THEME 6.
WRITTEN COMMUNICATION. DIFFERENT TYPES OF WRITTEN TEXTS.
STRUCTURE AND FORMAL ELEMENTS. NORMS RULLING WRITTEN TEXTS.
ROUTINES AND FORMULAE.
OUTLINE.
1. INTRODUCTION.
2. WRITTEN COMMUNICATION.
3. DIFFERENT TYPES OF WRITTEN TEXTS.
3.1. Functions of written language.
3.2. Classification of texts.
3.2.1. Genre.
3.2.2. Text Types.
4. FORMAL ELEMENTS OF WRITTEN LANGUAGE.
4.1. Lexical density.
4.2. Other differences.
4.3. Formal characteristics of written language.
5. NORMS RULING WRITTEN TEXTS.
5.1. Features of text organization.
5.2. Standards of textuality.
5.3. Social context.
5.4. Social distance.
6. ROUTINES AND FORMULAE IN WRITTEN TEXTS.
6.1. Postcards.
6.2. Letters: formal and informal.
6.3. Filling in forms.
6.4. Curriculum Vitae.
6.5. Summaries.
6.6. Reports.
7. CONCLUSION.
8. BIBLIOGRAPHY.
1. INTRODUCTION.
Under the educational framework currently in force in Spain students are expected to be able to
communicate in the foreign language both through speaking and writing. The focus on fluency
has tended to give priority to the listening and speaking skills, although the present trend is to
integrate all four macro-skills, since, as we shall see, writing is not simply speech written down
on paper, but quite another thing.
2. WRITTEN COMMUNICATION.
It has often been assumed that whatever appears in spoken form can also be written, that writing
is simply an expression alternative to speech. In the broadest sense, the assumption can be
allowed to stand, since a writing system is capable of representing all possible wordings in the
language. However, writing systems tend to engender conformity once they come into general
use, partly for convenience, and partly because the development of writing tends to be associated
with normative processes anyway. That conformity that is expected of the language is expected
also of the way it is written; indeed it may exist primarily as a written language, not used in
speech except when read aloud.
So, writing systems tend towards uniformity, towards providing codified expressions for all the
established wordings of the language whether in characters, in syllabic or alphabetic spellings.
And for anything that is not codified, they provide general principles whereby expressions can be
created. Does that mean, however, that writing incorporates all the features of speech? Clearly it
does not. There are various aspects of spoken language that have no counterpart in writing:
rhythm, intonation, degrees of loudness, variation in voice quality, pausing and phrasing.
3. DIFFERENT TYPES OF WRITTEN TEXTS.
3.1. Functions of the written language.
Writing evolves in response to needs that arise as a result of cultural changes, like that from a
mobile way of life to permanent settlement. This enabled language to satisfy a new range of
functional demands: marking and inventorying society, property, trade, taxes, calendar, law,
measurements, as well as religious, literary and oratorical functions, that is, as a vehicle for the
transmission of cultural knowledge.
In general, we can say that it is used for the exchange of meanings, which are somewhat different
from the kinds of meanings transmitted through speech.
3.2. Classification of texts.
Texts can be classified in two main ways to capture the ‘packaging’ of genre. The first and most
straightforward classification is based on the contexts in which texts occur and results in
institutionalized labels such as ‘journal article’, ‘science textbook’, ‘newspaper editorial’ or
‘travel brochure’.
3.2.1. According to Richards, genre is a type of discourse that occurs in a particular setting, that
has distinctive and recognizable patterns and norms of organization and structure, and that has
particular and distinctive communicative functions. For example: business reports, news
broadcasts, speeches, letters, advertisements, etc. In constructing texts, the writer must
employ certain features conventionally associated with texts from the genre in which he or she is
writing. In reading a text the reader similarly anticipates certain features of the text based on
genre expectations.
3.2.2. The second is a more subjective classification which does not normally apply to a whole
text but rather to parts of it. This classification is based on another criterion: the purpose of the
text. In accordance with this criterion, texts are narrative, descriptive, expressive,
argumentative and prescriptive.
4. FORMAL ELEMENTS OF WRITTEN LANGUAGE.
4.1. The complexity of written language: lexical density.
The following sentence is taken from a written report: “The Trust has offered advice to local
government authorities on cemetery conservation”.
It consists of twelve words. Of these, eight are lexical items (content words) and four are
grammatical items (function words); grammatical items are those that function in closed
systems in the language: in English, determiners, pronouns, most prepositions, conjunctions,
some classes of adverb, and verb operators. In this example, the grammatical words are the, has,
to and on.
In other words, there are twice as many lexical words as there are grammatical words.
