Medium of Production: Oral Versus

Written

This chapter summarizes the most common differences that have been observed between oral and written texts of the same genre. Such differences show up, for instance, when comparing oral and written versions of a narrative given by an accomplished storyteller, or when comparing recorded and printed versions of a political address. As Bartsch says (1997:45), "Different genres have different features, and it is not helpful to compare oranges to apples." Consequently, comparisons between oral texts of one genre and written texts of another may be misleading (see Chafe 1985b for a comparison between dinner table conversation and academic prose which falls into this trap).

Bartsch's article not only compares an oral and a written version of the same narrative in an Algonquian language of North America, but also in cludes a useful bibliography of recent publications on variations between speech and writing.

4.1 Frequency of repetition

"Spoken language uses a lot of repetition. But in written language there is a limit to how much repetition can be tolerated by readers" (Aaron 1998:3).Bartsch's comparison of the oral and written forms of an Algonquian story revealed that the same teaching point was made four or five times in the oral version, but only once in the written one. Similarly, if a reported speech was longer than one sentence, the SPEECH ORIENTER (eg, he sa/d, sometimes called "quotation margin" , "quote tag", etc.) was often repeated in the oral version,but not in the written one.

A distinctive form of repetition frequently found in oral material is TAIL-HEAD LINKAGE (Thompson and Longacre 1985:209-213). This consists of the repetition in a subordinate clause, at the beginning (the "head") of a new sentence, of at least the main verb of the previous sentence (the "tail"),8 as in...he arrived at the house. When he arrived at the house, he saw a snake. Johnston (1976:66) found that tail -head linkage, cons

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Medium of Production: Oral Versus

Written

This chapter summarizes the most common differences that have been observed between oral and written texts of the same genre. Such differences show up, for instance, when comparing oral and written versions of a narrative given by an accomplished storyteller, or when comparing recorded and printed versions of a political address. As Bartsch says (1997:45), "Different genres have different features, and it is not helpful to compare oranges to apples." Con...

Preface
1-4 Types of Text
　1 Means of Production: Number of Speakers.
　2 Type of Content: Text Genres
　3 Manner of Production: Style and Register
　4 Medium of Production: Oral Versus Written
5-15 Common Characteristics in Discourses
　5 Coherence
　6 Cohesion
　7 Thematic Groupings and Thematic Discontinuities
　8 Text Charting
　9 Mental Representations Revisited
　10 Activati​​on Status, Definiteness, and Referential Status
　11 Discourse-Pragmatic Structuring of Sentences
　12 Foreground and Background Information
　13 Signaling Relations Between Propositions
　14 The Reporting of Conversation
　15 Conventionalized Aspects of Text Organization
16-18 Participant Reference
　16 Basic Notions of Reference
　17 Strategies of Reference
　18 A Methodology for Analyzing Reference Patterns
Appendices
　Appendix A: “Win​​ds of Terror”
　Appendix B: “The Train Ride”
　Appendix C: Extract from “The Healer and His Wife”
References
Index

Preface
1-4 Types of Text
　1 Means of Production: Number of Speakers.
　2 Type of Content: Text Genres
　3 Manner of Production: Style and Register
　4 Medium of Production: Oral Versus Written
5-15 Common Characteristics in Discourses
　5 Coherence
　6 Cohesion
　7 Thematic Groupings and Thematic Discontinuities
　8 Text Charting
　9 Mental Representations Revisited
　10 Activati​​on Status, Definiteness, and Referential Status
　11 Discourse-Pragmatic Structuring of Sentences
　12 Foreground...