| Description |
What is the difference between receiving a letter of dismissal in the mail, being called into the office of your boss, or getting a text message saying “u r fired”? Why do these differences matter, and how can we describe and analyze them from a linguistic and discursive point of view?
In this lecture, we will be concerned with different realizations of language – spoken, written, and beyond. We will explore how the spoken/written distinction intersects with all levels of linguistic description, and how it can be used for the analysis of linguistic structures and discourse phenomena.
In the introductory sessions, we will take a close look at existing definitions and models of spokenness and writtenness, and retrace how spoken and written language have played a role in the history of linguistics. After that, we will examine different features and factors of spoken and written language, including phonological and prosodic aspects, traditions of representation, visibility and materiality. We will close with an extended view at digital and multimodal realizations of language, and how they challenge our assumptions about spokenness and writtenness.
The lecture will not be limited to linguistic theory, but will include many pieces of empirical evidence, and suggestions on how to integrate spoken and written aspects into linguistic analysis. |
