Spoken and Written Texts

11 are meaningful although the utterances consist of one word. However, texts are structured in different ways to achieve their purposes. For example, the purpose of instruction is to tell someone how to do or make something. Every kind of text in every language is meaningful because it can be related to interaction among speakers, and ultimately to ordinary everyday spontaneous conversation. Again, it is very important to know that every text which is produced should have meaning. Halliday and Hasan 1994:10 describe that a text is essentially a semantic unit. A semantic unit means a text has a certain meaning. The important thing about the nature of a text is that it is made of words and sentences; and it is really made of meaning. Halliday and Matthiesen 1999:1 said that the information which is transferred is treated as meaning rather than as knowledge. Text which is produced consists of information which is treated as meaning

2.3. Spoken and Written Texts

Based on the perspective of systemic functional linguistics, when people communicate, they exchange meaning. To exchange meaning, they should create a text. Therefore, the text which is created should have meaning. The text which is produced can be spoken or written. The process of encoding and decoding in transferring messages through texts need a channel of communication called spoken or written channel. Widdowson 2007:8 says that in spoken language people not only create language but also paralanguage, however written communication may be multimodal. Paralanguage is tones of voice, varying stress, pauses, and so on. When 12 people speak they will produce tones or voices. However, multimodal relates to other modes of communication such as pictures, diagrams, charts and so on. The differences between spoken and written language are sometimes complicated. It is because the characteristics of written language which can sometimes occur in spoken language and vice versa. The examples of spoken language are a casual conversation, a shopping transaction, etc. On the other hand, the examples of written language are a poem, a newspaper, a poster etc. Nunan 1994:8 clarifies that the contexts for using written language are very different from those in which spoken language is used. When spoken language occurs, the interactans are usually facing each other. However, in written language, the interactions are separated in time and space. Eggins 1994:56 states that spoken language will typically be organized according to the turn-by-turn sequencing of talk: first you speak, then I speak, then you speak again. Turn – by-turn sequencing of talk shows a notion that spoken language tends to accompany action. When we play cards, snake and ladder, the language is used to accompany an action. Written language, on the other hand, is intended to encode our considered reflections on a topic, will be organized synoptically, that is, it will have the beginning, middle and end. Further, Eggins 1994:57 clarifies the differences of spoken and written. The following figure shows the differences. 13 Figure. 1.1 Spoken and written language: The linguistic implications of MODE Spoken Language Written Language Turn- taking organization Context dependent Dynamic structure - interactive staging - open – ended - spontaneity phenomena false starts, hesitation, interruptions,overlap incomplete clauses Everyday lexis Non – standard grammar Grammatical complexity Lexically sparce Monologic organization Context independent Synoptic structure - rhetorical staging - closed, finite “final draft” polished Indications of earlier drafts removed “prestige” lexis Standard grammar Grammatical simplicity Lexically dense Eggins, 1994:57 The above table shows several distinctions between spoken and written language. Spoken language also tends to use non-standard grammar rather than standard grammar. Eggins 1994:56 said that the spoken texts will contain everyday sorts of words, including slang and dialect features. The example of slang and dialect is “youz”. It has been explained in the previous sentence that spoken language often uses non-standard grammar. For example, “I usen’t to do that”; “I seen it yesterday” etc. Basically, spoken language indicates language which accompanies actions, or it can be called language as action, while, written one indicates language as reflection. Further, Hammond and Burns 1992:5 differentiate the relationship between spoken and written language. The relationship is clarified clearly in the following figure. 14 Figure .1.2 Burns,1992:5 The figure above shows the relationship between most spoken and most written language. The term most spoken reflects language as accompanying action such as in badminton game, basketball game etc. The term most written reflects the language as reflection. For example, a short story, novel etc. It is a reflection because the distance between the speaker and the addressee is maximal.

2.4. Text and Context