A scale of conceptual orality and literacy

Koch and Oesterreicher’s model of ‘Nähe und Distanz’ (‘Nähe’ = immediacy, conceptual orality; ‘Distanz’ = distance, conceptual literacy) is widely used in German linguistics. However, there is no statistical foundation for its use in corpus-linguistic analyses. Theoretically, it is proposed that written texts can be assessed on a scale of conceptual orality and literacy based on linguistic features. Evaluating established features reveals that conceptual orality and literacy must be distinguished in order to rank texts in a nuanced manner. The present approach is theory-guided but not confirmatory and establishes such a scale, emphasizing a statistical implementation that seeks to reflect core theoretical assumptions in practical terms. In comparison with Biber (1988) , this leads to a different and more narrowly framed set of possible applications: not the investigation of conceptual orality and literacy themselves, but rather supportive or controlling functions in corpus compilation and analysis, as demonstrated using the ‘Deutsches Textarchiv’.