Compare this with the spoken text: “The only real accident that I’ve ever had was in fog and
ice”. Counting “I’ve” as one word, this has 13 words; of these, the, only, that, I’ve, ever, was, in,
and and are grammatical items; the lexical items are real, accident, had, fog, and ice. Here the
proportions are reversed: twice as many grammatical words as lexical. This is a characteristic
difference between spoken and written language. Written language displays a much higher ratio
of lexical items to total running words.
The difference between written and spoken language is one of density: the density with which
the information is presented. Relative to each other, written language is dense, spoken language
is sparse.
4.2. Other differences between spoken and written language.
4.2.1. Speakers have a much greater range of possibilities at their command than writers. Apart
from the actual words they use, they can vary their intonation and stress, which helps them to
show which part of what they are saying is most important. By varying the pitch and intonation
in their voice, they can clearly convey their attitude to what they are saying; they can also
indicate interest or lack of it, for example, and they can show whether they wish to be taken
seriously. At any point in a speech event, speakers can rephrase what they are saying; they can
speed up or slow down. This will often be done in response to the feedback they are getting
from their listeners, who will show through a variety of gestures, expressions and
interruptions, that they do not understand. And in a face to face interaction the speaker can use
a whole range of facial expressions, gestures and general body language to help to convey the
message.
Not all speakers have the benefit of such immediate listener feedback, however. Speakers on the
phone, for instance, have to rely on the words and the use of intonation, pitch and stress only,
without being able to see all the visual clues that would help them to know what the other person
was thinking.
Perhaps the single most important difference between writing and speaking however, concerns
the need for accuracy. Native speakers constantly make ‘mistakes’ when they are speaking.
They hesitate and say the same thing in different ways and they often change the subject of what
they are saying in mid-sentence.
4.2.2. A piece of writing, however, with mistakes and half-finished sentences would be judged
by many speakers as illiterate since it is expected that writing should be correct.
The writer also suffers from the disadvantage of not getting immediate feedback from the
reader and sometimes getting no feedback at all. Writers can no use intonation or stress, and
facial expression, gestures and body language are denied to them.
These disadvantages have to be compensated for by greater clarity and by the use of grammatical
and stylistic techniques for focusing attention on main points, etc. Perhaps most importantly
there is a greater need for logical organization in a piece of writing than there is in a piece of
speaking.
Lastly there are the twin problems of spelling and handwriting. English spelling is notoriously
difficult for speakers of other languages, and handwriting is particularly problematic for speakers
of languages such as Arabic, Chinese, Bengali, which do not have Roman script.
When teaching writing, therefore, there are special considerations to be taken into account
which include the organizing of sentences into paragraphs, how paragraphs are joined together,
and the general organization of ideas into a coherent piece of discourse.
4.3. Formal characteristics of written English.
The following can be considered the most typical characteristics of written English, which, at the
same time, differentiate it from spoken English.
4.3.1. Nominalization: the grammatical process of forming nouns from other parts of speech,
usually verbs or adjectives. In English, writer and writing are nominalized forms from the verb
to write.
4.3.2. Generic reference: a type of reference which is used to refer to a class of objects or
things, rather than to a specific member of the class: Tigers are dangerous animals.
4.3.3. Objectivity, except for texts with the expressive function of language.
4.3.4. Formality, non colloquial expressions, especially in technical texts.
4.3.5. Preference of the passive voice over the active.
4.3.6. No hedges (kind of, sort of, maybe) or discourse fillers (well, I mean, actually, you
know).
4.3.7. More use of verbs of thinking than in oral language (e.g. provide, convey, etc.).
4.3.8. Use of technical vocabulary.
4.3.9. Dummy ‘it’ as impersonal subject of sentences.
4.3.10. Use of rigorous and non ambiguous expressions (except for texts with the expressive
language function).
4.3.11. Referencial explicitness.
4.3.12. Hypotaxis: use of subordinate clauses. At least, less parataxis than in oral language.
4.3.13. No contractions, false starts, topic changes or repetitions.
4.3.14. No verb tense shifting.
4.3.15. Greater number of lexical than function words, leading to more lexical density.
5. NORMS RULING WRITTEN TEXTS.
5.1. Features of text organization.
Any text, in any language, exhibits certain linguistic features which allow us to identify it as a
text. We identify a stretch of language as a text partly because it is presented to us as a text, and
we therefore do our utmost to make sense of it as a unit, and partly because we perceive
connections within and among its sentences. These connections are of several kinds:
First, there are connections which are established through the arrangement of information within
each clause and the way this relates to the arrangement of information in preceding and
following clauses and sentences; these contribute mainly to topic development and maintenance:
given/new information, subject/predicate and frame/insert.
Second, there are surface connections which establish interrelationships, between persons and
events, that is, the social context or the social distance; these allow us to trace participants in a
text and to interpret the way in which different parts of the text relate to each other.
