Speech and Writing
Most contemporary linguists work under the assumption that spoken language is more fundamental than written language. This is because:
- Speech appears to be universal to all human beings capable of producing and hearing it, while there have been many cultures and speech communities that lack written communication
- Speech evolved before human beings invented writing
- People learn to speak and process spoken language more easily and much earlier than writing.
Nonetheless, linguists agree that the study of written language can be worthwhile and valuable. For research that relies on corpus linguistics and computational linguistics, written language is often much more convenient for processing large amounts of linguistic data. Large corpora of spoken language are difficult to create and hard to find, and are typically transcribed and written. In addition, linguists have turned to text-based discourse occurring in various formats of computer-mediated communication as a viable site for linguistic inquiry.
The study of writing systems themselves is, in any case, considered a branch of linguistics.
Read more about this topic: Linguistics
Famous quotes containing the words speech and writing, speech and, speech and/or writing:
“In our time, political speech and writing are largely the defence of the indefensible.”
—George Orwell (1903–1950)
“America—rather, the United States—seems to me to be the Jew among the nations. It is resourceful, adaptable, maligned, envied, feared, imposed upon. It is warm-hearted, overfriendly; quick-witted, lavish, colorful; given to extravagant speech and gestures; its people are travelers and wanderers by nature, moving, shifting, restless; swarming in Fords, in ocean liners; craving entertainment; volatile. The schnuckle among the nations of the world.”
—Edna Ferber (1887–1968)
“Speech and prose are not the same thing. They have different wave-lengths, for speech moves at the speed of light, where prose moves at the speed of the alphabet, and must be consecutive and grammatical and word-perfect. Prose cannot gesticulate. Speech can sometimes do nothing more.”
—James Kenneth Stephens (1882–1950)
“In writing these Tales ... at long intervals, I have kept the book-unity always in mind ... with reference to its effect as part of a whole.”
—Edgar Allan Poe (1809–1849)