Oral vs. Written Communication: Key Differences & SEO Strategies
Oral vs. Written Communication
Characteristics of Spoken Discourse
1. Tendency to Repetition
There is a tendency to repeat particular words or fragments of words. Usually, listeners automatically filter out such repetition without noticing it. Only when repetition becomes extreme do people pay attention to it.
2. Usually No Chance of Correction
Repetition of words or sentence fragments is typical of speech, made up as the speaker goes along with no opportunity to reformulate it. Speech also contains hesitation noises.
3. Specific Vocabulary
Speech often uses words that look odd in writing, such as now, well, you know, sort of, etc.
4. Specific Grammar
Many people have the impression that spoken language is less organized than written language. Even if more grammatical errors are accepted in spoken discourse, the spoken language depends as much on grammar as the written language does.
Characteristics of Written Discourse
1. No Tendency to Repetition
Speech often shows repetitions, but in written discourse, people can revise the text and avoid unnecessary repetitions.
2. Chances of Correction
Unlike spoken discourse, written discourse can be looked at and edited several times. Nowadays, spelling checkers are efficient at catching mistakes that deviate from correct English.
3. Density of Content
Writing has a bigger proportion of grammatical words. Writing is denser than speaking because it has a higher proportion of content words. The feeling of density is not simply a matter of spoken sentences being shorter than written ones.
4. Specific Grammar
Writing has long sequences of prepositional phrases; writing has more ‘nominalizations’ than speech, that is to say, it uses noun-based phrases rather than the equivalent verb-based phrases; writing has more participles; writing has a higher proportion of ‘attributive’ adjectives rather than adjectives after a verb.
5. Neutrality of Social Roles
The different social roles in the interaction are important. A speaker is a visible, clearly identified individual, whereas a writer is an invisible, fairly anonymous person.
6. Punctuation
Punctuation has to do with the typical signs (; : etc) but also with the use of spaces between words or the function of capital letters. However, punctuation is limited when showing all the possible subtleties of spoken discourse.
7. Text as “Object”
A written text and its component parts have the character of objects; they are persistent and static. Considerable sections may be scanned.
Differences Between Spoken and Written Discourse
1. Sounds Versus Written Signs
Speech has changes of pitch. Writing, however, has a punctuation system, partly used for showing the structure of the sentence and partly for showing vocal aspects of language.
2. Speed
The everyday processes of reading and speaking have their own characteristics. Reading can take place at speeds faster than speech. Besides, the mind processes spoken sounds differently from written signs.
3. Permanency
Writing is permanent marks recorded on paper; speech is only sounds passing through the air. Writing stores the information on paper, speech in the memory. Written language is used to keep a permanent record, but speech leaves no trace on the world.
4. First and Final Drafts
Writing can be worked over time and again. Speech is always a first draft. Apart from a few gifted or trained public speakers, people do not plan in detail the final version of what they are saying. Speech, therefore, comes out full of the mistakes and distortions characteristic of a first draft.
5. Interaction Between Listener and Speaker
Usually, the listener and speaker are physically present in the same speech situation; they can see each other and be aware of what is going on. In writing, however, a reader and writer may never meet. Any written document can be read anywhere by anyone, not just by those actually present in the speech situation.
6. Purposes of Language
Speech and writing are used for different purposes. Written records are kept for the future. A meeting may use spoken language, but the transcripts are often kept in writing.
7. Formality
Writing is an authority to be trusted in a way that speech is not; ‘put it in writing’, ‘It’s in the dictionary’. Speech in a literate society is used for reasons that are more immediate.
8. Contextualization
Unlike spoken utterances, a written text lacks an immediate context. Though it is true that a reader must, in order to properly understand a written text, “place it in a context,” a written text is – as a rule and in comparison with spoken utterances – relatively explicit and less open to contextual constraints.
9. Grammatical Differences
Spoken:
- No complex constructions
- Coordination
- Active voice
- Indexicals (I, you, there…)
- Incomplete information
- Ordinary discourse markers
- Repetitions, fillers, hesitations
Written:
- Complex constructions
- Subordination
- Passive voice
- No explicit indexicals
- Complete information
- Formal discourse markers
- No repetitions, fillers, etc.
Techniques for Compensating for the Lack of Oral Qualities in Written Discourse
- To resort to a fictional narration in order to show the vocal qualities of a certain character
- To combine the narrator’s comments with the ‘transcription’ of the character’s utterances.
More Innovative Techniques for Compensating for the Lack of Oral Qualities in Written Discourse
- Phonetic Orthography: To write the words in the same way as they are pronounced.
- Colloquial Orthography: Reduction of words due to their pronunciation in spoken discourse.
- Regiolectal Orthography: Transcription of spoken variations in order to show dialect variations.
- Prosodic Orthography: Textual representation of intonational patterns by using punctuation marks and repeated letters.
- Interlinguistic Orthography: To reproduce the phonetic quality of foreign words but filtering it through the linguistic rules of the importing language.
- Homophonic Orthography: Mainly substitutions of words having a similar pronunciation but fewer.