Spoken and Written Language

Abstract

This chapter is dedicated to the relationship between spoken and written Galician, which will be discussed in two different parts: the first shall refer to historical aspects, and the second shall concentrate on the current differences and mutual influences between orality and writing. The chapter departs from some theoretical notions that allow for a clear distinction as to the medial difference between the spoken and the written code and the conceptual difference between what is generally associated with both: what Koch and Oesterreicher (2001) call the “language of immediacy” and the “language of distance”. The diachronic part will first discuss the emergence of a written variety in medieval Galician and then trace the basic evolution of the Galician
language with regards to the tension between oral and written communication. It will be shown how the history of modern written Galician (from the first texts of the so-called “pre-Rexurdimento” onwards) is marked by a process of “diaphasic differentiation” (Kabatek 1997a): here, the selection of elements considered to be adequate for the written language and the “sorting out” of others as well as the stylistic differentiation and widening of a certain range of written varieties will be focused. Some remarks on the orthographic debates will open the second part. The remainder of the text will be dedicated to the relationship between the contemporary written and spoken standards and the respective non-standard varieties.