The Nottingham Linguistic Circular, 1983, 12, 55-65 THE ROLE OF CONTEXT IN WRITTEN COMMUNICATION

A substantial body of thought about language supports the notion that written and spoken language differ most with respect to the contexts in which each is created and must function. Writers, unlike speakers, do not produce language in the company of a language receiver. And written texts, unlike spoken, must function apart from the context of their production. Unlike spoken discourse, which is said to be ‘context bound,’ written texts must be ‘autonomous’ and ‘explicit’ in order to function ‘acontextually.’ Indeed, current research distinguishes composition from writing a priori in precisely these terms. Bereiter and Scardamalia’s distinction is typical: Writing is use of the written medium and entails such skins as handwriting, spelling, and punctuation. People who could converse by pa notes back and forth to one another would be said to know how to write, If that were all they could do, however, they could not be said to know how to compose. . . . [Composition] involves producing . . . “autonomous text” . . ., a coherent piece of language that can accomplish its rhetorical purpose without depending on context or on interaction between sender and receiver. One does not, in principle, need to know how to write in order to compose. Compo can be done by dictation (pp. 3-4).