse with respect to function, topic,acceptability under rules governing debate in Commons. Those used in thissurvey are:

• ‘Main’: Speech of a main speaker called through The Speaker to participate indebate at a given time and which is not covered by the following categories.

• ‘Intervention’: Speech of a secondary speaker interrupting a main speakerthrough the Chair.

• ‘Response’: Speech of a main speaker responding to intervention.• ‘Organisation’: Speech serving to maintain discourse between speakers.• ‘Unofficial’: Speech not covered by any of the above categories.• ‘Speaker section’: Unit of debate throughout which a ‘Main’ speaker (see

above) holds floor.

Sample of discourse categories in transcription

Initially, it may be helpful to show pairs of texts from Text S and Text W, both togive examples of the categories and to show, for small sections of debate, howthe reductions occur. The following samples of the texts showing the alterationand elimination of discourse categories:

Sample 13

Text S Comment

[Intervention—Speaker 1] does he notthink in his judgement that had the SelectCommittee on Westland been televised theRight Honourable Gentleman the Memberfor Richmond would have then been in aposition where he had to answer possiblygreatly for that Right HonourableGentleman’s own good

Speaker 1 has been allowed to ‘break-in’to the discourse of the original speakerwho was holding the floor

[Organisation—Speaker 2] Mr Wallace Speaker 2 (the Deputy Speaker),acknowledges the return of the originalspeaker

[Response—Speaker 3] I think it is amatter of speculation but I think he eitherwould have had to answer or failure toanswer would perhaps have attracted morepublic er comment and judgement than itnecessarily did er without it it beingtelevised but the I think I think

Speaker 3, the original speaker respondsto the intervention


Text S Comment

[Organisation—Speaker 3] I’ve givenaway I’ve given way quite a number oftimes and I want I’ve given away anumber of times and I would like to moveon to some of the reservations which er wedo have er Madam er Madam DeputySpeaker

The original speaker re-embarks on thethread of his discourse which was brokenoff by the successful intervention

[Main—Speaker 3] because we do thinkthat there W-that there could well be er thedangers of exclusion and unfair coveragenot only of those of us on this bench but ofthe the nationalist parties the parties fromNorthern

The original speaker re-embarks on thethread of his discourse which was brokenoff by the successful intervention

Ireland and indeed from backbenchersfrom er from all parties after all at the lastgeneral election nearly a a quarter of theel- of those who voted er voted for a thirdforce in British politics but the proceduresof this House are very much geared to atwo-party system indeed at the on theoccasion when we last debated this inNovember 1985 Hugo Young writing inthe Guardian said…

[Unofficial—Speaker 4] who’s he facetious comment by another Member,not recognised by The Speaker andtherefore ‘unofficial’

(Author’s data)

Sample 13a

Text W Comment

[Intervention—Speaker 1] Does theHonourable Gentleman not think that hadthe Westland Select Committee beentelevised the Right Honourable andLearned Member for Richmond Yorks.would have had to answer, possibly verymuch for his own good?

Intervention as above in Text S version,with alterations typical of the Hansard text

[Response—Speaker 3] That is a matterfor speculation. Either he would have hadto answer, or failure to answer wouldperhaps have attracted more publiccomment and judgement than occurredwithout its being televised. (CampbellSavours rose)

Note that the organisational utterance ofSpeaker 2 above is not transcribed, andthe presence of an explanatory ‘stagedirection’ for the reader re the Memberwho is trying to intervene


Text W Comment

[Organisation—Speaker 3] I have givenway a number of times. I should like nowto move on to some of our reservations onthis matter.

Reduced version of the Text S move toreturn to main topic without the repetitionsand mistakes caused by the fending off ofanother speaker

[Main—Speaker 3] We feel that therecould be a danger of exclusion or unfaircoverage—not only of Alliance members,but of the nationalist parties, the partiesfrom Northern Ireland and backbenchersfrom all parties. After all, nearly a quarterof those who voted at the last GeneralElection voted for the third force in Britishpolitics, but the procedures of the Houseare very much geared to a two-partysystem. When we last debated this matter,in November 1985, Mr Hugo Young,writing in the Guardian, said that hethought…

The speaker returns to his main train ofthought, as in the spoken version, but theunofficial remarks made by others are nottranscribed

(OR)

Preliminary findings

The most striking thing about the ‘verbatim’ transcript prepared as the officialrecord of discourse in the Commons is that some utterances have disappearedcompletely, or been greatly reduced. Table 2.1 gives a diagrammaticrepresentation of the difference in categories in these extracts.

Table 2.1 Elimination of discourse categories in transcription

Quite apart from any alterations or omissions made within discoursecategories as the transcriber tidies and corrects utterances, the Hansard versionomits whole stages that were present in the original: for example the firstoccurrence of organisational talk (the acknowledgment by the Deputy Speaker ofwhose turn it is to speak next—in this case, a Main speaker who is responding toan intervention, having given way previously and the final, ‘unofficial’ utterancein the transcript). This hints at two major criteria we might think of transcribers


(those in ‘natural’ settings, as opposed to the linguist preparing a transcriptionfor analysis) as using when they decide what should not be included on the page:first, sections of talk which simply exist to carry forward the mechanics of thediscourse itself; second, utterances that are not in line with the conventions of theframework of the discourse, the ‘rules’ governing the interactions.

Further analysis

With the aid of a computer this intuition about the regular reduction or completeremoval of certain types of discourse in transcription can be tested, and this cangive some insight into what transcribers feel readers should have in front of themon the page to read as an acceptable record of a person’s speech. Token countsby discourse category suggest that the process seen in the short extracts above ispart of a more general feature of the transcription.

For the whole debate the sections of discourse in Text S and Text W wereanalysed and marked off from one another in such a way that a computerconcordance programme4 could recognise them and count the word totals for anygiven section in isolation from the others. To exemplify this, in the small extractgiven above the computer could be programmed to prepare a token total for, say,the Organisation category in Text S and the total would be around forty-six(depending on whether you had decided to count the auxiliary verb ‘have’ as aseparate word when elided as in ‘I’ve’). A similar instruction to count the samecategory in Text W would give a total of twenty-two. For any small section ofText S and the equivalent in Text W this reduction by over a half might not besignificant—it could be a strange section of text with an unusually high reduction—but a count made for the whole debate shows a similar process of reduction atwork.

The totals for all the discourse categories are shown in Table 2.2. The firstthree categories listed there show reductions in token totals close to the averagefor speakers in the debate. As was predicted from the analysis of a small sampleof text, the last two categories, ‘Organisation’ and ‘Unofficial’ have undergonereductions of well over twice this average.

Table 2.2 Discourse categories ranked by token totals

Before drawing any sweeping conclusions about these figures, it is importantto consider how much of the talk that has ‘gone missing’ is attributable to


disfluency features such as hesitations, repetitions and voiced fillers, featureswhich, as was noted above, writers associate with a ‘difficult’ interaction. That isto say, it might not be seen as very significant if transcribers merely eliminate thefeatures which are production errors, but, in contrast, it may be seen as moresignificant if whole sections of ‘correct’ discourse are being eliminated.

Analysis taking into account speaker error

A second count using a different version of the spoken text (Text Sl) for acomparison with Text W was carried out. This text marked production errors asto be ignored by the computer. For example, in the short extract given above thewords that are in italics would have been omitted from the count:

because we do think that there w- that there could well be er the dangers ofexclusion and unfair coverage

The ‘w-’ was possibly a false start of the word ‘well’ (was the speaker going to usethe more emphatic word-order of ‘well could be’ as opposed to ‘could wellbe’?). This is followed by a repetition of ‘that there’ as he reformulates theutterance, and the clause continues with a voiced filler ‘er’ before thecomplement of the verb ‘be’ is constructed and uttered. As will be seen inChapter 3 some individuals appear to have much more difficulty in choosingwords and formulating utterances than others, and the transcriber sees his/her jobto be to convey the final form reached by the speaker, rather than the sometimesgroping process by which the form is found. If all the disappearing words fromthe markedly reduced sections of discourse (Unofficial and Organisation) can beattributed to disfluency features, then it would not be possible to really claim thatthese sections were undergoing anything different from other sections ofdiscourse. That is to say, they were not reduced because of their status, butbecause they contained a great many production errors. We might be interestedto think why these sections of discourse had such a high prevalence of ‘errors’,but we could not conclude that transcribers were eliminating the categories perse.

The results of the token count between the ‘error-free’ text (Text Sl) and theHansard version (Text W) are shown in Table 2.3. The high degree of tokenreduction in the discourse categories mentioned above is maintained betweenText Sl and Text W. That is to say, over half the category ‘Unofficial’ and nearlyhalf of the category ‘Organisation’ present in Text Sl were ‘missing’ from TextW in terms of volume of tokens, just as they had been when Text W wascompared to Text S.

The implication of this is that we are witnessing a reduction in terms of actual‘content’ words (used loosely here rather than in the way the term is used inlexical studies), rather than repetitions or hesitations from these categories ofdiscourse. This conclusion was further supported when a count was made to


show what proportion of the difference between Text S and Text W that could beaccounted for by error. As Table 2.4 shows, the discourse categories that hadranked highest in terms of overall token loss ranked lowest in terms of thepercentage of overall differences due to ‘errors’. Indeed, in the ‘Unofficial’category there were no such ‘errors’ of speech production present and thereforeno part of the missing percentage of tokens could be accounted for by these factors.The top category in Table 2.4 was ‘Response’ with 36 per cent of the differencein volume between Text S and Text W accounted for by speaker ‘error’.

Table 2.3 Token fall between Text S1 and Text W by discourse category ranked accordingto difference as percentage of Text S1

Table 2.4 Discourse categories ranked according to percentage of differences betweenText S and Text W accounted for by speaker error

It is tempting to draw conclusions from these figures. For example, oneintuitively feels that speaker ‘error’ will be increased after an intervention byanother speaker. The high incidence of hesitancy and repetition in the discoursecategory ‘Response’, where the speakers are dealing with such an interruption,would appear to support this. The figures presented in Table 2.4 could beinterpreted as reflecting the nature and priorities of the kind of record-takingunder consideration. That is to say the written record aims to capture facts andnot the dynamics of discourse. One might therefore expect the discoursecategories containing the interplay of speakers as they organise their turn-taking,for example, not to be retained, and a comparison of the texts in question wouldappear to support this.

Summary

These results suggest that transcribers, like creative writers, are not concerned toshow readers a record of the actual process of spoken communication. The studyof parliamentary discourse has also thrown up the issue of ‘correctness’, for


example, the fact that only discourse that is recognised by the person in chargeof the debate should be given space.

In general, the process of representing an interaction on the page is focused onthe content of the utterances more than on the way in which this content wasconveyed. This is true of the literary as well as non-literary representations ofspoken exchanges, where the interests of the reader tend to outweigh veracityand/or verbatimness of transcription.


When writers seek to represent a spoken interaction on the page, they face aninitial problem in that they are transferring what is dynamic, primarily oral/aural,interpersonally motivated and strongly temporally dependent to a medium ill-suited to showing these distinctive features. Conventions have arisen whichsignal to a reader that spoken interaction is taking place, and writers can chooseto flout or adopt these as they feel the need. This is a fruitful area of study forstudents interested in the more linguistic side of literary studies; for example, acomparison can be undertaken of different writers’ techniques in representingspoken interaction, and the degree to which standard conventions are adopted.

A second issue is the degree to which literary ‘constructed’ interactions seekto reflect spontaneous interaction. This is an issue with two sub-points. First,there is the fact that writers, and we may be thankful for this, are generally notlinguists, and, unless they have made a study of the topic, have only a lay-person’s knowledge of the structure of real spoken data. Second, there is therelated point that readers are trained in the normal conventions of speechpresentation, and they too have only a ‘residual’ picture of the complexities ofinteraction. Therefore, when a writer makes an effort to present something moreakin to realistic speech between characters this often has an alienating effect.That is to say, the reader does not recognise the written-down-speech style ofwriting as an accurate reflection of their perception of spoken interaction, or maysimply be turned off by the unconventional look of the writing on the page, orthey may misinterpret the cues as being indicative of a ‘problematic’ exchangebetween characters. Again, not all literary works are alike in this respect, and aninteresting point of comparison between writers, or between different works bythe same writer, is the degree to which the spoken discourse comes near to actualinteraction.

As touched on previously, a great deal of real spoken interaction is boring inthe extreme, and even meaningless, to those not involved. The task for the writeris to manipulate those features which help readers to recognise spokeninteraction, while avoiding the extremes of difficult to read and ambiguous tointerpret vérité, or unrealistic woodenness.

In non-literary contexts, such as the transcription of police interviews, theissue of verbatimness takes on even greater significance. Here, once again, ifthere is not to be a re-education of readers into new conventions for showing


actual speech written down, so that the hesitant or apparently less than articulatespeaker does not automatically seem over-emotional or shifty to a reader, thebalance must be struck between capturing what was actually said andmisrepresenting the speaker in the new channel by a too faithful transcript.

EXERCISES

Task:

Look again at the transcript you made of a conversation for the first task at theend of Chapter 1. Does this show features of a smoothly running conversation ornot? Could it be included, unedited, in a novel? If not, why not? List the featureswhich would make it difficult for readers of a novel to understand.

Task:

Find some short extracts of dialogue from your favourite novelist. To whatextent does s/he attempt to show features of actual spontaneous conversation?

Task:

Look at the following representation of an angry interchange between a fatherand son (taken from a Sherlock Holmes story). In the light of this chapter, howdoes the writer show heightened emotion? Do you think an actual angryexchange would be structured like this? (Here the speaker is quoting himself.)

Sample 14

“‘You blackguard!” I shouted, beside myself with rage. “You havedestroyed it! You have dishonoured me forever! Where are the jewels youhave stolen?”

“Stolen!” he cried.“Yes, you thief!” I roared, shaking him by the shoulder.“There are none missing. There cannot be any missing,” said he. “There are three missing. And you know where they are. Must I call you

a liar as well as a thief? Did I not see you trying to tear off anotherpiece?”’

(BC)

Task:In your reading, look out for examples of exchanges which match any of the

interactions you have read about in this chapter and create a ‘portfolio’ ofexchanges; for example, two people catching up with one another’s experiences,or two people assessing an object that is present in their situation. What is thebalance of contributions made by each speaker? Do your examples support the


conclusions of this chapter? If not, how would you alter some of theconclusions?

FURTHER READING

Burton, Deirdre (1980) Dialogue and Discourse, London: Routledge.Button, Graham and Lee, John R.E. (eds) (1987) Talk and Social Organisation,

Clevedon: Multilingual Matters.Coulthard, M (1985) An Introduction to Discourse Analysis, London: Longman.Nunan, D. (1993) Introducing Discourse Analysis, Harmondsworth: Penguin.Orestrom, B. (1983) Turn-taking in English Conversation, Malmo: Liber.


Chapter 3Individuals in speech and writing

In every human utterance lies the sum total of that person’s linguistic past.

INTRODUCTION

The discussion in this chapter begins with a general overview of the notion ofdistinctively individual use of language (one’s idiolect), first in the spokenchannel, and then in the written. It then moves on to consider real speakers andfictional speakers,1 and concludes with a second case-study investigating howand why some speakers’ idiolects seem to be more amenable to transcription fora written record than others.

In the same novel from which the epigraph for this chapter is taken (MissSmilla’s Feeling for Snow by Peter Høeg) a useful example to highlight the keyconcepts underlying the present discussion can be found. The central character,Smilla, has found a cassette tape recording of a person speaking. Although sheherself is a Greenlander by origin, she cannot understand the dialect which isbeing spoken and she takes the tape to a language expert for analysis:

Sample 15

He listens for half a minute with his head in his hands. Then he stops thetape.

‘Mid-forties. Grew up near Ammassalik. Very little formal education.On top of the East Greenlandic there are traces of more northern dialects.But up there they move around too much to say which exactly. He hasprobably never been away from Greenland for any significant period oftime.’

(MSFS Chapter 3)

The language expert, like that famous earlier example, Professor Higgins inShaw’s Pygmalion, is able to disentangle and articulate the features in the samplehe has heard which make the unknown speaker distinctive. Whereas most of usare only able to recognise the ‘sum total’ in what we hear, and gain animpressionistic sense of the individuality of the language, the expert can break

down the individual elements into geographical elements (for example ‘Grew upnear Ammassalik’), and sociological elements (mid-forties, very little formaleducation), the combination of which produces the speaker’s idiolect.

Additionally, in any sample of speech there are incidental elements which mayhave an influence on any individual utterance, such as topic, setting orinterlocutor. The expert continues, moving on to these types of feature (he alsolocates another sociological element: the speaker’s probable occupation):

Sample 16

He’s describing a journey. Across ice. With sleighs pulled by rope. Well,yes — and dogs. He’s probably a hunter, because he uses a series oftechnical terms, such as anut for the dog harnesses. He’s probably talkingto a European. He uses English names for locations. And he seems to thinkhe has to repeat many things.

(MSFS Chapter 3)

Factors which influence idiolect

The factors which go towards making up our identifiable speech patterns can bedivided2 according to the categories shown in Table 3.1.

Table 3.1 Divisions of idiolect

The divisions shown in Table 3.1 provide a checklist of factors to considerwhen we discuss idiolect, and a series of points of comparison when we turnnext to the matter of writing and idiolect.

64 INDIVIDUALS IN SPEECH AND WRITING

Individual voices

The way in which one speaks is akin to a fingerprint. The single word ‘hello’spoken on the telephone is usually sufficient for a listener to recognise thespeaker, even if they have only a slight acquaintance. This unique vocal‘fingerprint’ is made up of several interlocking aspects. The first of these is thedialect or dialects we speak. Traditionally, this concept is strongly linked to thephysical location of a community of speakers who all tend to speak in the sameway, and to show social solidarity to those around them by choosing to soundlike their family or neighbours. Choosing whether or not to retain a way ofspeaking which marks you out as from a particular area (and more subtly, from asocial group that is stereotypically linked with speakers of that dialect) is acentral way of defining one’s identity as one grows up and becomes a moreconscious language user.

The dialect that one speaks will initially be affected most strongly by that ofone’s parents, by early peer groups, areas of long-term settlement, such as whenone moves to a new location to take up a job and remains there for several years,and it continues to be affected throughout life by the process of communicationwith those whom we find influential in our lives: life partners, and social groupsof other adults we admire and wish to be accepted by.

Cross-cutting the dialectal factors are sociological factors which again assistthe individual to mark their identity in relation to others. We may choose tospeak in one style or another because of a particular context, such as a jobinterview, but underpinning this is the ‘default’ way we speak, our usual voice inwhich we speak most of the time. The position of a family in society, the choiceof schooling, the type of work a person undertakes, and again the influence of thegroup(s) of people we want to be a part of are all social factors which leave theirmark on the way a person speaks.

Some of the characteristics of an individual’s speech, such as voice quality andpitch, are retained whether one is speaking one’s mother tongue or not and aredetermined by the physical characteristics of the body, the length of vocal chordsand so on. Others, such as accent, intonation or speed, are more within the controlof the individual, and are less physically dependent. One’s age, state of healthand constitution and the presence or absence of physical impediments all affectand help to define one’s individual way of speaking.

The above combine with incidental features such as who one is speaking to atthe time, the type of discourse being constructed (for example, conversation or apublic after-dinner speech), the emotional states, the topic and the reason forspeaking, and are factors which need to be considered when discussing whether asample of language is ‘typical’ of the individual producing it.

The term ‘idiolect’ is more usually used in relation to dialectal features, beingcoined to refer to the actual language used by an individual in a languagecommunity as opposed to the more abstract collection of individuals’ languagepatterns which go to make up the dialect. The focus in this discussion of

INDIVIDUALS IN SPEECH AND WRITING 65

individuals’ language is less upon how an individual sounds and more uponpreferred choice in lexis, typical syntactic structuring and so on. The reason forthis is that while the production aspects of an individual’s discourse—their vocalpattern (or indeed their handwriting in the written channel)—may be the mostdistinctive aspects of the language sample, these aspects are the least useful interms of comparison between speech and writing. The aim in this chapter is toanalyse features which can be said to hold identity across channel: words,phrases and clauses, rather than less directly comparable features such asintonational patterns of an individual speaker and, say, punctuation. A furtherreason for putting the focus on content features rather than production ones is thatthese have more bearing on the representation of character through speech inliterary contexts, and this topic permits an interesting four-way comparison to bemade concerning: the individual speaker, the individual writer, representation ofa fictional individual’s speech, representation of a real individual’s speech.

Individual language use and writing

So far the discussion has dealt primarily with the spoken form of language, evenif only implicitly. When we turn to consider the written form, we are faced onceagain with a lack of symmetry between the two forms, and an associateddifficulty in any comparison. Speech is the locus of change in a language. Theengine which drives that change is the sum of everyone’s idiolects. As we chooseto speak in one way or another we affect the choices made by others andgradually, as one form seems right, useful or amusing, or another seems wrong,ineffective or boring, the spoken language reshapes itself. After a period of timea change may be given a seal of approval and enter the respectable world of thestandard written form,3 in the case of a neologism it will find itself in adictionary, in the case of a grammatical variant (and this is a much harderjourney for a linguistic item) it will find itself as a footnote in a book on ‘correct’grammatical usage.

A writer may choose to flout the norms of the mode, and indeed unmediatedwriting (i.e. writing which is not published and edited in a formal context, butrather written directly for consumption by one individual from another, such asan informal letter between friends) often uses forms which would not generallybe recognised by the ‘gatekeepers’ of writing as acceptable.

Therefore, whereas an individual speaker can hardly choose but revealsomething of their distinctive idiolect each time they open their mouth to speak,an individual communicating in the written channel, particularly through aprinted or published medium, has the potential to remain far more anonymous.Indeed, as will be shown below, the skilful writer must learn to work within theconventions and restrictions of the visual channel and this is a process whichinvolves adopting standard spelling, punctuation, grammar and the norms ofinformation presentation associated with written genres.


While it can be argued that a speaker must also work within conventions andexpectations, these tend not to be articulated in the same way, or as explicitly, asthose which govern language production through writing. Furthermore, speechconventions tend to be ‘acquired’ rather than taught. The nature of writing meansthat it is easier to examine, in all senses of the word, and easier to set evaluativecriteria for.

In a literate society, writing serves well-defined functions, such as being themedium for contractual agreements, for information gathering and storage, orother interactions based around content which people demand should persistthrough time. These functions are by their very nature social, rather thanindividual, and tend to permit little variation between different producers.Additionally, it is the hallmark of ‘socially defined’ writing, such as legaldocuments, or laboratory reports, that they are ‘impersonal’, and the valorisingof objectivity in scientific or institutional texts assists the process of reducingindividuality in much that is produced via the written channel. A person’sindividuality is, therefore, often masked or altered by using the written channeland this fact can make the status of idiolect in writing problematic.

The above points lead to a difficulty in defining idiolect in writing, and adifficulty in comparing idiolect across channel. This point will be consideredfurther in a discussion of young writers, but first, we return to the categoriesgiven above which were seen as underpinning spoken idiolect, and attempt toanalyse discourse produced by an individual solely in the written channel, inorder to flesh out some more details of the asymmetries between speech andwriting.

The first category seen as underlying idiolect was dialectal. Historical factorshave led to written English being closely associated with Standard English, itselfa development of Southern English dialects and strongly influenced by thegeographical location of centres of power and learning such as London, Oxfordand Cambridge. The refinement of printing and publishing techniques has led tofurther standardisation of spelling and punctuation (a relatively recentdevelopment) so that the relationship between variations in geographical locationand idiosyncrasies of writing has been broken. These developments are notwithout good reason. Since the written form of language has developed to servethe purpose of communicating across time and space with other individuals, it isgenerally not efficient or advisable to limit the possibility of being read andunderstood because of geographically dependent features, such as dialect wordsfor objects, or a spelling which seeks to convey a regional accent. The writerwho unwittingly reveals dialectal origins in the written channel is likely to beregarded as ill-educated.

On the other hand, writers who knowingly try to convey dialectal features inthe written mode, for example D.H.Lawrence or Emily Brontë, rarely do sowithout some desire for contrast effect between the dialectal and the standardforms, and an associated insight into character. Therefore, for the majority ofpeople communicating through writing, dialect features which may be an


important part of a person’s identity, and which serve to show solidarity with aparticular location and/or community, need to be subsumed if one is to beaccepted as a skilled writer. Only when this level of standardisation has beenreached can dialectal features be re-assimilated, in which case they can serve toshow evidence of an even more highly regarded skill, that of the creative writer.

This process can be seen in terms of three levels of awareness or competence,a point which will be returned to below. For example, if a writer always uses theword ‘mardy’ to mean ill-tempered simply because this is a part of their speechidiolect and they are transferring this directly in to the written channel and it isthe first word that comes to mind, they have failed to grasp two key aspects ofwritten mode: first, that it requires deliberation; second, that, as in speech,different contexts require different language. If, however, they use ‘mardy’ in aletter to their close school friend and not in an English language examination,they show the minimum level of awareness needed, and have begun the processof distinguishing between speech and writing. Finally, if the word is used by acreative writer and put into the mouth of a character, a high level ofsophistication has been reached, since the speech habits of a fictional creation(and a fictional idiolect) are being conveyed through the written channel in orderto be decoded by a reader as indicative of social status of character, relationbetween characters, state of mind of character and so on. The analogy here mightbe that of the contrast between a person who simply dresses in whatever comesto hand with little sense of how it will be perceived, as opposed to the dresserwith a sense of appropriateness, who in turn contrasts with a person whose job itis to convey something through the semiotics of clothing, such as a costumedesigner in film or theatre.

The second category of idiolect features noted above was sociological. Thedominance of a standardised form of written language which is acceptable interms of spelling and grammar to those who produce, edit and publish the bulkof written material means that the sociological features affecting an individualwriter, as was seen to be the case with dialect features, tend to boil down to whatis acceptable in a standardised, formal form. The individual’s written idiolect isjudged against a far more clearly articulated set of norms than their patterns ofspeech. Indeed, in some forms of writing, such as the business letter, theconventions have become so formulaic that software packages for the busy officecan provide ready-made form letters for different kinds of communicationobjective.

Rather than the capacity to communicate per se the competent writer mustlearn to manipulate acceptable linguistic forms within set perameters of the literatecommunity. Within the collective limitations it is possible for the writer to have astyle of their own, but as was suggested in the discussion of dialect, too great adeviation from what is generally accepted will not be effective or acceptable in amodern literate society. Furthermore, whereas spoken idiolect is largelyunconscious, and in many respects beyond our control (for example, the timbre ofour voice, or favourite phrases such as ‘you know’ which we barely notice


ourselves using until someone points them out to us), the process of writing ismore deliberative and the choices made between different ways of puttingsomething are generally more conscious.

The physical aspects which were noted as typically affecting speech idiolectare most applicable to the handwritten medium. Thus far the discussion has largelyfocused on printed written discourse, but the handwritten form, depending as itdoes so intimately on the individual, is the closest parallel to the physical aspectsof a ‘voiceprint’ of an individual speaker. Those who study the science ofhandwriting claim that not only gender, age and state of health can be inferredfrom a sample of handwritten text, but also mental characteristics. Nonetheless,for most of us the effects of reading handwritten texts are largely subjective, andour interest lies mostly in the content of what has been written. This contrastswith speech, where many of the meaning-bearing elements of the language arebound up with subtle variations in the way something is said.

Finally, those features which were considered incidental or ancillary to aspeaker’s idiolect, such as the setting in which the discourse is produced, can beseen as having a variable level of influence over a writer’s idiolect. Other thanrather vacuous conclusions about handwritten texts produced under emotionalstress, or in less than perfect physical conditions, such as on a moving train, thechoices that an individual writer makes are strongly influenced by audience,communicative objective and topic. These features, which were seen as havingtemporary, or speech-event-dependent effects on spoken idiolect, actually defineand limit the potential for idiolect to be shown in writing. That is to say, theskilful writer assesses which forms of language to use in the light of probablereader, current objective and topic, and consciously manipulates the forms usedaccordingly.

In general, therefore, the written mode may be seen as ‘filtering out’ speechidiolect. The effect of this filter is most marked when communication is takingplace via a strongly formulaic genre under the umbrella of the identity of anorganisation or institution, such as a business letter, but even when a writer iscommunicating in a genre which has a potential for less conventionalised formsof language, the need to remain within reader expectation limits the variationwhich a writer’s language can show. Even writers who are keen to present astrongly marked speech idiolect via the written channel usually choose to conveythis by means of a few, selective indications of speech behaviour, rather thanalienate their readership by attempting to convey all the features which combinein actual speech to mark an individual’s speech out from that of others.

