This accessible satellite textbook in the Routledge Intertext series is unique in offering students hands-on practical experience of textual analysis focused on speech and writing. Written in a clear, user-friendly style, it combines practical activities with texts, accompanied by commentaries and suggestions for further study. It can be used individually or in conjunction with the series core textbook Working With Texts: A core introduction to language analysis. Aimed at A and AS Level and beginning undergraduate students, the Language of Speech and Writing: * Analyses the processes involved in writing and speaking * Highlights the differences between these two modes of communication * Explores written texts from recipes to legal language, spoken texts from telephone conversations to interviews and mixed-mode texts from email to adverts * Compares and contrasts spoken and written texts on the same theme

Rather than giving the student a list of facts to assimilate this book offers a selection of standard and non-standard pieces of spoken and written English that the reader uses to formulate opinions on structure and lexis for further self-study.

Similarities and differences between speech and writing have been the subject of innumerable studies, but until now there has been no attempt to provide a unified linguistic analysis of the whole range of spoken and written registers in English. In this widely acclaimed empirical study, Douglas Biber uses computational techniques to analyse the linguistic characteristics of twenty three spoken and written genres, enabling identification of the basic, underlying dimensions of variation in English. In Variation Across Speech and Writing, six dimensions of variation are identified through a factor analysis, on the basis of linguistic co-occurence patterns. The resulting model of variation provides for the description of the distinctive linguistic characteristics of any spoken or written text andd emonstrates the ways in which the polarization of speech and writing has been misleading, and thus enables reconciliation of the contradictory conclusions reached in previous research.

Linguists routinely emphasise the primacy of speech over writing. Yet, most linguists have analysed spoken language, as well as language in general, applying theories and methods that are best suited for written language. Accordingly, there is an extensive 'written language bias' in traditional and present day linguistics and other language sciences. In this book, this point is argued with rich and convincing evidence from virtually all fields of linguistics.

In three chapters, Write It, Speak It: Writing a Speech They'll Applaud, gives you the tools you need to produce a more effective, powerful, and memorable speech. Chapter 1 discusses the rules and good practices of all effective writing. With that foundation set, Chapter 2 sets out the ways in which speech writing differs from other forms of writing, and how spoken language allows you to make your words come alive. Chapter 3 provides you with techniques to write more powerful and memorable speeches through storytelling, timing, and rhetorical devices. Tom Pfeifer has been a professional communicator for more than 30 years. In Write It, Speak It, he uses research and personal stories to show how you can write speeches they'll applaud.