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Speech
- Speech is biologically based - all babies babble (even those who are deaf)
- The human oesophagal tract is adapted for speech (even though that makes it less efficient for other functions such as swallowing)
- Speech develops before writing in societies (for some, writing has not developed)
- Speech develops before writing in individuals
- Speech is learnt spontaneously without explicit instruction (providing there are models for the learner to hear)
- Speech is highly resistant to conscious control
- Most people spend more time speaking than writing
- Speech is mostly unplanned (except in formal registers such as speeches)
- Speech exists in real time. It decays and disappears, so it must be remembered and understood.
- Speech may be seen as "corrupt" when compared to writing
- Speech is not perfect, it is fragmented and contains false starts, repetition, pauses, errors and "slips of the tongue"
- Speech has paralinguistic qualities (tone, voice quality, loudness, speed)
- Speech has kinaesthetic features (gesture and body language)
- The context of speech influences its flow (e.g., conversations with turn-taking, interruption and feedback versus lecturing
- Speech uses fewer connectives (mainly "and, but and so"), fewer adjectives, more concrete nouns, more first person reference and more hedges
- Speech contains more imperatives, questions, exclamations, active rather than passive verbs, and deictic terms (here, now, that).
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Writing
- Writing has social primacy
- Writing is a learnt behaviour
- Writing requires implements (pencil, paper, computer etc)
- Writing exists visually so it is more permanent
- Writing is usually planned and decontextualised (removed from the time and place it describes)
- Writing is distanced from its audience
- Writing can be edited to have no errors
- Writing develops after speech and is based on it (although differs from speech at all levels e.g., sound system, vocabulary, grammar, discourse)
- Writing requires instruction and can be consciously controlled
- Few people spend more time writing than speaking
- Writing has higher prestige than speech and so influences "standards" applied to speech
- Writing usually contains complete sentences and more complex structures, e.g., subordinate clauses, more adjectives, fewer first person references, fewer hedges, more prepositional phrases and more conjoined noun phrases
- Writing contains a wider range of vocabulary and more ideas per unit (per sentence) than speechs
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