ANTHONY PYM

TEXT GENRES IN ENGLISH

WEEK 2

SPEECH AND WRITING IN ENGLISH

Aim: To describe the basic differences between written and spoken English, and the develop
the categories of analysis in such a way that they can be applied to the study of electronic
English.
ODonnell, W. R. and Loreto Todd begin their Variety in Contemporary English (first published
in 1980) with a consideration of the difference between spoken and written English. This
might seem strange, since what we shall call the medium variable would not normally mark
out any specific variety of a language. There is instead a set of features that belong more to
one medium than to the other. How important are those features? To the learner, perhaps,
they are simply among the many things that have to be learnt. Now, however, some twenty
years after ODonnell and Todd, the medium variable is of extreme significance, quite simply
because electronic communication is fast blurring the divisions that might once have formed
part of a stable learnable set of variables.
The Conquest of Distance
It was once thought that writing was a secondary representation of speech, just as speech
was a secondary representation of thought. The speaker has something in their mind; words
were found to express that thought; the words would carry as far as a listener; and if the
listener was sufficiently out of earshot, those words would be written down so as to express
the thought across space and hence across time. This is a schema in which a kind of truth is
lodged at the origin, in the mind of the thinking subject, and each step away from that truth
involves some kind of loss of value. Language is a poor representation of the original thought;
and writing is a poor representation of speech. The further we are from the source, the less
we have understood. Such is the world in which writing might be seen to occupy a secondary
position.
The philosophical bases of that picture of the world have now well and truly been
shattered. For a start, there is little reason to suppose that language simply represents
thought, and many reasons to see writing as doing rather more than represent speech.
Deconstruction provides perhaps the most elaborate critique of the logocentrism involved in
such visions. But alternatives have long been available. Augustines theory of illumination, for
example, posited there was no communication of the essential truths, since understanding
came from divinely inspired flashes of truth. All communication, be it spoken or written, merely
conveyed fragments that might help one remember the inner truth one already has. Similarly,
spoken and written words might convey not thoughts but are in themselves a kind of practice,
and actually doing the practice will lead to understanding.
Both kinds of practice - speech and writing - actually create language, and create
modes of understanding of the world. There is no reason to suppose that speech is somehow
closer to truth.
Linguistics here is as much to blame as anything else. Language acquisition is
supposed to be primary acquisition, of the kind completed in childhood, prior to the input of
writing as a feature of secondary acquisition. So-called universal grammar has little space for
the written word; phonetics remains the only discipline where structuralism really worked.
Derridas grammatology, which was supposed to study writing, has found no place in
linguistics.
Could there be a place for it in sociolinguistics?
Differences
Let us suppose there is some kind of actual division between speech and writing, The main
features of that difference should probably correspond to the following heads:

Spelling
English alphabetical representation is anything but a transparent representation of speech.
Our spellings owe much to the spoken language of the past; the written form bears the scars
of history. These differences are maintained in the language, since they increase the labour
required to enter the power structures of writing.
Noah Webster simplified the spelling system in a situation where there were many learners of
English as a second language, and a keen political desire to break with the colonial past. But
he did not go so far as to make writing look like speech. To do so is to provoke parody, as in
the work of Josh Billings (in Crystal).
Fillers
Since speech is produced in real time, it requires that time be occupied if one is to keep the
floor. We thus find spoken language more likely to include fillers like I mean, sort of, you
know, you see. There is also much repetition of information, not particularly to make sure
the message is understood but to fill out the space of interaction. By talking, we care for each
other; we express and maintain solidarity. This filling out of space would seem less likely to
concern writing.
Back-channeling
To the extent that speech implies mutual presence, it allows for significant back-channeling,
here understood as a general term for all the a-ahs, yeahss, head-nodding and the like by
which a listener indicates that they are participating in the conversation.
Marked incompletion
In speech, sentences are left incomplete; space is left for the other to participate, to affirm, to
nod. In writing, this might be represented as points of suspension.
Overlapping turns
In speech, interruption is possible, which means there are also many strategies for avoiding
interruptions. These include keep speaking regardless, speaking louder, using non-verbal
means changing the tone of voice.
Fine-tuning of register and domain allocation
The entire suprasegmental level allows spoken language a range of regional and social
variations that is not available to written language.
Contractions
These concern verbs in English: cant (cannot), neednt,
BUT NOT maynt,
Informal vs formal lexical items
maybe vs perhaps
get vs become
Coordination vs subordination
This would also concern the absolute length of noun phrases.
Presence of first and second persons

In theory, the first and second persons are less prominent in the written mode. Formality in
many cultures involves a shift to the third person.
The Dissolution of Differences
There are several reasons why these differences are not always clear:
1.
2.
3.
4.

