Spoken & Written Language

by M.A.K. Halliday

This books identifies the important differences between speaking and writing. Halliday leads the reader from the development of speech in infancy, through an account of writing systems, to a comparative treatment of spoken and written language, contrasting the prosodic features and grammatical intricacy of speech with the high lexical density and grammatical metaphor or writing.

Genres: Nonfiction, Linguistics

109 pages, Paperback

First published May 25, 1989

About the author

Michael Alexander Kirkwood Halliday is a British-born Australian linguist who developed the internationally influential systemic functional linguistic model of language.

Reviews

[Thùy Trang]

This book helps me have a comprehensive overview of spoken and written language.

[Nick]

Clear, concise and enlightening, Halliday tells you more than you knew was possible about the differences between spoken and written language. If you think that written language is spoken language written down, you really need to read this book. The differences in development (as part of our species and as part of our lives), the different functions that each serve, and the differences in how meaning is realised that are described in this book will make you realise that they are almost different languages.

[Mhulyani]

Spoken and Written Language

[Lily Loan]

This book is very helpful and interesting.