ABSTRACT
This chapter aims to establish that spoken language does indeed have structural patterns (a grammar) and provides a background into why and how people (including many linguistics researchers) have come to show a lack of appreciation or understanding for how language is organized in this medium. The overall conclusion is that the grammar of written language is neither better (nor worse) than that of spoken language, it is simply that the two types of language exhibit properties which suit the purpose of their users. Some patterns are only found in written language and some only in spoken language, and a great majority are found with varying frequencies in both.
