Kenneth G. Wilson (1923–). The Columbia Guide to Standard American English. 1993.
PLANNED LEVEL
is the kind of speech we use to address fair-sized groups of people—a classroomful, for example. Speech in such situations receives less feedback than does Impromptu, and it inevitably underscores the literal and figurative distance between speaker and hearers. It is called planned (Gleason [1965] called it “deliberative”) because it is more prearranged and varied than the speech of lower levels: its syntax is more varied, its vocabulary is more extensive, and anacoluthon frequently occurs in it, as does the vocalized pause, when the speaker tests and alters what he or she is saying in order to improve it. Not every speaker of English is comfortable or even competent at the planned level; it has to be learned and practiced. Many people encounter so few situations in which they must face a roomful of listeners that they never learn to use it well. When schoolteachers have their pupils address the entire class, they are trying to provide some of the experience necessary to master planned speech. This level demands planning ahead of utterance, monitoring rather more complex syntactic and other grammatical structures, finding synonyms, and anticipating if possible what the listeners are hearing and understanding. It tends to be more self-conscious than Impromptu speech, but less so than Oratorical. See LEVELS OF USAGE.
