Integration and Involvement in Speaking,
Writing, and Oral Literature
1. Speakers interact with their audiences,
writers do not
Detachment – the passives, nominalizations
Involvement – First Person References,
Speaker’s Mental processes, Monitoring of
Information Flow, Emphatic Particles,
Fuzziness, Direct Quotes
2. Oral Literature
英語語言學理論與研究
Instructor: 黃淑鴻教授
Presenter: 胡美英
20978L020
Speakers Interact with Their Audiences,
Writers Do Not
Share knowledge concerning
the environment of the conversation
a speaker
Monitor
the effect
a listener
Has face to face
contact
Signal
understanding
and ask for
clarification
Is aware of an obligation to communicate what he or she
has in mind in a way that reflects the richness of his or
her thoughts – not to present logical coherent
but experiential stark skeleton
Speakers Interact with Their Audiences,
Writers Do Not
Writers
Are
displaced
in time
and
space
Readers
results
1. The writer is less concerned with experiential richness.
2. The writer is more concerned with producing
something that will be consistent and defensible when
read by different people at different times in different
places, something that will stand the rest of time.
Speakers Interact with Their Audiences,
Writers Do Not
Chafe will speak of
‘involvement’
with the audience as typical for a speaker,
and
‘detachment’
from the audience as typical for a writer.
Speakers Interact with Their Audiences,
Writers
Do
Not
DETACHMENT
INVOLVEMENT
The detached quality of written language is manifested
in devices which serve to distance the language from
specific concrete states and events.
A Device in English
The Passive Voice
Suppressing the directive involvement of
an agent in an action
Speakers Interact with Their Audiences,
Writers
Do
Not
DETACHMENT
INVOLVEMENT
Examples of the passive
1. Its use was observed on only a single occasion.
2. The resonance complex has been studied
through experiments with an electronic violin.
From the written data, we don’t know who
performed the action – i.e. the agent is unknown.
Speakers Interact with Their Audiences,
Writers
Do
Not
DETACHMENT
INVOLVEMENT
Nominalization pp. 39-40
Another Device
Nominalization
1. Allowing predications to be integrated within
larger sentences
2. Suppressing the directive involvement of
an agent in an action
Speakers Interact with Their Audiences,
Writers
Do
Not
DETACHMENT
INVOLVEMENT
The Passive
Spoken
5.0
Written
25.4
Nominalization
4.8
55.5
1. There were about five times as many occurrences of
the passive in our written sample as in our spoken.
2. There were about eleven and a half times as many
occurrences of nominalizations in our written data.
Speakers Interact with Their Audiences,
Writers
Do
Not
DETACHMENT
INVOLVEMENT
First Person References
Speaking
Written
A speaker is more
First person reference is
frequent reference to him
much less frequent in
or herself.
formal written language.
Typical examples of reference in our spoken data were
(25a) I have a friend who’s …. About six foot and blond.
(25b) I was reading some of his stuff recently.
Speakers Interact with Their Audiences,
Writers
Do
Not
DETACHMENT
INVOLVEMENT
First Person References
Occurrences per thousand words of first person
references, including I, we, me, and us were:
Spoken
61.5
Written
4.6
Second person reference would seem to be also a
symptom of involvement, but there were too few examples
in our data to demonstrate anything of interest.
Speakers Interact with Their Audiences,
Writers
Do
Not
DETACHMENT
INVOLVEMENT
Speaker’s mental processes
References to a writer’s own mental processes were
conspicuously absent in our written data; some
examples from spoken language follow:
(26a) and I had no idea how I had gotten there.
(26b) but … I can recall … uh… a big undergraduate
class that I had.
(26c) and I thought … am I alive?
Spoken
7.5
Written
0.0
The occurrences of such references in our data were as above:
Speakers Interact with Their Audiences,
Writers
Do
Not
DETACHMENT
INVOLVEMENT
Monitoring of Information Flow
A speaker monitors the communication channel which
exists with listener and attempts to make sure that the
channel is functioning well. Colloquial expressions like
well, I mean, and you know perform one or another of
these functions:
(27a) Well I .. I took off four weeks.
(27b) But .. But as it is still I mean .. Everybody knows
everybody.
(26c) So we..so we..you know, we have this confrontation.
Speakers Interact with Their Audiences,
Writers
Do
Not
DETACHMENT
INVOLVEMENT
Monitoring of Information Flow
These expressions were significantly present in our
spoken sample, and entirely absent in the written:
Spoken
Written
well
7.0
0.0
I mean
2.5
0.0
You know
13.6
0.0
Speakers Interact with Their Audiences,
Writers
Do
Not
DETACHMENT
INVOLVEMENT
Emphatic Particles
Particles expressing enthusiastic involvement
in what is being said, like just and really, are
also diagnostic:
(28a) I just don’t understand.
(28b) And he got..really furious.
The occurrences were:
just
really
Spoken Written
7.5
0.4
5.1
0.0
Speakers Interact with Their Audiences,
Writers
Do
Not
DETACHMENT
INVOLVEMENT
Fuzziness
Vagueness and hedges are also more prevalent
in speaking, and may also express a desire for
experiential involvement as opposed to the less
human kind of precision which is fostered by
writing.
