Commas and canaries: the role of punctuation in speech and writing

Looks like I somehow managed to skip an entry as I was adding my collection.

FORMAL REFERENCE:
Baron, Naomi S. “Commas and Canaries: The Role of Punctuation in Speech and Writing,” Language Sciences, Volume 23, Issue 1, January 2001, Pages 15-67, ISSN 0388-0001, DOI: 10.1016/S0388-0001(00)00027-9.

RELEVANT SECTIONS:

SUMMARY:

An absolutely mammoth article, but very clear, well-structured and well-argued. The purpose of the paper is to argue that, essentially, writing is bound to spoken language, but that over time, the association between writing and speech has expanded and contracted. In modern times, the link is becoming stronger, meaning (essentially) that writing has become more conversational, with grammar and punctuation becoming more flexible to convey informal spoken conversations.

Many parts of the article are applicable to tone, especially this definition of informal punctuation:

“Maynor reports similar levels of informality in punctuation. Among the common punctuation features she found in email messages were lack of capital letters, high use of exclamation points, frequent use of trailing dots and dashes at the ends of sentences, and use of parentheses to indicate conversational…”

From this, we can establish that punctuation can be used to determine levels of formality!

The author also makes the interesting point that punctuation helps us determine literacy through noticing the degree of the bond between the written word and intended message/spoken form. The statement is that punctuation is “increasingly rhetorical” and fluid.

“When we think of punctuating a text, we understandably see our tools — commas, semicolons, capitalization, and the like — as devices for adding clarity to the written word. Yet punctuation also assists us in monitoring the extent to which the literate community (or at least a significant portion of it) views speech and writing as independent or interdependent modes of language. … Punctuation is increasingly rhetorical in character, although the nature of this rhetorical function differs significantly from its earlier role in re-presenting written texts as oral productions.”

Finally, the author states that punctuation marks the cadences of informal speech more and more, and that it’s also used to quickly determine parts of messages in a quick-view fashion.

“In its stead, punctuation is increasingly marking the cadences of informal speech or, in the case of email and other contemporary language media, helping the eye make sense of messages that are intended to be viewed quickly.”

ASSESSMENT:
The journal is highly credible, as is the author, who is a professor of linguistics at American University. She was a Guggenheim and Fulbright Fellow, as well as president of the Semiotic Society of America—semiotics being of interest to this topic. Her Ph.D is from Stanford.

The literature review, also, is quite thorough. This is academically rigorous material.

REFLECTION:

This can form one backbone of my argument for the research: the connection between intent and the spoken version of our language changes over time, and so writing effectively has a lot to do with understanding the degree to which writing and punctuation adhere to strict grammatical standards or instead to they conveyance/reproduction of the speech.

Punctuation is becoming more informal and flexible, and this indicates that perhaps there is an opportunity for exploring new and old, accepted and frowned upon uses of punctuation. There is no more debatable punctuation than the exclamation point.

KEYWORDS AND LABELS:

punctuation, speech and writing, formality, conversation, chronology