The inclusiveness of Greek definitions of culture was reflected in the organisation of sporting events and technology exhibitions, alongside the artistic programme of the event.
Written and Spoken Argumentation
I have mentioned that there may be cultural reasons for difficulties in paragraph coherence. Equally important are the differences between the written and the spoken. Earlier parts of this course focused on their implications for style and syntax. Let us re-examine an example to identify the differences between written and spoken argumentation.
It is very important to realize that the way in which people use language when they are speaking is quite different from the way in which they use language when they are writing. If you want to have the ability to communicate with effectiveness, you really should try to bear in mind one of the most significant differences between the written and the spoken forms of language, that is the fact that the levels of redundancy which are expected in written language and those expected in spoken language are not the same. As a general rule we can say that the level of redundancy in speech is noticeably very much higher than the level of redundancy in writing.
Here, Sentence 1 states the basic fact: the difference between the written and spoken. Sentence 2 repeats this, then gives the most important example: the level of redundancy. Sentence 3 finally clarifies the difference between redundancy levels. This is typical of spoken argumentation which is essentially incremental. In other words speech usually starts at the beginning and explains how an end is reached. This is a step by step approach, often indeed three steps forward and then two steps back.
Such argumentation is analogous to the nursery rhyme, The House that Jack Built:
This is the house that Jack built.
This is the malt that lay in the house that Jack built.
This is the rat that ate the malt that lay in the house that Jack built.
This is the cat that ate the malt that lay in the house that Jack built.
When speaking it would be impossible, or at least incomprehensible, to start at the end:
This is the cock that crowed in the morn that woke the priest all shaven and shorn that married the man all tattered and torn to the maiden all forlorn that milked the cow with the crumpled horn that tossed the dog that worried the cat that killed the rat that ate the malt that lay in the house that Jack built.
Even if the speaker could hold all these ideas in his mind and produce the sentence, the listener would not have a chance of understanding or remembering all the details because he would not know the context until the very end. As we saw, a similar lack of a context or topic sentence was the problem with the first paragraph about Thessaloniki.
In contrast, written argumentation is teleological. It starts with the end or more frequently and fruitfully several ends and then develops the relationship between them. Thus a paragraph may begin with this end:
Effective communication depends on the awareness that higher levels of redundancy are expected in speech than in writing.
If this was spoken, the audience would have great difficulty decoding such a complex utterance without the step by step preamble. As this is not a course on public speaking, we must concentrate on where the paragraph might go next.
Give yourself a couple of minutes to consider how a paragraph may develop or at least how the next sentence might start, then click here.
Course Contents / Academic Editing Service
© 2002 Martin Paterson