One idiolect or two?

So far, consideration has been given to idolect in speech and then in writing, butthere remain difficult questions for further and more theoretical study, questionswhich a channel-based approach to language makes particularly salient. Forexample, the precise relationship between speech idiolect and written idiolect in


an individual; whether, given the conventions and rules which dominate thewritten form, the concept of idiolect is at all applicable in the written channel;whether, as people become competent writers, they develop a secondary idiolect,their own habits and style of writing, which marks them off from other textproducers; whether judgements about idiolect should be value-free or evaluativein nature.

This last point regarding evaluation becomes more of an issue when weconsider the written form, since the major part of what is read is produced byindividuals who have reached a high level of competence in the channel. Whereasthe spoken form is constantly instantiated in various ways and with varyingdegrees of communicative success (and in forms which the written would notallow), the written tends to be filtered and monitored, both by individual writersand those with the power of editing the writing of others. Therefore, many of theunconscious choices which speakers make and which go towards creating typicalpatterns of speech, cannot be said to be relevant in the written channel.

The following quotation from Norman Mailer gives some indication of thepainful, and painstaking, process by which an individual searches for the rightway of expressing an idea in writing, and also highlights the dislike which thisparticular writer has for the undeliberative communication which the spokenchannel forces on him:

I think an interview is truly an unhappy way to get it said, particularly forsomeone who speaks as poorly as I do… When I write, I am forever goingover the words. ‘Now, the best road, that is the most agreeable, no, themost indigenous, say rather, the most comfortable to travel of all the roadsto Burlington is, uh, that is, the road you are likely to find most agreeable,yes, the agreeable road…’ Authors in raw transcript can seem as bad onoccasion as politicians.

(Mailer 1982: v-vi)

The development of an individual style in the written channel is a more explicitprocess than in the spoken, and one which is shaped by the educational processand the relative value which a society places on spoken and written forms. Thisfact complicates any direct comparison of idiolect across channel.

In order to consider this problem further, I shall be using examples from thewriting of fifteen- and sixteen-year-olds whose language use is idiosyncratic.4

The fact that is of interest is that these are language users in their mid-teens,some of whom would be able to leave school the following year and attempt toget a job, and who had, presumably, developed their own spoken idiolects.5 Thequestion is whether the samples are best described as showing an attempt totransfer this speech idiolect directly into the written channel, or whether theysuggest a development of a secondary idiolect which will be the typical patterafor future writing.


If a writer chooses to express the two-word phrase ‘ignore me’ as ‘egnoreme’or the word ‘irrelevant’ as ‘erilivent’, this would appear to be a directly phoneticattempt at spelling out the words as they would be said. Other examples takenfrom these mother-tongue English speakers are: ‘engurence’ (endurance);‘stubed’ (stupid); ‘jovill’ (jovial), with these last three suggesting that the way inwhich someone chooses to present something in writing can on occasion give usa clue to how they would express themselves and/or perceive items in the spokenchannel, a fact which can, sometimes, take on hilarious or creative twists:

He talk a load of Tod’s waddle (codswallop)Strange phraseology or inappropriate use of speech idioms can also mark the

developing writer:He is the bad end of the stickHe speaks slumpish

These young people are expressing themselves in the written channel, but havenot yet fully assimilated the need to break the direct link with speech. Suchexamples may be taken as evidence of a unitary idiolect. That is to say, thelanguage user has a largely one-mode view of language, and attempts to ‘write ashe/she would speak’.6

The examples of idiosyncratic language in the written channel given above aremarked at the level of word or phrase. The surrounding context gives sufficientindication of what was meant, although a word or expression is mis-spelled ormisused. As such, the writers show a higher awareness of the requirements of thechannel than the writer of the following example:

Sample 17

Mr G and Mrs H was related with the royal family that they were abovewith the politics. So mrs H were so useful just for the sort of thing thatwhat open things and so on.

The sort of langage thats were spoken were something that are Italy orGermany because they thought that it was so bad they seemed to mange tospeak like without expensive parasites.

(anonymous GCSE candidate)

This young writer has a fairly well developed grasp of the mechanical channelrequirements of writing—apart from ‘mange’ for ‘manage’ and ‘langage’ for‘language’ the spelling is correct and the punctuation, although minimal, ispresent. What marks it out, however, is the lack of awareness of specificallywritten mode requirements. That is to say, the text is akin to babbled speech andhints at a marked non-standard speech idiolect. The relevant features include:non-standard (although variable) use of the verb ‘be’:

Mr G and Mrs H was relatedthey were


mrs H wereThe sort of langage thats wereSomething that areit was

and idiosyncratic use of prepositions:

related withabove with the politicsspeak like without expensive parasites

and impressively random ‘that’—constructions which serve to mask the intendedmeaning:

Mr G and Mrs H was related with the royal family that they were abovewith the politics. So mrs H were so useful just for the sort of thing thatwhat open things and so on.

The sort of langage thats were spoken were something that are Italy orGermany because they thought that it was so bad they seemed to mange tospeak like without expensive parasites.

For the purposes of this analysis, and as was noted earlier, the types of writtenidiolect are divided into three as shown in Figure 3.1 in order to try to combinedescriptive and evaluative insights. In this model, any sample of a person’swriting is regarded as showing idiolectal properties. Below a certain level ofcompetence the writing is markedly different from the accepted norms, and maybe closely related to an individual’s speech patterns. A realisation of the differentmode requirements of the two channels (binary mode) brings with it the capacityfor the individual to develop their own written idiolect within the conventions ofthe channel. The adept writer learns to manipulate styles and structures, and—what is of particular interest in the present study—can as a creative writer shownot only their own individualism in writing, but attempt to convey other people’sspeech patterns in the written channel (multi-mode): a highly sophisticatedinterplay of channel and mode.

A unitary mode may be further broken down as follows:

1 Marked by spoken channel features:

egnoreme [ignore me]; erilivent [irrelevant]; stubed [stupid]; a houseof air

own [their own]He talk a load of Tod’s waddleYou made a spectral [spectacle] of yourself


Here, as was noted above, the visual presentation is strongly influenced bythe way the spoken forms would be produced by the individual.

2 Marked by spoken mode features:

He is the bad end of the stickHe is the type of person who would jump into someone else’s skin to see

life in their shoesHe is being as it were ‘put under the hammer’ by Mr Y

In this category the way of putting ideas is such that it would be more at home inspoken discourse, such as informal phraseology or idiomatic expressions.

3 Marked by misuse of written channel features:

He is very perlightAnd they do not have blue blood, has the saying goe’s. If thay did they

would not be human.(comment on the royal family)

Figure 3.1 Development of mode awareness


Here the idiosyncrasies arise because of a misunderstanding of, and anovereagerness to use, features which are grounded in the written channel, such assilent letters or the apostrophe to mark possessive forms.

4 Marked by misuse of written mode features:they seemed to manage to speak like without expensive parasites

In this example, the words ‘expensive parasites’ belong to a higher level offormality than the surrounding discourse (and, indeed, were ‘lifted’ from the texton which the student was writing a commentary).

A purely descriptive definition of idiolect would allow us to say that writingwhich diverges from the norm is an example of individual writing style. Wemight say that the person’s written idiolect has properties X and Y (for example,non-standard use of prepositions) and we may conclude that these are a reflectionof a transference of some speech idiolect features into the written channel.However, a developmental, or evaluative model would suggest that the writerneeded help in order to be able to express themselves in this channel and todevelop a binary idiolect able to manipulate both channel and mode featuresappropriately. Whereas in speech there is a strong tradition among linguists forevaluation-free description of language which allows us to say that whatevervariation we find in a person’s language is potentially a marker of their idiolect(whether this variation is standard or highly non-standard), a tension arises forthe concept when it is applied to written discourse due to the more overtlystandardised nature of the form as represented in the bulk of texts in the channel(i.e. printed, published, edited and corrected).

Summary

This consideration of idiolect in speech and writing has brought out some of thedifficulties which underlie a comparison of two such different forms oflanguage. Whereas an individual speaker, whatever the context they are speakingin, will show at least some of the ‘core’ features of their idiolect (preferredintonational patterns, lexical choice, and so on) whenever they speak, theindividual writer, who must adopt shared and conventionalised forms in order togain acceptance, must learn to mask their idiolect in many contexts. Thecomplexities are further increased when consideration is given to the differingmedia in which the written form of language can appear — handwriting,typescript, computer screen, book, public notice, advertising billboard, and soon, and the level of personal control, and authorship, which the text producer hasover the discourse written in these different contexts. Nonetheless, what hascome out of this discussion is the underlying fact that successful writers need todevelop a sensitivity to appropriateness without the more obvious situational andinterpersonal cues which are available to the speaker, and that a fundamental


stage in this process is learning that one’s spoken idiolect may not be adequate orcomprehensible in the visual medium.

For reasons touched on in Chapter 2, the written form tends not to attempt toconvey interpersonal or organisational features of speech, and whereas much ofwhat goes on during spoken interactions is taken up with maintaining thediscourse, a written representation of interaction tends only to attempt to show themechanics of discourse as a signal to the reader of a problematic interaction.Equally, if we consider the individual writer, as opposed to speaker, there is atendency to emphasise informational content over the interpersonal, andevidence of a conventionally delimited set of choices for the language producer.The process of developing an idiolect for writing is one of learning to separate formand content and acquiring the skill of deliberative language choice.

In the following sections some real speakers’ language is considered in thelight of the previous discussion on idiolect. There then follows a brief look at theway individuals are represented by writers in literary contexts, before the finalpart of the chapter goes on to look at real speakers transcribed in non-literarycontexts. As in Chapter 2, the underlying assumption is that skilled writersmanipulate the presentation of speech events (in this case, the speech of anindividual, rather than an interaction) and that the ways in which they choose torepresent speech can tell us something fundamental about the differencesbetween the two forms of language.

REAL VERSUS FICTIONAL INDIVIDUALS SPEAKING

Real individual speakers

If we consider Sample 18 and Sample 19 some of the difficulties for a creativewriter who wants to represent idiolect become apparent. This is because whentranscripts of actual speakers are read, they often contain very few ‘cues’ as tothe personality of the speaker. In order to test this, questions we might ask aboutthe two short samples which follow are:

• How old are these speakers?• Are both samples from the same speaker at different times?• Are the speaker(s) male or female?• What part of the country are they from?• Are they highly educated or not?

Creative writers, if they are not simply to rely on their authorial comments, butrather want the characters to sound right and ‘in character’, need to convey thistype of information. And frequently they need to convey it in fewer words thanare given in these extracts.


Sample 18

Right down the bottom of the orchards there’s a a blackberry field and hesaid it must have been planted in about 1910 and it must be the oldest onein Britain and if it was managed it would keep a family without botheringabout the orchards…


Sample 19

My youngest daughter was about five years old and I was taking her to thedentist and I was coming down Southport Road near the police station andthere was a line of traffic but I was at the front you know and there was…


Finding idiolect features in real speakers

These questions are very difficult to decide from the samples that are given.Although the subject-matter is different and one is speaking about a frighteningpersonal experience while the other is talking about a blackberry patch, there aresome marked similarities between the samples. One of the most distinctivefeatures is the use of the co-ordinating link ‘and’ between unrelated clauses,which can be clearly seen in a rough grammatical analysis set out in Tables 3.2and 3.3.

Another marked feature in both samples is the high incidence of simple, one-or two-word grammatical subjects, the most complex being ‘My youngestdaughter’, which is in contrast to the more complex adverbials found in both:‘Right down the bottom of the orchards’; ‘down Southport Road near the policestation’.

Despite some embedded clauses in Sample 18, the overall impression of bothexamples is one of simple, straightforward delivery: the grammar and lexicalchoice are standard and give no clues as to the geographical origins of thespeakers, and these aspects are again relatively neutral stylistically speaking.Therefore, the reader of these extracts might be forgiven for concluding that bothcould have been spoken by the same person, and would find it hard to concludeanything about the personality or personalities involved.

In reality, these samples were taken from two different speakers, both female,both in their forties, but one from South Wales (Sample 18) and the other fromthe north of England. Nonetheless, on the page, in a standard orthography whichdoes not seek to convey accent or prosodic features, the two women ‘read’ inquite a similar fashion.

At this point, it could be argued that the notion of idiolect is flawed, that is tosay, speakers are not in fact that different from one another, and that people who


are undertaking informative discourse, such as these examples, will use similarlanguage (i.e. co-ordinated linking, simple subjects and so on). The implicationbeing that aspects such as gender, age or discourse objective are more salientthan individual factors. However, the point is not so much this—although that isan interesting notion to consider—but rather that once speech is transferred to thepage, and the dynamic sound qualities are eliminated, a fairly extensive sampleis needed in order to establish typical structural and lexical choices of thatindividual speaker.

For example, in a bigger sample it might become clear that the first speakerhad a marked propensity for embedded clauses, whereas the second speaker usedvery few. Or it might be the case that the first speaker always placed adverbialphrases of location in the sentence initial position, while the second usuallyplaced them in the less marked end-of-clause position. In terms of lexical choiceand style of speaking the first of these speakers uses the emphatic expression‘right down the bottom of the orchards’, and the superlative form ‘the oldest onein Britain’ and expresses the point about the prolificness of the blackberry patchsomewhat hyperbolically: ‘it would keep a family without bothering about theorchards’. A more extensive sampling might support the idea that this particularspeaker generally had a liking for lively hyperbole rather than understatement. Inother words, this speaker would rarely choose to put something plainly and

Table 3.2 Clause analysis of Sample 18 (blackberry narrative)

Table 3.3 Clause analysis of Sample 19 (accident narrative)


simply as ‘at the bottom’ or ‘possibly one of the oldest’ or ‘would provideenough blackberries for a family to use’, choosing the more emphatic alternativeby preference.

The point to note is that short, randomly chosen samples of real individualsspeaking tend not to contain a high density of markers of distinctive languageuse. A reader analysing recurrent forms and trying to establish something aboutcharacter has a difficult task, since they will need to uncover relevant featuresand then look for them in an extended sample. It is this difficult task which thecreative writer at times attempts to eliminate in their representation of speech,either condensing a large number of salient features into a small space, or, moreoften, latching on to one or two marked features which are intended to give animpression of idiolect without distracting the reader by being too difficult to read.

Fictional individuals speaking

Since idiolect in real speech carries with it a strong identity-bearing element, andsince, whether we like it or not, many judgements that are made about speakers arestrongly influenced by how the ideas are conveyed—the tone, accent, mode ofexpression and so on—rather than the content per se, it is unsurprising thatcreative writers find the representation of speech a useful tool, to mark bothcharacter and the contrast between characters.

When I was studying Shakespeare at university, I was struck by a comment ofmy tutor’s on the following extract from Othello:

Come, let us to the castle.News, friends, our wars are done, the Turks are drown’dHow do our old acquaintance of the isle?Honey, you shall be well desired in Cypress;I have found great love amongst them: O my sweet,I prattle out of fashion, and I doteIn mine own comforts…

(Othello II:i)

Here, the Moor excitedly rambles on and addresses his wife as ‘Honey’. At this,my tutor wrinkled up her nose disparagingly and said that she thought this mustbe wrong, that she never could imagine Othello using that form of address toDesdemona. Having an underdeveloped sense of both Shakespeare’s use oflanguage and of Othello’s idiolect, I nodded dumbly, but realised that there was aworld of fine-grained analysis relating to the presentation of speech which wasas yet beyond me. The skilled creative writer does more than make characterspresent information through dialogue, he or she creates a sense of how theyspeak. Taking into account the fact that in actual speech lexico-grammaticalmarkers of speaking style can be spread relatively thinly throughout thediscourse, the creative writer needs to find ways of compressing features into a


smaller space, without losing comprehensibility,7 or, if they are seeking realism,plausibility.

Therefore, in this section some short samples of fictional speaking arediscussed with a view to seeing how writers choose to show distinctive individuallanguage use, and, more importantly, what insight this can give for the study ofspeech in opposition to writing.

The options available to writers

There are several methods by which a writer can choose to convey somethingabout the distinctive language use of a character. These include dialogue externalcomments by the author, as in the following extract from the short story ‘TheDead’ by James Joyce (my italics in this and subsequent extracts):

His hot face had leaned forward a little too confidentially and he hadassumed a very low Dublin accent so that the young ladies, with oneinstinct, received his speech in silence.

(Joyce 1956:181)

Here there is no dialogue material given to flesh out the precise wording of theanecdote he tells, and the effect of this is to place the focus less on the content ofthe story, and more on the reaction to the teller of the story (to his indiscreetcloseness and adoption of a ‘low’ accent). This in turn brings out the mismatchof story to audience, since the genteel young ladies would ipso facto shudder tohear any story delivered in this manner, and the precise wording is immaterial tothem or to the reader.

Alternatively, authorial description of what was said can combine with directrepresentation of the speakers, as in the following:

‘I say I say what’s the matter there?’ The English ‘King’s Parade’ voice,scarcely above him, called out… ‘I say, haven’t I seen you before orsomething.’

‘Trinity,’ The Consul found his own voice becoming involuntarily alittle more ‘English’.

(Lowry 1977:84)

Here, there are not only dialogue external comments (The English “King’sParade” voice…his own voice becoming involuntarily a little more “English”’)to help the reader understand the nature of the speakers’ style, but also examplesof their direct speech, in which structures typical of the style (the repeated ‘Isay’, and the filler ‘or something’) can be found.

Finally, the author may choose simply to represent the distinctive speechwithout directing the reader through narratorial comments, as in the followingexample from P.G.Wodehouse:


Sample 20

I got ’em for ’im up at the big ’ahse. Coo! The old josser the plice belongsto didn’t arf chase me. ’E found me picking ’em and he sharted somefin atme and came runnin’ after me, but I copped ‘im on the shin wiv a stoneand ’e stopped to rub it and I come away.

(LEG)

In this example the unorthodox orthography provides a strong sense of thecharacter’s way of speaking, indicating the sounds of the cockney accent (‘’em’,‘’im’, ‘plice’ etc.), together with vocabulary typical of the dialect (‘old josser’,‘copped’) and grammatical or idiomatic constructions which match the rest(‘didn’t arf, ‘I come away’).

There exist subtle mid-points between these three categories outlined above(author only comment; author comment plus direct speech; direct speech withoutauthor comment): for example, when an author chooses to provide a form of freeindirect speech which contains hints of the distinctive language of the user but isnot presented within the conventions of punctuation associated with directspeech and may be in the third person; or when, as in the example below, thedirect speech is introduced by a comment as to the character’s psychological orattitudinal state. The comment can be interpreted as conveying manner of speechor alternatively might be construed as showing internal state:

‘Yes.’ He was cock-assuredly positive. ‘Life is a moral unity with a commonthought.’

(O’Faolain 1970:85–6)Nonetheless, it is only the direct representation of speakers which is the focus

for this section. This is because in choosing to represent speech with little or noauthorial direction, the writer places the reader of a fictional text in something ofthe same position as a reader of a transcript of naturally occurring speech. Aswas noted above, a relatively long sample of actual speech is needed for thereader to gain a sense of the individual speaker’s style, and in the directrepresentation of speech in fiction a sense of what a writer thinks a reader needsin order to understand idiolect can be seen.

Three characters contrasted

In order to pursue this a little further, the representation of direct speech in ashort story by P.G.Wodehouse is analysed in more detail. In the story, threecharacters contrast strongly with one another, and their individuality is broughtout in part by means of the way they are represented as speaking. In ‘LordEmsworth and the Girlfriend’ the ‘girlfriend’ in question is in fact a little girlcalled Gladys (the cockney whose speech style was discussed above). The storyis one of wistful humour and is unusually sentimental for Wodehouse. The smallgirl, who has been evacuated from London to the country, is important in the


story, since the plot hinges on her being an ‘exotic’ and refreshing source ofempowerment for the timid Lord Emsworth in his battle against the combinedforces of his bullying sister, Constance, and his intransigent gardener,McAllister.

As well as making her come alive, and highlighting the contrast between hersocial status and that of the lord, the alienating effect of the roughly ‘phonetic’representation of her cockney speech helps to put the reader into something ofthe same position as Emsworth who is bewildered by her way of speaking. Thisbewilderment reaches its climax when, after she has been treated to tea in ‘thebig ahse’ (against the wishes of Lady Constance), Emsworth and the butlerconspire to provide a package of good things for her little brother:

Sample 21

A wistful look came into Gladys’s eyes.‘Could he ‘ave some flarze?’‘Certainly,’ said Lord Emsworth. ‘Certainly, certainly, certainly. By all

means. Just what I was about to suggest my—er—what is flarze?’Beach, the linguist, interpreted.‘I think the young lady means flowers, your Lordship.’

(LEG)

At this point, Wodehouse is being somewhat disingenuous, since, apart from aslight difference in vowel length, a cockney speaker and an ‘upper class’ RPspeaker would pronounce the word ‘flowers’ in exactly the same, monosyllabicway. As was noted in the case of Dickens cited in Chapter 2, the opportunityoffered by translation of speech on to the page is being fully used, and the alienspelling ‘flarze’ tricks the reader into assuming that such a misunderstanding couldreally happen, and with it comes the potential for humour.

The third main player in the story is the Scottish gardener, McAllister, whosides with Emsworth’s sister, and who rules the garden with a rod of iron. It is hewhom the small girl terms ‘the old josser the plice belongs to’ and who, due tothe lord’s rather endearing lack of backbone, is in reality the owner, or rather,master, of the gardens. Constance and McAllister are conspiring to lay a gravelpath along a mossy yew tree alley, a move which Emsworth abhors, but is tooineffectual and unassertive to counter. He meets the dreaded McAllister, and, inan exchange worthy of a how-not-todo-it example in an assertiveness handbook,avoids expressing his opinion:

Sample 22

‘Morning, McAllister,’ said Lord Emsworth coldly.‘Good morrrning, your lorrudsheep.’

[…]


‘I was speaking to her leddyship yesterday’‘Oh?’‘About the gravel path I was speaking to her leddyship.’‘Oh?’‘Her leddyship likes the notion fine.’‘Indeed!’

[…]‘I’ll—er—I’ll think it over, McAllister.’‘Mphm.’‘I have to go to the village now. I will see you later.’‘Mphm.’‘Meanwhile, I will—er—think it over.’‘Mphm.’

(LEG)

Unlike the little girl’s cockney dialect, McAllister’s Scottishness is conveyed byonly a few orthographic oddities: the aggressive repeated ‘r’s in ‘morrrning’,combined with indication of lengthened syllables in ‘lorrudsheep’ (whichperhaps also deliberately hints at the sheeplike nature of the lord, since the syllable‘ship’ is indicated normally in the reference to the lionlike Lady Constance), andthe alteration of the vowel length in ‘leddyship’. Additionally, apart from theunusual word ordering in ‘About the gravel path I was speaking to herleddyship’, the only candidate for a dialect feature in terms of grammar or lexisis the use of ‘fine’ as an adverb (in ‘Her leddysip likes the notion fine’), ratherthan its more standard use as an adjective (as in ‘a fine day’).

Both speakers show a repetitive style of speaking, but, whereas the gardenerhas a dogged accretion of ideas which does not allow his master to get away fromthe topic of the gravel path, Emsworth’s repetitions are due to a lack of anyeffective possible answer to the issue. He is, by nature, reactive, and hismalleable nature is mirrored in his style of speaking. In the example given abovehe responds with evasive monosyllables (‘Oh?’) until forced to give a reply of sorts(‘I’ll—er—I’ll think it over, McAllister’). By contrast, McAllister’s repeatedmonosyllabic grunts (‘Mphm’) give no quarter, and strongly convey that he is notto be diverted by such mealy-mouthed answers.

Table 3.4 Clause analysis of Lord Emsworth’s speech


Table 3.5 Clause analysis of McAllister’s speech

The reactive and conciliatory nature of Emsworth, and the intransigence of thegardener can also be seen at the level of grammar (see Tables 3.4 and 3.5).

McAllister’s measured clauses with their repeated mention of ‘her leddyship’(a not-so-veiled threat, since Emsworth is ruled by his sister), in prepositionalphrases at typical adverbial position (‘to her leddyship’ twice), and then broughtforward to subject position (‘her leddyship likes’) to clinch the point are incontrast to the vague and more or less content-free repetitions of Emsworth (‘I’ll—er—I’ll think it over’).

Whereas McAllister’s repeated clause structure (‘I was speaking…I wasspeaking’) has its own dogged, tank-like rhetoric, Emsworth’s procrastinationand excuses (‘I will think’; ‘I have to go’; ‘I will see’; ‘I will think’) carry withthem an air of desperation. Unlike McAllister, his speech is characterised byhesitancy, and he tends to make up for the lack of purpose and drive in what hesays by use of deliberative adjuncts and other sentence links. For example, in theexchange about ‘flarze’ he hides his confusion by repeating ‘certainly’, and then‘by all means’ and in the present example he launches into his final clause withthe impressive sounding ‘meanwhile’. This has the effect of covering up, ifinefficiently, the other shortcomings in his assertiveness.

In contrast to both McAllister and Emsworth, Gladys is not a repetitive speaker,but runs on with an easy, and lively, delivery. Throughout the story in which sheis a catalyst to a rebellion by Emsworth, she has no sense of the part she isplaying. For example, when she asks for a bunch of flowers to give to her littlebrother, she has no idea of the ramifications of that request (i.e. that Emsworthdoes not have the power to give her flowers from his own garden because he isscared of his gardener). Therefore, while her speech is the most marked in itspresentation, in other ways the impression remains one of simplicity. The effectis largely produced by adopting a grammatical feature which was isolated asbeing prevalent in the actual speakers discussed above: the use of ‘and’ toloosely join clauses together:

I got ’em for ’im up at the big ’ahse. Coo! The old josser the plice belongsto didn’t arf chase me. ’E found me picking ’em and he sharted somefin atme and came runnin’ after me, but I copped ‘im on the shin wiv a stoneand ’e stopped to rub it and I come away.


(LEG)

The other distinctive features of her speech were discussed above, for example,the use of dialect vocabulary (‘josser’) and some non-standard grammaticalfeatures (‘I come away’). In general, of the three speakers under discussion, hersis the most distinctive ‘voice’, and the reason for this is that the visual alienationof the reader forces us to read her words aurally, and, in order to understandwhat she is saying, mentally (or physically) verbalise her utterances.

Summary

To conclude this brief survey of the language of three characters, in terms ofdistinctive aural properties three levels of typical variance from the norm can beseen: standard orthography, partially altered orthography and quasiphoneticorthography. In the case of Emsworth, his status as a speaker of Standard Englishis underlined by the fact that his speech is not indicated as differing in phonemequality from standard spelling. This convention is the norm, despite the fact that,due to the history of English spelling, speakers of Standard English using RPvary considerably from any direct phoneme to letter relationship. For example,postvocalic ‘r’ (an ‘r’ which comes after a vowel in a syllable as in ‘form’, asopposed to before, as in ‘frame’) is silent in the dialect of such speakers (unlikethe redoubtable McAllister, a Scot whose Scottishness is brought out by theelongation of this feature in ‘morrrning’).

Any divergence from standard spelling on the part of a writer (or rather anauthor who is regarded as being capable of correct spelling and is thus seen asmanipulating the representation of speech for some reason) has the effect ofstrongly highlighting the aural qualities (the accent, or less usually, theintonation) of a speaker, as was seen in the speech of Gladys. Such an act on thepart of a writer can never be undertaken without the reader being led to think thatthe speaker is ‘abnormal’ in some way (even if the sounds being conveyed, farfrom being unusual, are closer to the way an actual speaker speaks, and probablycloser to the sound qualities of the majority of the population). Therefore, at avery minimum, unorthodox orthography in the representation of speech acts as asignal to a reader, firstly, to read with their aural sense ‘switched on’, and,whereas the skilled reader reads mainly visually, to slow down to consider theactual sounds a speaker is supposed to be making in the light of the letters beingpresented.

The fact that a reader is being asked to do this is rarely without a secondaryunderlying purpose, and a second signal sent to the reader by unusual spelling isto look for a reason to account for the writer’s unusual orthographic choices.