Finally, there are underlying semantic connections-coherence- which allow us to make sense of
a text as a unit of meaning.
5.2. Standards of textuality.
Beaugrande defines a text as a communicative occurrence which meets 7 standards of
textuality. These are:
1. Cohesion, grammatical or lexical relationships between the elements of a text.
2. Coherence: relationships which link the meanings.
3. Intentionality: the writer’s attitude is to produce a cohesive and coherent text.
4. Acceptability: the receiver accepts the relevance of the message.
5. Informativity: the extent to which the occurrences of the text are expected or unexpected.
6. Situationality: factors that make a text relevant to a situation.
7. Inter-textuality: factors that make the utilization of one text dependent upon knowledge of
one or more previously encountered texts.
5.3. Social context.
It is the environment in which meanings are exchanged. According to Halliday the social
context of language can be analysed in terms of three factors: field, mode and tenor of discourse:
-Field of discourse, which refers to what is happening, including what is being talked about.
-Mode of discourse, which refers to what part the language is playing in this particular situation,
for example, in what way the language is organized to convey the meaning, and what channel is
used- written or spoken or a combination of the two.
-Tenor of discourse, which refers to the participants who are taking part in this exchange of
meaning, who they are and what kind of relationship they have to one another, in a word, their
role relationship.
5.4. Social distance.
Jack C. Richards points out that social distance is the feeling that a person has that his or her
social position is relatively similar to or relatively different from the social position of someone
else. The social distance between two different groups or communities influences
communication between them, and may affect the way one group learns the language of another.
Social distance may depend on such factors as differences in the size, ethnic origin, political
status and social status of the two groups.
6. ROUTINES AND FORMULAE IN WRITTEN TEXTS.
There are so many different sorts of written texts that talking about all of them in depth would be
endless. So here we will just mention those which could be important for students learning a
foreign language in a secondary school.
6.1. Postcards.
These are cards which have a picture or a photo on one side and the text on the other. The back
of each postcard is divided into two parts. On the left part we can write the text and on the right
we put the name and address of the person we want to write to, on lines printed for that purpose.
The stamp is put in the top right-hand corner, on a printed square. As postcards are not very big,
texts have to be quite short. They are especially used for congratulations and greetings. Many
people write postcards to their family and friends when they are travelling during their holidays.
As far as the text is concerned we must follow some rules:
-Town or city where you are staying, ordinal number which indicates the day we are in, name of
the month and year. -Dear…-Brief text. -Love/ Lots of love/ Best wishes/ Yours. One or more
“X” can be added. Each x means a kiss (men normally use “Love” for the family and “Yours” for
friends).
When writing the address, we do it like this:
First we write the name and surname of the person the postcard is addressed to. Then we write
the number of his/her house, the name of the street, road, avenue or square. Afterwards, we write
the name of the town, city or village he lives in, followed by its postcode; finally we write the
district and the country of that person.
As far as writing is concerned, a colloquial, everyday language is used and an informal style is
preferred.
6.2 Letters.
These are written messages sent from one person to another. We can divide them into informal
or formal letters:
6.2.1. Informal Letters:
These are letters written to friends or to the family. When writing one of these, we must follow
some rules:
-The writer’s address appears in the top right-hand corner with the date underneath.
-As far as the date is concerned, the form 21(st) February 1993 is preferred to 21-2-1993.
-On the left-hand side, one line below the date, the first line of the letter is written. This is always
Dear + name of the person being written to, followed by a comma.
-The following line begins with the text of the letter, which consists of various paragraphs. The
first paragraph is an introduction. There are several ways of beginning it, some of which could
be: I’m sorry I haven’t written for so long, but…It was good to hear…It was lovely to get your
letter. Thank you very much for your letter. It’s been ages since I saw you and quite a lot has
happened…
The second paragraph contains the reason for the letter. The third paragraph contains the
additional information. Here, the writer gives any news about himself and what he has been
doing. The last paragraph can be a conclusion. Most letters have a brief sentence on a separate
line before the ending. Some of them are: Thank you for…Please write and tell me…Hope to
hear from you soon. I’m looking forward to hearing from you/ to seeing you…Best wishes to…
Do keep in touch. Give my love/ regards to…Let me know whether/ when/ how….
-Endings. The most common are: Yours (for people we are not very close to) With best wishes,
Love, (for the family and very close friends) Lots of love, With love,
-Signature, with the name and surname underneath in clear letters. Sometimes we can find the
letters P.S. below the signature and some text after them. This is a postscript and it is used to
write something we have forgotten to mention in our letter. For this type of letter a colloquial
style is used.