The following are examples of spoken fuzziness:
(29a) schemes for striking, lifting, pushing, pulling,
and so on.
Speakers Interact with Their Audiences,
Writers
Do
Not
DETACHMENT
INVOLVEMENT
Fuzziness
(29b) moving the bridge or soundpost a
millimeter or two.
(29c) Since this banker is something like forty-seven,
(29d) And he started sort of circling.
Counts of occurrences per thousand words of this
kind of language were:
Spoken Written
18.1
5.5
Speakers Interact with Their Audiences,
Writers
Do
Not
DETACHMENT
INVOLVEMENT
Direct Quotes
Direct quotes also express an involvement in
actual events which tends to be lacking in written
language.
(30a) And uh..she said, ‘Sally can I have one of your
papers?
(30b) And I said, ‘Well no I’m afraid I don’t.’
The occurrences of direct
quotes in our data were:
Spoken
12.1
Written
4.2
Speakers Interact with Their Audiences,
Writers Do Not
Summary
Written language
Detachment
The use of passives
Nominalizations
Spoken language
Involvement
First person references
Speaker’s mental processes
Monitoring of information flow
Emphatic Particles
Fuzziness
extremes
Written
Spoken
Figures from maximally differentiated samples: spontaneous
conversational language and formal academic prose
Integration and Involvement in Literature
Oral Literature
Seneca spoken in western New York has no written tradition.
developed
Asher Wright,
a missionary
Seneca
published
An excellent
orthography
Rich and varied
oral literature
Chafe examined
features which
differentiate spoken
and written language
Some religious
materials
Now only accessible
from written records
Features of a similar sort
may differentiate colloquial
Seneca from the language
used in these rituals
Integration and Involvement in Literature
Oral Literature
Distinction between
colloquial and ritual
parallel
Distinction between
???? colloquial and written
reasons
Reason 1:
Chafe thought that ritual language, like written
language, has a permanence. The same oral ritual
is presented again and again with a content, style
and formulaic structure which remain constant from
performance to performance.
Integration and Involvement in Literature
Oral Literature
Distinction between
colloquial and ritual
parallel
Distinction between
???? colloquial and written
reasons
Reason 2:
The performer of a ritual is removed from his audience
in a way that parallels the solitude of a writer. What he
performs is a monologues with minimal feedback and
no verbal interaction. Thus the situation is one which
fosters detachment rather than in involvement.
Integration and Involvement in Literature
Oral Literature - differences
1. Seneca has no nominalizers performing the same
function as the English nominalizers discussed above.
2. It has no participles.
3. It has no attributive adjectives either; adjectival
meanings are expressed by stative verbs.
4. It has neither prepositions nor postpositions.
5. It has no complementizers like English ‘that’ or ‘to’.
6. It has no constructions which are like English relative
clauses.
These features arise in a language precisely
because of writing.
Integration and Involvement in Literature
Oral Literature
Spoken Seneca – fragmented quality
Three intonationally separate sentences,
four syntatically independent clauses or idea units
Integration and Involvement in Literature
Oral Literature - a Seneca Thanksgiving Ritual
An integrated whole
The only sentence-final
intonation occurs at the
end of this sequence;
the sequence of phrases
or clauses is united into
a single sentence.
The phrases and
clauses depend on one
another.
Integration and Involvement in Literature
Oral Literature
Distinction between involvement and detachment
Evidence of Detachment
Seneca has an impersonal reference marker, a
verb prefix which means ‘one’. As with the
passive, this prefix allows the omission of specific
reference to the agent of an action.
‘one’ prefix
Colloquial
2
Ritual
36
Integration and Involvement in Literature
Oral Literature
Distinction between involvement and detachment
Evidence of Involvement
Seneca has a variety of particles –
agwas ‘really’ and do:gës ‘for sure'
agwas ‘really
do:gës ‘for sure'
Colloquial
5
4
Ritual
0
0
Integration and Involvement in Literature
Oral Literature
Distinction between involvement and detachment
Evidence of Involvement
The occurrence of particles expressing
fuzziness or evidentiality, whose occurrences
per thousand words were as follows:
Integration and Involvement in Literature
Oral Literature
Chafe gave the suggestion that oral literature
may indeed has more like written than spoken
language in some way.
Chafe thought that certainly the differences
between colloquial language and oral
literature do not in all always parallel those
between spoken and written language.
Integration and Involvement in Literature
Conclusion
Spoken and written language differ with regard to
two sets of features.
fragmentation vs.
integration
involvement vs.
detachment
a consequence of
differences in the use of
time in
speaking and writing
The different relations
of a speaker or writer
to the audience
Integration and Involvement in Literature
Conclusion
Chafe suggested that some of the same
differences may distinguish colloquial
language and oral literature, even in a
language that has never been written.
The reasons may be that oral literature
has a kind of permanence analogous to
that of written language, and that the
reciter of oral literature is, like a writer,
detached from direct person interaction.