The speech of Lord Emsworth, containing as it does no odd spellings otherthan his mystified quoting of the child’s ‘flarze’, does not carry these signals tothe reader. He is the ‘normal’ speaker, and the other two characters are the oneswhose aural nature is brought out: the cockney and the Scot. If one wanted to


build an ideological thesis, the fact that implicit power relations are frequentlymirrored in speech representation by means of this convention would be a goodinitial hypothesis. However, suffice it to say, the idiosyncrasies of Emsworth’sspeech have to be looked for solely in the structure of his language, the lexis andgrammar, rather than the indications of sound quality as such.

Rather than a sustained attempt to convey details of an individual speaker, awriter usually chooses, as in the case of McAllister, one or two markers to hint ata more general tendency in the speech. At the level of phonemes this is markedby slightly unusual spelling, at the level of word by occasional dialect or lessorthodox forms, and in terms of grammar some alteration of normal wordordering or idiomatic turns of phrase. More difficult for a writer to sustainsuccessfully is a full-blown attempt to convey speech sounds and distinctivegrammar, an attempt at which can be seen in the speech of Gladys. Even thisfaithful rendition shows some inconsistencies: ‘he’ as well as “e’; ‘picking’ aswell as ‘runnin” and so on.

This returns us to a key point in the relationship between speech and writing.Despite the apparently straightforward one-to-one relation between forms in thetwo channels, when detailed comparisons are made, the impossibility of usingstandard written forms (as opposed to the phonetic alphabet) to convey actualspeech in detail becomes evident. In creative writing the reader takes an activepart in the process by learning the conventions adopted by writers, and colludingin the illusion that anything like real speech can be represented. As readers, wedraw on our knowledge of the spoken form and use this to gain sufficient sense ofwhat the author is trying to convey. However, this process is almost impossiblewithout a prior sense of the typical sounds and structures being represented, and,however detailed the rendition, there is always an element of interpretation onthe part of the reader.

If as a writer I present you with the forms ‘kine slice’ and ask you what theymight mean, I would predict that speakers who were brought up in Staffordshirewould be among the first to see how a child from that area could use them torepresent the words ‘council house’. As for the rest of us, even when the point isexplained, we can gather only an imperfect aural perception of how the speakerwould actually articulate these words unless we already know how the dialectsounds. Writers who try to represent speech need to have a sense of the ‘pool’ oflanguage knowledge they can assume a reader has access to. A large part of thetime they depend on the established convention that unmarked spelling andstandard English lexical and grammatical forms represent normal speech. Whena writer steps outside this convention the limited potential for the normal systemof orthography to represent speech is highlighted. The effect is to present thespeech as somehow ‘marginal’, ‘abnormal’ or, at the very least, quaint anddifferent from standard speakers, whether or not such a speaker would seem so inreal life.

Moving on from literary contexts, it is possible to gain some more insightsabout speech and writing in general when the transference of real speakers’


idiolects from speech into writing is analysed. The case-study presented belowreturns to the transcription of parliamentary speakers introduced in Chapter 2,and looks at the way in which some speakers seem to need less alteration to theirdiscourse in order to make sense in the new channel.

A CASE-STUDY: PARLIAMENTARY SPEAKERS INTRANSCRIPTION

The final section in this discussion looks at the way in which real individualspeakers are represented in the written channel for purposes other than alinguist’s transcript.

In Chapter 2 some broad statistics for the translation of speech on to the pagewere described and it was shown that for the debate as a whole the token totalhad dropped by some 17 per cent from Text S (the ‘full’ transcript made fromsound recordings) to Text W (the Hansard version prepared as the official writtenrecord of what was said). In the study described here we are interested inindividual speakers and the way that idiolect is represented in a written record ofwhat was said during debate. The hypothesis being investigated is that somespeakers use language in a way that is more amenable to transfer to the writtenchannel than others.

Differences between speaker ‘loss’ in transcription

The first point to note is that not all speakers undergo the same level of loss inthe process of transcription. Table 3.6 shows the number and the percentagedifference between Text S and Text W for twenty speakers. Figures here are forindividual speakers throughout the debate. That is to say, all utterances made byeach speaker in all discourse categories were counted, whether the speaker washolding the floor for a sustained period, or simply intervening. Column one showsthe three-letter code used to identify individual speakers.

All speakers showed a reduction in token totals. These ranged from just under100 to over 700, with the mean reduction being around 300 tokens ‘lost’ fromthe speech of an individual speaker. In percentage terms these figures representlosses from a speaker’s contribution to a debate from around 6 per cent up tomore than 30 per cent.

Comparing high- and low-token-loss speakers

Good candidates for detailed analysis in the present investigation are speakerswho rank at the top and bottom of the table, since we might assume that a large dropin token total represents a large alteration to the discourse, and this alteration inturn suggests that the transcribers felt the need to alter the discourse. Equally asmall reduction in transcription, by the same reasoning, might be assumed to be


indicative of discourse which the transcriber judged to be acceptable andcoherent in the new channel as it stood. This final part of the chapter looks atsamples from two speakers who rank near these positions. They were chosenbecause they have many characteristics in common. They are both LabourMembers of Parliament, they are both speaking in the context of a full-blowndebate (as opposed to Prime Minister’s questions or other business of theHouse), and both are experienced speakers with the ability to hold an audience.Furthermore, both have, in their different ways, a very lively and engaging styleof delivery.

Analysis of a high-loss speaker

Despite these similarities, the first speaker, TRA, undergoes a remarkable drop inthe transference of his idiolect into the written channel, whereas FAU does not.In the following tables showing samples from the speakers the right-hand columnshows the written form as it was divided into sentences for the Official Report,while the left-hand column shows the equivalent material from a transcript of thesound recordings. Items that are found in one text but not in the other areitalicized to highlight the changes.

Sample 23 Sample 23a

Table 3.6 Number and percentage difference Text W from Text S for twenty speakers(ranked according to difference)


TEXTS TEXT W

and that really is the essential abouttelevision it’s about entertainment and notgovernment

The essence of television is this: it is aboutentertainment, not government.

that it’s about the ratings that it’s aboutthe competition between each channel tosee who can pull in the most viewerswhether it’s Eastenders, Coronation Streetor whatever

It is about ratings and about competitionbetween channels to pull in the mostviewers to watch Eastenders, CoronationStreet or whatever.

and ultimately it will do the same forpolitics like it has done with footballwhere we’ve seen crowds decrease

Ultimately, television will do the same forpolitics as it has done for football—thecrowds have decreased.

like it ha . . where religion on Sundays isnow Harry Secombe singing 1950s songsat 6.30 on Songs of Praise or whatever

Religion on Sunday is now Harry Secombesinging 1950s songs at 6.30 pm on Songsof Praise.

That in effect is what television is about itis about a branch of showbusiness

That is what television is about—it is abranch of show-business.

(Author’s data) (OR)

Breaking sentence boundaries

The first thing to note about TRA (the high-loss speaker) is that it was difficult tolocate breaks in the Text S transcript where a relatively short ‘free-standing’extract could be presented. This speaker’s manner of conveying ideas typicallyexplodes standard sentence boundaries and links long sections of ideas in aseamless whole. In the present sample (which had to begin with a continuation ofa previous idea because of this very problem) the words ‘that’ (used both as ademonstrative and relative pronoun and in noun clauses), ‘where’ used tointroduce loose relative clauses acting as exemplification (‘where we’ve seen…’;‘where religion…is…’) and the co-ordinating conjunction ‘and’ join several ideastogether without an obvious break.

In the written channel the ideas are tidied into five sentences, with theaccompanying grammatical alterations. These include the elimination of themore unusual uses of ‘that’ and of transformation of the floating ‘where'-clausesinto separate main clauses (‘where we’ve seen crowds decrease’ becoming ‘thecrowds have decreased’).

Differences in referencing

Additionally, the original spoken discourse had a system of ‘distant’ anaphoricreference. The speaker in the example given above begins with ‘and that’referring backwards (‘anaphorically’) to a prior topic, the ensuing ‘that’—clauses and ‘where’—clauses serve to continue the line of thought by means ofexamples (competition → politics and football → debasement of religion), a lineof thought which gives the impression of the speaker joining the ideas ‘off the cuff’


as they occur to him. These examples then culminate in a further anaphoricmarker in ‘That…is what television is about.’

The written form shows a different system of linking at work. The samplebegins with a forward marker (a cataphoric reference) in ‘The essence oftelevision is this…’ and, while it goes on to retain the central reference totelevision using the pronoun ‘it’, this is sustained for a far shorter period than inthe spoken. While in Text S the chain of reference to television goes: television,it’s, it’s, it’s, it will, it has, it ha[s], etc.; in the Text W version the distancebetween full noun and pronoun is shorter: [essence of] television, it is, it is,television, it has, etc.

The logic of juxtaposition

Despite the apparently ‘fluid’ flow of ideas in the Text S version it has its owninternal logic which goes to make the speaker a persuasive one. He establishesthe point that television is a debasing influence by comparing the proposedtelevising of the House to a series of negative examples and this allows him tomake the final statement that television is a branch of show-business with thesense established that this is undesirable. This type of rhetoric works less well onthe page, where, rather than a piling on of negative examples the effect is moremeasured, and the ‘Religion on Sunday…’ example appears to have littleconnection with the previous ideas.

The low-loss speaker

Sample 24 Sample 24a

TEXTS TEXT W

the House may come to resemble and Ishould warn the House of this a perpetualgame of musical chairs as Members try toget in on the camera

The House may come to resemble aperpetual game of musical chairs asHonourable Members try to get on camera.

but what of the security implications What of the security implications?

we’ve had tear gas in the Chamber some ofus were here we’ve had red paint andwe’ve had what I must call horse manurethrown in here

We have had tear gas in the Chamber—some of us were here. We have had redpaint and what I must call horse manurethrown in here.

I am simply explaining the dangers thatwill certainly arise in the future were weto be foolish enough to allow theintervention of the camera lens.

I am simply explaining the dangers thatwill certainly arise in the future were we tobe foolish enough to allow the interventionof the camera lens.

now could there exist a greater temptationto the demonstrator

Could there exist a greater temptation tothe to the [sic] demonstrators?

(Author’s data) (OR)


Unlike the TRA sample, this speaker’s discourse undergoes very little alterationin the process of transcription. Although the speaker has a lively speaking stylethe grammar he uses is closer to standard grammar as found in text books thanTRA’s, and consequently falls more naturally into distinct sentences. Forexample, in the opening of this extract we have the clause structure shown inTable 3.7.

Speaking in sentences

In general the discourse consists of relatively straightforward main clauses([MC]) and subordinate clauses ([SC]) marked by normal subordinators such as‘as’. The contrast between the speakers is clearly shown if a comparison is madeof two points in the Text W version where the transcriber uses a dash to looselyrelate two main clauses:

Table 3.7 Clause structure of a low-token-loss speaker

TRA:

Ultimately, television will do the same for politics as it has done forfootball—the crowds have decreased.

FAU:We have had tear gas in the Chamber—some of us were here.In the spoken original of TRA’s contribution not only was the first clause

linked back to previous material by ‘and’, the second clause was in the form of aquasi-relative clause beginning ‘where we’ve seen…’:

TRA (Text S):

…and ultimately it will do the same for politics like it has done withfootball where we’ve seen crowds decrease…

Additionally, TRA’s non-standard use of ‘like’ instead of ‘as’ and ‘with football’rather than the more usual ‘for football’ are both changed in the written version.


Presence of spoken mode features

FAU’s manner of speaking is altogether more measured and generally closer tothe norms of standard grammar, suggesting perhaps a higher degree of pre-planning on the part of this speaker (who was a professional actor in earlierdays), but despite this there are some spoken mode features which are eliminatedin the process of transcription:

• co-ordinating links used to introduce relatively dissimilar topics: ‘and Ishould’; ‘but what of’

• interrupted clauses: ‘may come to resemble [interrupting clause= I shouldwarn…] a perpetual game of musical chairs’

• repetition: ‘we’ve had tear gas…we’ve had red paint…we’ve had what I mustcall…’8

• discourse marking: ‘now, could there exist…’

Summary

In order for these speakers to make sense on the page, and conform to the normsof sentence structure and cohesion of written mode, one of them underwent a fargreater degree of alteration. This speaker, TRA, showed a rhetorical style basedaround the juxtaposition of ideas and the sustained linking of topics over longsections of discourse with little explicit marking of the precise logical relationsbetween them. Such a style depends greatly on the manner in which it isdelivered, and not all speakers can carry off the performance well, nor does therhetoric transfer well on to the page where, without the emotional vigour andsincerity of the speaker, the reader comes to ask difficult questions about thescope of the ideas (for example, in the statement that ‘television will do the samefor politics as it has done for football—the crowds have decreased’, on reflectionwe might ask ‘who are “the crowds” in the analogy to politics?’ or ‘If televisionis bringing the debates into the houses of millions of viewers, rather than ahandful of people in the Strangers’ Gallery, in what sense will “crowds”decrease?’).


This chapter has dealt with the concept of individual language use and the formsit takes in the two channels. The discussion highlighted one of the underlyingareas of contrast between the two forms of language: that an individual speakeris less shaped by the educational and normative processes which literacy and theconventions of the written form entail. While speakers follow certain culturalconventions in the choices they make when they produce language, these are lesshighly articulated than the standards and norms of the written form. Another wayof putting this is that there is greater scope for acceptable diversity within speech,


where judgement tends to be based more on communicative success rather than‘correctness’ and compliance with a standard.

In terms of literary contexts the point was made that the presentation of afictional idiolect is a sophisticated process. The lexical and grammatical featureswhich mark out a real speaker can be quite hard to pinpoint accurately from arelatively small sample, and the writer therefore constructs a condensed set ofmarkers for a fictional character. The point was also made that the mismatchbetween standard orthography and standard pronunciation in English leads to theconvention that non-standard spelling is a cue for readers to read aurally, but thatfew writers sustain an accurate attempt at conveying speech sounds.

The problems for a creative writer of representing speech idiolect on the pageshare some features with the issues raised in Chapter 2 concerning therepresentation of interactions. There it was noted that features which are typicalof actual interactions, such as false starts and overlaps, are not only difficult torepresent on the page, they are also read as indicators of heightened emotion orproblematic exchanges. Similarly, with the representation of individual voices inthe written channel there exists a convention that standard orthography andgrammar indicate ‘normal’ speech, and yet, as shown in the discussions ofsample of actual speech in this chapter and the previous one, real spoken mode isfrequently non-standard. However, if a writer chooses to be more ‘realistic’, thereader automatically takes this to be a cue that the speaker is abnormal in someway. In ideological terms it is interesting to consider what the implications ofthis convention are. Despite the fact that only some 4 per cent of the population,it has been suggested, speak Standard English, the majority of normal voices infiction are presented as speakers of this form. For a writer to choose to show aless conventional, if more representative, idiolect is to create speech that is‘foregrounded’ and unduly noticeable.

The transference of the language of an individual from speech into writing is acomplex process since it involves not only assumptions about the individualspeaker, whether real or, in the case of creative writing, fictional, but also of theindividual who is producing the written text. A central aim of this book is thatthe actual realisations of language and their contexts should not be overlooked inthe analysis. Indeed, I am arguing that in the case of a comparison of speech andwriting the precise status of the samples of discourse being described andcontrasted needs to be at the heart of the exegesis. As was noted in Chapter 1, itis easy enough to find interesting areas of difference between samples of speechand writing. However, the problem for the analyst is to tease out those differenceswhich are attributable to the channel of the discourse from those which areincidental and due to some other factor. In considering the relationship betweenindividual language use in the two channels, and the transference of discoursefrom one channel to another, some of the underlying contrasts have emerged. InChapter 4 I go on to consider mode and channel from the perspective of thecontexts in which speech and writing are produced.


EXERCISES

Task:

Consider whether you speak (a) with an accent; (b) in a dialect. Do you knowof anyone (including yourself!) who has a particularly distinctive way ofspeaking in terms of typical speech habits?

Do you know anyone who has changed the way they speak? Why did they dothis?

Task:

Look at the following ‘howlers’. Try to categorise them on the basis of theconclusions given in this chapter.

She likes to think of herself as very lucky, rick and absorbent.talkerable [talkative]imaginated [imaginative]joville [jovial]no one thinks politcals when they see a Royale, They just think ‘I have seen a

Royale’at least he is a open minded man with a browd spectriomYou really made a foul of yourself tonightYou’re like a bear with a sour headI’ve had a skin full of Roger and Jane

Task:

Consider the representation of speech in your favourite novel. Does the speechof any of the characters show distinctive orthography? If so, what reasons canyou see for this?

FURTHER READING

Harris, J. (1993) Introducing Writing, Harmondsworth: Penguin.Honey, J. (1989) Does Accent Matter? The Pygmalion factor, London: Faber and Faber.Kress, G. (1993) Learning to Write, London: Routledge.Page, N. (1988) Speech in the English Novel, Basingstoke: Macmillan.Short, M. (1988) ‘Speech presentation, the novel and the press’, in Van Peer, W. (ed.) The

Taming of the Text: explorations in language, literature and culture, London:Routledge.

Wilkinson, J. (1995) Introducing Standard English, London: Penguin.


Chapter 4Analysing speech and writing in context

INTRODUCTION

In the previous chapter the sophisticated process of an individual writerpresenting speech idiolect in prose fiction, and real speakers’ idiolect intranscription were discussed. This chapter draws on the issues raised by thisprocess in an investigation of the influence of context on the type of languageproduced. The particular interest in this chapter is in considering how the sameinformation is presented differently in the two channels. For example, theimmediacy of the spoken channel allows it to be used for commentary on eventsas they happen. In this context the producer of the language has a limitedpotential to assess accurately the implication of the events or their outcome, andthis has an effect on the type of language produced. On the other hand, the lessmutable ‘recording’ nature of the written channel permits a post hoc commentaryon events, with all the deliberative editorial processes of constructing writtenmaterial, not to mention the wisdom of hindsight. In contrasting a spoken andwritten commentary on the same events some sense of the influence of thesefactors on the linguistic choices made can be gained. Used in this sense the termcontext relates to the temporal and situational factors shaping the discourse—when, where and why the speaking or writing happened.

The second way in which the notion of context is used in this chapter relates tothe influence of the context of reception and the medium by which discourse isconveyed. In the second section of analysis the focus is on differences betweencomparable spoken and written texts which are partly ascribable to the differingneeds of discourse-to-be-read and discourse-to-be-heard. For example, those whowrite a screenplay dialogue which must stand alone in the spoken channel via thefilm soundtrack medium must assess the needs of a listening and watchingaudience. In looking at the changes made to novel dialogue when it is transferredto the screen the opportunity arises to consider the nature of these largelychannel oriented changes.

Problems of comparability

In order to do this a brief return to methodological matters is needed. Up to nowthe informational content of the samples of speech and writing has not alwaysbeen closely matched. For example, in the investigation of interactions in realspeech and then in creative writing in Chapter 2 roughly similar content wasdiscussed—two men making small talk, people discussing an object in theirsight, and so on. This was balanced somewhat by the casestudy material ontranscription in Chapters 2 and 3, where the same person’s discourse on the sametopic was ‘translated’ into the written channel, but the point was not raised as amethodological issue.

In a comparison of speech and writing from the point of view of the influenceof context the choice of texts needs particular attention. This is because thelexico-grammatical ‘texture’ of any sample of language can be influenced byfactors other than channel, for example the genre or level of formality. Theproblem for the linguist studying spoken language in opposition to writtenlanguage is to isolate those differences between samples which can be ascribedto the channel of the discourse.

In Chapter 1 I drew a distinction between channel, mode and medium andsuggested a definition of mode, in contrast to the other terms, which would beuseful for a comparison of speech and writing. This was based on the idea thatthe channel of production influences the potential for a language user tocommunicate in a particular way, and that, although certain specialised types ofdiscourse such as the formal lecture or the personal e-mail can go beyond thenorms of the channel, the factors underlying the nature of each channel work toproduce two modes of language. The strengths of each channel work to influencethe functions to which they are put, for example personal face-to-facecommunication and interaction versus the stable communication of informationacross time and space to an anonymous recipient.

Within this primary channel choice, conscious mode decisions may alsobecome relevant in the construction of discourse. For example in Chapter 3 Iconsidered the sophisticated multi-mode choices available to the competentwriter who may seek to simulate speech idiolect. The mode issues in which weare interested in this study are the degree of creative shaping which the discourseunder consideration has undergone, and whether the author of the discourse optsto simulate language of the spoken in the written or vice versa. Of fundamentalinterest is the interplay between the context of production and the nature of thediscourse. For example, it might lead us to ask whether, if a novelist creates adialogue on the page, this is more or less like actual speech than a screenplayversion of the same interaction written to be performed in the spoken channel.

In order to have a good variety of styles available for comparison the texts inthe present study are selected from both literary and non-literary sources, andfrom live and scripted speech. A second criterion in choosing texts forcomparison in this area is that wherever possible the language should be

ANALYSING SPEECH AND WRITING IN CONTEXT 95

produced for purposes other than linguistic analysis. It is possible to generatespoken and written narratives, anecdotes, reports, directions and so on quiteeasily for the purposes of a survey of speech and writing. This has the advantageof the potential for increased experimental validity, such as random choice ofsubject and control groups, but these advantages are outweighed, when languageis the object of study, by the greater potential for the production by the subjectsof discourse influenced by the experimental context. Therefore, less satisfactoryalthough it may seem in terms of finding large samples of strictly controlledcomparable material, the real world should be the source.

A third criterion regarding choice of material in the study of spoken asopposed to written language should be the consideration of topic. That is to say,it is not sufficient to find samples of speech which are more or less ‘about’ thesame thing as a written text, or which were produced by the same person. It isimportant to find pairs of texts with a high level of shared identity. One shouldbe able to say with confidence that the texts are not merely similar in terms oftopic, but that they are presenting the same information in a different channel.

This criterion is not without philosophical problems, raising as it does theissue of identity. Nevertheless in terms of methodology it is not difficult to pointto pairs of texts which on an intuitive basis have sufficient shared identity forcomparison to take place. Some examples of acceptable and unacceptablepairings might make this clearer. Sources of comparable material from thespoken and written channels which have the desirable high level of sharedidentity include:

• the televised proceedings of Parliament and their written report (the OfficialReport or ‘Hansard’) which is held in most libraries;

• the language spoken during formal meetings and the written minutes whichrecord this;

• a commentary of a sporting event and the newspaper report of the same event;• film actors’ version of a dialogue in a screen adaptation of a novel and the

original written dialogue;• a television soundtrack and the sub-titles which are prepared for hearing-

impaired viewers.

Less acceptable would be to compare the following:

• a conversation about hairstyles and a written advertisement for hair-careproducts (the differences might lie in the difference between a conversationand an advertisement);

• samples of the language of one person taken from spoken andwritten channels (again, the type of speech and the purpose of the discourse mayinfluence the language too strongly);

• the spoken language of airline pilots compared to the language in a textbookon air navigation.

96 ANALYSING SPEECH AND WRITING IN CONTEXT

The aim should be to find samples which share precisely the same topic, ratherthan a similar topic, and in any conclusions reached consideration should begiven to the problems of comparability.

It could also be argued that the purpose of the sample, for example a formalwritten record of a meeting versus the less formal interplay of people at themeeting as decisions are reached, outweighs the channel influence. However, theapproach taken here is that, as suggested above and in previous chapters, the linkbetween the channel and the functions to which it is put is fundamental andtherefore an important and interesting factor in determining the nature of the twoforms. That is to say, written mode tends to be more formal, to show morestandardisation and to reflect the status quo of power relations in interactions andso on, and it does this because of the nature of the channel and the restrictionsand potentialities it brings.

Introduction to the samples

This chapter looks at the speech versus writing issue in the context of two pairedexamples of discourse. The first pair consists of live commentary of an event andsubsequent written prose commentary of the same event, the second pair gives asection of film dialogue contrasted to the original version found in a novel.

The relatively small space available makes the analysis of a large sample of datawithin each variety impossible. However, the decision to concentrate on twopairs of texts in the present chapter was made not only on the basis ofpracticality. First, the importance of considering examples from the point of viewof topic matching cannot be overemphasised. Without a fixed point ofcomparison it is difficult to assign linguistic features to differences in channel.When a spoken text and a written one purport to represent the same informationor events there is more justification for suggesting that the differences found aredue to channel. Second, the aim of the present work is not the description of thestylistic features of particular varieties, but is rather to seek features generated bydifferences between the nature of spoken language and written.

Four texts are under consideration in this study from the following areas ofdiscourse:

• spontaneous spoken commentary• non-fiction prose commentary• novel dialogue• screenplay dialogue.

The actual samples are as follows:

(a) extract from a transcription of the television commentary on the MuhammadAli-George Foreman fight (30 October 1974)


(b) extracts from The Fight (TF) by Norman Mailer detailing the same events inthe fight described under (a)

(c) extract of dialogue from Under the Volcano (UV) by Malcolm Lowry(d) extract from transcription of dialogue from film version of (c) above.

Contextual factors

In this section I consider the background context of the two commentaries — thewhen, where and why factors relating to each.

The pairing of spontaneous sports commentary and its matching prose partnergives the opportunity to analyse samples of speech and writing at the extremes ofa contextual continuum. A live sports commentary is shaped by the events whichare happening at the time of speaking, and in the case of a televised commentarythe discourse is directly linked to actions seen by the recipients of thecommentary. A written commentary on the same events is shaped more by thecrafting techniques of the author, who, if he or she is to convey a sense of acomplete event, must decide which actions are most significant in order tosummarise the multitude of moves which make up a sporting event and conveythem coherently to readers.

The skill of the speaking commentator is to build a picture of an eventproviding sufficient information for the viewer (or in the case of radio broadcast,the listener) to follow the action. The discourse produced is shaped by the eventsbeing commentated on, and this fact alone puts it at the extreme uncrafted end ofthe continuum, with the creator of the discourse spinning a usually unbrokenthread of language under the pressure of a live audience (the language ofcommentators is usually remarkably fluent and free from normal speakerproduction errors, such as hesitations). The commentator in the spoken channelmust attempt to maintain interest throughout an event and this will also lead to anadded element of spontaneity as, despite any predictability in terms of the event,the speaker must work in extra material to keep the attention of the listener.1

On the other hand, any written commentary on a sporting event is likely to bewritten after the action has been completed from notes made during the event.While there may be time constraints in the case of a newspaper commentary asthe writer will have a deadline to fulfil, he or she still has greater opportunity toshape and edit the material, an opportunity that is not available to the creator oflive spoken commentary.

In the next section I consider the second type of contextual factors—for whom,and how. In terms of the background context both the dialogues are highlycrafted samples of discourse. The first example shows a dialogue from a novel(with the authorial commentary and intervening descriptions edited out to makethe comparison easier).

The nature of a screen adaptation of such a dialogue is such that we mightimagine, initially, that it would be closer to actual speech than the dialogue foundin the novel. That is to say, since the screen version is delivered via the spoken


channel by actors there is the potential for intonational and interactive nuanceswhich the page version cannot give. However, the other contextual factors—thefact that the discourse is produced for a listening and watching audience ratherthan a reader with the benefit of authorial presence, and the conventions of thescreen medium, limit and shape the screen dialogue in ways which serve to keepit distinct from the norms of actual interaction.

ANALYSIS OF PAIRED TEXTS

This section contains general and more detailed comparisons of pairs of textswhich convey the same events in different channels.

Boxing match conunentary in speech and writing

In this section the first pair of texts is analysed: the spoken and writtencommentaries on the boxing match introduced above. In each case the texts willfirst be presented with a brief initial summary of dominant features. This in turnwill be followed by a detailed comparison of the language used, and theimplications for broader conclusions about the speech-writing issue.

