I’ve been thinking (on and off) about this question since last week. I was at lunch reading a book and talking to a co-worker when I noticed that out conversation was proceeding quite differently than the story in the book.
Why? So I began to try to compare spoken word to written. I learned that we do speak in sentences, generally, but I’m not sure whether or not we organize those sentences into paragraphs.
It probably makes a difference whether the talk is solo, as an address, or two-way, as in a conversation.
It’s obvious by now that grammar is not my strong point, so help me out.
Puh-leese.
Peace,
mangeorge
Both sentences and paragraphs are artificial constructs designed to make reading easier.
Of course we do. It has long been established that the universal organizational unit of a piece of writing is the paragraph.
Bolding mine. Huh? 
It’s going to depend on how well-organised your talk is. If you are chatting with a group of friends, you might not even speak in sentences. If you are giving a lecture in a classroom or a presentation at work, then you ought to be well-enough organised to be talking in paragraphs.
I do sometimes. It’s all about how prepared you are when you construct your arguments.
Casual conversation is just a back and forth, but if you’re discussing something at length, and have the opportunity to express a detailed spiel, I think you’d find it can be broken up into paragraphs quite clearly. Pauses to think, or waiting for reactions, would be places for paragraph breaks, for example.
This is a fairly silly question, I think. A paragraph is a visual organizing principle that tends to hold similar concepts together in a larger context and that signals to readers a slight shift in focus. Even if we speak in fairly coherent ways, and even if we stick pretty much to a topic, it’s more than a little reach to suggest we speak in paragraphs. No one can see anything when we’re talking. You might just as well ask if we speak with capital letters or punctuation. These are orthographic conventions. While one could argue that we know where these conventions might occur in speech, they are not there. Ever hear Victor Borge’s punctuated speech? I imagine Youtube has it. xo, C.
This probably isn’t a GQ kind of answer, but I think to an extent it depends on the individuals and the situation.
In business communication, I’d imagine the talk is more formal, more planned, and more structured. As GuanoLad says, informal chatting with friends would be a lot less structured.
I think it also depends on the people involved. I have a couple of friends who not only don’t talk in paragraphs, they have the ability to change chapters almost in the middle of a sentence. With them, it’s always an adventure to figure out what the hell they’re talking about. I used to think it was just me, till I’d finally say something if we were in a group, and everyone else was wondering the same thing but was afraid to ask ;x
That was a fairly rude answer, I think. When you learn to write, you learn that paragraphs organize your communication in way that goes far beyond the look of the text. A paragraph in expository writing should state a main idea as the topic sentence, then develop that idea. (Paragraphs in narrative writing may not follow that model because a story just flows along, it doesn’t necessarily make points. Paragraph breaks often then correspond to what might be a brief pause by a speaking narrator.) Writing meant to be heard and not read, such as a speech, is still organized into paragraphs, because it creates eloquence. Although the audience doesn’t see the organization laid out on a page, they certainly hear it.
Writing itself is an artificial construct, is it not? Writing was (and still is) invented to preserve and share profound thought. And, of course, to impose one’s will on others at a distance.
Language, on the other hand, grew out of experience. Early language was more democratic that writing. If cavemom is going to tell cavedad to bring back a nice fat T-Rex, you’re both going to need to know what that is.
That’s exactly what I’m asking. You have to call these groups of sentences something. Even our casual conversation is somewhat organized. If you were to tape record a conversation, then transcribe it, I think some would be surprised at how organized it is. there are even “rules” for talking.
I tend to be a very visual thinker. I’m a “gifted speller,” I’ve been told, and my theory as to why is that I’ve always thought in the written word; when I think a conscious thought, I see it written out in words in my mind’s eye. I often see sentences and paragraphs in much the same way. So, if this is a survey, put me down for yes; I frequently–usually–think in the same paragraphs that I would write in.
I think you might be surprised at how disorganized it can be. Cite (PDF file).
The notion that we speak in words or sentences or paragraphs is still based on our understanding of these notions as written entities. I would challenge anyone to listen to a totally foreign language and detect which sounds represent words, sentences, or paragraphs. The word “paragraph” itself comes from root words that refer to writing, not speaking. We don’t speak in paragraphs any more than we speak in capital letters when we speak loudly.
If we can speak in words, and we can speak in sentences, then we can speak in paragraphs.
I speak in granfalloons.
I can understand how one might orally distinguish between words by careful enunciation, and between sentences with pauses. How you you, by voice alone, indicate a break between “paragraphs”?
Again, I refer you to http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lF4qii8S3gw for an idea.
Paragraphs i can see, but sentences?
Sure, if the average person saw a transcript of what they were saying, they might be in for a shock, but in general I think spoken language pays fairly good attention to proper grammatical form, including sentences. We tend to have subject, object, verb, and all the rest of it.
Yeah, but not always. ( 
)
Extemporaneous speech can have very little to do with clear construction, yet still be understood. It’s very interesting to look at a transcript of a company’s quarterly earnings release conference; the presentation is very structured and clear, since it’s basically a script.
The moment you get into the question and answer part, though, and the company officers have to start speaking off the cuff, out comes the stuttering, sentence fragments, run-ons, incomplete thoughts, etc. When they take a moment to think, or speechify, there’s more structure to their answers, but back-and-forth dialogs can be hard to follow.
Honestly, I’ve stopped trying to ‘read’ transcripts. (Not really my job anyway, I check for formatting and spelling primarily.) It can be very difficult to comprehend written speech, especially if the speaker isn’t experienced with public speaking. There’s all kinds of twists and turns and false starts that make it difficult to follow along. Interestingly, if you listen to the audio, it suddenly becomes much clearer; all those speech cues that don’t translate to the written word suddenly come out and it’s comprehensible all of a sudden.