What are the main differences between spoken English and written English? Are they the same?
In general I believe that spoken and written English are very different, surprisingly so considering that English is one language. Of course, this does not always apply, and there are many instances where spoken and written English are the same, where the one takes over from the other and where functions and purposes are swapped.
Some differences seem obvious, such as different accents in speaking. A person may speak with a strong regional accent but when writing this is no way detectable unless his or her grammar is very much in keeping with the regional dialect. You may have a writer who will deliberately imitate a dialect or regional accent in order to portray a particular type of person.
Frances Hodgson Burnett did this in her famous children’s story, The Secret Garden, where the little boy, Dickon, coming from a Yorkshire farmworkers background, says things like (- talking to a robin - ) ...”...Tha’ knew how to build tha’ nest before tha’ came out o’ th’egg. ...” and, “...Us is near bein’ wild things ourselves...” Dickon and his family speak in this way throughout the book, while the other characters and the narrative itself is in standard English. Clearly, this is Hodgson Burnett’s way of showing a different type of character and in 1911, when the book was first published, it may have been unusual. Today it seems rather dated.
George Bernard Shaw had much more fun in his play “Pygmalion”, where he makes hilarious attempts to imitate the cockney way of speech. “Aaaaaaaaaaaah-ow-ooh!”is one of the famous noises that Shaw tried to reproduce phonetically, which Eliza makes and which actresses can have a good time deciding how to enunciate. But Shaw never goes much into “incorrect” spellings, or “incorrect” grammar, as Hodgson Burnett does, and very occasionally in this play does he use phonetic spelling to denote a particular sound. His portrayal of the cockney accent in Eliza and the other cockney characters is done mainly through the kinds of things they say, rather than a phonetic imitation of the accent. I believe this is a more effective way of showing the accent, as he is also able to portray the social gap to audience and reader alike, which of course is equally central to Shaw’s play.
One important aspect of writing as opposed to speech is that the reader can go at his or her own pace. This also means that repetition is unnecessary, as the reader can always go back and re-read the relevant passage. In good writing therefore there is actually very little repetition as such. In fact, a “good” writer will certainly avoid the repetition of words unless he or she is particularly trying to emphasise a point.
By contrast, in speech we make frequent repetitions, sometimes using the same word again and again. That is why playwrights who directly imitate speech can be so funny: they show up what we actually do - how we actually speak.
Thus, speech is, if you like, “designed” for the moment. It is calculated, cultivated in order to have impact while it is being used, at the very moment of speech, and not twenty years later. Speech, by its very nature, must be listened to at the moment of speaking or be forever lost. Unless it is recorded.
Television and radio have brought a whole new side into the so-called ephemerality of speech, and it is clearly one of the areas which strongly overlap into the durability of the written word. That speech, spontaneous, unrehearsed and flippant, may now be recorded for posterity shows us yet more about the similarities and the differences between the written and spoken word. Just as portentous written words may be pompous, high-falutin and valueless in content and therefore ephemeral in nature, so – we can now judge - are there occasions when the spoken word which is in intention flippant, superficial or joking, may now be seen to contain great and eternal truths. With the recording of spontaneous speech (as, perhaps of chat-shows on TV) we can see that the saying, “many a true word is spoken in jest” is proven to be true.
All the same, if you listen to the speech of teenagers, you can hear transience in operation. Apart from the fact that they change accents according to whom they are talking, teenagers use words that are recognised by their peers to be the newest and most up-to-date way of saying a thing. The word “wicked” was used from around 1989 to mean wonderful, exciting, extraordinary (instead of its usual meaning of “bad”). Now this use of “wicked” is already dated.
Newspapers have a life of their own as far as the written word is concerned. They seem to be akin to speech and intended to have a very immediate appeal. Tabloids, as far as I can tell, try to invent as many new words as possible, mainly for purposes of sensationalism. The “quality” newspapers have a less sensationalist attitude towards language, and the better the newspaper, the more standard the English will be. However, throughout all journalism there is some jargon used (journalese), even if only as far as the headlines are concerned – and the jargon might even be incorporated later into standard English.
We all understand a headline like: “Generals on alert as Baghdad shows signs of war jitters” from the Independent. To put this into standard English would require adding an article and a verb at the very least; and yet we don’t doubt that the newspaper column itself will be written in standard English. Headlines are therefore a form of jargon, but a jargon which the general public understands. It is certainly not one that is spoken - except possibly by the journalists themselves.
“Variety”is a well-known American weekly newspaper which is written, printed and circulated for show business. It is written carefully in a jargon that nobody but the initiated show business person can understand. (I doubt the paper has a direct appeal to many actors, for example). The paper is there in order to impart information, review and discuss (show) business between those who can understand what amounts almost to a written dialect. Amazingly, it is one of the USA’s most popular weeklies. However to the lay-person, both the headlines and articles alike are almost incomprehensible.
Jargon is, however, an important form of writing. It applies to different professions such as the medical profession, scientists, stockbrokers or psychoanalysts. All professions, businesses even, have their own particular jargon simply because they have interests and knowledge based on one particular subject; and this jargon is more often written rather than spoken.