Initial comparison

The following extract (Sample 25) is a transcription of the live broadcastcommentary taken from the opening seconds of the first round:

Sample 25

Here we go. Ali quickly across the round [sic]Round one Ali bouncing around shifting left to rightGeorge moves slowAli gets the first punch in a light right-hand taken on the forehead by

George Foreman the ChampionForeman moves in slow trying to stop his manAli looks like he’s ready to go here, he’s not staying away, he’s going

after his manForeman comes in Foreman a bit cautious in the first round looking to

drop that left hook[cheers cover commentary]Foreman backs his man to the far corner there’s that left upper cut

and jabs to the body of Muhammad AliAli tries to hang on to the head of George ForemanForeman dances now movesAli with a right hand leading in has Foreman slightly confused with that

right-hand lead which I haven’t seen too many times before


Ali certainly dancing slipping punches, sliding around both waysForeman’s idea is to back him up in the corner and when they get tight

whale away with that vicious hook to the body of Muhammad AliAli lashes out with a light left

(Author’s transcript)

The following extracts conveying the equivalent sections of the fight were takenfrom the written commentary:

Sample 25a

The bell! Through a long unheard sigh of collective release, Ali chargedacross the ring. He looked as big and determined as Foreman, so he heldhimself, as if he possessed the true threat. They collided without meeting,their bodies still five feet apart. Each veered backward like similarmagnetic poles repelling one another forcibly. Then Ali came forwardagain, Foreman came forward, they circled, they feinted, they moved in anelectric ring, and Ali threw the first punch, a tentative left. It came upshort. Then he drove a lightning-strong right straight as a pole into thestunned center of Foreman’s head, the unmistakable thwomp of ahighpowered punch. A cry went up […]

Foreman charged in rage. Ali compounded the insult. He grabbed theChampion around the neck and pushed his head down, wrestled it downcrudely and decisively to show Foreman he was considerably rougher thananybody warned, and relations had commenced […]

Up and down the press rows, one exclamation was leaping, ‘He’s hittinghim with rights’ Ali had not punched with such authority in seven years.Champions do not hit other champions with right-hand leads. Not in thefirst round. It is the most difficult and dangerous punch. Difficult to deliverand dangerous to oneself…

(TF Chapter 13)

The first striking contrast between these samples which deal with the sameevents is that of immediacy versus distance. In the spoken commentary therelevant time is ‘now’ and the dominant tense is the present:

Here we goGeorge moves slowand so on. In contrast to this the written presents the details as ‘past’:Ali charged across the ringhe looked… The primary distinction is not due to the tenses used, however. In a written

context, the present tense can be used in what is termed the ‘historical present’where events which are assumed to be past by the reader because of the


surrounding context are given using present tense verbs. That is to say, Mailercould have chosen to write:

Ali charges across the ringHe looks…and retained a sense of the events being over and done with. More important in

generating a sense of greater or lesser immediacy is a difference in presentationof the participants between the texts.

Action versus evaluation

While both examples focus on actions, being, in their different channels,commentaries specifically on action, Sample 25 gives a stronger sense ofindividual actions happening through time in a linear manner, whereas thewritten version, Sample 25a, incorporates evaluative statements within thepresentation of the action. Thus in the opening of Sample 25 we have a series ofactions culminating in a comment (shown in Table 4.1). On the other hand, theequivalent section in Sample 25a combines evaluative material in withstraightforward action (shown in Table 4.2).

Shaping a narrative

Furthermore, while both texts are of necessity focused on actions, there is adifference in the organisation of the presentation of action. In the sample ofspoken commentary there is little sense of ‘shape’ to the discourse, other thanthat provided by the flow of the action. Where evaluative statements are madethey are frequently made during a lull in the action. That is to say, when there isaction it provides the informational basis of the discourse, and when there is lessaction, or repetitive action, the commentator falls back on evaluation as opposedto straight description.

Table 4.1 Action versus evaluation in spoken commentary

Almost the reverse is true of the written commentary. The opening paragraphbuilds to a climax through the focus firstly being on the evaluation of the boxerswho are ‘big’, ‘determined’, ‘threatening’. From this preliminary lull in theaction, with the sense of the physical power and presence of the fighters beingestablished, the discourse moves on to a rapid sequence of actions (collide, veer,


come forward, circle, feint, move, throw, drive), giving the impression of asudden onset of the serious business of the fight and culminating in a sensationalpunch from Ali (‘a lightning-strong right…a high-powered punch’).

In fact, when compared with the video tape and the sound commentary, thewritten version takes some artistic liberties with the sequence of the action in orderto set up this pleasing structure and denouement in the right-handed punch fromAli. In the spoken commentary the equivalent to the spectacular punch whichends the first paragraph of Sample 25a is:

Ali with a right hand leading in has Foreman slightly confused with thatright-hand lead which I haven’t seen too many times before…

This mundane comment contrasts with the two paragraphs of admiration and awewhich the right-hand lead generates in the written commentary.

The presence of the author

A closer analysis of the descriptions of the fighters in the two texts shows upfurther distinctions between the spoken and written discourse. In Sample 25a (thewritten text) there is a stronger sense of the individual who is authoring the textas an interpreter of the actions, whereas in Sample 25, the live commentary, amore literal approach is taken and the author of the discourse rarely steps beyondthe terms of reference of the immediate context (i.e. the opening round of amajor boxing match).

The spoken commentary is concerned with the physical facts of the matter: thespeed, strength or angle of an action. On the other hand, in Sample 25a the concernis with relating actions to broader themes and/or implications. Thus in the spokencommentary movements are described in straightforward physical terms: quickly,

Table 4.2 Action versus evaluation in written commentary


slow, left to right. Where comments are made as to the intentions or inner statesof the fighters these tend to relate to immediate context:

Foreman’s idea is to back him up in the corner and when they get tightwhale away with that vicious hook to the body of Muhammad Ali

In Sample 25a actions take on portentous significance relating to the bigger themesof the whole book (Ali in relation to African Gods, for example), a significancewhich can only come into being with the wisdom of hindsight. It is only in thelight of the outcome of the fight that a particular punch can definitely become acrucial and significant event. When it occurs we can interpret it as a possiblycrucial event, but cannot know what its significance will be in terms of outcome.What appears to have happened in the written commentary is that a series ofgood right-hand punches during which Ali first established himself as asurprisingly strong contender have been amalgamated into one punch which isdescribed in almost mythical terms as the hero of the written piece makes hisspiritual début. The language used to describe Ali’s punch establishes him, notsimply as an equal fighter, but as the winner to be. The written commentarymakes no bones about this. The reader is not kept in suspense by an even-handeddescription of the fighters and the to and fro action of the fight, rather the story isone of the way the hero won the fight.

This final aspect of contrast between the texts brings us back to the sense ofdistance versus immediacy noted at the outset of the section. The contrast isprovided not only by the details of language, such as tense, but also by a broaderdifference in authorial stance. In the spoken commentary the author of thediscourse is in a sense powerless in the face of the realities of the action. He maymake evaluative statements, but these take second place to description of action.Second, and more significantly, he is creating the discourse in ‘real-time’, and atthe point of authorship does not know future events which relate to the present heis talking about. In this way his linguistic choices are limited by several factorssuch as the pressure to speak fluently and articulately (as noted above, thisvariety of speaking rarely shows the hesitation and filler material or the false startswhich characterise much conversational language); and is prompted to saycertain things by the actions going on before him. This contrasts to the creator ofthe written commentary who not only has the benefit of contemplation, planningand editing which the channel allows, but also has the opportunity to shape thediscourse into an artistic whole on the basis of the outcome of events.

Before moving on to discuss the implications of these differences in thecontext of the wider debate about spoken and written language a more detailedlinguistic comparison of the texts will be given to show the actual ‘texture’ of thediscourse, and how this may relate to the general impressions given above.


Detailed comparison

In this section I look at a section of the pair of commentaries and analyse it interms of lexical and syntactic contrasts.

Lexical contrasts

For each sample a preliminary count can be made for lexis attributable to thetopic being dealt with, which can be termed the ‘lexical set’. The lexical set forthe nouns in the two texts is shown in Figure 4.1 and that for the verbs inFigure 4.2.

As would be expected, given the shared topic, there is a degree of shared lexisbetween the nouns in the texts:

round

punch

lead

left.

However, considering the fact that the two texts are about precisely the sameevents within the field, the high number of non-shared items is interesting (itemsshown with question marks indicate uncertainty as to whether they strictlybelong to the lexical set associated with boxing).

Within the lexical set relating to boxing most of the nouns appear in thespontaneous spoken commentary, and the majority of the verbs in the written.Furthermore, of the nine noun types found in the spoken version seven

Figure 4.1 Nouns in lexical set associated with boxing


Figure 4.2 Verbs in lexical set associated with boxing

are synonyms for ‘punch’:

punch

right-hand

hook

uppercut

jab

lead

left.

On the other hand, there is less diversity in this synonym group in the written,with only four words for punch, all but one of which are subsumed by the spokenset (all if we count ‘right’ with ‘right-hand').

There is also contrast evident when the modification of the nouns isconsidered, with the written showing more evaluative language as opposed tophysical description. Thus in the spoken commentary only one of the nouns inthe lexical set is modified by an evaluative adjective: ‘vicious hook’ (although‘light left’ might also imply evaluation), whereas in the written there are thefollowing:

tentative left

lightning-strong right

high-powered punch.

All the verbs in the total set collocate or are associated with ‘punch’, the maincontrast between the texts being that the spoken uses only one such verb (andthen it is in its non-finite form ‘leading’) as opposed to the four stronglyassociated with boxing found in Sample 25a (the written):

feint

throw


punch

deliver

and the verb ‘hit’—less limited to the topic—in two forms.Thus an initial conclusion about the language of the texts is that, within a key

set of lexical items on a topic, differences in the balance and presentation ofinformation can be predicted. In the spoken commentary there is a higherincidence of noun types, and a greater diversity; conversely, in the written thereis both a higher incidence and greater diversity of verb types. It may also be saidthat a contrast exists in terms of the level of generality, with the spokencommentary using more precise terms for actions (jab; hook; uppercut) asopposed to the less specific terms of the written (punch; left; right). Furthermore,there is the tendency for more evaluation in the written commentary, and this isshown not only in sections of evaluative language woven into the action but alsoat the level of noun premodification.

These features in turn may be ascribed to the particular circumstances underwhich the two texts were produced. That is to say, the speaker could see theactual actions taking place, and could report them accurately whereas the writerof a post hoc account cannot recapture the ‘blow-by-blow’ details of the action.The writer is therefore thrown back on the verb diversification (feint; throw;deliver) to convey variety in the events, and, with the knowledge that the fightwill go to Ali (against the odds), can present the actions of the final winner inheroic terms.

Leaving aside the lexis particularly associated with boxing, further contrastsappear between the texts. A preliminary reading gives the impression that thevocabulary used in Sample 25, the live commentary, while it may be moretechnically accurate is ‘simpler’ and more day-to-day than that of Sample 25a, thewritten. Again, nouns and verbs will be used as the basis for comparison, startingwith the verbs used to describe the actions of the two fighters.

While some verbs appear in both texts (look; move; come) the majority arenot shared between the texts. Furthermore, the most ‘unusual’ verbs found in thespoken are ‘bounce’ and ‘shift’ with by far the majority being commonmonosyllabic (in their base form) verbs (get; take; try; stop; go). In contrast tothis the verbs found in Sample 25a are in many cases longer (possess; collide;repel; circle) and belong to a more heightened register (charge; veer; drive) (seeFigure 4.3).

A similar contrast can be found when nouns are considered. When lexisassociated strongly with boxing is eliminated, very few nouns are left in theextract of the spoken commentary being considered. On the other hand, a verydiverse collection of nouns, including the onomatopoeic coinage from the realmof cartoons ‘thwomp’ can be found in the written. In particular, the nouns andpronouns used as grammatical subjects to introduce the actions of the fighters in


the two forms show a contrast, and the greater diversity in the written channel issustained (see Figure 4.4).

The spoken commentary uses only three types to refer to the creators of theaction (token totals are given in brackets): George (1); Ali (8); Foreman (6).And, as was suggested in the initial comparison given above, in the spokenchannel the attention is shared more or less equally between the two combatantson the basis of the actions happening before the eyes of the commentator. In thewritten commentary of the same part of the round the fighters’ last names arealso used, but Ali is given centre stage with eight occurrences as the grammaticalsubject (‘Ali’ (5) and ‘he’ (3)).

I noted earlier that there was a greater sense of immediacy in the spokencommentary, and of distance in the written, and some linguistic justification forthese intuitions can be pointed to in these lexical findings. Firstly, the lexis of thespoken is more firmly focused on the matter in hand, and secondly it does littleto draw attention to itself. That is to say, the use of simple unmarked vocabularyto describe the events does not arrest the attention of the listener to remark on thelanguage itself, but rather offers precise terms for the actions being reported. Inthe written commentary the fight is presented in more general and abstract terms,and the actions of the individuals take on significance beyond that of theimmediate events.

Figure 4.3 Verbs from commentaries (not in boxing set)

Figure 4.4 Distribution of reference to fighters in spoken and written commentaries


Grammatical contrasts

Moving on from an assessment of isolated lexical items we see even moremarked contrasts in the presentation of ideas. A sample analysis of part of eachtext is given below, in the form of a basic grammatical parsing (see Tables 4.3and 4.4). The left-hand column includes any linking items between relatedclauses and, in the case of the written, thematic linking between sentences.

Table 4.3 Sample clause analysis of spoken commentary

Table 4.4 Sample clause analysis of written commentary

The spoken commentary contains many of the features which we have come tothink of as typical of speech mode. The first and most noticeable aspect is thefrequent omission of main verbs and the deletion of the verb ‘be’ as an auxiliary:

Ali [is? moves? goes?] quickly across the roundAli [is] bouncing around.No such deletion is evident in the written version. The second most noticeable

contrast is the lack of explicit linking in the spoken, with the only example being‘like’ used as a subordinating conjunction (‘as if’ would be more standard):


Ali looks like he’s ready to go here.On the other hand, a variety of linking devices are found in the written,

including the extended adverbial element at sentence initial position (Through along unheard sigh of collective release’), the more standard comparativesubordinator ‘as if and the temporal adjunct ‘then’. In both cases the strongtendency is for active clauses with the focus on one or other of the fighters as thegrammatical subject. However, there is a difference in the management of thesesubjects. In the spoken commentary the names of the fighters are repeated inclose proximity with little anaphoric linking:

Ali quickly across…Ali bouncing around…George moves slow…Ali gets the first punch in…Foreman moves in slow…Ali looks like…

This contrasts with the written where we see a different pattern emerging:

Ali charged…He looked…he held himself…he possessed…They collided…Each veered…Ali came forward…Foreman came forward…they circled…they feinted…they movedAli threw the first punch…

Whereas in the spoken commentary the attention is divided equally between thefighters, and the aim is to convey the actions as they are carried out by each ofthem, in the written there is a sense of the focus being on Ali. He is the subject moreoften than Foreman, and the anaphoric chain (he looked → he held → hepossessed) serves to place him firmly in the centre of attention. In contrast,Foreman is given only one clause where he is the single subject, and is otherwisethe joint subject subsumed under the pronoun ‘they’. In this treatment of thefighters we see at grammatical level the working out of the larger differencebetween the texts.

As was noted earlier, Mailer presents Ali as the heroic figure in a clash of theTitans, and it is therefore unsurprising that the grammatical encoding shouldreflect his interest. Later in the extract we see further evidence of this biasedfocus beginning with the lexical echoing at ‘Foreman charged…’. However, thisfighter cannot take the grammatical focus for long, and the futility of his attack isreflected in the return in the next clause of Ali as grammatical subject at the startof a further pronominal chain:


Foreman charged in rage. Ali compounded the insult. He grabbed theChampion around the neck and pushed his head down, wrestled itdown crudely and decisively to show Foreman he was considerably rougherthan anybody warned…

Summary

The influence of channel can be seen in the grammatical differences between thetexts. The spoken commentary is produced under severe pressure. It is a publicutterance which is being broadcast to millions of viewers. Although thecommentary is free from most of the hesitations and false starts which we saw inthe conversational discourse, we do see the lexical error near the start with theuse of the word ‘round’ in place of ‘ring’. The sequencing of the information isfirmly decided by the events going on, rather than manipulated by the producer ofthe discourse. Conversely, the written version was created after the finish of thefight, and with the potential for considerable editing. As a result we see the high-level structuring of the narrative to fit this outcome (the raising of one fighter toheroic status), and the lowerlevel stylistic ‘economising with the truth’ toproduce a pacey and dramatic effect. We can assume that the spokencommentary presents a more accurate picture of the minutiae of events, and thatthe written takes some artistic licence. For example, both texts inform us of Ali’sfirst punch, ‘a light righthand taken on the forehead by George Foreman theChampion’ as it is described in the spoken. This becomes ‘a tentative left’ in thewritten, and is immediately followed by the crucial ‘lightning-strong rightstraight as a pole into the stunned center of Foreman’s head’.

As was noted in our discussion of conversation, speakers tend only to producewhat is necessary for communicating an idea, and will assume certain knowledgeand schemata on the part of listeners. A similar effect can be seen in thecommentary. The fact that there are two fighters in a ring fighting one anotherfor the world title means that the commentator does not have to ‘place’ thediscourse temporally. The deletion of auxiliary verbs leads to an omission of thetense-bearing part of the verb phrase:

Foreman [is? was? had been? will be?] slightly confused with thatrighthand lead.

The default tense, the ‘understood’ tense, is the present tense and it is only whenhe steps from this temporal space that the commentator needs to fill out the verbphrase: ‘that right-hand lead which I haven’t seen too many times before’.

In contrast to this, the written text has full verb phrases, and the dominanttense is past. There is, furthermore, greater variation in the tense and aspect inthe written:


simple past: Ali came forward

past continuous: one exclamation was leaping

present continuous: He’s hitting him with rights

past perfect: Ali had not punched with such authority in seven years

simple present: Champions do not hit other champions with right-hand leads

This variation is further evidence of the ‘crafted’ nature of the written as opposedto the spontaneous commentary, as the writer is able to shift the temporal focus aspart of the structuring of the presentation of events.

Analysis of dialogue in Under the Volcano: novel versussoundtrack

The following texts are taken from two versions of Under the Volcano byMalcolm Lowry. Sample 26 is the original dialogue from the novel, and Sample26a is a transcription made from the screen version directed by John Huston.

One of the problems for producers of dialogue for the medium of screen is theremoval of any authorial voice to assist with the understanding of what is beingsaid, for example the impression the author wishes to give of a character,information about past events relating to the present situation, the relationsbetween characters and so on. As was noted earlier in our discussion ofconversational structure (see pp. 20–3), speakers tend to be economical with theinformation they convey, usually relying on their listener to ask for clarificationif they do not understand. The author of a written dialogue is in the position toput a reader ‘in the picture’ and therefore, potentially at least, dialogue that iswritten to be read, rather than to be heard, may in this sense be closer tospontaneous dialogue. That is to say, the surrounding narrative in a dialogue thatis written to be read can provide context to the utterances of the characters in a moreexplicit way than can be achieved by the film medium. The short extracts fromthe two versions of Under the Volcano lend some support to this notion.

Initial comparison

These extracts are taken from a key conversation in the novel, where thedipsomaniac Consul talks at length to his po-faced neighbour, Mr Quincey. Thefilm treatment of their conversation has been criticised for the superficiality lentto this significant incident in the novel. However, it could be argued that sincethe essence of the conversation is one of misinterpretation and multipleinterpretation (the men speak across one another, and this lack of communicationcomically supports the sense of isolation of the central character), the problem forthe film maker is (a) which interpretation to convey and (b) how to presentsomething explicable for the viewer in the film medium.


Sample 26

Dr Livingstone, I presumeHicket Ah, good morning, Quincey What’s good about it?I saw you from over there… I was just out inspecting my jungle, don’t

you knowYou are doing what?And I’m afraid it really is a jungle too in fact I expect Rousseau to come

riding out of it at any moment on a tigerWhat’s that?On a tigerI expect so, […] Plenty tigers. Plenty elephants too… Might I ask you if

the next time you inspect your jungle you’d mind being sick on your ownside of the fence?

Hicket […] Hicket […] Sorry I gave that impression, it was merely thisdamned hiccups —

So I observeAnd the funny thing is I scarcely touched anything more than Tehuacan

water all night… By the way; how did you manage to survive the ball?(UV Chapter 5 [dialogue extracted])

Sample 26a

Ah, good morning Quincey!What’s good about it?I’ve just been inspecting my paradise. I half expected to see Adam come

riding out of it on a tiger.On a what?On a tigerI would imagine lots of tigers and pink elephants too. About your cat…I’ve been giving a lot of thought to Eden, finding a path back to our

origins, perhaps I’ll go and live among the Indians like WilliamBlackstone, stripped of useless trappings, unaccommodated man the thingitself, you know about Blackstone?

My wife and I are kept awake half the night with its infernal howling ordon’t you even…

(Author’s data)

The simplification of antagonism

The approach taken in the film is to simplify the relationship to one ofmismatched topic and straightforward antagonism on the part of Quincey. In thenovel the neighbour’s questioning is balanced by authorial comment such as the


following description of his thoughts in the form of apparent first-personthoughts on the part of Quincey:

I know all about it because I am God, and even when God was much olderthan you are he was nevertheless up at this time and fighting it,if necessary, while you don’t even know whether you’re up or not yet, andeven if you have been out all night you are certainly not fighting it, as Iwould be, just as I would be ready to fight anything or anybody else too, forthat matter, at the drop of a hat!

(Lowry 1977:136)

Taken without this authorial commentary, Quincey’s contributions to thedialogue could seem merely bewildered, rather than exasperated and holier-than-thou. Equally, his icy politeness of ‘Might I ask you if the next time… you’dmind being sick on your own side of the fence?’ could lack irony, if presentedwithout the surrounding narrative. In the screen version Quincey is made moreovertly aggressive, to make up for the lack of commentary.

Speaking without an authorial presence

The eventual spoken channel of the film presents a problem for the screenplaywriter. The language has to convey both the ideas and information of theoriginal, together with sufficient additional context for the listener tocomprehend matters. The present text presents particular difficulty since thenovel is at pains to put the reader in something of the position of the neighbourwho is wrong-footed by the Consul’s train of thought, that is to say, we are notintended to understand what is going on as we read (although we may makesense of things at a later stage).

Detailed comparison

The simplification of this ambiguity is seen both at discourse level and in thechanged lexis.

Discourse contrasts

The novel version opens with a cliché on the part of Quincey as he greets theConsul from his well-tended garden and regards him ‘distastefully’:

Dr Livingstone, I presume.The choice of allusion is significant, since the Consul has just been fighting

his way through an overgrown garden in search of a bottle of tequila he hadhidden there previously. Furthermore, he has been overwhelmed with nostalgiafor a traditional England by the sight of Quincey’s well-cultivated garden:


…the green lawns of the American…swept down parallel with his ownbriars. Nor could any English turf have appeared smoother or lovelier…

(Lowry 1977:135)

This cliché places the neighbour firmly in a tradition not only of Victorian valuesby connotation, but also of predictable discourse-moves in conversational terms.The extreme conventionality of the neighbour is reflected in his preference forjaded language, such as the common retort ‘what’s good about it’, the referencesto ‘plenty tigers, plenty elephants’ with its overtones of colonial discourse, andhis claim that he would fight anything or anybody ‘at the drop of a hat’.

Just prior to their meeting, there is a section in which the progression of theConsul’s drunken thoughts revolve around the words ‘what he wanted …’(Lowry 1977:133–4) and the first stage in this is that he wanted to talk tosomeone, which crystalises as wanting ‘an opportunity to be brilliant’, at whichpoint he catches sight of Quincey in the neighbouring garden and forms thedesire to reach him. The desire to be brilliant becomes on reflection a need to beadmired and then to be loved. These then move on to a less metaphysical desirefor a drink, and eventually to go to the brothel in Parián. Some remnants of thedesire to be conversationally brilliant can be seen in the novel version of thedialogue which ensues, and the longings to be admired and loved as a geniuscontrast with the actual dismissive and irritated responses of the neighbour.

The conversation which follows immediately ‘loses’ Quincey in the allusionsto a jungle, Rousseau and tigers. The authorial comments in the novel convey theidea that Quincey is not troubled that he cannot follow the ramblings of a drunk.In fact, on reflection, the thread of the Consul’s speech springs directly from hisinterlocutor’s opening and is not illogical:—Livingstone → jungle → Rousseau →tiger. Furthermore, in terms of ‘normal’ conversational interaction the Consulresponds adequately to the American’s greeting with a greeting:

Hicket. Ah, good morning, Quinceymarred only by the inexplicable first word. The staid neighbour challenges this

in the form of another cliché:What’s good about it?Thus, from the opening exchange in the novel, the nature of the two men is

underlined: the Consul attempts supporting moves and in his own terms abrilliant conversation, but slips into the inexplicable (for the reader because of‘hicket’ which can only be understood by reference back to the previous scene,and guesswork, and for the fictional interlocutor because he is unable, andunwilling, to follow the thread of the Consul’s thoughts); and his neighbourcannot step beyond the predictable. The conversation seems illstarred from thefirst.

The equivalent material in the screen version simplifies this exchange to anopening move by the Consul, followed by a challenge from his neighbour:


Consul (opening greeting): Ah, good morning Quincey

Quincey (challenge): What’s good about it?

Here, it is the Consul who strikes up the conversation, with perhapsuncharacteristic bonhomie, and the neighbour who responds with immediateaggression.

In Sample 26 (the novel version) the Consul proceeds to expand on the junglemotif suggested to his less than sober mind by the ‘Dr Livingstone’ of Quincey’scasual remark:

…inspecting my jungle…it really is a jungle too… Rousseau…tiger.

His listener is bewildered and responds with irritated questioning moves, doinglittle to hide his contempt:

You are doing what?… What’s that?

culminating in his belief that the Consul has been or is about to be sick. Againthe Consul responds with owlish politeness, and finally gives the reader anexplanation of the inexplicable ‘hicket’:

Hicket […] Hicket […] Sorry I gave that impression, it was merely this[sic] damned hiccups

In Sample 26a (the screen version) the Consul is in fact less constructive inconversational terms, and his neighbour’s tetchy bewilderment isunderstandable. In the spoken channel version, he greets the neighbour and thengoes off at a tangent first about the jungle, and then about Blackstone, with noexcuse in the form of an allusion by his neighbour to a jungle explorer. This hasthe effect of making him seem in control of his discourse in a way whichcontrasts with the novel version. In the latter, his thoughts are sparked off byallusions within the conversation and its setting in a way that reflects actualspeech rather more accurately than the screen version.

The dialogue discourse in the written channel is dependent on other writtendiscourse, the surrounding authorial comments and the preceding events for itssignificance to be brought out. The dialogue prepared for delivery in the spokenchannel, despite the visual medium of film, must stand alone and make sense to alistener without overt cues in supporting written text. For example, beforedismissing as dipsomaniac hallucination the allusion to Rousseau which hecannot understand, in the novel Quincey is said to look at the Consul with ‘thecold sardonic eye of the material world’, and although an actor might be able tolook sardonic it is difficult to convey such a precise noun phrase in a look.


Much of the tragi-comedic quality of the book hinges on the mismatch of theConsul’s spiritually charged, if drunken, world view and hard facts which in theend he cannot escape. Although the self-assured and conventional neighbour andhis disapproving stance are not difficult to convey on film, his qualities have to bebrought out by means of additional contributions in the screen version on thetopic of the cat. More fundamentally, the sad and hilarious juxtaposition of theConsul’s desire to be a brilliant speaker who is admired and loved with theactual conversation which ensues cannot be conveyed.

In the written channel it is possible for the author to show us the thoughts of acharacter, thoughts which cannot be expressed in the spoken channel withoutdifficulty. For example, the section revolving around the words ‘what hewanted’, which contextualises the subsequent dialogue and gives it point wouldtransfer uneasily to the spoken channel. One possibility would be a third-personnarrator speaking over the actions to give the Consul’s thoughts as he searches inthe garden:

…what he wanted, he now saw very clearly, was to talk to someone: thatwas necessary: but it was more, merely, than that; what he wanted involvedsomething like the grasping, at this moment, of a brilliant opportunity, ormore accurately, of an opportunity to be brilliant.

(Lowry 1977:133)

The problem with a voice-over is that, however anonymous the deliverer of thewords, the physical presence of the voice creates a secondary ‘character’ for thelistener with the power to read the mind of the central figure in the action. This inturn leads to a diversion of attention from the importance of the leadingindividual as the focus for the scene. For although the talk would be about thatfigure, the act of spoken narration places a frame or barrier between the audienceand the character in such a way that they are distanced and made more artificialand fictional.

On the other hand, the stream of inner thoughts could be translated into thefirst person and delivered by the Consul. However, there is a difference betweenprivate thoughts and ideas expressed in actual speech, even if only to oneself.The actual vocal expression of something like: ‘what I want is an opportunity tobe brilliant’ gives an impression of absurd egoism on the part of the persondelivering the words. The written channel allows a flow of non-speech in themind of a character to be presented directly to a reader who accepts theconvention that these ideas are private and non-articulated thoughts. This illusionis hard to sustain off the page and in the spoken channel, where, howeversophisticated the screenplay, words must be spoken by somebody to somebody.


