Vocabularies of Oral and Graphic Language

Abstract

Forty subjects constructed spontaneous stories using card two of the TAT as a reference. Half of the subjects verbalized their stories and recorded themselves on tape (spoken vocabulary) and half wrote their stories (written vocabulary). There were no time limits and all responses were made in private. The spoken and written vocabularies were similar in general word frequency characteristics and in their proportionate occurrence of personal pronouns. They differed in proportionate occurrence of nouns and relative simplicity. A comparison of these results to previous findings regarding the differences between conversational and printed vocabularies suggested that variations in noun usage and relative simplicity are a function of the oral and graphic language modes. Pronoun usage, however, did not appear to vary simply as a function of oral and written language forms. Rather, a relatively high occurrence of pronouns seems to be peculiar to conversation per se as a special form of oral language.

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