Abstract
Drawing of Saussurian concepts of langue and parole, and the Chomskyan concepts of competence and performance, we can establish theoretical grounds fot the concepts of orality and literacy. Both parole and performance represent an actual, individual an personal realization of langue or competence, and such external realization is manifested in two possible forms, distinct in they nature and origin.
The acoustic, spoken variety is understood to be the oral, and the visual variety is labelled as the written.