ABSTRACT
Although they are the ‘lowest’ in the hierarchy, the phonic/graphic and prosodic levels of textual variables are as potentially significant as any other.
THE PHONIC/GRAPHIC LEVEL
Taking a text on the phonic/graphic level means looking at it as a sequence of sound-segments (or phonemes), or as a sequence of letters (or graphemes), or as both. Oral texts are normally only looked at in phonic terms. Written texts are always first encountered on the graphic level, but they may need to be looked at in phonic terms as well-in fact, from a translation point of view, they are more often considered phonically than graphically. Although phonemes and graphemes are different things, they are on the same level of textual variables. To help keep this in mind, we shall normally refer to the ‘phonic/graphic level’, whether the text in question is oral or written.
