Speech is divided into two main types opposed to each other, and in some respects compared types. This is oral and written language. They diverged in their historical development, therefore, they discover various principles of the organization of linguistic means. General literary language means, combining types such as oral and written speech, are the basis for the formation and functioning of synonymous series. The book-written and oral-speaking means separating them are used in their entirety in their type, but in the opposite they are accessed with certain restrictions.
Speech spoken
Oralness is the main factor uniting the various varieties into which oral speech is subdivided . The properties of written speech are realized in varieties of the book-writing type. Of course, form is not the only factor in unification. But in the oral-colloquial type, it is she who predetermines the formation and functioning of specific language means that distinguish spoken language from written language. The properties of speech are related to the nature of its generation. Let's consider it in more detail.
Differences in spoken and written language
The difference in forms is based on a deep psychophysiological difference. Psychologists have found that the mechanisms of generation and perception of oral and written speech are not the same. When generating written speech, there is always time to think over the formal plan of expression, so that its degree of structure is high.
Accordingly, when reading, you can always stop, think deeper about what is written, and accompany it with your personal associations. This allows both the writer and the reader to transfer the necessary information from the RAM into the long-term. Not that when speaking and listening. Sounding, historically primary oral speech has its own characteristics. The properties of speech in this case are determined by the fact that it represents a certain stream, which only during its production can be interrupted by the speaker in accordance with his intentions to complete or suspend information. The listener, however, must in his reception follow the speaker in time, and he does not always have the opportunity to stop where he needs to think more deeply. Therefore, predominantly short-term memory acts when oral speech is perceived. The properties of speech in this case are that it is spontaneous, disposable, it cannot be repeated again in the form in which it was already uttered.
Automation
When learning a foreign language in preparation for the lesson, you can prepare each sentence in advance, but this will not work out in the lesson: the task of spontaneous production requires the issuance of voice portions again in a smooth speech stream. The characteristic of oral speech is that it cannot be fully prepared, it is produced largely automated. If the speaker intensely controls her, she will lose the quality of spontaneity and naturalness. Self-control is fully possible only in slow educational speech, which at its unnatural pace betrays its non-original character.
Written text scoring
From spontaneous spoken speech produced, one should distinguish between simple scoring of the written text by announcers, artists, and sometimes speakers. Such scoring does not change anything in the text, and although it sounds, it remains the way it was written. At the same time, the characteristic of written speech, all its properties, is preserved. From the mouth, only the intonation contour and possible phonetic expressiveness appear in it. That is, the acoustic properties of speech sounds change. An observation by E. A. Bryzgunova, who compared the voice acting of the same text, is interesting: they differed. This means that as soon as an oral speech element appears, in this case intonation, discrepancies arise due to individualization.
Individuality
Oral coherent speech is always individual. For writing, this is not the general quality of all varieties. Only artistic speech and, in part, speech of non-strict newspaper genres are individual. Each speaker has his own way of characterizing a person as a person on the part of his psychological, social, even professional characteristics and general culture. This applies not only to colloquial speech. In parliament, for example, the speech of each deputy highlights his personal qualities and intellectual abilities, gives his social portrait. Oral coherent speech often means more to the listener than the information contained in the speech, for which the speech takes place.
Speech Features
If we turn to the factors of division, acting in the oral-colloquial type, it turns out that in addition to those operating in the book-writing type, there are some additional ones. Some properties of oral speech are common to the entire oral-colloquial type and are characteristic of it, in contrast to the book-written type, dividing the modern Russian literary language into two parts. Others take part in the selection of varieties of the most oral-colloquial type. We list these additional factors. Such properties of speech are addressing, situationality, speech form (the use of monologues and dialogs).
Addressing spoken language
Oral speech is always addressed, and directly to the listener, who perceives it simultaneously with its products as an addressee here and now. Various technical tricks, such as delayed and then reproduced recordings, may not be taken into account, since they do not deprive the communicative act of the main thing: instantaneous perception, where time synchronization is important. The addressee of speech can be: a) individual; b) collective; c) massive.
These three types of addressing of oral literary speech, coinciding with the action of other factors of its division (all these factors, including addressing, are unidirectional), are involved in distinguishing three varieties of oral literary speech (oral-colloquial type of literary language): 1) oral-spoken; 2) oral scientific; 3) radio and television.
Addressing Written Speech
Here, the addressing is not direct: paper serves as an intermediary between the author of the text and the reader, and it allows you to delay reading as much as you want, that is, eliminate the factor of physical time, while speech itself is endowed with the qualities of spontaneity and reusability. In contrast to oral speech, the proverb “The word is not a sparrow, will fly out - you won’t catch” is not applicable to it. Such indirect addressing cannot be a division factor.
Situation
The main properties of speech also include situationality. It is inherent in the colloquial type, where the situation makes up for verbally unexpressed meaning, any understatements and inaccuracies. It is usually considered the exclusive quality of colloquial speech, but, strictly speaking, is constantly being discovered. This shows, for example, an analysis of poetic speech, when a biographical commentary is required to accurately understand and feel the poem. In general, comments of this kind, supplying an artwork of any genre, can enrich the perception and understanding of the author’s intention. To situationality is added the general apperception base of the speaker and the listener, the community of their knowledge and life experience. All this allows verbal hints and provides an understanding at a glance. Partly situationality is also characteristic of collectively addressed speech. For example, a teacher knows what kind of students he has, what they know and can, what they are interested in. However, situationality is not characteristic of massly addressed texts. Thus, it acts as a factor in isolating colloquial speech and as an incomplete factor characterizing oral scientific speech. Naturally, situationality cannot be characteristic of any kind of written type.
Using monologues and dialogs in written language
As regards the correlation of monological and dialogical types, this property of both written and oral types appears differently when the literary language is divided into varieties. In the book-writing type, it does not play the role of a division factor, while in the spoken-colloquial type it is such a factor. This is due to the different ratio of monologue and dialogue in written and oral varieties. In the book-writing type, scientific speech is usually monologous, but you can also see signs of dialogism in it. Although one can disagree with this: if they exist, they are not direct, but rather indirect. Business speech can be expressed in a monologue, but single (usually) sentences expressing an order, request, instruction, order, etc., and containing the verb form of incentive (imperative) mood, are similar in form and organization to the replica of the dialogue. Newspaper articles are usually monologous, but may contain dialogue elements that mimic the reader’s questions and their expected answers, direct dialogue is in the genres of interviews, correspondence with readers, answers to questions, etc. In artistic speech, dialogue is a means of communication between the characters, and author’s speech monological view. But there are genres that are completely dialogic. This, of course, is about plays and dramaturgy as an art form. In general, it turns out that, as a factor in the division, the dialogue - monologue appear indistinctly, but they quite clearly show an increase in dialogism from left to right.
Monologues and dialogues in spoken language
In the oral-colloquial type, a fundamentally different ratio. It is determined by the fact that the dialogic and monological types of speech, as a result, have different organization, namely: a monologue is a segmented syntax, dialogue is a short conversational cue of a rigid, specifically conversational syntactic structure. Of course, the written dialogue also has its own syntactic features compared to the monologue, which is the space for the implementation of numerous syntactic models, all the richness of written language. But here the differences of the dialogical and monological form do not entail such fundamental differences in syntax, where specifically conversational models are formed in the space of dialogue. On the whole, dialogicity in the oral-colloquial type decreases from right to left. And comes to a minimum in oral scientific speech. The equal rights of dialogue and monologue make it possible to distinguish oral-colloquial speech as an independent variety, among other factors of division, as separated from this by radio, television and oral scientific speech.