Lexical contrasts

Despite the similarity between the novel version and the screen version beingsufficient to recognise and match up the section of conversation in question, theradical simplification and reworking that has been undertaken can be seen in therelatively small quantity of shared lexis between the two versions. Thedistribution of the noun-types is shown in Figure 4.5 and Figure 4.6 where thediscourse of the two speakers has been analysed separately.

In both cases shared lexical items between the two texts are in theminority. Additionally, although there is the impression that the non-shareditems are spread equally between the two versions (the Consul having tendifferent nouns in one version from the other, and Quincey having four new onesin the screen version and five different ones in the novel version), this is rathermisleading since all but two of the nouns (‘paradise’ and ‘Adam’) found in thescreenplay version come from new material that is inserted into the conversationin the process of telescoping a much longer and more rambling conversation inthe novel. That is to say, Quincey is given lines about the cat, and the Consullines about William Blackstone, each of which were topics which occurred laterin the novel dialogue.

Within the strictly comparable material the tendency is for the screenplay toreduce the lexical diversity found in the original written channel in a moregeneral process of simplification. The potentially ‘difficult’ references toRousseau, and Tehuacan water along with the mysterious and onomatopoeic

Figure 4.5 The Consul's noun

Figure 4.6 Quincey’s nouns


‘hicket’ of the Consul’s hiccups are all removed and replaced with the morecoherent lexical set of ‘Adam’, ‘paradise’, ‘Eden’ and ‘a path back to ourorigins’.

A similar process can be seen when the distribution of verbs is considered (theseare shown in Figure 4.7 and Figure 4.8) where once again fewer items are sharedthan not, and once again all but one of the ‘new’ verbs in the screen version(‘imagine’) are accounted for by the interpolated material. When the strictlycomparable material is analysed, greater diversity and more complex vocabularyis found in the written channel. In particular, Quincey’s language is simplified sothat he ‘loses’ some of his distinctive pomposity with the elimination of theverbs ‘presume’, ‘expect’, ‘inspect’, ‘would mind’ and ‘observe’.

Summary

In preparing a screenplay for delivery in the spoken channel on film, the writersare removing discourse from the exclusively written channel of the novel to anew medium which must take into account the needs of viewers rather thanreaders. On the page the novelist has the luxury of being able to manipulate thevisual presentation of spoken interaction in a way that makes it cheekilyambiguous to the reader, thus placing them in something like the position of thebewildered Quincey when faced with the eclectic and tipsy Consul. For example,we as readers may be bemused by the word ‘hicket’ until it is explained muchlater, and the twists and turns of the Consul’s topics (from ‘Good morning’

Figure 4.7 The Consul’s verbs

Figure 4.8 Quincey’s verbs


through ‘inspecting my jungle’ to Rousseau on his tiger to hiccups and finallythe Tehuacan water and the ball of the previous evening) need concentration tofollow them. The skill of this writing is that it generates confusion and makes thereader an active participant who may feel a shared perspective with the puzzledQuincey and his repeated questions:

What’s good about it?You are doing what?What’s that?

The transference of the discourse into the medium of speech on film presentsthe screenplay writer with a dilemma: how can this subtle interaction betweenthe audience of the discourse and their deliberate confusion be sustained? Thisrealist screenplay does not attempt to carry the interplay across into the spokenchannel for the listening and viewing audience. Whether the film medium has thepotential to sustain this level of sophistication in the playing off of createddiscourse against audience perspectives is beyond the scope of this book.Nevertheless, the detailed analysis of the changes which are made in preparingnovel dialogue for delivery on the screen returns us to the question of spokenmode and written mode.

The tendency for greater simplicity and predictability of cohesive linking bothat a discourse level and at the level of lexis means that the screen version issuperficially closer to the norms of conversation. Yet there are several featuresof the novel dialogue which mirror spoken mode very accurately. Whereas thescreen version must concentrate the matter of the conversation (Blackstone, thecat, and eventually Yvonne, the Consul’s estranged wife) into the conventionallimits of a film scene, the novel version has the expansiveness and ramblingquality of actual talk as it extends over more than four pages. In addition, thediscourse contains evidence of indications to an actual context of production,similar to those found in real conversation. The Consul speaks of ‘over there’,and ‘this…hiccups’, Quincey refers to the fence they are speaking over, and usesthe self-referential term ‘So I observe.’ By contrast, the screen version is moredetached from the context in which it is presented, with all the topics introducedbeing explicit referents beyond the immediate setting (apart from ‘my paradise’,and even this has a higher metaphorical content than ‘my jungle’).


Speech and writing usually take place in very different contexts. These contextscan be described both in terms of the context of production and the influence ofthe context of reception. In the case of the spoken and written commentaries on asports event the significant contextual factor was the time constraint on thelanguage producers. Whilst both texts were shaped by the events on which thecommentary was made, the context of the spoken discourse permits little creative


reworking or evaluation of events since the speaker cannot know the ultimateoutcome of the event. The written commentary contains much summarising andamalgamation of actions, and that which is seen as significant is stronglyinfluenced by the knowledge on the part of the writer of the whole event.

These contextual influences are reflected in the syntax and lexis of thediscourse, with the spoken channel showing a high level of ellipsis, precision ofterms for actions, a low incidence of evaluative discourse and a tendency forsimple vocabulary strongly associated with the matter in hand. On the other hand,certain liberties were taken with the presentation of events in the written, and thetendency was for more generalised vocabulary for actions, complete sentences,diversity of tenses, and generally more complex vocabulary.

Turning to the comparison of the same dialogue in a novel and translated intothe spoken channel for the screen, here the context of reception of the twosamples was significant. In the written channel the dialogue is supported byother written text in the form of both the wider context of the surroundingchapter, and more specifically in the form of authorial comment. The dialogue onscreen tended towards greater simplicity and conventionality, but in the process agreat deal of the sophistication and point of the dialogue was lost. The process ofsimplification was reflected in the lexis, with the novel version having greaterdiversity and obscurity of reference. This led to a superficial similarity betweenthe screen version and actual speech. Nevertheless, other features in the novelversion, for example reference to things within the sight of the speakers, showedmore similarity to actual speech taking place in a real context.

This chapter has looked at the influence of the context of samples of text fromthe two channels. The question of context raises several important issues whichhave not been addressed directly in this discussion, for example, the relationshipbetween genre and context or between register and context, quite apart from theissue of what counts as context for a given sample. In addition, there is room formore discussion of the peculiarities of these texts and how typical they are oftheir kind.

The nature of speech and writing limits their potential to appear in the samecontexts and these differences have an influence on the kind of language whichis produced. For example, the time it takes to write and read discourse meansthat the written channel is not well-suited to producing a commentary on liveaction. Equally, the fact of speech carries with it an element of performancewhich it is hard to separate from the individual who is speaking. This wasbrought up in the discussion of the use of a narrative voice in the written channelas opposed to the spoken channel. However, a question remains which relates tothe differences between a narrator and a commentator, and why a narrator hascertain creative powers and a role of importance which is not assigned to acommentator. This in turn brings up the issue of the status of fictional createddiscourse and whether different contextual factors are salient for such material.In the discussions presented in this book, the special status, if any, of createddiscourse has not been mooted, and real samples of conversation have been


placed beside created ones as if there was no problem of comparison. Rather, theaim has been both to bring out contrasts between discourse in the two channelsand to raise awareness of how writers are both limited and liberated by themedium in which they work.

Once again, at the end of this discussion, we are returned to the issueof comparability which has been central throughout this book. Despite thedifficulties of comparing speech and writing, and of comparing real discoursewith fictional, the retention of the nature of channel at the heart of the studyprovides insights, and, it is hoped, starting-points for further comparative workeither in literature or linguistics, which a straightforward textual comparisoncannot.

EXERCISES

Task:

Analyse the grammatical structures and lexis in the following texts and discusswhether they support the conclusions given earlier in this chapter. Sample 27 isfrom the live spoken commentary of the same fight analysed above, and Sample27a is from the written version in The Fight by Norman Mailer, with the relevantsections extracted.

Sample 27

Here’s some real good shots thrown to the body by ForemanForeman on the left of your screen, Ali on the rightAli leans up against the ropeRight-hand taken on the gloves by AliThere’s a real wild right-hand taken on the back of the head of AliForeman with a wild right againAli looks like he’s trying to rest in this round, punches are not doing any

damage thoughVicious right thrown at the body of Ali, wild right misses the head of

Ali, a left taken on the glove of Ali, the right gloveForeman pouring, pouring, pouring, trying to set them up to the bodyAli does look tired now, Foreman seems to be coming back with more

speedOne minute left in round five, this is George Foreman’s round all the

wayAli, this is a cruising round for himForeman just working the body, hasn’t hit Ali except once in the face (..)A combination by Ali, lands on the head of ForemanForeman with that right hookAli backs up Foreman


(Author’s transcript)

Sample 27a

With Ali backed on the ropes, as far back on the ropes as a deep-seafisherman is backed back in his chair when setting the hook on a big strike,so Ali got ready and Foreman came on to blast him out. A shellingreminiscent of artillery battles in World War I began. Neither manmoved more than a few feet in the next minute and a half. Across thatembattled short space Foreman threw punches in barrages of four and sixand eight and nine, heavy maniacal slamming punches, heavy as the boomof oaken doors, bombs to the body, bolts to the head, punching until hecould not breathe […]

And Ali, gloves to his head, elbows to his ribs, stood and swayed andwas rattled and banged and shaken like a grasshopper at the top of a reedwhen the wind whips, and the ropes shook and swung like sheets in a storm,and Foreman would lunge with his right at Ali’s chin and Ali go flyingback out of reach by a half-inch […]

And Ali reaching over the barrage would give a prod now and again toForeman’s neck like a housewife sticking a toothpick in a cake to see if itis ready.

(TF Chapter 14)

Task:Make your own transcript of a short section of commentary on a sporting event.

See if you can find a newspaper account of the same event. Analyse yoursamples in the way outlined in this chapter.

Task:

Take a sample of dialogue from a novel or story (if possible, one which hasbeen made into a film for which you have access to a video—one possibilitywould be the prose and film versions of The Dead’ by James Joyce). Extract thedialogue from its written context and consider whether this could be acted onscreen without alterations. Make any alterations you consider necessary, and thencompare your version with a screen version, if possible.

FURTHER READING

Cook, Guy (1990) ‘Transcribing infinity, problems of context presentation’, Journal ofPragmatics, 14, 1–24.

Crystal, David and Davy, Derek (1969) Investigating English Style (Chapter 5, oncommentary), London: Longman.


Psathas, G. and Anderson, T. (1990) ‘The “practices” of transcription in conversationanalysis’, Semiotica, 78, 75–99.

Rader, Margaret (1982) ‘Context in written language: the case of imaginative fiction’, inTannen, Deborah (ed.) Spoken and Written Language: exploring orality and literacy,Advances in Discourse Processes, vol. IX, Norton, NJ: Ablex.

Redd, T.M. (1991) ‘The voice of time: the style of narration in a newspaper magazine’,Written Communication, 8, 240–58.

Simpson, P. (1993) Language, Ideology and Point of View, London: Routledge.Toolan, M. (1988) Narrative: a critical linguistic introduction, London: Routledge.


Chapter 5Issues in the study of speech and writing

INTRODUCTION

This chapter aims to bring a more overtly theoretical perspective to the study ofspeech and writing than has been the case in the previous chapters. It is intendedto raise awareness of the problematic status of speech and writing in the study oflanguage, and as such is perhaps more suited to advanced students, or those whowish to move on to tackle some of the underlying issues in the field. However, italso presents a contextualising background of previous approaches to speech andwriting for the more general reader.

The rest of this chapter is in two parts. The first section presents a summary ofprevious approaches to the subject of the relationship between spoken andwritten forms of language from a theoretical perspective. The second discussesmore empirically based research in the field. While the distinction betweentheoretical and empirical approaches is not always as clearcut as this oppositionsuggests, I am using it in order to present the broad differences in perspective inthis field.

THEORETICAL APPROACHES

Among those who I am grouping together as presenting a theoretically basedaccount of the relationship between spoken and written forms of language arethose who form rational hypotheses about the relationship on the basis of whatthey believe to be true about the two forms of language, rather than examiningsamples of language as their starting point. While some examples of languageuse may be included in their expositions, such examples serve to support an apriori theory. In the group are many of the most influential figures of linguistics.

I shall be dealing with them in three stages. First, those who, like Ferdinand deSaussure or Leonard Bloomfield, discuss the speech versus writing issue in thecontext of the larger question of what constitutes the proper object of study inlinguistics, and who conclude that writing is a subsidiary form of language.Second, I move on to linguists such as M.A.K.Halliday or Josef Vachek whogive more weight to the actual manifestations of speech and writing, and who

generally see the two forms as complementary systems. Third, I deal withscholars who have presented theories about the social functions and influence ofspeech as opposed to writing. Among these I include both linguists such asDavid Olson, and social scientists like W.J. Ong or Jack Goody, as well as theClassical scholars Lord and Havelock. I shall be suggesting that a commontheme in this group is an overemphasis on the effects of the written word.

Speech supreme

There is a fundamental assumption in the study of language that the spoken formis primary, and the written form a means of representing that primary form. Thisview stems mainly from the work of a highly influential linguist, Ferdinand deSaussure, who memorably claimed that choosing to study writing was likechoosing to study a photograph of a person rather than the real thing.

Despite this derogatory claim about writing, there is in the work of Saussure adegree of inconsistency in his attitude to the status of writing. This inconsistencyunderpins many of the difficulties in studying speech and writing. On the onehand, ‘A language is a repository of sound patterns and writing in their tangibleform’ (Saussure 1983:15)1 which would suggest that writing serves an importantfunction. Not only does it ‘represent’ a language (Saussure 1983:25), it alsopresents us with a record of the sound patterns of a language in a form that isamenable to study. On the other hand, Saussure frequently presents writing as, atbest, a convenient repository of linguistic facts in the case of dead languages; andat worst as a dangerous diversion from the study of la langue. Whilstrecognising, and fulminating against, the influence of writing and its compellingpresence, Saussure did not see it as worthy of synchronic study. In thisdiscussion I shall be suggesting that this attitude to the status of writing as boththe tangible record of language and as something misleadingly different from itleads to inconsistencies.

Saussure’s own arguments against the independent life of writing are aproduct of his belief that the ‘sole reason’ (Saussure 1983:24) for its existence isfor it to represent ‘a language’. He dismisses the idea of studying writing for itsown sake with a persuasive image:

It is rather as if people believed that in order to find out what a personlooks like it is better to study his photograph than his face.

(Saussure 1983:24–5).

Indeed, it is the tangible aspect of writing which gives it its undesirable potencyand influence. The existence of writing provides an ‘easy option’ for linguisticstudy, and therefore, in Saussure’s opinion, is a dangerous red-herring forlinguists. Writing should not deflect the attention of scholars of language from thetrue object of study in linguistics, that is to say, the system of signs which is lalangue. Under no circumstances should the ease of perceiving the written sign

ISSUES IN THE STUDY OF SPEECH AND WRITING 125

lead one to think that it is anything but an ‘artificial unit’ (Saussure 1983:26).The point of the photograph comparison is not only that the image might beinaccurate (it could be flattering, out of date, unflattering), but it also implies thatno representation should be substituted for the real face. That is to say, norepresentations of la langue will be acceptable.

This theoretical issue leads to methodological problems. For analysis oflanguage (whether conceived of as an abstract system, or as language in use)depends on our ability to describe or capture it in some form of graphicrepresentation. A strong statement of Saussure’s case leads us to the conclusionthat analysis of la langue is impossible.

A further key concept in Saussure’s theories of language is parole, (the actualexamples of speech as used by people, rather than the more abstract system, lalangue). However, the real object of interest for Saussure was the latter, higherand more abstract system of signs. The relationship between two pseudo-formsof language, parole and the written form (in terms of this book: speech andwriting), Saussure would argue, should not be of interest to those studyinglanguage. Nevertheless, the question of what is the nature of the links betweenall three elements in the triangle—the language system, speech and writing—hasremained at the centre of linguistic theory. If one retains the concept of‘language’ as an abstract system one can produce models which have advantagesof elegance and power, such as transformational grammar. However, for these tobe acceptable they must at some point ‘connect up’ with naturally occurringlanguage, the words we speak or the books we read. On the other hand,abandoning the theoretical and depending on real spoken words and real writtentexts brings with it its own difficulties: if one concentrates on analysingexamples of actual speech/writing the power and universality of the descriptionis greatly reduced. In the case of the former it can be argued that the model,however internally consistent, may not reflect reality; in the case of the latter,empirical, approach the criticism is that it has limited power, and sheds light onone (possibly atypical) area of language use.

To sum up, a language and the form it is written in were, for Saussure, twodistinct systems. The written form was not part of the language but was a meansof making manifest the sound system that makes up la langue. The graphic andpermanent nature of writing serves to give it an impression of independentexistence. According to this approach, this tangibility and degree ofindependence does not make writing a separate form of language that is suitablefor linguistic study, rather it provides a false object of study.

Why was there such firmness in the work of Saussure that writing should beexcluded from study in linguistics? There were two main reasons, other thanhistorical pressures in the development of language study in general. First, thefact that writing is in important ways not like parole. Second, the nature of thewritten form undermines the basic tenets of Saussure’s theory.

The arguments which Saussure used to exclude naturally occurring speechfrom linguistics are firmly grounded in the means of production and do not

126 ISSUES IN THE STUDY OF SPEECH AND WRITING

necessarily hold good for writing. Unlike parole (actual language as spoken bypeople), which can be dismissed as transient, unpredictable and idiosyncratic,writing is permanent, and, in its literary, printed form highly standardised (seeChapter 3 for a further discussion of this). The definitive aspects of parole arethat it is subject to the whim of the individual and that it is affected by ancillaryor accidental factors (Saussure 1983:14), such as the context in which the speechoccurs. Writing, on the other hand, if it is idiosyncratic and context-dependentsoon loses its communicative value. It is interesting to substitute the word‘writing’ for la langue in some of the definitions and descriptions of it given inthe Cours:

It can be localised in that particular section of the speech circuit wheresound patterns are associated with concepts. It is the social part oflanguage, external to the individual, who by himself is powerless either tocreate it or to modify it. It exists only in virtue of a kind of contract agreedbetween the members of a community …It is quite separate from speech: aman who loses the ability to speak none the less retains his grasp of [it].

(Saussure 1983:14)

Furthermore, it ‘is an object that may be studied independently’; it is‘homogeneous’ in nature, and is a structured system. These aspects of la languecould be applied to the written form of language far more easily than to thespoken. Of course, this does not mean that writing actually is la langue.However, given the fact that by nature writing more a pseudo-langue than isparole, it is unsurprising that such emphasis should be placed on its denigration.In order for speech to retain its prime status in Saussure’s theory, writing had tobe described as, simultaneously, sound-pattern-written-down (which, I shall bearguing, does not work at anything but the most general level), and a ‘false’ formof language.

The notion of a system of language consisting of a priori forms is anathema toSaussure’s science of semiotics. For this reason, I suggest, writing was dismissedas merely reflecting and representing speech and as a pseudoparole.2

This feature of linguistics returns me to the question of precisely whatSaussure was referring to when he discusses writing. The question hinges uponthe nature of representation through writing. Does writing represent sounds ordoes it represent concepts? Saussure’s complex delineation of the linguistic signpoints to the fact that it represents both. That is to say, writing is the tangiblemanifestation of la langue which is a system of mutually defining linguisticsigns. Since the sign is dual in nature and is comprised of a united sound patternand concept, any system which makes it manifest must be representing bothaspects. However, throughout the Cours the phonic (sound) aspect of the writtenis given prominence.

In Saussure’s remarks on orthography, as indeed in most people’s, it is thelack of a ‘fit’ between the sounds of speech and the graphemes on paper which


vex him, and lead him to state that writing ‘obscures our view’ (Saussure 1983:29) of la langue. He goes as far as to ‘quarantine’ any changes in a language thatcan be traced back to the influence of the written form. He gives the example ofan intrusive [b] being introduced into the name ‘Lefevre’ due to the influence of‘learned’ Latin spelling, and argues that such changes should be kept separatefrom true changes which were due to ‘natural evolution’.3

However, there is an inconsistency in this. For, first, the alphabetic guise of asign written down is supposed to be arbitrary: ‘The signs used in writing arearbitrary. The letter t, for instance, has no connexion with the sound it denotes’(Saussure 1983:117). Second, by criticising the inconsistencies of some sound-grapheme relations in alphabetic writing Saussure is implying that there could bea better means of graphically representing sound patterns, and that some of therelations are more acceptable. Taken to its conclusion, this would mean that lalangue could be made manifest in an idealised visual way. However, Saussurewould be extremely loath to accept that, say, the modern phonetic alphabet couldserve this function.

Above, I argued that many of the distinguishing features of la langue wereshared by writing. I pointed to high-level parallels, such as the social aspect ofacceptable writing. It is also the case that written words and Saussure’sdefinitions of linguistic signs share many of their important distinguishingfeatures. In particular, the notion that the linguistic sign combines sound patternwith concept in an indissoluble bonded form.

Later in the Cours, Saussure accepts that direct study of linguistic signs isimpossible, and returns to dealing with the word: ‘Since we cannot have directaccess to concrete entities and linguistic units, we shall take words as examples’(Saussure 1983:112).

I would argue that, for Saussure, words boil down to visual signs (Saussure1983:102ff). Whether or not the visual aspect of the word is accepted, it remainsthe case that detailed analysis of language, and discussion of language betweenlinguists, cannot be carried out, by Saussure or anyone else, without somerecourse to the graphic medium.4 What generally has not been addressed is theeffect of writing on the object of study, a point I shall return to below.

As long as one accepts that the sole function of writing is to represent speech,two interconnected facts are the case. First, it is possible to ignore a system oflanguage (i.e. writing) which largely avoids the criticisms directed at parole.Second, the written examples of ‘string-based’ grammars become acceptable in ascience which accepts the primacy of speech. Without holding the notion thatwriting is speech written down, and that speech is a product of some higher,decontextualised system, the analysis of language through isolated, writtensentences would seem limited, to say the least.

However, if writing is made up of an independent system of signs, and is notsubject to the vagaries of parole in what sense is it not a worthy object forlinguistic study? In fact, despite the exhortations to the contrary, writtenlanguage has never ceased to be studied, if for no other reason than that:


The written form of a word strikes us as a permanent, solid, object andhence more fitting than its sound to act as a linguistic unit persistingthrough time.

(Saussure 1983:26)

I have dealt with the approach adopted by Saussure in some detail because itpresents clearly the fundamental and far-reaching questions that arise whendiscussing the relationship of writing to speech, for example whether the primaryfunction of writing is to convey speech sounds or whether it is a largelyindependent system. For, if ‘writing which reproduces the phonemes of speech isas intelligible as speech’ (as Bloomfield states when arguing for spelling reformto bring orthography in line with modern speech sounds; Bloomfield 1935:502),the alterations made in, say, a verbatim transcription cannot be put down to thechange in channel per se. If, on the other hand, writing is a language systemwhich by now is complementary to speech (i.e. fulfilling those functions that areleast well carried out in speech, such as listing things, or keeping records), andindependent of it, it would be surprising to find no alterations made.

I have highlighted a dualism in Saussure’s treatment of writing, and suggestedthat this has important implications for the study of language in general. With hisdeep suspicion of the written form of language, Saussure set the general trend intheoretical linguistics away from concrete manifestations of language. His notionof the ‘natural evolution’ of a language, free from artificial interference, places itfirmly in non-empirical territory. Further-more, his insistence that it is a mistaketo proceed from forms to meaning moved the study of language from the real tothe ideal.

I shall now move on to other theorists who shared many of the attitudesexpressed by Saussure towards writing. In the following paragraphs I shall bearguing that the view of writing as merely a means of recording sounds isdifficult to support. In particular, I hope to show that a linguistic science thatrefuses to acknowledge the importance of the written form of language and at thesame time proposes to study speech must face the inconsistencies that this leadsto.

Written forms of language were famously denigrated by Leonard Bloomfield.Not only did he regard writing as simply a means of recording language and notan independent form of language (Bloomfield 1935:21, 282f), it is also clear thathe saw the writing-speech relationship in terms of a straightforward, mechanicalprocess: ‘The art of writing is not part of language, but rather a comparativelymodern invention for recording and broadcasting what is spoken’ (Bloomfield1942). This presents writing as a sound recording mechanism, a comparison thatis made explicit, for Bloomfield states that writing is like a ‘phonograph’ or‘radio’.5 The only useful function of writing is, as for Saussure, that it provides afossilisation of earlier sounds in a language and is therefore useful for diachronicstudies. In his emphatic rejection of the idea of writing as anything other thansubsidiary to speech, he goes so far as to deny the generally accepted view of


ideographic writing systems, stating that the characters do not reflect the ‘ideas’,but they represent features of ‘the writers’ language’ (Bloomfield 1935:285).6

Bloomfield’s arguments for the primacy of speech are that it precedes writingchronologically in both the history of peoples and a person;7 that there exist non-literate language communities; that it is an arbitrary representation of a language;that deciphering written records is impossible without prior knowledge oflanguage; that written forms hinder rather than help our understanding of ‘actualspeech’ (Bloomfield 1935:21), and that alphabetic writing is a ‘poor guide’ to theunderlying phonemes (Bloomfield 1935:79). Each of these statements begs thequestion of whether writing could be an independent system of signs. Ifalphabetic writing were not fundamentally designed to represent phonemes, butrather was an encoding of concepts which has the potential to be read aloud, thenthe fact that it is a poor reflection of phonemes would be neither surprising, norworrying.

Bloomfield decries the influence of standardising, ‘literary’ language onspeech through what he sees as the tyranny of written orthography (Bloomfield1935:486ff). However, despite being such a handicap the written form of alanguage is said to have no independence from the sounds of a language:8

Actually, the writer utters the speech-form before or during the act ofwriting and the hearer utters it in the act of reading; only after considerablepractice do we succeed in making these speech-movements inaudible andinconspicuous.

(Bloomfield 1935:285)

But there is a paradox here. Given the fact that writing is accused of ‘fixing’sounds from earlier forms of the language (and therefore disguising the truesounds present in a language), which sounds are readers ‘uttering’ when theyread? If a reader utters the sounds indicated by the graphemes would they beuttering all the inconsistent and archaic sounds that orthography contains? Orwould they be uttering their own phonemic patterns? Surely, the latter. If not, weare in the position of accepting that readers utter one, obsolete set of sounds asthey read, but which they simultaneously recognise as the sound patterns they arefamiliar with. On the other hand, if we deny the vocalisation aspect of reading inproficient readers many of the problems concerning inconsistency vanish.Without the phonic potential being emphasised written words can be seen asvisual ‘labels’ which direct a reader to generate a meaning based on theirlinguistic (and other) knowledge. The written form may, of course, be uttered, butits primary purpose is not for it to be reconstituted as sound.9

However, the idea of writing having a function other than to represent speechsounds leads back to the question of the relationship between speech and writingin linguistics, even if indirectly. The problem is as follows. As long as writing isa direct representation of speech it is possible to ‘downgrade’ its status since it isa system made up of ‘parasitic formations’ (Lotz 1951), or signs of signs. If


writing is not dependent on speech sounds then its separate system must be takeninto account in a description of language. The removal of the object of study tothe level of abstractions such as ‘la langue’ or ‘competence’ does not entirelysolve this problem. First because, as noted by Saussure, the very existence of awritten, prestigious form of language can, potentially, affect these abstractsystems. Indeed, it could be argued that native-speaker intuitions about well-formedness are influenced by the norms of writing (a point that I shall bediscussing in more detail below).

Bloomfield himself makes a similar point in his article on the effects of literatelanguage: ‘The popular explanation of incorrect language is simply theexplanation of incorrect writing’ [original emphasis] (Bloomfield 1927). Second,the analysis of a language cannot be carried out without the medium of writing.This last point has implications for linguistic theory. There are three, related,questions. First, if writing is at best on a par with parole, or at worst a meremeans of representing parole, what then is the status of the isolated writtensentences (‘strings’) presented by linguists to, say, test well-formedness?Second, there is the more fundamental point that the written form of a languagemay affect not only native speakers’ attitudes to correctness, it may alsoinfluence our perception of the spoken form. Third, as has been seen in theprevious chapters, a linguistic theory designed for context-free, static systemsmay not be adequate to cope with the spoken form.

