The Relation Between Written and Spoken Language

or logical thought, it is not because they are incapable of such thought but because they do not deem it appropriate to talk in that way in such a situation. Thus the cognitive corrective shades into the ethnographic one. The ethnographic corrective holds that the principles and concerns of the ethnography of speaking should be applied to the study of writing Basso (9), reading McDermott (157), and literacy Szwed (223). Most fully developed and frequently cited is the work of Shirley Brice Heath (118-129) exploring the ways written materials are integrated into social interaction. Heath, like Graff (107), Ogbu (174), Pattison (184), and D. Smith (215), demonstrate that the dominant view of literacy as encoding and decoding skills belies its true nature and complexity, and that the acquisition of such skills does not ensure economic advancement as it is generally believed to do. Studies have examined the transformation of discourse between spoken and written modes in particular settings. For example, Cicourel (56, 57), Frankel (91), and Wallat & Tannen (253) compare talk exchanged in a medical setting with what is written in medical records, showing a complex and discontinuous relationship between them. Walker (252) shows that the verbatim transcript of a deposition, which becomes the basis for legal decision-making, cannot capture the meaning of oral testimony but is differentially interpreted depend­ ing upon the ad hoc transcription conventions variably employed by court