6.2.2. Formal Letters: These are letters written to enterprise and other official places. When
writing a formal letter one must follow certain rules:
-The writer’s address is written in the top right-hand corner with the date underneath. In the top
left-hand corner, at a lower level is written the address of the centre or enterprise it’s addressed
to. Some lines below it, the first line of the letter appears and it begins like this: Dear
Sir/Madam, if we do not know the name. Dear Mr/Mrs/Miss/Ms + name if we know it.
-Then, on the following line, the text of the letter appears. This could, for example, consist of
three paragraphs: the first contains the reason why you are writing; the second explains what you
want from the addressee; the last is a conclusion.
-The end of the letter is Yours sincerely when you know the person it is addressed to and Yours
faithfully when you do not.
-Signature, with the name and surname written clearly underneath. In this sort of letter one must
be clear and concise and not use emotional language.
6.3. Filling in Forms:
This is very easy. It consists of answering what you are asked as briefly as possible. For filling in
this type of form you do not need a writing style. In order to be able to fill them in properly, one
has to know the meaning of words referring to one’s own personal details, such as:
-Name, Christian Name, First Name. -Family Name, Surname. -Age. -Address and Telephone
Number. -Nationality. -Date of Birth. -Place of Birth. Sex (Male/Female). -Marital Status.
It is also advisable to know other details as well, such as school, hobbies, driving licence,
religion, etc. This will depend on the type of application we have to fill in.
6.4. Curriculum Vitae:
This is a clear summary used to give the academic knowledge and experience someone has on a
certain matter. The elements and structure are as follows:
-Personal details: Name and Surname, Date of Birth, Nationality, Marital Status, Address and
Phone Number.
-Current Occupation: If one is working, indicate the type of job one is doing and why one wants
to change it.
-Academic Qualifications: Studies, Courses, Publications, Knowledge of Foreign Languages, etc.
-Professional Experience.
6.5. Summaries:
These are brief resumés of articles, booklets, brochures and books. Due to their special form of
composition and writing they allow the reader to gather information about the original work
without reading it. Their main purposes are:
-To help those people who are interested in the theme of the article of a book to decide if they
will read it completely.
-To give the reader, for whom the article or book only offers a marginal interest, as much
information as possible, so that they do not have to read it completely.
-To make the essential information of books and articles that appear in the scientific and literary
world easily accessible. Summaries have certain characteristics:
-They are brief and explicit sketches of the content and conclusion of the article, booklet or book
from which they are taken.
-They cannot contain information that is not contained in the original text.
-They consist of a coherent series of sentences and are not a reckoning of epigraphs.
-They use common words and not the technical ones used by the author.
-They must be written in the third person to maintain objectivity.
-They must not contain references nor particular or textual quotations.
The art of summarising consists of the ability to take the essential ideas, the nucleus of the
original text. When we read the original we must have a notebook at hand, where we will write
the fundamental ideas or concepts we find and the corresponding pages of the text.
The essential or most important information should be stressed. The summary order does not
have to coincide with that of the original text. Sometimes it is more effective to follow the
interest order, from the most important to the least important. The best way of summarising can
be achieved by making a synoptical diagram.
6.6. Reports:
These are used to present, clearly and in detail, the summary of present and past facts or
activities, and sometimes, of foreseeable facts from already checked data. Although they consist
of facts they often contain the interpretation of the writer, his conclusions and his
recommendations about the problem that causes it.
The difference between reports and other written genres, such as novels for example, is that the
former communicate concrete facts or activities to a limited and concrete number of readers.
A report is not the product of a momentary inspiration that we want to express to others, but the
answer to a question from another person searching for information. The intention of reports is to
acquire a perfect knowledge of the reality of an enterprise, agency or institution without
deformative personal visions.
According to their content and objectives, three types can be distinguished: expositive,
interpretative and demonstrative.
7. CONCLUSION.
Learning a foreign language is very important nowadays to be able to communicate with people
from other countries, both orally and through writing. Languages have a greater importance now
than before and in this competitive society those who can speak, or, in this case, write several
languages get better jobs and opportunities in life. So, students should try to learn foreign
languages in order to communicate with other people, be it for pleasure or for work purposes.
They will be able not only to communicate but will also learn about new cultures, habits, etc. and
all this knowledge will broaden their minds and make them more tolerant. Lastly, the learning of
new languages will help them to know their own language better and to appreciate it.
8. BIBLIOGRAPHY.
Some of the books I have checked to elaborate this unit, all of them published in the 2 nd half of
the 20th century, are the following:
HARMER, J. The Practice of English Language Teaching. Longman. 1991.
RICHARDS,J.C. Dictionary of Language Teaching & Applied Linguistics. Longman. 1985.
BIBER, D. LEECH,G. Grammar of Spoken and Written English. Longman. London 1999.
BYRNE, Donn Teaching Writing Skills. Longman 1988.
