lpetrich

There is sometimes a very glaring difference; in our species, it is rare to find anyone with a poor command of spoken language, but it is much more common to find someone with a poor command of written language.

I recall over in Misc. Discussions a college teacher who griped about the poor grammar in some of her students' writing; however she had not griped about a similar lack of performance when conversing with them.

Could this mean that written language is intrinsically more difficult than spoken language? Could bad grammar and similar phenomena be a result of written language being more difficult to generate than spoken language?

Has anyone done any brain-function studies on that question? It would be interesting to see if using written language requires more brain function or different pathways than using spoken language.

Also, I notice one very interesting feature about my writing. Before I got access to computers with text editors, I did not like to write that much -- I'm not the world's greatest typist, and consistently getting it right the first time is not very probable for me. However, once I got access to text-editing software, I started writing lots of essays and other documents.

Wyz_sub10

This is a very interesting point.

I might argue, however, that grammar used in conversation is similarly lacking, but is not as glaring or subject to the same scrutiny as written pieces.

Try conversing with someone and imaging those very words written on paper. I'm guessing you'd find a lot of incomplete sentences, improper tenses, misuses of words, etc.

lisarea

It's been a long, long time since I was in college and had a clearer recollection of current studies--and of course those studies aren't current now, anyway; but written language is considered almost an artificial language, or to put a finer point on it, an artificial dialect of a natural language.

Natural language has any number of components that are lost on written language--tonal rules, mostly, and gestures. And written language has added components itself, such as spelling and punctuation, that add a level of complexity as well. Essentially, there are no native speakers of written language. It's always a second language at best, so it's common to see someone who's at least reasonably articulate with spoken language, but can't write a coherent sentence.

And if you look at bad writing carefully, you can identify different ways in which it's bad. Some people phrase things fine, but can't spell or punctuate; others are lacking a basic ability to string ideas together--this shows up in speech as well, but I think it's amplified in writing simply because it takes longer; and others don't seem to be able to replicate basic grammatical structure in writing, although they can in speech.

Still, it always kind of surprises me when I see really bad writing, because my mental image of the writer generally takes the form of some kind of Big Daddy Roth cartoon or something, yelling the words, with spittle and other little cartoon detritus flying around their heads; and I have to remind myself that I have never actually seen such a thing in real life.

Celsus

Hi lpetrich,

I lean towards the idea that practice makes perfect. In some bilingual societies (especially Singapore), we have people who are unable to speak or write English or their mother tongue fluently, but are adept at the hybrids that mixtures of languages produce. And of course, literacy is a skill that must be taught and practiced, since there is no real substitute for the live interaction, listening and conversations that speech has. Of course, this is just off the top of my head.

Joel

Clutch

I'm with wyz and lisarea. Most ordinary contexts of use for spoken language require only the most impoverished vocabulary, and simple sentences. In general, if you're writing, it's because something more careful, or weighty, or unusual is required. Ask people to speak in complex sentences containing subordinate clauses and an unusually broad lexicon, and you'll witness a meltdown firsthand.

On the other hand, speaking and writing are very different abilities. There is lots of room for differences in competence to result from domain-specific disparities. But let's first look for an explanation in terms of shared underlying syntactic and lexical capacities.

Shadowy Man

I agree with Wyz; I think poor grammar in speech is tolerated more. In fact, I've found myself saying things that I'd be abhorred to write.

Clutch

Now, stop that!

Yggdrasill

Spelling errors are often caused by inconsistencies between how the word is pronounced and how it's spelled. "Dough" for example, you spell it as "Dough" while you pronounce it as "Do". This sort of inconsistency makes the language more difficult than it has to be and increases spelling errors. Grammar is different though, if there are errors in relation to grammar it probably stems from lack of practise or growing up saying it in the way it was written.

On verbal interaction I agree with Wyz, we are more tolerant. Forming sentences is an ongoing process and I think we tend to sacrifice quality for quantity when talking. Talking is more of a dynamic social interaction than a objective reasoned sharing of ideas. Oppositely, written words are supposed to be primarily quality, not quantity, probably because it is a monologue instead of a dialogue. Because we expect quality when reading a text we judge it as such.

lisarea

It's not even so much poor grammar, though. Grammar's a much more flexible tool than most people give it credit for. (Please note that all True Grammarians are Descriptivists.)

The innate knowledge of grammar, though, relies very heavily on things that we don't fully understand and can't teach. In addition to the infinite ways in which language can be described, there are enormously complex tonal rules, many of which have yet to be articulated. But we understand them because we have intuitive knowledge of the language. And written language has no built-in feedback mechanism, either, so you don't get the jillion little clues and guidelines you do when you're speaking, allowing you to tailor and guide your message as you're creating it.

On top of that, I think there's a definite phobia factor as well. Many people feel as though they're being put on the spot when they have to write, so in addition to making the necessary concessions to written language, they're just plain scared.

wade-w

My father was a highly respected journalist in the wire services for most of his career (he is retired now). He also had two internationally syndicated columns. He has written a novel (his first) that is due to be published this summer. He once gave me some advice on writing that has stood me in good stead for many years now: "write like you speak". The very fact that this advice is not commonly followed or taught is evidence that the two skills are unrelated.