It is significant that, despite the admonitions of Saussure, the nature of writingand its relationship to speech has continued to be a subject for debate. It is adebate that is inevitably bound up with the nature of the object of study inlinguistics. In the rest of this section I am going to discuss the question of thestatus of speech and writing in the work of Noam Chomsky and in particular theproblem of correspondence between the language generated by a grammar andnaturally occurring language. A related discussion will be on the work oflinguists who have been interested in how writing conveys the sound structure ofa language.

In examining the work of Saussure I dealt with three main subjects, la langue,parole and writing. In Bloomfield there was seen a similar triangular system:‘ideas’, speech and writing. In the work of both the question of the status of thewritten form in the field of linguistics was talked about at some length in orderfor it to be eliminated. In the writings of the most influential linguist sinceBloomfield, Noam Chomsky, the question of the nature and status of writtenlanguage as opposed to speech is seen as largely irrelevant, and is never dealtwith directly in any detail. I am not going to deal with his work at great length.However, if any correspondence is to be found between the sentences producedby a generative grammar and empirical language use it will be with the writtenform of the language, not the spoken. As I pointed out above, the result ofexcluding those elements most typical of speech in defining the object oflinguistics is that the object, of necessity, becomes more like writing. Anadditional aspect of Chomsky’s work is that the grammar created itself produces


examples of ‘language’. The status of these, and their relationship to speech ornaturally occurring writing is one that remains problematic. This is addressed byTerence Moore and Christine Carling in their introductory overview to NoamChomsky: consensus and controversy:

The closest parallel ordinary human language appears to offer to a set ofsentences resembling those a generative grammar might produce is writtentexts. Setting aside obvious exceptions—poetry and experimental novels—nearly all written prose consists of sets of sentences. The obvious place tolook for a correspondence between a set of sentoids of a formal languageand a set of sentences in a human language is in the written form of ahuman language.

(Moore and Carling 1987:21)

This is a rather simplistic account of the nature of written texts. However, if weaccept that the sentoids produced by a grammar will resemble writing moreclosely than naturally occurring speech we are brought back to the central issueof this book—what is the nature of the relationship between speech and writing?It is the same dilemma that was found in Saussure’s work. That is to say, thescience of language would seem to deal with a form that is closer to writing thanto speech. If it is to account for the mechanisms of naturally occurring speechrather than formal languages, then a central question is the possibility of relatingstatic written language to dynamic spoken language.

There are several complex problems in even beginning to discuss this issue.For example, there is the question of at what level correspondence is to besought: phonemic, syntactic or semantic. It is at the level of the phoneme thatmost theoretically based accounts of the relationship have taken place. The basicassumption is that speech and writing share the same phonemes and that thealphabet is a reflection of these. In 1968 Chomsky and Halle made a break withthis by coming out in favour of the much maligned spelling of English:

Notice, incidentally, how well the problem of representing the soundpattern of English is solved in this case by conventional orthography…English orthography turns out to be rather close to an optimal system forspelling English.

(Chomsky and Halle 1968:184n)

Acceptance of the adequacy of English orthography as a representation oflanguage is a prerequisite for a theory of language which uses the words ofeveryday writing in order to represent fundamental structures in the brain. Theelimination of the issue of non-phonic representation in writing (the lack of ‘fit’between sounds and letters) goes a long way to side-stepping the problem of howwriting relates to speech. Furthermore, in the context of generative grammar, itprovides the potential for deep structure to connect to speech.


In Chomsky’s own writings the written form of language is referred tospecifically in the context of memory/processing limitations.

A sentence that is incomprehensible in speech may be intelligible ifrepeated several times or presented on the written page, where memorylimitations are less severe.

(Chomsky 1980:221)

and he goes on to make the analogy with the knowledge we have of mathematicsin which we use pen and paper to extend our memory. He states that our ability orinability to carry out a complex computation is independent of a person’sfundamental knowledge of arithmetic:

Rather, he uses the knowledge already represented in his mind, with accessto more computing space than his short-term memory provides. Somecomputations may be too complex even for paper and pencil, but theselimitations are independent of knowledge of arithmetic. They hold forother domains. Therefore a scientist interested in determining ‘arithmeticalcompetence’ would quite properly disregard these limitations, attributingthem to independent components of the mind.

(Chomsky 1980:221)

This brings up the issue of what is meant by speech in the first quotation fromRules and Representations. The statement is given to explain the independenceof knowledge of grammar from extrinsic constraints. As such, the ‘speech’described may be interpreted as an example of performance, and the exampleseems to be persuasive: we listen, we do not understand, we ask for the utteranceto be repeated or, if there is some speech impediment, written down. However,what becomes clear as the arithmetic analogy is unfolded, is that thecomprehension task is being seen as a computational process. The paragraphgoes on:

But we do not have to extend our knowledge of language to be able to dealwith repeated or written sentences that are far more complex than those ofnormal spoken discourse.

(Chomsky 1980:221)

Here we seem to have ‘speech’ producing sentences too difficult to beunder stood in the context of normal processing, and hypothetical sentences thatare more difficult than those of ‘normal spoken discourse’ and can only beunderstood with an aide memoire. Rather than being speaker-dependentperformance, the former (‘speech’) must be a product of a generative grammar.Indeed, if a person had produced the ‘incomprehensible’ sentence he/she, weimagine, could have understood it. Otherwise, we are in the position of speakers


producing utterances too complex even for themselves to understand withoutrepeating them or writing them down. However, if the sentences in question arecontext-free sentoids why bring up the problem of real-time processing,repetition or writing? The issue of complexity is connected to that of therecursiveness of grammars. That is to say, the infinite potential for languageproduced from the finite set of rules represented in the brain. Moore and Carlingpoint out that the type of sentence Chomsky is referring to would be a self-embedded sentoid such as ‘the rabbit the girl the cat ignored pursued dropped theglove’. They go on to say that these types of sentoids:

…highlight the sharp difference between what is a natural output of aChomsky grammar and what is a possible sentence of English.

(Moore and Carling 1987:27n)

The issue is one addressed from a different perspective by Alexander George inhis paper ‘How not to become confused about linguistics’ (George 1989a). Heposits a five-fold series of distinctions relating to grammar and suggests that theabstract entity which is the fundamental grammar is not causally linked to speechproduction or perception. He goes on to say that this view has not been generallyaccepted as it would turn linguistics into a non-empirical discipline ‘basically, abranch of mathematics’ (George 1989a:98).10

The issue of the potential for generalisation from empirical data is one that mustbe addressed in an investigation of speech and writing, whether theoreticallydriven or data driven. My aim was to show how without a clear and consistentdefinition of speech, writing and their relationship to ‘language’, the science oflanguage will not cohere. That is to say, if it is claiming to account for thecomprehension and production of naturally occurring speech via the descriptionof an abstract entity, two preliminary theoretical questions are: (a) what is thefeasibility of producing such an account by moving from the abstract and idealtowards the empirical and concrete? (b) what effect does the means ofgraphically representing language have on our conception of a ‘type’? Morespecifically, the definition of speech is of great importance in any empiricalstudies into speech and writing. For instance, the statement that certain genres ofwriting are ‘more like speech’ than others can have very little meaning withoutsome factual basis for what is typical of speech and of writing.

The independence of writing

I should now like to turn to some scholars who have dealt with the relationshipof speech to writing from a different perspective. Here I shall be discussing someof those who have given more credence to the independence of writing, and havealso tended to present their arguments in terms of a less abstract system of ideasthan those I have previously discussed. A common theme here is that the natureof written language is a product of the functions it serves in actual language use.


In general, the presence of a common underlying language system or system ofideas is accepted as a given. However, unlike the ‘purer’ theorists examinedabove, the notion of actual language use being outside the true object inlinguistics is not central to their approach.

In his book Phono-graphic Translation William Haas makes explicit the viewthat written signs are not secondary in nature. He seeks to explain how it is thatwe are able to pass from sound to letters and vice versa. He begins with adiscussion of the ‘phonemic’ approach which has underpinned the theories Ihave outlined above. When looking for a correspondence between phonemes andgraphemes he criticises the notion that graphemes are signs of phonemes as achaotic one. For, if this were the case the initial letters in ‘cat’ and ‘cider’ wouldrelate to an underlying [c] and therefore be ambiguous. On the other hand, the [c]and [k] would be signs in complementary distribution, and therefore equivalent.He concludes that because speech and writing can carry a message independentlyof each other ‘translation’ is a better term for the mechanism. He concludes:

It is quite common for a perfectly intelligible recorded talk or conversationto be incapable of intelligible transcription. The inevitable absence ofadequate graphic signals for patteras of stress or tone and for changes oftempo leaves much of the transcribed remainder obscure. What is requiredhere for expression in writing is complete reformulation—‘free’ translation.

(Haas 1970:85)

The implication here is that it simply is not possible to say the ‘same thing’ in adifferent channel without extensive changes. The key phrase, in terms ofsemantic theory, is that ‘much of the transcribed remainder’ is left obscure, forexample, how much meaning is carried by paralinguistic features which cannotbe transcribed?

The work of Josef Vachek supported the idea that the written form of languageshould be at the centre of linguistic study. In his work, speech and writing aretwin domains with complementary language functions, and with little overlap.The spoken form carries out dynamic functions, and the written static ones. Hetoo, rejects the direct phonemic correspondence of phoneme to alphabetic letter(Vachek 1976). Earlier, remarking on the process of moving from one domain tothe other he states that the differences in function make it strictly impossible tosay the same thing in a different medium:

It may sometimes happen that an utterance primarily intended for listeningneeds reading, and vice versa… In such cases…transposition from the oneinto the other material is not done with the intention of expressing thegiven content by means of the other material; if it were so, the onlypossible accomplishment of the task would be to replace the spokenutterance with the written one or vice versa.

(Vachek 1966:154)


By this he means that the expression of the content in the opposite materialwould lead to merely a phonetic transcription in the one case, or a spelling out ofthe written text in the other. This is because he believes that it is not within thescope of writing for it to accurately represent the phonic make up of spokenutterances. In Written Language Vachek queries the interchangeability of‘spelling’ and ‘orthography’:

Orthography is, in fact, a set of rules enabling the language user totranspose the spoken utterances into the corresponding written ones…it is akind of ‘bridge’ leading from the spoken norm of language to the written.The ‘bridge’ going the other way is pronunciation. ‘Spelling’…serves toexpress the material make-up of the written utterance by phonic means, i.e.by successively naming each of the graphemes comprising that utterance.

(Vachek 1973:18)

In his view the different means of representing speech sounds graphically belongto these different domains. Phonetic transcription, although it is a graphicrepresentation of speech, has nothing to do with writing:

…in deciphering a text written in phonetic script one first of all undertakesthe acoustic interpretation of the visual signs…and only then proceeds tothe semantic interpretation of the acoustic facts thus obtained.

(Vachek 1966:152)

Much of what Vachek has to say on the relationship between spoken and writtennorms of language focuses on the lack of correspondence at the phonemic level.He states in Chapter 4 of Written Language that we must look for equivalencesbetween speech and writing at a higher language level. Similarly, he sees anincompatibility between the logographic principle, and the phoneme/graphemeprinciple; and an additional lack of ‘fit’ at the morphemic level (he points to theexample of the -s endings to English words and their different pronunciations:compare the sound at the end of trees /z/ with that of treats /s/). However, hisfirm view that the only means of expressing the exact content of spokenutterances in the graphic medium is through a phonetic transcription leads us to apoint where the existence of what is commonly termed a verbatim transcriptionof speech is an impossibility.

In ‘Speech and writing’ H.J.Uldall proposed a related view which differs fromthat of Vachek in that it does not reject the phonemic principle. He retains thenotion of la langue at the heart of his exposition, and states that it makes possiblethe expression of one language in two forms: speech and writing. That which iscommon to sounds and to letters equals la langue. The actual manifestations oflanguage are peripheral:


If either of these two substances, the stream of air or the stream of ink,were an integral part of the language itself, it would not be possible to gofrom one to the other without changing the language.

(Uldall 1966:147)

He goes on to give a largely non-semantic account of transcription, and toconclude that ‘it would be quite feasible to produce standardized artificial speechof some kind’ which would be the equivalent of printed writing. He calls writingand speaking mutually incongruent, and accounts for the differences by notingthe history of the alphabet. When discussing the semantic content of the twoforms he states that the unit of content is expressed in two ways, that is to say awritten utterance and a spoken utterance are ‘functions of the same unit ofcontent’ (Uldall 1966:150). He goes as far in his parallel account of the two formsas to say that a bad pen for a writer is linguistically the same as a sore throat or acigar between the teeth of a speaker. In this outline of the relationship, unlikethat of Vachek given above, the production of a verbatim transcription wouldoffer few difficulties. However, there is little account given of the differences inthe nature of the two channels (static/dynamic, ephemeral/permanent) and theeffects this might have on the expression of a unit of content.

The Vachek and Uldall descriptions of the relationship between spoken andwritten forms of language show two related versions of what may be termed theparallel/complementary outline. This is one with which, in broad terms I agree.That is to say, in an empirical account it seems sensible to allow the written formequal status with the spoken. Indeed, it seems to be the case that the moreempirical the approach the less coherent becomes the idea that writing is speechwritten down.

The most coherent and sustained continuation of this stance is in the work ofM.A.K.Halliday, in particular in his book Spoken and Written Language. Whilehe sees the spoken and the written forms of a language as emanating from thesame underlying language system, Halliday focuses on the differences in formand function which affect the nature of the two manifestations. He does not denythe phonic aspect of writing. Indeed, he states that in a phonological writingsystem, such as the alphabet:

…if a text is unintelligible when read aloud, it will also be unintelligible inwriting, since the writing merely symbolises the spoken expression.

(Halliday 1989:44)

However, other factors serve to keep spoken and written forms of a lan guagedistinct from one another even in a phonological writing situation. He points tothe development of writing systems as the product of changes in society, andgoes on to say that this means that the functions of the later form (writing) werenot intended to replace those of speech. That is to say, due to historical factors,speech and writing serve different purposes and this leads to structural


differences. Additionally, the intrinsic nature of the different forms, the onedescribed by Halliday as a process (speech) and the other as a product (writing)leads to further divergence between the two. Writing is unlike speech because itwas designed to serve purposes that speech could not, for instance, thepermanent labelling of property, listing of objects and recording of transactions(see Goody 1987; SchmandtBesserat 1986, 1992; Olson 1994 for examples offurther discussions of this). For this reason it does not attempt to captureprosodic and intonational features. Furthermore, the means of productionproduces differences such as greater lexical density in the written form whereplanning and editing are a possibility.

Halliday’s approach keeps a balance between the two forms, giving each dueattention in their own terms. For instance, he is keen not to fall into the trap ofdenigrating the spoken form as careless, or unstructured. Rather, he sees speechand writing as two distinct ways of representing experience with typical featuresof their own. He gives several examples to support this idea, for instance hecontrasts as typical of each form:

Written: Every previous visit had left me with a sense of the futility offurther action.

Spoken: Whenever I’d visited there before, I’d ended up feeling that itwould be futile if I tried to do anything more.

(Halliday 1989:81)

Here, it is claimed, we see the essential nature of speech as opposed to writinginfluencing the form in which ideas are expressed. The first, written, examplepresents ideas in terms of static ‘products’ the second spoken example presentsthem in terms of processes.

There are aspects of his outline of the relationship with which one might argue,for example many of his statements are intuitively rather than empirically based.The examples given above, for instance, are ‘made up’ rather than elicited frompeople or found in a corpus. Halliday had previously defined the differencesbetween spoken and written language as largely a difference of register. Withouta channel-based set of real examples, the difference as presented here couldequally well be between informal and formal registers, rather than speech andwriting per se. Nevertheless, this largely functionally based approach to thedifferences between spoken and written forms is one which I have pursued inthis book.

Writing supreme

In this last section of my discussion of the more theoretical approaches to spokenand written forms of language I deal with the work of those who have, withMarshall McLuhan (1962), argued that writing is a powerful and not altogetherbenign force in society. I shall be suggesting that this view, which singles out the


technology of writing from other influences, is an overstatement of the case.While I have argued that the effects of writing in linguistic theory have beenunderestimated, I do not adhere to the view that writing is an irresistible, isolablecatalyst in social and cognitive change.

There have been some very large claims made for the effects of literacy in thepast. Many of these are no more than speculations based on little evidence:

Could the alphabet have acted on our brain as a powerful computerlanguage, determining or emphasising the selection of some of ourperceptual and cognitive processes?

(Kerckhove 1986:274)

Kerckhove begins from a factual base in his initial hypothesis when he discussesthe differences in reading/writing impairment between brain-damaged patientswho use different scripts. He suggests that the alignment of scripts from left toright or vice versa could be a product of different hemispheres of the brain beingused. However, the move from this to the question posed above is a leap fromhypothesis based on fact to a counter conclusion. That is to say, we have possibleevidence from the brain-damaged patients of a correlation between scriptalignment and hemisphere use. However, it is hard to see the causal link betweenthis and the idea that the brain has been reshaped by contact with the alphabet.Subsequently, the cognitive effects of literacy were also criticised by historians ofthe process, for example, Harris (1989), and Olson (1994) provides an overviewof the arguments.

Many of the statements made about the power of literacy tend to be impossibleto prove or disprove:

Until writing most of the kind of thoughts that we are used to thinkingtoday simply could not be thought.

(Ong 1971:2)

In ‘Writing and the concept of law in ancient Greece’ Jon Stratton (1980)suggests that the growth of literacy led to imbalances in society which in turn ledto the instigation of restrictive laws. Brian Stock in The Implications of Literacysuggests that the advent of writing in oral cultures ‘can disrupt previous patternsof thought and action, often permanently… The model is now exteriorised’(Stock 1983:18).

In ‘Effects of printed language acquisition on speech’ Linnea C.Ehri (1985)suggests that the influence of print on our language perception is similar to that ofcalendars and clocks on our perception of time. Fondacaro and Higgins state thatthe ‘social cognitive consequences of communication tend to be greater forwritten than for oral communication’ (Fondacaro and Higgins 1985:98).

The kinds of claims that are made for the influence of literacy can lead topotentially stigmatising attitudes to non-literate cultures. If we accept that there


is a fundamental change in the way of thinking of literate peoples, we mustaccept that at best there will be a difficulty of communication between literateand non-literate thinkers, or at worst fall into imagining that ‘they’ cannot thinklike ‘us’ but can make very pretty carvings.

Out of the work of Eric Havelock on the nature of literacy in ancient Greecethere has grown the idea that writing is the necessary prerequisite for analyticthought:

…the alphabet converted the Greek spoken tongue into an artifact, therebyseparating it from the speaker and making it into a ‘language’, that is anobject available for inspection, reflection, analysis.

(Havelock 1982:7–8)

From this has evolved the assumption that logical thought can only be carriedout in literate societies. Scholars such as Jack Goody or David Olson are at painsto point to the different value placed on kinds of thought in primarily oral versusprimarily literate cultures, and thus remove any value judgements from theiranalyses. Nevertheless, the characteristics of primarily oral thought as presentedwould seem to put the non-literate at something of a disadvantage not only in anacademic seminar, but also in a market-place or decision-making gathering. Inprimarily oral contexts inconsistency and contradiction are supposed to be hardto perceive (Goody 1977:49); the oral form is claimed to be more persuasivebecause it is hard to pin down and criticise statements; the alphabet is supposedto have made possible the creation of systems of classification (Goody 1977:111), and so on. While much impressive evidence is put forward by the scholarswho hold that writing can affect cognitive processes, a great deal of it iscircumstantial and somewhat selective. The essential quibble is that the advent ofwriting in a culture is not a decontextualised event. The need/desire for literacyis part of a larger movement in a society which (generally) brings it into contactwith different experiences and modes of thought. The written word alone cannotrestructure thought.11 Indeed, the fashion for thinking that it can seems to havepassed. Two later articles criticise the ‘determinism of literacy’ view. The firstapproaches the subject from an historical perspective. In The Written Word AnnaMorpurgo Davies argues that the case for the influence of alphabetic writing hasbeen overstated in the past (Morpurgo Davies 1986). The second, ‘Olson onliteracy’ by John Halverson (1991) gives a clear account of Olson’s views and ishighly critical of them. In particular, Halverson takes issue with the notion thatthe means of communication predetermines the content:

Both language modalities [speech and writing] can be used in the sameway and for the same purposes. Both can be explicit or vague, logical orillogical, adequately or inadequately informative, lucid or opaque; both canbe ideational or interpersonal, true or false, wise or stupid; both presupposeshared knowledge.


(Halverson 1991:630)

Nevertheless, the fundamental assumption that there exist two opposing systemsof cognition and language use, one based on the autonomy of writing and theother on the interactive nature of speech, has been generally accepted as the basisfor most of the research into speech and writing.12 For Olson’s later statementson the nature and influence of the written form see The World on Paper (Olson1994), which also provides a wide-ranging summary and restatement of thearguments.

I have included this brief overview of the ethnographic work on the influencesof literacy for the reason that its conclusions have affected empirical work in theresearch on speech and writing. In this book I have moved away from thesepresuppositions and reinstate channel at the heart of any research on therelationship between the two language forms. However, it is not the case that Iaccept John Halverson’s ‘blanket’ account of the potential for use in each. Myposition, as can be seen in the previous chapters, is that the material differencesbetween the written channel and the spoken lead to restrictions on the processingand production of content.

EMPIRICAL APPROACHES

In this section I discuss the work of those who form hypotheses and conclusionsabout speech and writing on the basis of data. I shall be giving a looselychronological outline of previous studies, pointing out significant changes inperspective and discussing the implications of these. What is interesting in termsof the above outline of the theoretical approaches is the degree of consensus thata straightforward definition of the relationship in terms of two opposed entities—speech and writing—does not map well on to reality. A product of this hasfrequently been the abandonment of the analysis of spoken versus writtenlanguage for its own sake, and the focusing of attention on other aspects ofdiscourse.

Quantitative analyses

Early empirical work in this field tended to take the form of quantitative analysesof syntactic or lexical units. For example, Jane Blankenship’s (1962) work onsentence length in speech and writing or Roy O’Donnell’s (1974) study on thesame topic. This approach sought to compare the frequencies of particularlinguistic elements in the two modalities. For instance, Bengt Altenberg (1986)compares the use of contrastive linking in speech and writing and concludes thatspeakers use fewer types to express contrast than do writers, and that writersmake greater use of subordination in showing contrasts. In the same collectionLars Hermeren (1986) discusses the forms and frequencies of the modalities ofobligation, permission and volition, and states that modal nouns are generally


more frequent in the spoken than the written. Halliday (1989) has suggested thatthere is a greater density of content words in writing than in speech. Mostcompelling among the empirical school is Douglas Biber (1988) who has arguedfor a return to quantitative analysis of speech and writing. Apart from Halliday,the later quantitative surveys have been based on a large corpus in each channelwhich broadens the relevance of the conclusions.

Non-quantitative approaches

During the 1980s there was a growing interest in non-quantitative approaches tothe relationship between spoken and written language. In the work of Gumperz(Gumperz et al. 1984; Gumperz 1982), Halliday (Halliday and Hasan 1976;Halliday 1989) or Tannen (1984) the move was away from the trees to thewoods, as it were. High-level analysis of theme and cohesion tended to replaceor complement the quantitative analysis. This discoursebased approach has led tothe suggestion that the two forms of language are distinct at levels higher thanthe sentence. For example, Angela Hildyard and David Olson (1982) tested therecall in children of stories heard as opposed to stories read. They concluded thatlisteners pay attention to general themes whereas readers will recall moreincidental details. In Literacy, Language and Learning Deborah Tannen (1985)focuses on the influence of the relative involvement in the processes of speakingand writing.

The disaffection felt towards the quantitative approach in this area was madeexplicit in a paper by Jenny Cook-Gumperz in The Social Construction ofLiteracy she describes a channel-based study into the use of cohesive devices inthe narratives of Black working-class children as opposed to White middle-classones in spoken and written forms. She noted that nothing conclusive could beascertained about the nature of any differences between the texts when a simplecount of particular linguistic elements such as nominal or verbal complementswas made. However, clear differences emerged when the narratives werecompared in terms of what cohesive devices were being used (Cook-Gumperz1986:212). The Black children used prosodic skills to make their system ofreferencing clear. For instance, the reintroduction of a previously mentionedcharacter would be emphasised by vowel elongation and a high rise-fallintonation. White children, on the other hand would tend to reintroduce thecharacter using syntactic, rather than prosodic devices (in particular, relativeclauses). The devices used by the Black children are by nature not transferable tothe written channel. Cook-Gumperz points out that White children may be at anadvantage because of this in an education system that values explicit referencing.

The shift of emphasis away from the counting of particular items in the twoforms of language was perhaps understandable. The quantitative analyses hadthrown up many contradictory findings. Douglas Biber (1988:49–51) gives aclear summary of the discrepancies between past studies. He points out that interms of sentence length, elaboration of ideas, syntactic complexity, use of the


passive, and the numbers of adverbs/adjectives used in speech as opposed towriting, researchers have come to inconsistent conclusions. For instance, in thetwo studies on sentence length cited above the results were different.Blankenship found little difference in length, while O’Donnell suggested that onaverage writing had longer sentence units.

In his own quantitative study, which uses a large number of samples drawnfrom various genres, Biber concludes that the distinction between speech andwriting should be redefined in terms of a stylistic continuum, rather than twodiscrete entities. This notion of continuity overcomes the problem posed by thecommon sense intuition that genre and channel are not mutually defining. That isto say, certain written genres—for example a chatty, personal letter—will becloser to ‘speech’ than a piece of formal, spoken discourse such as a judge’ssumming-up or an academic lecture.

Others have found the speech/writing opposition unhelpful and have turned todifferent dichotomies such as ‘planned’ versus ‘unplanned’ discourse (Ochs1979); ‘integration’ versus ‘fragmentation’ (Chafe 1982, 1985); ‘utterance’ and‘text’ (Olson 1977), ‘literacy’ and ‘orality’ (Finnegan 1988; Tannen 1981, laterrestated as the presence or absence of markers of personal involvement inTannen 1985), ‘stasis’ and ‘dynamism’ (Fleischman 1991).

However, some of the widely accepted descriptions of the nature of writing asopposed to speech have in turn been questioned. For example, the idea thatwriting is more ‘autonomous’ (Olson 1977) or less personally involved (Chafe1982) is questioned by Margaret Rader (1982) in ‘Context in written language’and by Jacob Mey (1991). Equally the notion that the written form is morestructurally complex (O’Donnell 1974; Akinnaso 1982; Chafe 1991) is notwithout its critics. Halliday, in particular, argues for the distinctive ‘intricacy’ ofthe spoken form (Halliday 1989:87). Robin Lakoff (1982) points to the use of‘oral’ strategies in some writing, and Wallace Chafe (1982) suggests that someoral literature may be more like writing than speech (i.e. the reciter is detachedand the degree of skill in the repetition means that the utterances are highly‘polished’), and the preconceptions about channel have also been challengedmore recently by Carruthers (1990) from a historical perspective.

Whatever the approach, the problem one returns to is that posed by JohnHalverson. If it is possible to carry out any speech act, or language function ineither modality, then, theoretically at least, there is no difference between speechand writing. Rather there are varieties of discourse in diverse genres and registerswhich have the potential to be realised in either speech or writing. In addition,the counter examples to the dichotomies outlined above suggest that thedistinctions on which they are based may be a product of relying on too fewexamples from either form.

The tendency has been to take spontaneous conversation as the paradigm forspeech, and expository prose as that for writing. For instance, the previouscorpus-based studies (apart from Biber) used the face-to-face conversationalmaterial from the London-Lund Corpus, and compared them mostly to printed


material (press reviews, essays, scientific/learned writings) from the Lancaster-Oslo/Bergen Corpus (LOB), for example Tottie and Ingergerd (1986). These arethe extremes of genre in each case, as most researchers allow. The choice of suchdivergent material for comparison means that any differences found may be aresult of the genre, rather than the channel.

The problem generated by the above conclusions may be expressed in twostatements: any particular linguistic item may be found in either channel; anyfeature of discourse isolated as typical of either channel may be found in theother. If both these statements are true, then the means of production can neverbe said to account for differences between a given example of language use.Discussion of channel, in this view, becomes secondary to other featuresaffecting the form and content, such as level of formality.

