In this widely acclaimed empirical study, Douglas Biber uses computational techniques to analyse the linguistic characteristics of twenty-three spoken and written genres, enabling identification of the basic, underlying dimensions of variation in English. Similarities and differences between speech and writing have been the subject of innumerable studies, but until now there has been no attempt to provide a unified linguistic analysis of the whole range of spoken and written registers in English. The resulting model of variation provides for the description of the distinctive linguistic characteristic of any spoken or written text and demonstrates the ways in which the polarization of speech and writing has been misleading, and thus enables reconciliation of the contradictory conclusions reached in previous research.
In Variation Across Speech and Writing, six dimensions of variation are identified through a factor analysis, on the basis of linguistic co-occurence patterns. In this widely acclaimed empirical study, Douglas Biber uses computational techniques to analyze the linguistic characteristics of twenty-three spoken and written genres, enabling identification of the basic, underlying dimensions of variation in English. 1984).Similarities and differences between speech and writing have been the subject of innumerable studies, but until now there has been no attempt to provide a unified linguistic analysis of the whole range of spoken and written registers in English. More deliberately organized and planned than speech (Ochs 1979 Rubin 1980 Akinnaso 1982 Brown and Yule 1983 Gumperz et al. Less personally involved than speech and more detached and abstract than speech (Blankenship 1974 Chafe 1982 Chafe and Danielewicz 1986) Ĭharacterized by a higher concentration of new information than speech (Stubbs 1980 Kroch and Hindle 1982 Brown and Yule 1983) and More decontextualized, or autonomous, than speech, so that it is less dependent on shared situation or background knowledge (Kay 1977 Olson 1977) More explicit than speech, in that it has complete idea units with all assumptions and logical relations encoded in the text (DeVito 1966 1967 Olson 1977) More structurally complex and elaborate than speech, indicated by features such as longer sentences or T-units and a greater use of subordination (O'Donnell et al. Many studies also offer overall linguistic characterizations of speech and writing.
Although a variety of approaches has been adopted, the shared goal of most previous studies has been to identify specific linguistic features that distinguish between the two modes. There is a long history of research on the linguistic characterization of speech and writing.
0 kommentar(er)
