The suggested lexicogramatical features of the genres that should be taught to the SHS students in Indonesia can be found on pp. 170-172 of the
appendices. The rhetorical development and lexicogrammar characteristics stated in
the appendix are for both the written texts and spoken ones. However, there are differences
between spoken and written languages and the following discussion is about them.
2.6 Spoken and Written Language
Spoken and written languages have differences in some ways. ‘These differences
are generally attributed to the distinct functions that speech and writing have evolved to perform’ Hyland 2002: 49. Speech is for oral communication and
writing for written communication. ‘Speech is very contextualized, depends much on shared situation, allows less planning, involves real-time monitoring, and
relies to a greater extent on immediate feedback’ Hyland 2002:49. Involving in an oral communication, someone usually depends much on the context. Instead of
that, in an oral communication the immediate response is demanded and the parties involved hardly have time to think when responding. The list below
presents some of spoken and written language commonly perceived differences.
Spoken language Written language
- more hesitations, interruptions and self - more subordination and passives corrections
- no spelling and punctuation conventions - longer sentences
- relies on gestures paralanguages - more explicit coding of
logical relations - concrete, fragmented, informal con- - less modal modification
text dependent - structurally elaborate, complex,
abstract formal
- characterized by turn-taking - characterized by monologue Hyland’s differences between spoken and written language
adopted from Hyland, 2002:50. The direct contact between the speakers in spoken communication causes
them to have no time to think of what to sayrespond; hesitations, interruptions, and self corrections very often happen.
The clauses produced are mostly spontaneous, therefore they are likely to be short. This does not tend to happen in a written language; every clause is
preplanned, so written language tends to make use of conjunction, cohesive devices, sub-ordination to provide logical relation.
Spoken communication is highly contextualized, depending much on the immediate feedback. A text writer has hardly received immediate feedback
because of his being absent. In addition meanings in written text tend to be expressed in passive tenses with a lot of nominalization. Eggins offers another list
of differences as follows:
Typical features of spoken lang. Typical features of written lang. - dynamics
- synoptic - interactive staging which is difficult - crafted staging which is easier
to describe to describe - flexible, fluid - fixed, finite
- on-going and open-ended - closed, progresses to a conclusion - spontaneity phenomena false starts, - polished ‘final draft’ with indica-
hesitations, interruptions, overlap, tions of earlier drafts removed incomplete clauses
- turn-taking organization - linearmonologic organization
- everyday lexis - prestige lexis ideas, reason - lexically sparse - lexically dense
- non-standard grammar - standard grammar - grammatical complexity - grammatical simplicity
- move rapidly from one point to an- - each point is dealt with in turn and other and sometimes back again sometimes detail before writer
moves on to the next points - string information out - packs information into the text
- speakers can rely on shared physical - writers cannot rely on a shared phy- context
sical context to convey meaning so writing must be independent of the
physical context in which it is writ- ten context-independent
- speakers can request clarification - readers cannot request clarification.
Differences between spoken and written language Feez, et al.,2002:77. Spoken language is dynamic; it means that exchanging turns between
communicators occur so naturally; what is going on in the communication is unpredictable and spontaneous; the topic may even change very often.
In a written language, the communicators are in a distance to each other; it means that written language is read while the writer is absent. Therefore, the
language used tends to be synoptic instead of dynamic; meanings are expressed within stages required; and the context is independent within the text.
Knowledge of those differences is very important for a writer to know in order that she does not write a text which is like speech written down.
However, Bibber 1988:36-37, in his research, does not find any explicit difference between speech and writing in terms of linguistic or situational
characteri-zation. He finds that some spoken genres are quite similar to the written genres but some are different. He further adds that some genres such as
university lectures, sermons, and rap songs, maybe written to be delivered as speech; while some written forms, like advertisements, postcards and tabloid
articles often contain features more usually associated with spoken language. That opinion is supported by Hammond who observes more closely on the
spoken and written language, and finds out that ‘those two can be usefully viewed as a continuum and difficult to be clearly cut’ Hammond, 1992:5. The
continuum relationship between the two is illustrated by the diagram on the next page.
The label most spoken above means language interaction where it is
mostly accompanied actions and where there is the least physical distance between participants.
Thus it is the language that has the most characteristics of spoken language listed above.
While most written refers to language texts where the distance between
participants is the maximum.
Most spoken Most written Language accompanying action Language as reflection
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -- - -- -
Spoken language Written language
Fig. 7 Spoken and written language continuum adopted from Hammond 1992:5 In written text, as there is no physical interaction between participants, the
meanings being conveyed should be labeled fully, later after that they can be replaced by using referring items, such as pronouns, substitutions, ellipsis, etc.
Such those references serve to link parts of the text together into a cohesive text.
The non-physical context between the reader and the writer of a written text requires the writer to provide complete information. This causes the use of
lexical items or content words to become increased. This is the indication that written language has higher lexical density than the spoken one. Besides the text
construction of a written language is more logical, more highly structured and more systematically organized compared to the spoken form.
Other specific features of written language are the use of nominalization, the changing of other word classes into a noun. The word that is usually
nominalized is the verb, for example; ‘The completion of the design needs a
considerably long enough time’ is indicated to be more written style rather than The design is completed considerably long. Here the verb is completed is
changed into a noun phrase the completion of… . Nominalization like this tends to frequently be used in a written text. This tendency is done by the writer as to
create formality. The continuum of spoken to written language is in line with ‘the natural
continuity of a child learning a language; in a normal condition learning to speak takes place before learning to write Gleason, et al., 1998.
These characteristics of spoken and written language as well as the continuum can be the considerations in evaluating the quality of a text. However,
to explain how a text is constructed, the text has to be unfolded in terms of its clauses. This means that the realization of its rhetorical development through the
clauses of its elements can be used to see whether a text is compatible with the
parent community’s convention. The way to unfold clauses of a text that this research used is the one offered by the systemic functional grammar.
2.7 Systemic Functional Linguistics
