Speaking and writing in the time of Covid-19
Posted on: April 20, 2021
Written by Alan Cruttenden, Professor Emeritus of Phonetics, University of Manchester, and Fellow of the Phonetics Laboratory, University of Oxford. He is the author of Writing Systems and Phonetics.
Socialising
During the recent and ongoing pandemic, we have all had to adjust our lives. Mainly by staying home more. Social occasions have had to be curtailed, where we talked when visiting family or friends, or in restaurants, or in the bar after playing a sport, or over lunch in academic common rooms. Some of this talk could continue by video but only a limited part of it. We can make up part of this shortfall in social interaction by, for example, watching more television, but we can also read more. In many of our lives there has thus been a shift in the balance between less talking and more reading (and for some creative people by more writing as well). What is the connection between spoken and written langu