Today we examine the difference between spoken and written English.
On first being informed that my spoken and written use of language differed I was somewhat incredulous, but over the past few months I have examined this theory and discovered that it is quite so. The most graphic illustration of this difference became apparent when I took part in an experiment in the psychology department which involved a group of people interacting. Our interaction was recorded on tape and afterwards transcribed so that there was a written script of about fifteen minutes of our conversation. During the interaction period I had told what I had thought at the time was quite an amusing story, but I was horrified to see it reproduced on the transcript since I appeared to have been talking totally incoherently, seldom using complete sentences and frequently repeating myself. In other words my spoken representation of an incident was very different from what it would have been had I written it down, and having now conclusively – for me personally at any rate – that a major difference between the spoken and written use of language does exist, it must be determined more precisely where this difference lies.
Probably the most obvious difference is that one tends to use more shortened versions of words and generally to be more concise when speaking, for as has already been seen there is no need to speak complete formal sentences. Also speaking one tends to allow slang and “catch-phrases” (eg “Nice one Cyril”) to creep in. Thus, in general, written language tends to be very much more formal than spoken language, but this depends almost entirely on one key point not yet mentioned. The person being written to and the person being talked to and their relationship with the speaker dictate entirely the level of formality. So as well as there being a difference between the use of spoken and written language there are also differences within the categories of spoken and written language. To take spoken language first, this point is best illustrated by reference to an example.. A man fortunate enough to employ a butler will, if he is entertaining guests to dinner, speak very differently to his butler than to his guests. This is a somewhat extreme example, but it holds equally true, though less obviously so, that the host will talk slightly differently with each of his guests.
And so the essay written in my first year at Durham drones drearily on but it seemed to pass muster. Mr Branch (Twiggy) at Eton was more demanding. I would have thought I could have done a reasonable job on the chief characters in the first Act of Romeo and Juliet but Twiggy was not impressed.
“Not a conspicuous beginning to a specialist career when the second EW (Extra Work) has not been completed. This is to be signed by tutors and the essay must be shown up by Wednesday’s div. Some of your comments are also disturbing in their thoughtlessness.”
My Moral Tutor signed without comment; my House Tutor appended “intolerable”.
”What common features do you find in the 1920 group of poems, excluding Gerontion?” That was a tricky one and led Twiggy to write: “this standard of work is quite intolerable – what value can you possibly derive from a two or three line summary of a poem? A summary also, which is devoid of anything approaching analysis and is hardly related to the question. This is obviously a thoroughly lazy essay and you have ignored my last week’s comments. This topic must be tackled freshly and shown up by Chapel on Friday. This is to be signed by tutors.”
My House Tutor refrained from commenting, as his “intolerable” had already been deployed. Twiggy was a hard task master but he did get me across the line at English A Level. Meanwhile you might care to read Gerontion and be grateful you don’t have to write an essay about it.
Thou hast nor youth nor age
But as it were an after dinner sleep
Dreaming of both.
Here I am, an old man in a dry month,
Being read to by a boy, waiting for rain.
I was neither at the hot gates
Nor fought in the warm rain
Nor knee deep in the salt marsh, heaving a cutlass,
Bitten by flies, fought.
My house is a decayed house,
And the jew squats on the window sill, the owner,
Spawned in some estaminet of Antwerp,
Blistered in Brussels, patched and peeled in London.
The goat coughs at night in the field overhead;
Rocks, moss, stonecrop, iron, merds.
The woman keeps the kitchen, makes tea,
Sneezes at evening, poking the peevish gutter.
I an old man,
A dull head among windy spaces.
Signs are taken for wonders. “We would see a sign”:
The word within a word, unable to speak a word,
Swaddled with darkness. In the juvescence of the year
Came Christ the tiger
In depraved May, dogwood and chestnut, flowering judas,
To be eaten, to be divided, to be drunk
Among whispers; by Mr. Silvero
With caressing hands, at Limoges
Who walked all night in the next room;
By Hakagawa, bowing among the Titians;
By Madame de Tornquist, in the dark room
Shifting the candles; Fraulein von Kulp
Who turned in the hall, one hand on the door. Vacant shuttles
Weave the wind. I have no ghosts,
An old man in a draughty house
Under a windy knob.
After such knowledge, what forgiveness? Think now
History has many cunning passages, contrived corridors
And issues, deceives with whispering ambitions,
Guides us by vanities. Think now
She gives when our attention is distracted
And what she gives, gives with such supple confusions
That the giving famishes the craving. Gives too late
What’s not believed in, or if still believed,
In memory only, reconsidered passion. Gives too soon
Into weak hands, what’s thought can be dispensed with
Till the refusal propagates a fear. Think
Neither fear nor courage saves us. Unnatural vices
Are fathered by our heroism. Virtues
Are forced upon us by our impudent crimes.
These tears are shaken from the wrath-bearing tree.
The tiger springs in the new year. Us he devours. Think at last
We have not reached conclusion, when I
Stiffen in a rented house. Think at last
I have not made this show purposelessly
And it is not by any concitation
Of the backward devils
I would meet you upon this honestly.
I that was near your heart was removed therefrom
To lose beauty in terror, terror in inquisition.
I have lost my passion: why should I need to keep it
Since what is kept must be adulterated?
I have lost my sight, smell, hearing, taste and touch:
How should I use it for your closer contact?
These with a thousand small deliberations
Protract the profit of their chilled delirium,
Excite the membrane, when the sense has cooled,
With pungent sauces, multiply variety
In a wilderness of mirrors. What will the spider do,
Suspend its operations, will the weevil
Delay? De Bailhache, Fresca, Mrs. Cammel, whirled
Beyond the circuit of the shuddering Bear
In fractured atoms. Gull against the wind, in the windy straits
Of Belle Isle, or running on the Horn,
White feathers in the snow, the Gulf claims,
And an old man driven by the Trades
To a a sleepy corner.
Tenants of the house,
Thoughts of a dry brain in a dry season.