ABSTRACT
Psychology.—The oral modality is one of the modalities of language, the other being writing (→LANGUAGE, READING, WRITING). Strictly speaking, the oral modality ensures speech production by means of the articulatory system, and speech reception by means of the auditory system (→PERCEPTION); the written modality involves the use of a graphemic representation system (→REPRESENTATION). The oral mode is often associated with informal communication, and the written mode, with formal communication (→COMMUNICATION). Although the opposition between speaking and writing is correlated with different levels or types of discourse (→DISCOURSE), the correlation is not absolute (for example, a formal written discourse can be presented orally).
