This kind of complex meaning expressed in written language soon becomes a fish out of wate

r. The complexity of spoken language is more like that of a dance; it is not static and dense but mobile and intricate. Much more meaning is expressed by grammar than by vocabulary. As a consequence, the sentence structure is highly complex, reaching degrees of complexity that are rarely attained in writing.

Writing, as recognized by most people, is genuinely formal and readily tangible, but speaking language has merits of its own. It is usually more economic in human face-to-face communication, and it allows the omission of many contextual or commonsensical information. This permits the oral language to be more simplistic and flexible than written language. What is difficult or even impossible to achieve in written language can sometimes be achieved in oral language in a convenient way that does not demand extra efforts. On the other hand, speech can be more difficult to manage in linguistic studies due to such factors that make it readily acceptable as a more economic way of expression.

It is in spontaneous, operational speech that the grammar is most fully exploited, such that its semantic frontiers expand and its potential for meaning is enhanced. This is why we have to look to spoken discourse for at least some of the evidence on which to base our theory of the language. Philosophers of language have tended to take over the folk belief, typical of a written culture, according to which spoken language is disorganized and featureless, while only writing shows a wealth of structure and purity of pattern. This is 'demonstrated' by transcriptions in which speech is reduced to writing and made to look like a dog' s dinner. Now speech was not meant to be written down, so it often looks silly, just as writing often sounds silly when it is read aloud; but the disorder and fragmentation are a feature of the way it is transcribed. Even a sympathetic transcription like that above cannot represent it adequately, because it shows none of the intonation or variation in tempo and loudness; but it does show the way it is organized grammatically, and so enable us to analyze it as a text.

The author compares spoken language to "a dance" to say that ______ .

A．it is changeable and flexible

B．it is rigid and simple

C．it is lively and pleasant

D．it is easy to learn