Features of Spoken Language

There are many aspects of spoken language that I have used in my home. When I am speaking to a person with a higher position is society, I will greatly vary my speech in terms of my vocabulary and even reduce or abolish the use of less formal features such as fillers and acronyms. However whilst I am conversing with a person of my age or a similar position in society, I will greatly use informal features such as tag questions and ellipsis. In my informal conversation with the plumber, I have used an array of spoken language features such as acronyms, hedge words and even ellipsis however on the other hand, whilst conversing with my father, I have employed covert prestige so that he understands me better. In addition I believe that spoken language is different from written language because most written language is intended to be read by someone who is separated from the writer in space and time. Therefore to communicate successfully, it has to be a lot more explicit than spoken language used in a face to face conversation. Although some written genres such as texts and e-mails are very similar to spoken language, in general written language is more dense in the sense that bigger words are used in smaller spaces and it also uses more subordinate clauses and has less redundancy words like ''sort of'', ''like'', ''you know'', ''yeah?'' which are dominantly found in spoken language. Spoken language tends to be full of repetitions, incomplete sentences, corrections and interruptions, with the exception of formal speeches etc. Also, Writers receive no immediate feedback from their readers, except in computer-based communication. Therefore they cannot rely on context to clarify things so there is more need to explain things clearly and unambiguously than in speech, except in written correspondence between people who know one another well. On the other hand, speech is usually a dynamic interaction between two or more people. Context and shared knowledge play a major role,