Douglas Biber overcomes this by the use of more diverse samples in bothchannels. Nevertheless, he too uses the material available in the LOB andLondon-Lund corpora and does not include all the ‘casual’ and non-textual usesof writing. By this I mean handwritten lists and notes, and the diverse uses ofwriting in our everyday environment (for example, on signs and packaging).However, it is not the case that the inclusion of more and more samples willautomatically lead to a better understanding of the differences between the twoforms of language. For, even if we had the means of including all the speech andall the writing produced in Britain on any given day this would not answer thefundamental questions which should be asked in this context. What do we meanby ‘the same’ and ‘different’ in a comparison of speech and writing? Is itpossible for the same meaning to be conveyed in either channel in the same way?If not, what are the factors restricting the choice of language in either case? Thesecond of these questions relates to the Halverson position (he would answer:yes); and to that of William Haas, given earlier (he would answer: no). Myposition is that there is a potential for overlap between the two forms, but thatthere are some aspects of meaning which cannot ‘translate’. For instance theprosodic features which convey meaning in speech, but which can only beroughly sketched in the graphic medium. On the other hand, graphic featuressuch as typeface, paragraphing and punctuation in the written form have noobvious counterparts in speech.

There are highly complex issues underlying these questions.13 Earlierempirical research in this field has not discussed what it would be for speech andwriting to be ‘the same’ in philosophical terms. There are at least three,interrelated features of language by means of which spoken and written‘utterances’ may be compared: structure (the words said or written), function (thepurpose of utterance) and content (the semantic ‘message’ or unit of meaning).Using these three terms we might begin to outline the conditions under which aspoken and a written ‘sentence’ can be called the same. Put briefly, the problemis as follows. The same words in a different channel may have a differentmeaning, or have a meaning in one channel but not the other (for example, ‘I sawhim over there yesterday’). In this case are the spoken and written ‘the same’?


Equally, different words in different modalities may carry the same meaning(compare ‘As I noted above’ with ‘As I said before’, see also SuzanneFleischman (1991) on the indexing metalanguage of speech as opposed to text).

The previous chapters in this book have been an exercise in attempting toretain channel, rather than other discoursal factors, at the heart of the comparisonof speech and writing, and at the same time to move beyond textual quantitativecomparisons to look at the relations between texts and utterances and theircontexts, and at the associated relations between speakers and hearers, writersand readers. Without the retention of a sense of how, where and why, by whomand for whom samples of speech and writing were produced, some essentialdifferences between the two forms will always be neglected.


Appendix Approaching language analysis: abriefbeginners’ guide and glossary

INTRODUCTION

This appendix is a reference section containing some guidance on linguisticanalysis and is aimed at readers with no prior experience of the subject.

Many linguistic descriptions are based around the concept of systems workingat different levels. It is possible to begin the study of language at the level ofindividual sounds (this is called phonetics), or to look at which sounds aresignificant in forming differences between words in a language (phonemics).Turning from sounds to the structure of words it is possible to describe the partsof words which make them work differently from one another, for example inEnglish the -s which is typically added to words when they are plural (the studyof this is called morphology).

The different approaches to language study are shown in a simplified way inFigure A.1, and from this it can be seen that in relation to this book the levels weare most concerned with are lexical studies, grammar and discourse studies,since these are the approaches most dealt with in the comparison of speech andwriting as contrasting forms of language. The triangular shape of the diagramindicates a traditional view of language. This suggests that it can be studied interms of these different levels, each with its own terminology, but also that theterms of reference are gradually widened from individual sounds up to therelations between words across extended discourse. Therefore, it can be useful tothink of each level as being built up of units from the level below, particularlysince studies at one level often need to break up the units they are dealing with intosmaller units for the purposes of analysis.

In the glossary which follows some indication is generally given for each entryas to the level of analysis it is associated with.

GLOSSARY

In this alphabetic glossary the terms described are generally in the form in whichthey occur in the main text of the book. Cross-referenced terms which relate tothe item being described are italicised. In the case of longer entries, I have

attempted to give a very brief overview with a general sense of the word first (toenable the reader to continue reading the chapter they found the term in),followed by more detailed information for those who wish to have a slightlydeeper understanding, for example, those wishing to begin grammatical analysisfor themselves.

accommodation: term used by sociolinguists to describe the (oftenunconscious) process by which people alter their style of language to makeit similar to that of others. These changes are often seen by linguists ashaving social significance, since the way in which we speak is one of theways we show who we identify with.

adjective: a word class term. The adjectives in the following passagefrom a short story by Katherine Porter have been italicised.

…her nose was scarlet with sunburn; he told her that already she lookedlike a born country woman. His grey flannel shirt stuck to him, his heavyshoes were dusty. She assured him he looked like a rural character in aplay.

(Porter 1958)

The function of adjectives is to add information to a noun (or more strictlya noun phrase). They can be found either after the verb ‘BE’, as in ‘hernose was scarlet’, ‘his…shoes were dusty’, or in front of nouns: ‘heavyshoes’; ‘rural character’. Other word class items can fulfil the same

Figure A. 1 Approaches to language study

APPENDIX: APPROACHING LANGUAGE ANALYSIS 147

function as adjectives. In particular, nouns (‘flannel shirt’; ‘countrywoman’) can modify other nouns, as can verbs (‘laughing brook’).

adverb: a word class term. Adverbs have sometimes been described asthe ‘miscellaneous’ word class, and as a rule of thumb, if you cannotclassify a word as a noun, verb, adjective or preposition you will be correctin calling it an adverb. It is a very diverse class containing not only wordswhich directly describe an action (such as ‘quickly’), but also words whichaffect (modify) adjectives (such as ‘very handsome’) or even other adverbs(‘too quickly’).

adverbial: a functional class term for the part of a clause or sentence (aconstituent) which provides information about the circumstances or causesof the main action (how, when, where, why, for how long etc.). The adverbialelements have been italicised in the following:

My youngest daughter was about five years old and I was taking her tothe dentist and I was coming down Southport Road near the police station.


adverbial position: a sentence structure term for the usual position in asentence or clause for the adverbial constituent (i.e. at the end). See aboveunder adverbial.

anaphoric: a term used in grammar and discourse studies to describethe nature of a link between two words or phrases. In an anaphoric link thedirection is backwards, as in the following example where the explicitreference (‘your work’) occurs before the less explicit reference (‘it’). Aforwards pointing link is called ‘cataphoric’.

‘How is your work getting on?’ said Ravelston presently.‘Oh, as usual. It’s a drowsy kind of job…’

(KAF)

back channel: a term from discourse analysis used to describe largelycontent-free utterances which a speaker produces to show that they arelistening and understanding what another speaker is saying.

Bloomfield: Leonard Bloomfield (1887–1949) was a highly influentialAmerican linguist, whose book Language (1933) largely defined thepractice and theory of language study until the 1960s.

cataphoric: a term used in grammar and discourse studies to describe thenature of a link between two words or phrases. A cataphoric link ‘pointsforwards’ to something which the language user (often) wants to highlight:‘The main idea is this, the tax increases will hit the poorest sections insociety.’ Here, the word ‘this’ points towards the following idea (cf.anaphoric).

channel: a term used to refer to the way in which a sample of languagehas been produced, rather as we talk of broadcasting channels. The term isdiscussed more fully in Chapter 1.

148 APPENDIX: APPROACHING LANGUAGE ANALYSIS

clause: a term from grammatical description which is sometimes usedsynonymously with ‘sentence’, and I have adopted this coward’s way outin this book. A useful definition of a clause is that it is a stretch oflanguage containing a verb, whereas the term ‘sentence’ carries with it animplication of completeness. Therefore,

‘Leaving the room…’is a clause, but it does not seem complete. On the other hand, the

following does:‘Leaving the room, I slammed the door.’However, particularly in the spoken channel, finding the beginnings and

endings of segments which we could call sentences can be difficult,therefore the term ‘clause’ is often adopted. In the following, the clauseshave been marked off by lines, with the verb in each italicised:

My youngest daughter was about five years old || and I was taking her tothe dentist || and I was coming down Southport Road near the policestation.


This extract of speech contains three clauses, and they are defined as mainclauses because each could stand alone as a separate, complete ‘sentence’:

My youngest daughter was about five years old.I was taking her to the dentist.I was coming down Southport Road near the police station.The other major type of clause is a subordinate clause, a clause which is

dependent on another and cannot stand independently.cohesive devices: a general term for the forms which help to make a

stretch of discourse ‘hang together’ or cohere. These include the linksbetween words which refer to the same thing (as in anaphora orcataphora), and words which make the relations between one idea and thenext explicit:

Spoken Written

to put down a question was avery

To put down such a questionwas a

serious thing… Members were serious matter. However,Honourable

under pressure… Members are now put under

pressure…

There is a tendency for greater explicitness of linking in the written, asexemplified above.

collocate: a term from lexical studies used to express the fact that somewords have a greater affinity with one another than others. For example, if


we consider the words ‘tall’ and ‘high’ they seem to be more appropriatewith some nouns than others: ‘tall’—person/tree/story/ship; ‘high’—wall/mountain/sea/road. This is also true of verbs, for example we ‘make amistake’ but ‘do an essay’. These patterns have more to do with usage thanmeaning, and are difficult to explain to people who are learning English.

competence: a term from grammar theory (as opposed to descriptivegrammars) which is usually contrasted to performance. It refers to theunderlying capacity for language and language learning common to allhumans.

complement: a term from grammar which is used in various ways indiffer ent systems. The underlying idea is that a complement is part of thestructure of a clause or phrase which is made obligatory by anotherelement. For example, the verb ‘catch’ demands something after it tocomplete the sense.

constituent: a term from grammatical description for a unit (it can beone word or several) which functions as a grammatically significantelement, such as the subject or complement.

content words: a term from lexical studies. Content words carry themeaning in an utterance and are contrasted with grammatical words thefunction of which is to show the relations between them. So, for example,in ‘the pen of my aunt’ there are two content words (‘pen’ and ‘aunt’) andthe rest show the relation between them. (See under grammatical wordsand lexical density for further information.)

co-ordinating conjunction: a grammatical term for a particular set ofwords in the class ‘conjunction’, the function of which is to link parts of aclause or sentence together (for example, ‘and’, ‘but’ or ‘or’). They areusually contrasted with ‘subordinating conjunctions’, (e.g. ‘because’, ‘if’or ‘when’). These latter mark a clause as strongly dependent on anotherclause, rather than simply connected to it. There is often a higher incidenceof co-ordinating conjunctions in speech, particularly ‘and’, and moreexplicit markers of subordination in writing.

…there’s a a blackberry field and he said it must have been planted inabout 1910 and it must be the oldest one in Britain…


In the extract of real speech given above, three potentially separatesentences have been joined loosely together by the co-ordinatingconjunction ‘and’. This allows the presentation of a progression of linkedideas as they occur in the mind of the speaker, and the relation of ideasbetween them can be made clear by intonation or the return to an idea forfurther emphasis. With the greater time for planning allowed by the writtenchannel this might be reformulated to make the relations between the ideasmore explicit by using the subordinating conjunction ‘because’:


There’s a blackberry field which must be the oldest one in Britain,because he said it must have been planted in about 1910.

deep structure: a term associated with grammatical theory, particularlythat propounded by Noam Chomsky. The key idea is that, underlying actualutterances made by people, there is a more basic and abstract structure.These underlying structures assist the theory to account for sentenceswhich look the same but have more than one possible meaning, and torelate sentences which look different but which convey the sameinformation, for example, passive and active forms: ‘trees are cut down bylumberjacks’ and ‘lumberjacks cut down trees’. The term is often used incontrast to surface structure.

demonstrative pronoun: a member of the word class pronoun which isused to ‘point’ to things in English: this, that, these, those. The greatercontextual dependency of speech often leads to a greater use of them.

diachronic: a term from linguistic theory applied to approaches tolanguage study which are interested in the historical development of anaspect rather than taking a ‘snapshot’ or ‘cross-section’ of the. state of thelanguage at any one time. This latter approach comes under the term‘synchronic’ study. Following the famous linguist Ferdinand de Saussure,the analogy might be made between a diachronic description of a chessgame which would analyse the progression of the moves made as opposedto a description of the state of the board after any one move.

discourse markers: a term from discourse analysis for words whichserve an organisational purpose to show the transition of ideas or functionalunits of discourse. Examples of words used in this way are: right, okay, so,now, anyway. The conventions of organisation in writing, for exampleparagraphing, and the fact that it is not produced with a presentinterlocutor means that these have a lower frequency in the writtenchannel. In the following example, the speaker marks the transition fromone section and topic to the next by ‘now’. It is not being used as anadverb, but as a transition marker.

Spoken Written

I am simply explaining thedangers that will certainly arisein the future were we to befoolish enough to allow theintervention of the camera lens.Now could there exist a greatertemptation...

I am simply explaining thedangers that will certainly arisein the future were we to befoolish enough to allow theintervention of the camera lens.Could there exist a greatertemptation ...

disfluency features: features of speech which might be categorised as‘mistakes’, for example hesitations, false-starts, repetitions. These are aresult of the pressures on language producers in the spoken channel.


Interestingly, a speaker who has a high incidence of these often producesfewer other ‘mistakes’ of grammar and lexis, and their speech can translatedirectly into writing:

Spoken Written

I can understand the anxieties of[er] honourable and right-honourable [er] members whofeel that the televising of ourproceedings [er] here may tendto trivialise parliament

I can understand the anxieties ofRight Honourable andHonourable Members who feelthat the televising of ourproceedings might tend totrivialise Parliament.

On the other hand, speakers who do not give themselves time to think bymeans of these features often speak very fluently, but the style of speakingdoes not transfer to the written channel easily. The following speaker hasvery few disfluency features, but his discourse is changed a good deal inthe process of transcription (the extra words in the spoken text incomparison with the written are italicised):

Spoken Written

and that really is the essential The essence of television is this:

about television it’s about entertainment, not

it’s about entertainment and not government.

government It is about ratings

that it’s about the ratings and about competition between

that it’s about the competitionbetween each channel

channels

ellipsis: a concept from grammar and discourse studies which describesthe ‘missing out’ of part of a sentence. For example, in writing typicalellipsis would be: ‘Some Heads of State expressed concern, others did not’In this example we understand that the sentence could end ‘expressconcern’, but that it is not necessary to repeat the verb and complement. Inspeech there is far more ellipsis as speakers can assume that listeners will‘fill in’ the gaps from their shared knowledge. Particularly typical ofspeech is the omission of T or ‘you’ in expressions such as ‘don’t know’,‘might be’, sometimes combined with the deletion of auxiliary verbs as in‘ready yet?’, ‘seen him?’

existential sentence: a sentence which simply asserts that somethingexists, in English these begin: ‘There is/are’.

exophoric: a type of reference which depends on ‘pointing to’something in the situational context of the discourse in order for it to beunderstood, for example, ‘she’s nice’ said with a nod towards a person in


the vicinity. As would be expected from the nature of exophoric reference,it tends to be more common in speech than in writing. In writing exophoricreferences by speakers, for example in a dialogue, need to be explained forthe reader. Transcribers also need to take the reader into account andfrequently remove exophoric references from their version of the spokendiscourse:

Spoken Written

the bomb was thrown the Presssat up there laughing

…the bomb was thrown. ThePress sat laughing in the PressGallery

expletive: a word or phrase in the form of an exclamation which haslittle meaning beyond the expression of surprise or anger (swear words arecalled expletives).

finite: a term from grammatical description applied to verbs, and usuallycontrasted with non-finite. When a verb is used in a main clause it has to bein the appropriate tense and show this. In standard grammar, we cannot say‘He leaving the station’, but must add ‘is’ to mark the tense as referring tonow. Similarly, we cannot say ‘He leave on Thursday’ but must indicatethe tense by using the appropriate form (‘left’ for past tense, ‘leaves’ or‘will leave’ for future reference). When verbs are used in this way they arecalled ‘finite’.

formulaic: a term from discourse studies used to refer to extremelyfixed patterns of interaction. The beginnings and endings of conversationsare medium such as the telephone. Different cultures have differentpatterns, for example different nationalities vary in whether they typicallyspeak first on picking up the telephone or wait for the caller to speak, butthe patterning will generally be present and predictable.

generative grammar: a term from theoretical grammar coined todescribe the insights of the linguist Noam Chomsky. In this approachgrammar is seen as an abstract entity akin to a mathematical or logicalsystem. The key concept in the approach was that of well-formedness(grammatical ‘correctness’) and the aim was to isolate a set of rules whichwould ‘generate’ correct sentences and only correct sentences fromunderlying structures or deep structures.

grammatical words: a term from lexical studies. The nature of anysample of language can be described in terms of a lexical density score.The approach is based on the division of all the words in a text into twocategories: lexical words and grammatical words (also called ‘contentwords’ and ‘function words’, or ‘meaning words’ and ‘structure words’)and calculating the proportion of each. Grammatical words have littlemeaning in themselves but serve to show the relations between the


meaning-bearing words (they are the words which often get left out ofsmall-ads or telegrams when people are conscious of the cost of eachword).

grapheme: the smallest meaningful unit in a writing system, forexample the letters in an alphabetic system.

head word: a term from grammatical description. The parts of asentence can be described in terms of how they relate to one another insidea phrase. The main or key word in a phrase is called the head word. Theword classes noun, adjective, adverb are most commonly described in thisway. If we take the example ‘competition between channels’ the word‘competition’ is the head word. The phrase ‘between channels’ addsfurther information to define the kind of competition and would answer thequestion ‘what kind of competition’. Second, the head noun affects theform of the verb which follows: ‘competition between channels causes…’In the phrases ‘horribly soon’ or ‘fantastically expensive’ the head wordsare the ones italicised. The other words modify the adverb (soon) or theadjective (expensive).

historical present: a term from grammatical description. Whenspeakers or writers refer to past events they sometimes choose not to usethe past tense: ‘this man walked into a pub’ becomes ‘this man walks into apub’ and this use of the present is traditionally called the historical present.

ideographic: a term used to describe writing systems in which a symbolis used to convey a whole idea or word.

idiolect: a term used in dialect studies and sociolinguistics. Whereas theterm dialect refers to the language of a group of people who can be said tospeak the same language, but with consistent variation, such as Yorkshiredialect, the term idiolect has been coined to refer to the language used byany one individual.

idiomatic: a term often used in lexical studies and in register studies. Anidiom is a fixed expression the meaning of which cannot usually begathered by a literal understanding of the individual words, and which isgenerally of informal style. Thus, in the expression ‘hair of the dog’ theimport cannot be gathered from understanding each word separately, norwould it be appropriate in a formal context. Casual speech tends to rely onidiomatic expressions more heavily than writing, and speakers can oftenuse part of an idiom without completing it, knowing that their interlocutorswill fill in to rest, for example, ‘every cloud…’. We also tend to use idiomsin speech to show our evaluation of a topic, and to deal with difficult topicsto show that we are unaffected by them, for example there are numerousidioms associated with death and dying. Idioms tend to appear in restrictedsettings in writing, with headline writers, for example, relying on thecommon pool of knowledge of them for creative purposes.

implicature: a term associated with the philosophy of language anddiscourse studies. It is frequently the case that speakers mean more than


they apparently say. If a speaker says ‘It’s half past eleven’ they may beimplying more than a mere statement of the time. For example, it couldimply that they have to leave, that the person spoken to is late, and so on.The investigation of this aspect of language is the study of implicature.

initiation: a term from discourse analysis. The contributions to aninteraction are often thought of in terms of ‘moves’, rather as in a game.Discourse analysis is to a large extent concerned with the patterning ofthese moves and how they relate to one another. The satisfactoriness of asequence in spoken interaction depends on the speakers producingappropriate initiations and responses. For example, a greeting is usuallyfollowed by another greeting, a question by an answer and so on. A greatdeal of the creativity found in humour or in dramatic dialogue hinges onplaying with the expectations we have about proper initiations andresponses.

instantiation: the actual words used to convey an idea, similar torealisation.

interlocutor: person with whom you are communicating. The termtends to be used more to refer to speakers and listeners than writers andreaders, although both are possible.

intuition: a term from theoretical grammar. The key idea is that aslanguage users we have reliable views of what is possible and correct (well-formed) in our language, these views were relied on particularly heavily inthe early days of generative grammar.

langue: a French term from theoretical linguistics particularly associatedwith the insights of Ferdinand de Saussure. The term conveys the notion oflanguage to be studied as an abstract system, rather than any one particularlanguage (langage), or actual language use (parole).

lexical density: the nature of any sample of language can be describedin terms of a lexical density score. The approach is based on the division ofall the words in a text into two categories: lexical words and grammaticalwords (also called ‘content words’ and ‘function words’) and calculatingthe proportion of each. Spontaneous speech usually has a higher proportionof grammatical words than writing, and therefore a lower lexical density.In the following the grammatical words have been italicised:

Spoken Written

and that really is the essential The essence of television is this:

about television it is about entertainment, not

it’s about entertainment and not government.

government It is about ratings

that it’s about the ratings and about competition between

that it’s about the competitionbetween each channel

channels


By totalling the number of words in a text, and calculating theproportion of lexical words the lexical density can be found.

lexical words: a term from lexical studies. Lexical words carry themeaning in an utterance and are contrasted with grammatical words thefunction of which is to show the relations between them. (See undergrammatical words and lexical density for further information.)

lexis: a term from lexical studies, a rather more formal way ofexpressing ‘vocabulary’, but it can also imply a division between words inthe form you use them, as opposed to the conventional representation of a‘base’ form as in a dictionary entry. It is generally used in the less specificsense in this book.

logographic: a writing system in which a symbol represents a word, asin the system of Chinese characters.

main clause: a term from traditional grammar description used todescribe an independent clause which can ‘stand alone’. In standardgrammar this means that a main clause must contain a finite (tensed) verb.It is usually contrasted with the term subordinate clause. In the followingextract from a newspaper sports report there is one main clause and onesubordinate clause:

The message came loud and clear at the Baseball Ground on Wednesdaynight [=main clause], when a sharper McSwegan might have repeatedNigel Jemson’s hat-trick feat [=subordinate clause].

main verb: a term from traditional grammar description used todescribe the lexical or main word in a verb phrase. In ‘the bridge has beenbeing built for three years’ the main verb is ‘built’.

modification: a term used in grammar to describe the interrelationbetween a word (a head word) and the words it is affected by. Modificationcan be carried out by one word, such as ‘very’ which modifies the word‘nice’ in the phrase ‘a very nice bloke’, or more than one: the words ‘verynice’ work together as a unit to modify ‘bloke’.

non-finite: a term from grammar description used to describe verbs.Every English verb has three non-finite forms: ‘base’, ‘-ed’ and ‘-ing’, andused in one of these forms they do not show tense (this is a bit confusingbecause the ‘-ed’ form sometimes looks like the past tense form). Non-finite verbs can be used in clauses, but these clauses cannot ‘stand alone’ instandard grammar as main clauses. The ‘base’ form is often used with ‘to’:‘To free the paper jam…’ (needs completing with something like ‘he liftedthe lid of the printer’). The ‘-ed’ form often carries a passive meaning:‘The subject discussed by the shareholders…’ (needs completing withsomething like ‘was the level of their probable dividends’). The ‘-ing’ formcarries an active meaning: ‘The commuters leaving the train’.

noun phrase: a phrase which has a noun as its central word (headword). The noun phrases in the following have been italicised:


…her nose was scarlet with sunbum; he told her that already she lookedlike a born country woman. His grey flannel shirt stuck to him, his heavyshoes were dusty. She assured him he looked like a rural character in aplay.

(Porter 1958)

Noun phrases have a typical structure of basically four elements which thebeginning analyst should look for:

Determiner Premodifier Head noun Postmodifier

her nose

sunburn

a born country woman

his grey flannel shirt

his heavy shoes

a rural character in a play

Points to remember when analysing noun phrases are: (1) they canconsist of one word (‘sunburn’); (2) they can be very long and complex,and you need to look for the complete unit (not just ‘a rural character’ butmore specifically ‘a rural character in a play’); and (3) they can bepostmodified by special types of clauses, for example relative clauses.

orthography: the rules, and the study of the rules, of spelling in awriting system.

paralinguistic: some features of communication are regarded as lesscentral to the study of language than others, for example body language orgaze, and these are termed ‘paralinguistic’.

parole: a French term strongly associated with the work of Ferdinand deSaussure who drew a distinction between actual language as spoken —parole—as opposed to the underlying system of signs which he termedlangue.

passive, the: a term from traditional grammar description used todescribe a particular structuring of information which alters the form of theverb phrase. The verbs in the passive are underlined in the followingextract:

Right down the bottom of the orchards there’s a a blackberry field andhe said it must have been planted in about 1910 and it must be the oldestone in Britain and if it was managed it would keep a family withoutbothering about the orchards…


The passive is used when we either do not know, or do not wish tomention, the person who carried out an action. In the above, since the


person who planted the blackberry patch is unknown, the speaker has touse the passive construction. The active forms of the verbs in the extractwould be: ‘The farmer must have planted it in about 1910’; ‘If he managedit, it would keep a family.’ Since it permits a greater degree ofimpersonality, the passive tends to be found more in writing than in speech,particularly in formal writing.

performance: a term from theoretical grammar, particularly associatedwith the insights of the linguist Noam Chomsky. The key notion is that of acontrast between an idealised speaker-hearer (whose knowledge of thelanguage is referred to as competence) with actual speakers in actualcontexts who are prone to errors and limitations.

phoneme: a phoneme is a sound which contrasts meaningfully withother sounds in a language to produce the contrasts we can hear betweenwords. In different languages different phonemes carry these contrasts.

phrase: a term from grammar description which is frequently used tocontrast with clause. It is quite useful to think of clauses as beingconstituted of phrases (since this permits analysis at either of these‘levels’, with differing amounts of detail), but this leads to the initiallyconfusing fact that you can have a ‘phrase’ consisting of one word. In thefirst example there are two one-word noun phrases (NP) and one verbphrase (VP), while the second contains phrases made up of several words:

(cats)[=NP] (chase)[=VP] (birds)[=NP](The hunting instincts of a domestic cat)[=NP] (will cause)[=VP] (the

early demise of many birds within its territory)[=NP]Phrases are categorised according to the most important word they contain

(apart from prepositional phrases), for example, apart from the noun andverb phrases noted above there are: adjective phrases (AdjP: e.g.‘beautiful’, ‘quite incredibly beautiful’); adverb phrases (AdvP: e.g.‘chauvinistically’, ‘unbelievably chauvinistically’); and prepositionalphrases (PrepP: e.g. ‘to the shops’).

Phrases can, and often are, nested inside other phrases. Thus inside thenoun phrase: ‘the early demise of many birds within its territory’ thereare several other phrases which go to make it up, for example, ‘within its

Figure A.2 Example of phrase embedding


territory’ is a prepositional phrase, and inside that (as there always has tobe) there is another, smaller, noun phrase: ‘its territory’.

postvocalic: a term from phonetics (the study of the sounds of alanguage in relation to each other rather than to meaning). The term refersto a position of a sound as being after a vowel.

prepositional phrase: a term from grammar description. A prepositionalphrase (PrepP) has the structure: preposition+noun phrase. The way to spota Prepositional phrase is to look out for common prepositions (of, on, with,between, in, to, etc.) followed by nouns, and see whether they form afunctioning unit. (See also phrase.)

production errors: another term for disfluency features with greateremphasis on the influence of how the language is produced on the level of‘errors’.

prosodic features: aspects of language which include the nature andquality of sounds, for example, the speed of speech, or the pitch at which itis spoken, the rhythm or intonation. These are particularly relevant to thespoken channel where subtle changes in meaning can be introduced byalterations in the prosodic features.

realisation: an actual production of a more abstract entity, for example,the actual utterance by a speaker of a phoneme. The underlying abstractionalways tends to be tidier and more in line with the theory than the variety ofways in which a speaker produces it.

register: a term from sociolinguistics and descriptive linguistics. The keynotion is that different styles of language occur in different social settings,and that these differences are fairly predictable, recognisable anddescribable. For example, people can usually recognise legal language, anddistinguish it from biblical language.

relative clause: a term from grammar description. A relative clauseadds information to a noun, and can often be spotted by means of a relativepronoun which introduces it, for example, ‘who’, ‘which’, ‘that’. In thesentence ‘the man who broke the bank at Monte Carlo died in poverty’there are really two possible sentences compressed into one: (a) ‘The manbroke the bank at Monte Carlo’ and (b) ‘He died in poverty.’ By adding‘who’ in front of the verb ‘broke’ we produce a relative clause (italicised):‘The man who broke the bank at Monte Carlo’. In standard grammar thisconstruction cannot stand alone but needs to be put into a full sentencewith a main verb (‘died’) after it.

