| Spoken Language | Written Language |
| Real time, situation-bound, F2F | Displaced, not real time, asynchronous |
| Temporary, not recoverable | Permanent, reproducible, transmissable |
| Interactive | One-to-many |
| Face, body, voice | Punctuation, font, layout |
| Casual, repetition and repair | Concentrated, organized, dense, “correct” |
Some dates (for more detail, see this Recording Technology History web site):
- 1877: Edison’s phonograph cylinder, first practical recording and reproducing device for sound
- 1889: First gramophone disks
- 1920: Commercial voice radio
- 1920s: Electrical recording (radio)
- 1940s: First vinyl disks
- 1940s: First commercially available tape recorders, Ampex
- 1920s: First television, but first commercial television network in U.S. not until 1948
- 1982: Digital sound recording (first CDs), which resulted in a merger of sound recordings and computers.
Covergence: We are seeing a fusion of written and spoken language.
- Internet still largely text-based, but may well change
- Sound recording (telephone, radio, television and video) have altered the distinction between spoken and written language
- Spoken language now recoverable, repeatable, transmissionable over long distances.
- Radio and television one-to-many
- Mirror image: email, chat, blogs, SMS have given written discourse informality associated with speech
- Printed material less prestigious, more ephemeral
- Changing the language: Netspeak (Is email ruining the language? Are blogs? Is texting?)