A standard language acquires writing. But standardization exists within speech.

Mixed kinds of communication: speeches are written then spoken. Same for television.
Voice recognition software turns the voice into a writing tool
Corpora for the study of language are mostly based on written sources, even though they
are supposed to represent the whole of a language.
5. The written bias of language teaching has survived the heyday of communicative
methods, which stressed the oral.
The Differences that Remain
ODonnell and Todd presupposed that writing was designed to cover more distance than
speech, and all their distinctions were based on this material difference. They supposed, for
example, that the production of speech was quick and easy, whereas that of writing was
relatively slow and laborious; speech was spontaneous; writing required learning and tools.
Yet everything that can be said for one can also be said for at least one version of the other
(see the five points above). So are there no longer any substantial differences between
speech and writing?
There are, I suggest, good grounds for basing our primary distinction on the
difference presupposed by the text, or that is in some way inscribed in the text. Instead of
talking about speech and writing as such, we might then consider sets of items that indicate
mutual presence (i.e. the archetypical situation of speech), absence of the second person (as
in archetypical writing), or various modes of asynchronous presence (as in the case of
distance learning).
The categories underlying the above differences would thus be: PRESENCE,
ASYNCHRONOUS PRESENCE and ABSENCE.
Tasks
1. Use the differences between speech and writing to construct a grid. In groups,
analyse a piece of writing and a piece of speech in terms of each variable, while you
tape the work of another group. Now analyse the speech that you just taped.
2. Transpose the following into written form: (from the MICASE corpus at
http://www.hti.umich.edu/m/micase/):

S1: my name's Tom Lehker and i'm a staff member at the Career
Planning and Placement office. uh this is a program we hav- as far
as i know we have never done before, um we're co-sponsoring it
with Rackham, um uh the idea of sort of what it means to be a
faculty member as a panel really came from students at some of the
other events that we had, um as we would collect our student
evaluations which i'll have you fill out at the end of this program.
one of the events that students talked about having was something
that really, gave faculty a chance to talk about. issues of of faculty
culture or faculty roles, um expectations of junior faculty and how
those expectations might, um change as a faculty member, uh
progresses through a career, um, maybe some of the myths, um
myths and or realities that graduate students had, i'm hearing from
a lot of graduate students they just didn't hear much from, uh their

advisors and other faculty members about what it really did mean to
be a faculty member. so we uh decided to do this type of panel to
start to address some of those kind of issues. partly knowing that
many of these issues are very specific to the individual student or
also possibly very discipline-specific. so i think that's one of the
limitations that we acknowledge going into something like this, is
that we're hoping that the panelists um can speak sort of as
generally as possible but also knowing that they will always speak,
from the framework of their own, um process that they went
through. um, let me just say a couple things sort of administratively
before we get started, and one is to say up front that we were
supposed to have three panelists today. but i got a call from
Professor Rose from the history department literally about an hour
ago, she could hardly speak, and said she was too ill to attend. uh
but we're left uh with two uh very fine panelists, we'll have um,
Farnam Ja- Jahanian, um from the EECS department up in
engineering, and also Professor Dickerso- um, Glenda Dickerson,
who's also, in the theater department and also an associate dean
here at Rackham.
S2: and is making her stage entrance <SS LAUGH>
SU-F: (it's very nice)
S1: on cue. we're just getting started.
S4: good.
S1: um, and so the idea of this panel will be that um um, both of the
panelists will speak for some amount of time, ten fifteen minutes uh
potentially longer if you like given that we're we're short one
panelist today, um i gave them some questions that they might
want to think about along the lines as i was outlining earlier but
then also hoping that question and answer which i always think is is
always very helpful in this type of setting. um and so in just a
minute i will turn it over to them, i am gonna pass out a couple
things, the first is, program evaluation if you could take just a couple
of minutes at the end of the program and fill that out. um again it's
the evaluations in past years that have led to events like this so we
really do take, your feedback seriously. the other, is just a clipboard,
if you could also, sign in. uh, we like to, keep a record of who
attends these programs it helps us to, justify our, existence, uh for
things like this. so i think that was all, i wanted to say i think maybe
if the panelists wanna come up now we haven't talked about an
order for who would like to go first so you can, flip a coin or
S2: could i ask a question before we get started?
S1: sure.