In writing, relative clauses are used in a more standardised way than inspeech, and it is less common to see the omission of the relative pronoun(as in ‘The man [who(m)] I saw’). In modern speech, the omission isbecoming standard, and when a relative pronoun is obligatory (i.e. whenthe noun referred to is the subject of the main clause) there is a growingcross-over between the use of ‘which’ and ‘that’. Thus in speech we canfind the following: ‘any producer which didn’t show it…would get the


sack’, whereas in writing this would normally be expressed; ‘Any producerwho did not show it…would get the sack.’

relative pronoun: a word class term referring to a small group of wordswhich introduce extra information in a relative clause added after a noun:‘who’, ‘whose’ and ‘whom’ for adding information about people; ‘which’,‘that’ for adding information about things (although ‘that’ is commonlyused in speech to talk about people as well, and see above under relativeclause for further information).

response: a term from discourse analysis (see under initiation).RP: a common shortening of the term ‘received pronunciation’. This

way of pronouncing words is strongly associated with Standard English,and traditionally with influential sections of society such as public schools,universities, the BBC and so on. Rather than being associated with anyparticular geographical area (although it has many features of SouthernEnglish) it tends to be regarded as a class marker.

Saussure, Ferdinand de: an influential linguist (1857–1913) whoselectures on the subject of language as an abstract system of signs(reconstructed and published after his death as the Cours de linguistiquegénémle, often shortened to the Cours) laid the basis for twentieth-centurylinguistics.

semantics: the study of meaning in relation to language. Sometimes theterm is also used as a synonym for ‘meaning’, as in ‘the semantics of theexchange between the political leaders is unclear’.

semiotics: the study of the signs in relation to communication.spectograph: an instrument used in the study of speech sounds

(phonetics). It can produce a visual image of the sounds of the humanvoice.

structural words: (see grammatical words and lexical density).subject: a term from descriptive grammar, sometimes also called the

grammatical subject. The subject of a sentence can be found by firstfinding the verb, and then forming a question along the lines: ‘who/whatdoes?’ the verb. In the following, the verbs are italicised:

My youngest daughter was about five years old and I was taking her tothe dentist and I was coming down Southport Road near the police station.


The questions to find the subjects which go with the verbs are:

Who was five years old?Answer: ‘My youngest daughter’ [=subject]

Who was taking her to the dentist?Answer:‘I’ [=subject]

Who was coming down Southport Road?Answer: ‘I’ [=subject]


In speech, grammatical subjects tend to be shorter and less complex thanin writing, and once a topic is established it can be frequently referred to bya simple pronoun, like ‘it’ or ‘they’ rather than a long noun phrase.

subject position: the place in a clause where the subject is typicallyfound (i.e. before the verb in English).

subordinate clause: a term from grammatical description which is usedto contrast with main clause.

Right down the bottom of the orchards there’s a a blackberry field…if itwas managed it would keep a family without bothering about theorchards… (CUP/Nottingham corpus)

Subordinate clauses cannot stand independently. In the above, thesubordinate clause is italicised, and this part of the utterance demandsanother clause for it to be completed: ‘If it was managed…?’ Subordinateclauses are introduced by a subordinating conjunction, such as ‘when’, ‘ifor ‘because’.

surface structure: a term from theoretical grammar used to describe thehighest level, or the output, of a generative grammar.

third person: a term from traditional grammar description. There are twoother ‘persons’: first (I/we); second (you, singular and plural) together withthird (he/she/it/they).

token (and type): a term from lexical studies. In any stretch of languagethere are usually more tokens than types. This is because a ‘type’ is thebase form of a word, as you might find it listed in a dictionary, whereas a‘token’ is the actual word, each occurrence of which can be counted. Thefollowing extract contains twenty-six tokens, but a list of the types wouldnot include the repetitions of ‘a’, ‘and’, ‘it’ and ‘must’, and the differentforms of the verb ‘be’ (‘is’, ‘been’ and ‘be’) would also count as a singletype.



transformational grammar: a term from theoretical grammar coined todescribe an aspect of Noam Chomsky’s approach to grammar (see alsodeep structure and generative grammar). The stages in the processof ‘generating’ correct sentences from underlying ‘deep structures’ arecalled ‘transformations’.

type (and token): (see under Token).verb: a word class term from traditional grammar. Verbs are very

influential in terms of the structure of clauses, and play a central role indetermining what needs to be included in a clause. Verbs are traditionallydescribed as ‘action’ words, although they can also convey a great range ofmeanings (see also verb phrase and clause).


verb phrase: a term from descriptive grammar used to describe the partof a clause which consists of the verb and its associated elements. In thefollowing, the verb phrases are italicised:



A verb phrase consists of the main (lexical) verb and any other auxiliary(do/ be/have) or modal (must/may/shall, etc.) verbs which help it conveymeaning.

vowel length: the basic vowel sounds in English (often taught asrepresented by the alphabetic letters: a, e, i, o, u) vary in length, and thiscan lead to a distinction between different words (for example, ‘ship’(short) and ‘sheep’ (long)).

well-formed: see generative grammar. In some approaches to grammar,particularly in their earlier days, the judgements of individuals about thecorrectness of sentences was an important part in deciding what the aimsof the grammar should be.

wh-question: a term from descriptive grammar. A question whichcannot be answered yes/no, and which is formed using one of thefollowing: who, what, when, where, how, why.

yes/no question: a term from descriptive grammar. Unlike a wh-question these can be answered with yes/no: ‘Are you coming to theparty?’—‘Yes’ (as opposed to ‘when are you coming to the party’ to whichthe answer cannot be ‘yes’ or ‘no’).

PATHS TO FURTHER STUDY

This section contains a short bibliographical essay to enable students to find up-to-date source material for their own work.

Finding sources and reading efficiently

As a student one is often faced with either a daunting amount of material to read,or an apparent lack of sources on the particular topic you are interested in. Theskills which need to be learned to solve these problems are not necessarily fasterreading, but more efficient and varied ways of reading, combined with atargeting of appropriate material and a sense of the nature and variety of sourcesavailable.

Two main points to note are: (1) academic reading should be undertaken witha specific aim in mind (for example, finding information on the key terms fromthe essay you have been asked to write); and (2) professional scholars very rarelyread the whole of a text in detail the first time that they encounter it.


The reason for the latter point is that academics generally have a particulararea of specialisation or interest which motivates their reading, and this enablesthem to develop the skill of assessing texts before reading them .to see whetherthey are appropriate, and of ‘skimming’ through texts to see if they contain thetype of information they require. Having found the text, or part of text, which isparticularly relevant, this can become the focus for more detailed reading.

As a student, similar skills often need to be developed in order to completesufficient background reading for an essay or dissertation. To increase efficiencyin reading you should make a text work for you, rather than letting a text whichmay turn out to be less than relevant dominate a whole morning or evening ofdetailed, slow reading.

Before looking for source material, decide what type of information you need(for example, do you need general background information, or a detail about someparticular aspect?). Different types of text typically contain different levels ofdetail, and you should consider this before starting out. For example, as a rule ofthumb, journal articles and conference proceedings tend to contain more ‘up-to-the-minute’, specialist information than books. Equally, books can vary frommonographs (high-level, detailed texts by a well-known expert in the field, oftendifficult for the undergraduate without more background information) to moreintroductory overviews of a topic, such as the books in this series. Assessing thelevel, type of information and intended audience of a text before starting to readcan reduce wasted reading effort considerably.

Useful sources

Having made some preliminary decisions about the information you need for thetask in hand it is useful to know the nature of source material available in thefield, and how to find it.

The books which are recommended as further reading at the end of each of theprevious chapters contain good bibliographies, and these in turn can lead you tofurther sources on the topic you are most interested in. One of the things toassess when you are choosing a book is the level of detail in the referencesection, and also when the book was published, and how up-to-date thebibliography is.

Journal articles and their bibliographies are a good source of information andfurther paths of research for more advanced students, and the references inarticles will tend to be more up-to-date than those found in a book. Journals alsohave review sections of new publications which can provide a ‘taste’ of a book,and lists of ‘books received’ (i.e. new from publishers), and can be a good sourceof relevant new material. Journals which are of particular interest to the studentinvestigating speech and writing are: Journal of Pragmatics, Journal of Researchin Reading, Language, Language in Society, Text, Written Communication.

Those more interested in theoretical issues might also turn to Journal ofLinguistics; those interested in more applied approaches, particularly in the field


of language teaching would find Applied Linguistics of interest; and the journalLanguage and Literature offers interdisciplinary perspectives similar to those ofthis series.

In addition, the more advanced scholar who is perhaps reading for adissertation might wish to undertake wider searches using research tools whichare prepared for academics. These include traditional paper sources, such as theMLA bibliography and abstracting system or Kluwer’s Linguistic Bibliography,and electronic information sources such as CD-ROMs (the MLA bibliography isnow available in that format for easier searching) or the BIDS system.


Notes

1PROPERTIES OF SPEECH AND WRITING

1 This rather simplified picture of communication with readers and listeners‘decoding’ samples of language thrown at them is only being used to exemplifythis particular point, and is queried in Chapter 2.

2 At times, discourse may be delivered via the spoken channel in circumstanceswhich reduce the role of the recipient to that of a passive listener with a low, ornon-existent potential for interaction, for example during a formal lecture, speech,or via a recorded medium such as film, radio or television. These examples ofpublic, non-interactive discourse are not without their ideological saliency, since inday-to-day speaking it is normally only in certain privileged circumstances that weallow one speaker to dominate the floor and hand over our potential to speak tothem. The balance of listening and speaking roles in any sample of speech reflectsthe psychological and social identity of the participants.

3 An interesting historical survey by Keith Thomas (1986) suggests that calculationof literacy levels needs to take account of whether people’s ability to read extendsto all media, including handwriting.

4 In recent years, educationalists have come to attempt to test oral skills, andspeaking examinations have always been a part of second language learning.However, the general tendency is still for speaking to be regarded as a ‘natural’process.

5 Ideally, any analysis of the spoken would be made directly from the sound medium(i.e. the tape recordings made of the exchanges) however, as has been notedpreviously, almost all linguistic analysis has to take place through the writtenchannel and the present study is not an exception. Nonetheless, given the importantstatus of channel and medium in the comparison of speech and writing, it should beremembered that the artefact which we are looking at—the transcript — is itself arepresentation of the original speech event, and carries with it the reductions andconventions which are inherent in any representation. It is ironic, and significant,that a channel-based comparison must rely on one, highly influential channel, thewritten, to communicate examples and analyses from the other, spoken channel.

6 The decision whether to do this or not is controversial in terms of linguistic theory.Many theorists would argue that the deviant structures being analysed are only such

at a superficial level (what are termed ‘surface’ errors of ‘production’ rather thanthe underlying structures of the language system). Nevertheless, as is noted inChapter 5, if the description of language is removed to this abstract level thenchannel comparison becomes highly problematic. Therefore, for the purposes ofa channel-based survey of speech and writing, this theoretical issue has been laidaside, and a strongly descriptive line taken.

7 A further example of more permanent and publicly oriented speech is given in thetasks at the end of this chapter, where a short extract from an interview with anacademic is given. This was transcribed in an edited format (i.e. most disfluencyfeatures were removed) and published in an academic journal, thus giving thedynamic flow of ideas expressed in the spoken channel a degree of permanence.

2INTERACTIONS ON THE PAGE

1 This chapter deals with dialogue in non-dramatic contexts, for example, the noveland short story. There are further issues for the discussion if we broaden the samplematerial to include dramatic dialogue.

2 However, it is important to remember that this is intended as a methodologicallyuseful step, rather than being significant in theoretical terms. That is to say, paringdown spoken data to the basics in this way is done in order to give a ‘handle’ on thedata, a basis from which to see the nature of the interaction. It is all too easy to fallinto the trap of thinking that this interpretive step is in itself the analysis; or that,more grotesquely, this is how speakers would (or ought to) speak if they had moretime to plan what they were going to say.

The magic of spoken language lies in the fact that it is a dynamic process whichis strongly temporally dependent. After the fact, or for the purposes of analysis, wemight see exchanges in terms of question and answer, or greeting and greeting, butat the time of utterance we are usually too bound up in co-operating to produce theelaborate texture which is typical of a smoothly operating conversation to think inthese terms. In an investigation of speech it is necessary to avoid, or at least beaware of, the tendency to analyse a primarily dynamic and temporally dependentform in terms of static and less context-dependent categories.

So, although we can think of the sample in terms of an underlying structurewhich we are considering to be question-answer, the dynamically affected structurewe are really interested in—the actual interchange—is rather more elaborate thanthis.

3 The degree of overlap which speakers find acceptable varies from culture to cultureand language to language. It would be interesting to relate the possible differencesin the representation of interaction by writers to the differences in conversationalnorms of their society.

4 In this case, the Oxford Concordance Programme (OCP).

3INDIVIDUALS IN SPEECH AND WRITING

166 NOTES

1 Page’s (1988) Speech in the English Novel remains a comprehensive and insightfulstarting point for study of this topic (see also Further reading). The brief samplingand discussion of fictional speech in relation to character which is contained in thischapter is far from comprehensive, but is intended to raise awareness of the statusof fictional speech, and, as elsewhere, give some insights into the nature of spokenand written forms in general.

2 These divisions are not entirely exclusive, that is to say, a factor such as gender orage could also be listed under ‘Sociological features’, since it could be argued thatthey are as much to do with the individual in society (i.e. a person speaks/is spokento in such and such a way because they are male or female, young or old and theirsociety views these attributes in a particular way). Second, this division presents arather static picture of a person’s speech profile, as if we were taking a sectionthrough a plant stem and looking at the structures which combine to produce thewhole. However, like a plant, a speaker’s idiolect changes and develops throughtime, while retaining key features which provide it with identity. Physicalcharacteristics of the vocal tract change as we age, and our voice may be affectedby our state of health. Incidental features which do not normally affect idiolect,may, if they are particularly important to us, make us alter our way of speaking in amore long-term manner, for example if we meet people whom we admire and wantto be accepted by we may gradually accommodate our language use towards theirs.

3 Some forms can appear directly in the written, such as technical terms in laboratoryreports, which may never be actually spoken aloud in their full form.

4 These were gathered anonymously at various times, over a four-year period I spentas an examiner for an English language examination board. Therefore, the sampleis fairly random with a good chance of any example being from a female or a malecandidate, and the probability being that they were within a similar age range. Thearea of origin of the candidates was not known, but there is a high probability thatthey were not all from the same area of Britain, as scripts marked each year werefrom different locations.

5 Since our society does not have criteria for judging speaking that are as stronglydeveloped as those for writing, it is hard to define a ‘well developed’ idiolect, butwe can assume that in this sample most of the students would be able tocommunicate through the spoken channel, and would each have developedidentifiable speech characteristics, both in terms of accent and typical speechpatterns.

6 In other cases, there is evidence of a growing awareness of the requirements of thewritten channel, and the strange effect comes from an attempt to present somethingthat ‘looks right’, but which is not a directly phonetic presentation: ‘perlight’(polite); ‘ubrupte’ (abrupt); ‘browd spectriom’ (broad spectrum?); ‘goe’s’ (goes).These mistakes are suggestive of a slightly more sophisticated awareness of thedistinctions which need to be made in the written channel.

7 The language of Heathcliff in Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights is a good exampleof the problem, since its near phonetic rendering of the strong northern dialect inthe first edition foxes most readers completely, and this way of representing speechhad to be toned down by sister Charlotte for later editions.

8 Interestingly the written version also shows a repetition of ‘to the’ in the form of atypographical error due to the speed with which the text is prepared and printed.

NOTES 167

4ANALYSING SPEECH AND WRITING IN CONTEXT

1 Such added elements are usually sparked off by an event in the action or in thesurrounding context, rather than being simply the personal opinion of thecommentator on the action. Cricket commentators, who have to sustain interest overlong periods of play, are a sure-fire source of such ‘padding’. (See Crystal andDavy (1969) for more general discussion of commentary.)

5ISSUES IN THE STUDY OF SPEECH AND WRITING

1 Page numbers are for the 1983 translation.2 Roman Jakobson addresses this issue in his remarks on representational and

nonrepresentational signs:

A manifold dichotomy of signs may be outlined. Primarily representationalsigns, which display a factual contiguity with their objects, prove to bemostly visual, in contradistinction to nonrepresentational signs, preponderantlyauditory. The former deal foremost with space, the latter with time; simultaneity inthe one case and successivity in the other is the principle structuring device. Incontrast to the first semiotic type, the second implies a compulsorily hierarchicalarrangement and discrete elementary components, conceived, selected andorganised to serve a given purpose.

(Jakobson 1964:219)

3 Householder (1971) uses a similar type of example when arguing for the logicalprimacy of writing. He states that if someone called ‘Kerr’ pronounced /ka:r/decided to change the way the vowel sound was produced no one would bother.However, if they decided to change the spelling to ‘Karr’ they would have to havethis legally recognised by society.

4 It is ironic, in this context, that the Cours was originally delivered to the world viathe spoken channel in the form of lectures by Saussure, and that these weresubsequently written up and published by his students.

5 A restatement of his image of ten years earlier in Language (Bloomfield 1935:282).

6 The breaking of the link between letter and sound has the consequence ofeliminating much of the distinction between ideographic and alphabetic writingsystems. A written word, in both systems then becomes a unit representing an idea,rather than a series of marks which represent a sound which represents an idea.Nevertheless, Bloomfield does not accept this. Rather, he maintains that writing isessentially a means of conveying sounds.

7 The notion that speech is more ‘natural’ than writing has been criticised from theperspective of child language acquisition (Garton 1989).

168 NOTES

8 A view shared by Edward Sapir: ‘Even those who read and think without theslightest use of sound imagery are, in the last analysis, dependent on it’ (Sapir 1921:19–20).

9 In fact the non-phonic nature of most writing was pointed out by David Abercrombie:

The letters in which language is normally written do not represent more than apart of spoken language. Writing, of course, is perfectly intelligible without thesemissing ingredients. But then writing is a medium for language in its own right, andthough it is, in the last analysis, constructed on the basis of spoken language, theaim of writing is not, usually, to represent actual spoken utterances which haveoccurred

(quoted in Halliday 1989:31)

10 In the same collection Sylvain Bromberger points to the potential inconsistency in ascience based on types (i.e. abstract entities) which is carried out via tokens (i.e.empirical information). How can we gain knowledge of these abstract entities whenthere appears to be no causal link between type and token? He posits a question-based theory of the relationship between types and tokens, and concludes that theattribute of being a type is that ‘of being a type generated by the lexicon orgrammar (whatever the case) in a speaker’s mind’ (Bromberger 1989:84). Hepoints out that the methodological implication of this is that the study of naturallanguages ceases to be the same as the study of formal languages.

11 A point made well by Scriber and Cole (1981) who point to the influence ofeducation methods.

12 The Olson/Goody perspective contrasts with that of Chomsky. The former statesthat our capacity for computation is increased/altered by the effects of literacy, thelatter that our abilities are innate and independent of the context—the assistance ofpen and paper will extend our memory, but not fundamentally alter our abilities.

13 Such issues are not unconnected with the subsidiary theme of this book. Forinstance, the very notion of there being sentence meaning as opposed to speakermeaning, or of non-context dependent meaning, may be a result of the applicationof a static, context free model to language. This type of model, I have suggested, isitself a product of the presence of the written form of language. By means of such amodel we may be able to uncover structural relations, but will not throw light onaspects of meaning that are produced by the dynamic fluctuating transactionsbetween speakers and hearers.

NOTES 169

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REFERENCES 173

Index

For further information on topics readers should also consult the Glossary (pp.149– 64), and should refer to the sub-headings within the text as guidance onbroader treatment of items.

Numbers in bold represent the location of a sample used for analysis.abbreviation in speech 19, 25abstraction in writing 28, 107, 119academic discourse 13, 22, 27accommodation 38, 41ambiguity 37aural/oral channel 5, 11, 12–14, 30, 59aural reading 83–8, 92authorial presence 75, 78–3, 97, 102–8,

111–17, 114, 115, 120

Case of the Tudor Queen, The 46–48, 47change in language 65channel 5–6, 5, 12–13, 14, 20, 24–8, 30,

34, 113, 128, 134, 136, 140, 142, 143,144

cliché 113–18cognition and writing 138–3coherence in writing 3, 86cohesion: in speech 141;

in writing 91, 141–6commentary 98–15, 98–4, 119, 121–6conservatism of writing 11context 93–122;

of production 97, 106, 119;of reception 93, 97–3, 119–4

conventions: of speech representation 36,46, 59–4, 84–9;

of writing 66, 68, 69, 74, 91, 116conversation 13, 14–22, 15, 24, 36, 38–2,

114, 119

co-operation between speakers 15, 36–39,41–5

corpus studies 141, 143

deletions made in transcription 56–56, 85–91

discourse categories 53discourse features: in speech 16–18, 22–5;

in writing 29–2diversity of speech 11–12, 69, 91dominant speakers 15, 16–17, 25, 47–1

ellipsis 18–1, 20, 26, 108, 119emotion, representation of in writing 36,

44, 49–4empirical approaches 125, 140–8evaluative language 100–6, 106, 119explicitness of writing 11, 34

fictional idiolect 67, 77–9, 91fluency 23, 26functions: of speech 94, 96, 134, 137;

of writing 9, 26, 66, 94, 96, 134, 137grammatical features: in speech 18–3, 23–

6;in writing 28–1, 88

‘Hansard’ 52, 55–9, 58, 87, 89hedges 24hesitation 22, 30, 50–4, 52–6, 58–2, 102humour 16, 45

174

identity and language use 64, 67ideology of speech representation 83–9, 92idiolect 62, 63, 66, 69–8, 77, 85, 87;

representation of 77–2, 85–91, 92immediacy of speech 93, 99, 102, 107impersonality of writing 11, 12, 14, 29, 49,

66, 74, 94, 142implausibility of literary dialogue 43, 45implicature 6–7independence of writing 124, 125, 128,

129, 134–41individual language use 11, 62–92information, compression of in writing 27–

30innovation 11institutional speech 15institutional writing 11, 68interaction 12, 14, 20, 23, 26, 30, 34–61,

74, 92, 94, 114

juxtaposition 88, 91

Keep the Aspidistra Flying 42–7,

language use and identity 64, 67langue, la 125–31, 136lexical features: in speech 22, 24, 25, 79,

103–11, 116–3, 137;in writing 27–28, 103–11, 116–3, 120,137

linearity of speech 5, 5, 12listeners 6–7, 15, 23, 29, 93, 97–3, 113,

115, 118literary versus actual speech 16, 36, 42–51,

59–4, 74–77, 84–9, 91–6, 120logic: of speech 88, 91;

and writing 139‘Lord Emsworth and the Girlfriend’ 79, 80–

7, 80, 81

Martin Chuzzlewit 45–9medium 5, 30, 38, 46, 68, 74, 93, 98, 111,

115, 118–3, 120misunderstanding 41, 42, 45, 111–16mode 6, 10, 11, 19, 20, 24, 30, 30–4, 67,

70–7, 94, 108, 119

narrative 100–6, 110non-standard language 11, 19, 20, 71, 83,

90, 92

orthography 79, 83–9, 92, 127, 129, 132,135

overlap between speakers 37, 39–3, 41, 50

parliamentary discourse 52–59, 54–9, 85–91, 87, 89

parole 125–30perception of speech 130, 133performance, speech as 7, 25, 91permanence of writing 3, 5, 8, 10, 125,

126, 128personality, projection of in speech 12, 14–

16, 18, 25, 41, 59, 120planning 15, 20, 69, 90, 102–8preconceptions: regarding speech 41, 45–9,

59, 80;regarding writing 51

primacy of speech 124, 129private discourse 11production: of speech 25, 36;

of writing 10, 30, 34–8, 74pronunciation and spelling 83–9, 92punctuation 3, 11, 143

radio broadcast 22, 25reader expectation 16, 36, 49, 59–4, 84–9,

92readers 3, 6, 7–8, 10, 29, 43, 46, 59–4, 67,

77, 84–9, 92, 93, 98, 113, 114, 118reception: of speech 6–7, 25, 46;

of writing 7, 10, 46‘recording’ property of writing 6, 9, 12, 59,

93, 124, 128redundancy 26referencing, systems of 88repetition 25, 27–28, 39, 48, 81–6representation: of emotion in writing 36,

44, 49–4;of idiolect 77–2, 85–91, 92;of speech (methods of) 78–3

response 6, 7, 14, 15, 17–18, 25responsibility for utterance 38–2

INDEX 175

screen dialogue versus actual speech 94,111–23, 120

sentence boundaries 88speakers, overlap between 37, 39–3, 41, 50speech: abbreviation in 19, 25;

accretive nature of 38;actual versus literary 16, 36, 42–51, 58–4, 74–77, 84–9, 91–6, 120;actual versus screen dialogue 94, 111–23, 120;cohesion in 141;conventions of representation 36, 46,59–4, 84–9;difficulties of comparison with writing5, 8–9, 10, 12, 65, 66, 73–8, 93–96,121, 123–8;discourse features in 16–18, 22–5;diversity of 11–12, 69, 91;editing in 25;functions of 94, 96, 134, 137;grammatical features in 18–3, 23–6;immediacy of 93, 99, 102, 107;institutional 15;lexical features in 22, 24, 25, 79, 103–11, 116–3, 137;linearity of 5, 5, 12;logic of 88, 91;methods of representation 78–3;perception of 130, 133;as performance 7, 25, 91;preconceptions regarding 41, 45–9, 59,80;projection of personality in 12, 14–16,18, 25, 41, 59, 120;reception of 6–7, 25, 46;simplification in 112, 116–3;spontaneity of 14, 15, 25, 41, 59, 49–4,97, 111;temporal aspects of 5, 5, 24–7, 38, 59,102;token reduction in transcription of 52,56, 85–87;transience of 5,10, 14, 16, 24–7, 126;value placed on 9, 70

speech sounds, writing and 126, 134, 135spelling and pronunciation 83–9, 92spoken mode features 30–3, 90–5, 92

spontaneity of speech 14, 15, 25, 41, 59,49–4, 97, 111

stance 24, 26, 30standard forms 11, 14, 89–4, 66–1, 83, 92

tag-questions 19–2, 20tense 99–5, 110, 120token reduction in transcribed speech 52,

56, 85–87topic change 16–18, 24–7transcription 5, 14–16, 52, 58, 85, 136turn-taking 14, 36–38

value: placed on speech 9, 70;placed on writing 9, 30, 70

verbatim transcription 51, 52, 56, 59, 60,128, 135, 136

visual/motoric channel 5, 6, 11, 12–13, 26,30

vocalisation 129voice-over 116

well-formedness 130writing: abstraction in 28, 107, 119;

as artefact 15, 25–8, 46, 49;and cognition 138–3;coherence in 3, 86;cohesion in 91, 141–6;conservatism of 11;conventions of 66, 68, 69, 74, 91, 116;denigration of 126, 128, 130;difficulties of comparison with speech5, 8–9, 10, 12, 65, 66, 73–8, 93–96,121, 123–8;discourse features in 29–2;explicitness of 11, 34;functions of 9, 26, 66, 94, 96, 134, 137;grammatical features in 28–1, 88;impersonality of 11, 12, 14, 29, 49, 66,74, 94, 142;independence of 124, 125, 128, 129,134–41;institutional 11, 68;

176 INDEX

Under the Volcano 52-4, 53, 54,115-23, 115-16

lexical features in 27–28, 103–11, 116–3, 120, 137;and logic 139;non-oral nature of 26, 36;permanence of 3, 5, 8, 10, 125, 126,128;preconceptions regarding 51;reception of 7, 10, 46;‘recording’ property of 6, 9, 12, 59, 93,124, 128;representation of emotion in 36, 44, 49–4;and speech sounds 126, 134, 135;static nature of 3, 24–7, 26;tangible nature of 124, 125, 126;as translation 134;value placed on 9, 30, 70

written form: influence of 5, 8–9, 124–37,138–4;

in relation to ‘language’ 124–37written mode features 30–4written sign, the 125, 134

INDEX 177

english in speech and writing: investigating language and literature (interface (london, england).)

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