The fundamental distinction between the medial problem of 'phonic' vs. 'graphic' realisation of discourses, on the one hand, and the conceptional problem of their 'spoken = informal' vs. 'written = formal' character (denominated 'communicative immediacy' vs. 'distance' in the following) not only constitutes a sound theoretical basis for investigation into orality and literacy, but also leads to a better understanding of a wide range of synchronic and diachronic phenomena concerning language. The medial-conceptional distinction accounts, for example, for important problems on the level of discourse typology, comprising, for instance, 'elaborated' types of primary orality, communicative dynamics in medieval societies, modern types of electronic communication (e-mail, SMS message, chat), etc. Once it is to clearly tell the medial from the conceptional aspect of language, it is, of course, legitimate to observe the most interesting interactions between these two. The idea of a conceptional continuum between communicative 'immediacy' and 'distance' constitutes also an important contribution to variational linguistics and sociolinguistics. It can be shown that this continuum is not only one dimension of linguistic variation, but the central principle underlying the organisation of variational spaces (within one language) and of communicative spaces (involving more than one language). Moreover, the medial-conceptional distinction reveals to be of paramount importance to a modern conception of language history as observing the transformation of whole variational spaces. The questions that can be dealt with here comprise the way to literacy, processes of elaboration, Überdachung, standardization, codification, reorganization of variational spaces, etc. as well as several types of language change. Finally, a clear conceptualization of medial and conceptional problems is indispensable for a sound methodology in corpus linguistics.Brought to you by | University of Georgia Libraries Authenticated Download Date | 5/28/15 2:46 PM [...] il ne faut pas oublier que l'opposition entre une langue littéraire traditionnelle et le parler quotidien ne se confond nullement avec celle, beaucoup plus tranchée, qui existe entre forme primaire parlée et forme secondaire graphique: la forme .parlée' est-ce que connaît une expression graphique aussi bien qu'orale, et le passé simple ils dévorèrent se prononce aussi bien qu'il s'écrit (1960, 160). Was Martinet -terminologisch noch halbherzig -herauszustellen versucht, ist letztlich nichts anderes als die von Tullio de Mauro vorgeschlagene doppelte Begriffsopposition zwischen ,gesprochen/geschrieben' und .informal/formal' (wie man sie später dann beispielsweise auch bei Wallace L. Chafe 1982, 36 und passim, antrifft): In realtà, tanto l'uso scritto quanto il parlato possono oscillare tra uso formale e uso informale della lingua: queste due nozioni, meno note e adoperate delle nozioni di .lingua scritta' e .lingua parlata', meritano forse una più attenta considerazione (De Mauro 1970,176).Man ver...
