Drawing on research studies in (socio)linguistics, discourse analysis, and literacy, this paper provides a synthesis of findings about lexical and syntactico-semantic differences between spokken and written language, focusing on empirical research on the English language since the 1920s. The major theoretical and methodological aproaches used in comparative studies of spoken and written language are outlined and their advantages and shortcomings are critically examined. The question of how speech and writing relate to prototypical forms of language and meaning is reexamined in the light of the findings. To avoid basing generalizations about differences between speech and writing uniquely on English, suggestions for future comparative research are offered and discussed.

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The relationships among schooling, language, and knowledge-especially through the systematic comparison of the organization, form, function, and acquisition of institutionalized knowledge-in literate and nonliterate societies has hardly been examined. This essay attempts such an analysis, focusing on knowledge acquired through the use of language, because language is the major medium for imparting knowledge in schools and for social reproduction in the larger society, because knowledge acquired through the use of language is readily identifiable and testable, and because language is one of the major terms of the present analysis. The proposed elastic concept of schooling views schooling as a cover term for institutionalized learning in any society, literate or nonliterate. It thus questions the analytical adequacy of the received, Euro-American, concept of schooling as a unitary phenomenon based on the dual assumption that the school specializes in the transmission of literate knowledge and that literacy education is coterminous with formal education.The logical corollary to this literacy-based concept of schooling, an oversimplified view of education in nonliterate societies, denies that schooling and This essay developed out of an earlier one of the same title prepared for an international symposium on the cognitive consequences of literacy, organized by Pierre Darsen in 1986. As more and more data were collected and analyzed, the emergent findings and ideas were presented to various audiences at the University of Wisconsin at Parkside (1987