Page 137 - Literacy in the New Media Age

126 LITERACY IN THE NEW MEDIA AGE

2 from horizontal connection to vertical hierarchy;
3 from simple linking to (complex) embedding;
4 from relations which are lexically and intonationally expressed, to relations
which are syntactically expressed; and
5 from open syntactic structures to the fusion of closed lexical elements, as in
nominalisations producing a new quasi-‘word’.

Integration of clauses through syntactic fusions of various sorts, and the
hierarchical subordination of a number of clauses to other clauses, produces the
form of a full writing-like sentence.
To summarise, in speech the textual-syntactic framings of clauses are
relatively clear; each one is discreet. The material means for framing are the
voice, through pitch variation and through variations in energy; these become the
modal means of intonation, which ‘affords’ pitch prominence and pitch contours,
and rhythm, which ‘affords’ rhythmic structures, such as ‘feet’. In writing, the
textual-syntactic framings of sentences are clear. The material means are spacing,
use of graphic devices such as capitals, full stops and so on, which become the
modal means of layout and of punctuation. The conceptual, textual and social
orientation of the sentence is different to that of the clause. The material means of
framing are materially different: sound in temporal sequence, and graphic marks
disposed in linear-spatial order.
The move from most speech-like to most writing-like organisation is a gradual
and subtle one, involving changes in the material means of framing – the
disappearance of voice for instance – although there are recognisable stages on
this route. Writers tend to place themselves carefully at a particular point on this
path, anywhere between its starting point of a loose, chaining structure of clauses
and its endpoint of full syntactic integration. Each point has particular social
meanings for that writer around social affiliation, in her or his imagined relation
to their addressee(s): from full solidarity to full distance in power. If I imagine
myself to have solidarity with a group that constitutes its relations around the
open, informal meanings of speech, then that is my reference point. If I imagine
myself as having solidarity with a group that constitutes its relations around the
less open, formal meanings of writing, then that is my reference point. The move
derives its meaning from that starting point, its direction and extent.
At the endpoint of most writing-like forms, we find the resources of written
syntax used to produce new words. This is a move that marks the fullest degree
of syntactic integration of clauses, the point furthest from the open clausal
structures of speech. Here syntactic structures have been fused to become lexical
elements, new words. Punctuation in the usual sense appears only for some
sections of this route, or maybe it is better to say that it is visible for only a part
of the sequence. In other words, if punctuation is the overt marking of
conceptual/syntactic/textual ordering, then that ordering takes many different
forms, at all points along this route, and uses many semiotic resources, syntactic
integration being the one most in evidence at the fully writing-like end.