Speech
and Writing.
Most people’s immediate response about the
differences between speech and writing is that writing is speech put down on
paper, or that writing is more formal than speech. These views are, however, too
simplistic.
If we think about the two modes
without any electronic or computer mediation, we are likely to find certain
characteristics.
Speech,
unless it’s scripted, is an on-going process and will be:
·
Perceived
through the ears
·
Spontaneous
·
Face
to face (or at least within ear-shot)
·
Ephemeral
(i.e. gone as soon as it’s spoken)
·
Subject
to hesitation, self-repair and on-going editing
·
Not
necessarily in complete major sentences
·
In
real time
·
Able
to respond immediately to listener feed-back
·
Supported
by prosodic, paralinguistic and non-verbal features
Writing
is an end product and will be:
·
Perceived
through the eyes
·
Subject
to editing before it’s read
·
Likely
to be in complete sentences
·
Able
to be read at a distance
·
A
semi-permanent record
·
Capable
of being read and reread at any time after it’s written
·
Possibly
for an unknown audience
·
Unable
to respond immediately to feedback
·
Not
easily able to show prosodic, paralinguistic or non-verbal features
Both speech and writing can come anywhere on a
spectrum ranging from formal to informal, although it’s true that what we
write is generally likely to be more formal than what we say. Writing is also
more likely than speech to be in Standard English, and traditional orthography
(i.e. ordinary spelling) cannot show regional accent: we are likely to read
something using our own pronunciation.
Scripted speech, whether it be a prepared talk or a play-script, loses the spontaneity associated with normal speech, and telephonic, recorded or broadcast speech is also different from what is described above. All these types of speech take on some of the characteristics of writing, and computer mediated communication (CMC), such as texting, e-mail and chat-rooms, causes writing to take on some of the characteristics of speech.
©
CD Selwyn-Jones 2002