S2: i was just wondering if you could raise your hands if you're, here
because you're not sure if you wanna be a faculty member that you
might be interested in a nonacademic career... okay, thank you.
<P :05>

S3: so, would you like to start, Mrs Dickerson?

S4: well i could i <LAUGH> I hadn't thought of starting but would
you like to start?
S3: okay i i i'll start [S2: okay ] if you give me a minute to prepare.
so i'll i'll be um, brief, uh, i've prepared a couple of things to share
with you uh before we get, started. and and really we should keep
this a a uh, more of a dialogue and and i'm looking forward to to
answering some of your questions and share some thoughts with
you. but i wanted to sort of set the stage for for for this discussion,
by telling you a little bit about who i am. and also, uh, give you a
snapshot of my uh daily life, as a faculty member. here at U-of-M.
and um, uh the best thing to do is essentially to start first of all, uh
by giving you my vital statistics. um let's see if this... as you can tell
i'm an engineer. i can't talk unless i start with a biograph. uh... so i
um, uh have a PhD in computer science i graduated from the
University of Texas at Austin, in nineteen eighty-nine, um after um,
finishing my graduate work, i joined um the research division of I-Bof I-B-M. um, and i was there for about four years, and then took a
faculty, position, here at U-of-M in the College of Engineering that
Tom mentioned in the Electrical Engineering and Computer Science
Department. so if there's anything to be shared that's um,
discipline-specific i guess i'll bring in the engineering perspective.
um, currently at Michigan, i have a research group, that has uh,
depending on how you count uh on a given day, uh ten masters
students and PhD students in it. by the way how many of you are
from the engineering college? just a curiosity. oh wow, significant
number. um, and i guess how many from L-S-and-A? how many howo- another question is are there any, undergraduates here...? [SU:
(xx) graduate students ] okay, that's good. <AUDIO DISTURBANCE>
who are um in my <AUDIO DISTURBANCE> who actively work and
um <AUDIO DISTURBANCE> that's my academic life. i'm also
married, and i have three kids. and that plays as big a role in my
happiness and my health as as much as my academic life. and and
it's very very difficult to actually separate, uh the two. so, i i'll be
happy to answer questions of that that aspect of it as well. that's a
vital statistic. so as i was thinking, and and trying to come up with,
profound things to tell you about being a faculty member at
Michigan and i solicited input from some of my graduate students,
who by the way were threatening to show up and challenge me on
some of these things,<SU-F LAUGH> none of them showed up, i um
i i decided potentially the best thing to do is to give you a snapshot,
of my daily life. um what do i do during the day? um and in
particular, i in preparation for this, i took yesterday as a

representative day, and also last Tuesday. uh partially because

yesterday is a day that i, didn't teach. and last Tuesday is a day that
i actually teach. so here's Monday, twenty-second of February, um,
and that was yesterday morning, and this is what my, i don't know if
you can see this in the back, this is what my day looked like. uh not
very glamourous but there's some some points to be made. um at
nine o'clock every Monday morning i have a research group meeting
uh that's actually at central campus interestingly enough not at
north campus that lasts till ten-thirty, right after that i rush to my
office answer email put out a few fires and and in this case i had a
few minutes left and i wrote, a bunch of reference letters that were
pending, um and attempted to do that i had about forty-five minutes
got that done, and then, i had allocated myself an hour to finish
editing this, journal article that we've been working on and trying to
put some finishing touches on it. and sure enough at noon right
before i had to go to my my lunch meeting i realized that i wasn't
done and i had more stuff to do. but there's no, uh time left during
the day as you can tell for me to get back to that point. um by the
way you didn't tell me are we supposed to talk them into becoming
faculty members? <SS LAUGH> [SU-F: (xx) ]