“Speak” Is Formal and One-Way; “Talk” Is Conversational and Two-Way

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Micah from Texas.

Hi, Micah. How are you doing?

I’m good, thanks.

What would you like to talk with us about?

Well, I was thinking about the distinction between the words speak and talk.

They’re kind of interchangeable in meaning, and yet they’re somehow distinct.

We use them in different ways.

And I was thinking of that, especially in terms of, like,

how would you describe the distinction to the native speaker of a language

that only has one word where we have the two?

I was thinking like in Spanish, we have to have a blar and French to have a lait and that covers what we would use that covers both of those.

So how would you?

Boy, what a great question.

That’s a distinction.

Yeah.

Well, you’re exactly right.

They are very, very close in meaning.

And I would say that there’s a kind of subtle distinction between the two of them in that speak is a little bit more formal.

And maybe you find that as well.

You know, like you speak out against discrimination or you talk about the speaker of the house, not the talker of the house.

You wouldn’t say speak dirty to me, I guess.

I mean, unless you’re, I don’t know, hot chat for nerds or something.

And the other thing is that talk is often a word that connotes more of the idea of conversing and exchange rather than spoken to.

Bidirectional, it’s two-way, right?

Yeah.

Yeah.

Would you find that those are pretty much the distinctions that you see as well, Micah?

Yeah.

I think functionally the usage seems to differ in terms of what the formal setting is.

And talk is more of conversation and speak is more of needing to formally communicate something.

Also, maybe that’s based on something more fundamental,

Which is that talk is directly with someone,

Whereas speaking, you can speak without reference to a listener in particular.

Like you speak a language.

That doesn’t make reference to any particular person who is listening.

But you talk with someone.

Exactly.

Exactly.

Sort of like the difference between talk radio and speak radio.

Right.

If you want to get really wonky about this, Micah, I have a book title to recommend.

It is truly wonky.

But they have discussed in this book the words speak, talk, say, and tell.

And the book is called The Scene of Linguistic Action and Its Perspectivization by Speak, Talk, Say, and Tell.

I really like the movie better.

And it’s by Renee Dervin and others, and it’s published by John Benjamin.

But they have a really great, you can just flip to the conclusion, and they have a whole section of the conclusion, which compares the word speak and talk.

And some of what you guys have talked about here, it mentions in there, they really summarize the particular relationship between speak and talk by explaining that speak is what we use when we focus on the faculty, that is the ability, the thing that happens with the mouth.

And talk is what we use when we’re focusing on the performance.

It’s what we’re doing as a human being, if that makes sense.

The communication?

The communication.

And again, it’s the summary, so you’d have to read the actual section of the book to really get the full gist of it.

And it confirms what you guys just said, that speak is usually one way and talk is usually two way.

All right. Sounds good.

Well, I do like to nerd out every now and again, so that might be interesting.

Cool.

Okay, cool.

Micah, thanks so much for your call.

Really appreciate it.

Nice talking with you.

All right. Thank you.

Cheers.

All right. Bye-bye.

Bye.

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