Same grammar or different grammar? Contrasting approaches to the grammar of spoken English discourse

This chapter describes the two approach namely: &s;same grammar&s; and &s;different grammar&s;, together with the third &s;in-between" model of the Nottingham School. It explains the study of English grammar; a justifiable tendency has been to propose that a completely fresh look at grammar is needed when one turns to examine the grammatical characteristics of speech. The chapter explores that the corpus-oriented description of spoken grammar &s;in its own terms&s;, as by David Brazil and the Nottingham School, is a valuable corrective to the tradition whereby the grammar of spoken discourse is described in terms of a framework informed primarily by written language use. It discusses that the analysis of a general corpus representative of spoken and written language is a corrective to the description of spoken grammar &s;in its own terms&s;: the general corpus enables us to provide a contrastive &s;frequency map&s; of the language, showing where spoken grammar differs significantly from written grammar.