Spoken and written expression: An experimental analysis.

Horowitz, Milton W.; Newman, John B.

doi:10.1037/h0048589

Cited by 81 publications

(50 citation statements)

References 4 publications

(3 reference statements)

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…Rather than saying whatever comes to mind, or speaking off the cuff, people can take the time to formulate what to say or edit their communication until it is polished (Chafe and Danielewicz 1987;Redeker 1984;Walther 2007Walther , 2011. Horowitz and Newman (1964), for example, found that written communication generated less repetition (of words, as measured by type-token ratio, as well as phrases and whole parts of sentences), more ideas per word, and fewer peripheral or irrelevant ideas (also see Horowitz and Berkowitz 1967). Rettie (2009Rettie ( , 1143 examined text messages and argued that "its asynchrony provides thinking time, enabling interactants to choose their words carefully rather than responding impetuously."…”

Section: The Current Researchmentioning

confidence: 97%

Communication Channels and Word of Mouth: How the Medium Shapes the Message

2013

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Consumers share word of mouth face to face, over social media, and through a host of other communication channels. But do these channels affect what people talk about and, if so, how? Laboratory experiments, as well as analysis of almost 20,000 everyday conversations, demonstrate that communicating via oral versus written communication affects the products and brands consumers discuss. Compared to oral communication, written communication leads people to mention more interesting products and brands. Further, this effect is driven by communication asynchrony and self-enhancement concerns. Written communication gives people more time to construct and refine what to say, and self-enhancement motives lead people to use this opportunity to mention more interesting things. These findings shed light on how communication channels shape interpersonal communication and the psychological drivers of word of mouth more broadly.C onsumers communicate through a variety of different channels. They talk face to face, chat over the phone, and text back and forth. Further, the advent of social media has led more and more people to communicate with others via Facebook, Twitter, blogs, and other online channels.But while it is clear that people communicate frequently with others, and that such communication has important implications for consumer behavior, less is known about how the medium might shape the message. Does the particular channel consumers communicate through affect what they talk about and share, and if so, how?

show abstract

Section: The Current Researchmentioning

confidence: 97%

Communication Channels and Word of Mouth: How the Medium Shapes the Message

2013

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Various aspects of difference have been considered: the levels of abstraction in spoken and written language (de Vito, 1967); the frequency with which certain types of linguistic structures appear in oral and written discourse (Blankenship, 1962;Golub, 1969); differing modes of expression at the ideational, structural, and psychological levels (Horowitz and Newman, 1964); and developmental aspects of oral and written language (Harrell, 1957).…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

A Comparison of Oral and Written Code Elaboration

Poole

Field

1976

Lang Speech

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Data obtained from 80 first year university students of middle-class and working-class origin were used to explore aspects of the relationships between oral and written language systems. Subjects participated in a group testing situation (written) and an individual interview (oral). The analysis, based on code elaboration theory, compared oral and written language protocols along the dimensions of structural complexity, language elaboration, verb complexity and personal reference. Results indicate that, in relation to oral systems, written systems were more complex in structure; revealed more adjectival but less adverbial elaboration; showed more complex verb structures; but contained fewer indices of personal reference. The Bernstein initiated model of verbal code elaboration and code restriction is well established in sociolinguistic research literature. Studies emanating from England ) have tended to support the Bernstein thesis of social class differences in language utilization especially in manipulating the syntactic and semantic components of language which facilitate precision, flexibility, and complexity in verbal encoding. such differences have been noted in both oral (Bernstein). However, there has been little interest shown to date in comparing elaborated or restricted codes in oral and written language samples for the same subjects, whether of middle-class or working-class origin.Differences in spoken and written language have long been studied from the time of Aristotle (&dquo;the style of written prose is not that of spoken oratory&dquo;) to the present day (Golub, 1969). Various aspects of difference have been considered: the levels of abstraction in spoken and written language (de Vito, 1967); the frequency with which certain types of linguistic structures appear in oral and written discourse (Blankenship, 1962;Golub, 1969); differing modes of expression at the ideational, structural, and psychological levels (Horowitz and Newman, 1964); and developmental aspects of oral and written language (Harrell, 1957).The purpose of the present study was to explore a particular aspect of this more complex and general problem of differences, similarities, and inter-relationships of spoken and written language systems. By comparing oral and written language in terms

show abstract

“…Subjects in the self-limited condition used only 1/3 as many unique words as did those in the unlimited condition . This is not surprising because the number of unique words, or size of vocabulary , is a function of the total number of words used (Horowitz & Newman , 1964) .…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Self-Limited and Unlimited Word Usage during Problem Solving in Two Telecommunication Modes

Ford

1977

Proceedings of the Human Factors Society Annual Meeting

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Subjects using oral modes of communication generate far more verbiage than do subjects using written (handwritten or typewritten) modes to solve the same problems. This study was designed to provide support for one of two alternative hypotheses that have been proposed to account for this disparity: (1) written modes produce a hard copy of interchanges that can be referred to at any time, thereby compensating for the limitations of short-term memory and reducing the need to repeat information, and (2) talking is so much easier than handwriting or typewriting that there is no incentive to be concise in oral modes. Two-person teams of subjects solved problems cooperatively using either a voice or a teletypewriter mode of communication. Half the teams were given a monetary incentive to use as few words as possible. No such request was made of the control teams. The main finding was that subjects in the brevity condition, regardless of the communication mode, greatly reduced verbiage with no increase in time or decrease in accuracy. Moreover, subjects in the brevity-voice condition used even fewer words than did subjects in the control-teletypewriter condition. These results, then, lend weight to the second hypothesis.

show abstract

Spoken and written expression: An experimental analysis.

Cited by 81 publications

References 4 publications

Communication Channels and Word of Mouth: How the Medium Shapes the Message

Communication Channels and Word of Mouth: How the Medium Shapes the Message

A Comparison of Oral and Written Code Elaboration

Self-Limited and Unlimited Word Usage during Problem Solving in Two Telecommunication Modes

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About