Talspråk i skrift : om muntlighetens utveckling i svensk sakprosa 1800-1997

Sammanfattning: This dissertation is based on three questions:What is orality, how has orality developed during the last 200 years in Swedish non-fiction, and what is the cause of this development? Orality is treated here as the linguistic consequence of a certain communicative function. The basis is the different conditions of speech and writing and the different styles and features that are determined by these conditions. By means of factor analysis it is possible to obtain co-occurrence patterns, factors, of linguistic features. The patterns are functionally determined, and therefore the factors can be interpreted in terms of textual functions, dimensions. By computation of factor scores an exact measure of the different dimensions of each text is obtained, and texts can therefore easily and exactly be compared. 37 Swedish linguistic features were chosen for the analysis in this dissertation. Four genres are included: cultural articles, parliamentary records, travel books and news articles. For statistical purposes transcriptions of spontaneous speech were also included. Four functionally interpretable factors were obtained and labelled as follows: interactive vs informative (1), expository vs descriptive (2), elaborated vs concise (3), and factual vs animated (4). Dimension 1 is of great importance to the difference between speech and writing, but of surprisingly little importance to the difference between the written genres. From the first half of the 19th century all genres have a development towards a more expository style (2). All genres have undergone a substantial change towards a concise style (3), i.e. a more oral style. This is the dimension that reflects the statement about the increased orality in written language during the 20th century. The clearest pattern of (4) is the increase of animated style in the last 50 years, which also means increased orality. During the 20th century the genres have a higher degree of parallelism with regard to direction of change, than during the 19th century. Orality is not one coherent phenomenom. There are tendencies of development, but they cannot be summarized in a development of orality. The split picture during the first part of the 19th is probably due to the new written culture, which caused uncertainty with regard to text norms. During the 20th century, when the genres had been established, intelligibility, clarity and simplicity became more important according as more and more people participated in written communication.