Semantics and Pragmatics

Semantics

Krauthammer tells us that the domain of semantics (more than phonology, morphology or syntax) illustrates the value of the concept of the SLIP. Krauthammer earlier defined SLIPs as grammatical features whose spoken/written ratio is greater than its written/spoken ratio. An inverse SLIP is a grammatical feature whose written/spoken ratio is greater than its spoken/written ratio. The area of semantics includes few true errors, but many semantic practices seem inappropriate for certain genres.

In terms of semantics, speaking and writing are different through colloquialisms, wordiness, redundancy, wrong word usage, amplifiers, emphatics, private verbs, conjuncts and archaic words (just to name a few).

Colloquialisms are typically idiomatic and superfluous. Wordiness creates redundancy. Filler words ("well," "anyway") are common for speech but frowned upon in formal writing. All this being said, there are some arguments in favor of forms of wordiness. Those arguments include reasons like rhetorical effect, cohesion and the use of wordiness by professional writers.

Spoken language practices can create potential problems for writers, because these types of issues are often not issues at all when we are listeners instead of readers. Krauthammer makes the interesting point that "the spoken lexicon is different from the written lexicon, though the amount of words we actually use may be close in number." In spoken language, wordiness could simply be the way one person speaks and the words they often use to get their point across, but when we write, we are expected to utilize a variety of words to express meaning and to do it in ways that sound more academic than conversational.

For these types of issues, I might work with students by trying to raise awareness about these words and proper times to use them rather than banning them altogether. In working on assignments, we can start with conversations if it's easier for the student, but try to reduce colloquialism/redundancy as each step of the writing process progress towards composition.

Pragmatics

In terms of pragmatics, speaking differs from writing, because speech typically addresses a familiar listener while writing addresses an unknown reader. When students have trouble sticking to the point of their essays, organizing thoughts or paragraphing, they are committing pragmatic SLIPs. The nature of conversations is much more tangential than we are asked to be when writing.

Also, readers need to make a certain degree of inferences in someone's writing. The speaking situation often permits a high level of inference that is hard to comprehend without the proper context. Vague pronoun usage occurs frequently as well.

Speaking is more expressive while writing is more informative, and when the two overlap, students sometimes run into non-error SLIPs. The informative function is an inverse SLIP, and writers should be aware of information structure - organizing information to facilitate communication.

Pragmatic SLIPs seem like a particularly challenging area to address with student writers, because to me, they seem not as easily identifiable as other errors. I think this is something that a tutor might be able to identify over time and after reading multiple writing samples from one student. When tutor and student have had a chance to understand the way both people work, it might be an opportunity to bring up some of these areas of interest as potential points to improve on or elevate the scholarly tone of the student's writing.