Study On Relationship Of Spoken And Written Discourse From Functional Context Perspective

Spoken and written language can be seen as two different forms of language variants. Spoken language is generally defined as the language that people use in actual communication. It requires the speaker to accurately express information through voice and gestures, but it is less accurate on grammar and vocabulary. Whereas written language generally conveys people’s thoughts, views and other information in the form of texts. It is usually formal, standard and it emphasizes on grammar. Understanding the relations of spoken and written language is the basis of language learning.The occurrence of spoken and written language is inseparable from context, (i.e. linguistic environment or non-linguistic environment.). However, their dependency on context is in different degree. Generally speaking, spoken language has more dependence on context, while written language is relatively less dependent on context. This paper introduces the theory framework and basis of functional context. According to the theoretical basis of functional context, this paper uses illustrations to analyze and elaborate the differences between spoken and written discourse and the transformation mechanism between them.In this thesis, it clarifies the limitations of general view of understanding of spoken and written discourse. Based on the same event, there exists an internal relationship between spoken and written discourse - symbolic distance. This paper introduces Wignell and Gerot’s theory on functional context. According to the two linguists, in a certain process of language expression from spoken to written language, it can be generally divided into seven stages according to the different symbolic distance. Based on Halliday and Martin’s view on functional context and Gerot & Wignell’s ideas of seven stages from spoken to written language, this article has made two illustrations on Sun Weiming drunk driving case and the Obama health care to expound the relation of spoken and written discourse. This article reveals the evolution process from spoken to written discourse and the characteristics of each stage under the condition of functional context, thus providing a new train of thought to the study of spoken and written discourse.