Variation in Language and Cohesion across Written and Spoken Registers

Variation in Language and Cohesion across Written and Spoken Registers Max M. Louwerse (mlouwers@memphis.edu) Department of Psychology / Institute for Intelligent Systems, 202 Psychology Building Memphis. TN 38152 Philip M. McCarthy (pmmccrth@memphis.edu ) Department of English, Patterson 467 Memphis. TN 38152 Danielle S. McNamara (dsmcnamr@memphis.edu) Department of Psychology, 202 Psychology Building Memphis. TN 38152 Arthur C. Graesser (a-graesser@memphis.edu) Department of Psychology, 202 Psychology Building Memphis. TN 38152 Abstract Table 1. The 23 registers used in Biber (1988) Corpus Register Press reportage, editorials, press reviews, Lancaster- Oslo-Bergen religion, skills and hobbies, popular lore, biographies, official documents, academic corpus prose, general fiction, mystery fiction, science fiction, adventure fiction, romantic fiction, humor This paper investigates the variation in cohesion across written and spoken registers. The same method and corpora were used as in Biber’s (1988) study on linguistic variation across speech and writing; however instead of focusing on 67 linguistic features that primarily operate at the word level, we compared 236 language and cohesion features at the text- level. Variations in frequencies across these features provided evidence for six dimensions: (1) speech versus writing, (2) informational versus declarative, (3) factual versus situational, (4) topic consistency versus topic variation, (5) elaborative versus constrained, (6) narrative versus non-narrative. Our cohesion and linguistic analysis showed most variation in speech and writing, whereas the linguistic feature analysis operating at the word level did not yield any difference. London- Lund corpus (Additional) Introduction Face-to-face conversation, telephone conversation, public conversations, debates, and interviews, broadcast, spontaneous speeches, planned speeches Personal letters, professional letters In Biber’s study the normalized frequencies of these features in each of the registers were then entered in a factor analysis, from which six factors emerged. These factors can be seen as dimensions on which registers can be placed. Biber’s analysis showed that no single dimension comprised a difference between speech and writing; As such, Biber defined the sets of relations among texts as follows: 1. Involved versus informational production 2. Narrative versus non-narrative concerns 3. Explicit versus situation dependent reference 4. Overt expression of persuasion 5. Abstract versus non-abstract information 6. On-line informational elaboration. For example, registers such as romantic fiction, mystery fiction and science fiction were positioned high on the second dimension (narrative); whereas registers such as academic prose, official documents, hobbies, and broadcasts scored low (non-narrative). Biber’s study and the multi-feature, multidimensional approach have become a standard in corpus linguistics (McEnery, 2003), leading to various extensions (Biber, Conrad & Reppen, 1998; Conrad & One way to investigate similarities and differences between speech and writing is by using corpus linguistic methods. The most common and largest investigation of this kind is Biber (1988). Biber used 23 spoken and written registers. These registers are language varieties mediated by social situations and are similar to genres. Biber took these registers from the Lancaster-Oslo-Bergen (LOB) corpus and the London-Lund corpus, and computed the frequency of 67 linguistic features in these registers (see Table 1 for an overview of registers). The linguistic features used for Biber’s analysis primarily operate at the word level (e.g., parts-of-speech) and can be categorized as (1) tense and aspect markers, (2) place and time adverbials, (3) pronouns and pro-verbs, (4) questions, (5) nominal forms, (6) passives, (7) stative forms, (8) subordination features, (9) prepositional phrases, adjectives and adverbs, (10) lexical specificity, (11) lexical classes, (12) modals, (13) specialized verb classes, (14) reduced forms and dispreferred structures, and (15) coordinations and negations.