The grammar of written language and the grammar of speech: A case study of Spanish and English

Abstract

If we view grammar as a means for representing and describing our everyday communicative activity, we need a model which allows for the input of all our different modes of meaning into its organization. Two powerful inputs into the grammar of virtually all modern languages are speech and writing. Despite a traditional bias in linguistic theory towards written language, in real communication the grammar of writing coexists with the grammar of speech. I will demonstrate this through a couple of concrete examples from Spanish and English. My personal interest in this double grammar approach arises from research on conversational analysis and is informed by the ideas of Michael Halliday and Per Linell, as well as by multimodal semiotics.