Orality versus Literacy-The linguistic Development of the Diary from the 16/17th to the 20th century

The present paper studies the development of diary texts from the 16/17^th century and the 20^th century with regard to their development towards a rather oral or literate character. This research is based upon Biber’s (1988, 1992) findings. Using his analytical framework, five texts of each time span are classified, regarding three dimensions, of which each illustrates a possible division of rather speech- or written-like texts.