Spoken Language Study free essay sample

Consider the differences and similarities between spoken conversation and the language of social networking. Spoken language and web-based communication have similarities and differences. Spoken conversation is when a person is talking to somebody directly (live event), either face to face or from a distance using a device of communication e. g. mobile phone. With spoken conversation, there may be overlaps as the person that you are talking to may interrupt you if they disagree on your conversation or would like to make their point heard.Also, when using spoken communication, the person may stutter, as it isn’t planned and because the person is thinking of what to say next whilst talking, they wouldn’t concentrate on what they are saying presently or how to start the next sentence. Fillers, which are utterances, are used to fill silence in between sentences (â€Å"um well†), and are only included in spoken conversation, not in web-based communications. An example of spoken conversation would be Skype because if you are on video calls, you can talk to someone face to face and see what they are doing, see the person’s reactions and get quick replies.Another example would simply be a phone conversation because you are talking to the person, at the time. On the other hand, web-based communication is where a person might talk to somebody indirectly and therefore, wouldn’t get a quick reply. A person that you are talking to using this, has more time to think about how to reply to you but obviously, you wouldn’t be able to see their facial expressions, which would be impersonal and you couldn’t be 100% if it is them you are talking to. An example of this would be Twitter, a social networking site, where you can communicate with friends or people that share your interests.This can be done through ‘direct messaging’ or ‘tweets’. Direct messages are more confidential because you are certain that only the person you are talking to can see the messages. With tweets, anybody can see you’re them unless you have privacy settings on your account. Another example would be email as people can message each other indirectly and it remains confidential. It’s usually used when two people have a lot to talk about and they don’t want the expense of sending too many text messages. The only trouble is that it is long winded and there can be a delay in replies.Multi-modal talks are conversations that are not face to face. Messaging is a form of mixed mode talk because it can occur through text or video messaging. Both forms of communication, spoken language and web-based communication have similarities and differences as one is direct and the other is indirect, e. g. Twitter, Skype, etc. .. More to the point, web-based communication could be classed as scripted because it is more organised. It wouldn’t have the same stops and starts as a direct conversation.It’s more planned out because the person sending the email can check for grammatical errors before sending it. Slang is more likely to be used in this but is more likely to occur between younger generations as it’s a way of typing something quickly by abbreviating words (LOL – Laugh Out Loud, BRB – Be Right Back, G2G – Got To Go, etc†¦) The following conversation shows some of these abbreviations being used to shorten words or phrases and is also a form of web-based communication: YO 🙂 †¢ YO dude 😀 Whatchaa doinn’†¦ †¢ Nm jc watching tv haha wbu Putting nail varnish on †¢ Haha :O †¢ What’s sup? Nowt. As you can see from the conversation I had with my friend through MSN, we abbreviate a lot of words mainly du e to the fact that it’s easier and quicker but it causes us to commit a huge amount of grammatical and punctuation errors which we wouldn’t do if we were talking to anyone else (e. g. Nm – Nothing much, Jc – Just chilling, wbu – What ‘bout you, etc†¦) At the beginning of each message there is a capital letter but we use a generous amount of emoticons to express the feelings to what the other person has put.Also there is a clipping of the word ‘doing’ as the person has omitted to put the ‘G’ at the end of the word and has left it as ‘doinn’’. Also, because we are both from Manchester, there is more chance that the idiolect that we have adapted to individually is quite informal but may seem alright to people from the same town. The following is a spoken conversation: -Good morning, would you like some coffee? †¢ Yes, milk and two sugars. -Will do (calling) Hi, Can you please come to the office?Thanks! As you can see, the spoken conversation doesn’t have any abbreviations unlike the web-based one. The people in the conversation do not use Received Pronunciation, but still ap pear to be quite formal in their use of dialect. Unlike other spoken conversations, this one doesn’t have any fillers or overlaps. The people in this conversation seem to be well-educated by the dialect they are using and by the correct use of punctuation.With this, the person’s accent is more likely to shine through, maybe making it difficult for the other person to understand them at times. These both involve at least two people in the conversation. These two forms of communication can be both visual and aural. Examples of this would be Skype which is a form of web-based communication and you can visually see and hear the person you are talking to. With spoken conversation, you can’t abbreviate the words whilst talking but with web-based communication, a lot f abbreviations are used by the senders. Furthermore, spoken conversation is more personal than web-based communication. Also with spoken conversation, you don’t have time to think about what to say but with web-based communications, you can think about what you want to put before sending it. With spoken communication, the accent of a person can affect the other persons understanding of what they are saying as there may be phrases and words that are only used by a certain group of people.In my opinion, both forms of communication are good, it just depends on the time and place. If you were hundreds of miles away from the person you want to talk to then web-based communication would probably be the best but if you live just down the road from the person you are talking to, then visiting them and talking to them directly is far better. I prefer spoken conversation because I like to talk to people face to face so I can see their facial expressions first hand.