This study of oral and written speech in English examines media as
processing varieties and looks at their interaction with genre. To
date, the study of orality and literacy in English has been
unsystematic; findings in turn have been inconsistent and
contradictory.

In this treatment, clear methodological parameters have been set up
to ensure accurate and significant findings. All texts used are
parallel texts arising out of the same or similar context of situation.
With this methodology, ideational meaning is clearly distinguished from
textual meaning. Moreover, media and genre, two aspects of textual
meaning, are distinguished so that representative features of each are
isolated. Lastly, all texts are naturally occurring across
representative genres. With such distinctions and criteria in place,
the important interaction of media with genre is examined, while the
character of oral and written speech as processing varieties is
revealed.

Above all, this study demonstrates the non-neutrality of oral and
written speech as language varieties. Especially important is the
resultative/causative split between them in the representation of
events. Written speech is not oral speech 'written down' as
Bloomfield and de Saussure originally claimed, but a very different
system of syntactic and discourse organization which influences how we
represent and see the world. Both varieties strongly influence the
semantic content and generic function of any text they convey
indicating very significant interplay of semantic variables in the
processing of language.

Processing Varieties in English contributes to a wide range
of linguistic areas and topics, including discourse analysis,
socio-psycholinguistics, and cognitive science.