Table of Contents

Part I. Background Concepts and Issues: 1. Introduction: textual dimensions and relations; 2. Situations and functions; 3. Previous linguistic research on speech and writing; Part II. Methodology: 4. Methodological overview of the study; 5. Statistical analysis; Part III. Dimensions and Relations in English: 6. Textual dimensions in speech and writing; 7. Textual relations in speech and writing; 8. Extending the description: variations within genres; 9. Afterword: applying the model; Appendices.

Promotional Information

This widely acclaimed empirical study uses a factor analysis to identify six dimensions of variation on the basis of linguistic co-occurence patterns.

Reviews

'Biber's book is an important, highly innovative and stimulating work which marks a new departure in the study of language variation. Its multifeature/multifunctional approach succeeds where earlier studies have failed ... I regard Biber's book as a major achievement that is likely to become a classic in its field. It should be read by everyone interested in language variation.' B. Altenberg, Studia Linguistica ' ... Biber's study is far more than impressive number-crunching. As his detailed and explicit rationale make clear, this is a theoretically motivated research design ... Variation across speech and writing contributes fundamentally to research on oral and written language relationships as well as to that on discourse variables in general.' Roberta Vann, Studies in Second Language Acquisition 'By far the most extensive quantitative investigation of spoken-written language differences has been the recent stunning research of Biber ...' Wallace L. Chafe and Deborah Tannen, Annual Review of Anthropology