All Terminology Flashcards
Abstract nouns
refer to ideas and concepts that only exist in the mind
Accent
the distinct pronunciation patterns of a group of people
Accommodation
where a speaker adapts to another speaker’s accent, dialect or sociolect
Acronomy
abbreviation using the first letter of a group of words and pronounced as a single word. eg OPEC, NASA, RAM
Active voice
clause construction where the subject is also the actor (they are doing or have done something to somebody/something)
Adjacency pair
a pair of utterances in a conversation that go together (greeting and reply, question and answer, etc.)
Adjective
a word that modifies a noun (e.g. ‘the orange sky’
Adverb
a word that modifies a verb telling you how, where or when an action takes place; can also modify adjectives, telling you how much (e.g. ‘I am really delighted’)
Adverbial
words. phrases or clauses which act as adverbs and which
identify where, when and how when modifying the verb.
Affordance
linguistic and behavioural choices provided by technology
Agenda setting
where a speaker sets up the main topic of conversation
Analogical overextension
associating objects which are unrelated but which have one or more features in common (e.g. both being the same colour)
Anchored relationship
an online relationship where two participants know each other in the offline world
Article
a determiner such as ‘a’ or ‘the’
Asymmetrical power
an imbalance of power between people
Asynchronous:
unlike synchronous, there is a delay between utterance and response. Responses posted on a forum, which may occur
months or even years after the original post, are an example of discourse that is asynchronous
Audience
the person or people reading or hearing the text
Auxiliary verb
assists the main verb; primary auxiliary verbs do, have and be denote changes of tense
Avatar
an image used by a user that accompanies a username
Backchannelling
supportive terms such as ‘oh’ and ‘really’
Bald on-record
where a speaker is completely blunt and direct (e.g. ‘Sit down!’)
Bias
a form of prejudice in favour of or against an idea, person or group, expressed through language/images and so on. It can take obvious or implicit forms, or a mixture of the two, and
can arise from what is omitted as well as from what is stated or shown
Bidialectalism
a speaker’s ability to use two dialects of the same language
Categorical overextension
the most commonly occurring form of overextension in a child’s language, and relates to confusing a hypernym (broad category, e.g. fruit) with a hyponym (specific example)
Catenative
chain-like structure in a sentence (‘so we… and then… and then we…’)
Chaining
a speaker responds and sets up the other speaker’s next utterance in a chain that runs on past an adjacency pair
Child-directed speech (CDS)
speech patterns used by parents and carers when communicating with young children
Clause
a structural unit that contains at least one subject and one verb - it can include other features as well such as object, complement and adverbial.
Closer
spoken expressions which are designed to close
Codification
a process of standardizing a language
Cohesion
the many parts of a text that help to draw it together into a recognizable whole. (For example, the headline, picture and caption in a news article will all have words/images that link
together in terms of the meaning and subject matter of the article.)
Collocation
two or more words that are often found together in a group or phrase with a distinct meaning (e.g. ‘over the top’, ‘fish and chips’, ‘back to front’)
Comparative adjective
the form of an adjective that designates comparison between
two things, generally made by adding the suffix -er to its base
form (e.g. ‘this is a faster car’
Complement
a clause element that tells you more about the subject or the object
Complex sentence
has two or more clauses, one of which is a subordinate clause
Compound
a word formed from two other words (e.g. ‘dustbin’)
Compound sentence
has two or more clauses, usually joined to the main clause by the
conjunctions ‘and’ or ‘but’ and depends on the main clause to exist
Compound-complex sentence
a sentence that has three or more clauses, one of which will be a
subordinate clause and one of which will be a coordinate clause
Concrete nouns
refer to things we touch or can experience physically (e.g. snow,
butter)
Conditioning
the process by which humans (and animals) are taught or trained
to respond, and learn by positive reinforcement (e.g. praise from an adult) for whatever is deemed to be appropriate learning
within that specific context – for choosing the correct word or for
politeness for example
Conjunction
a word that joins clauses together
Connotation
the associated meanings we have with certain words, depending on the person reading or hearing the word, and on the context in which the word appears
Consonant clusters
groups of consonants (e.g. ‘str’ or ‘gl’) that demand more muscular
control than single consonants or vowels, so tend to appear later
in the baby’s utterances
Constraints
linguistic and behavioural restrictions provided by technology
Context
where, when and how a text is produced or received
Convergence
where a speaker moves towards another speaker’s accent, dialect
or sociolect
Cooing
sounds a baby will make like ‘goo’ and ‘ga-ga’, generally around the age of 6–8 weeks. It is believed that during this period the child is discovering their vocal chords.
Coordinate clause
a clause beginning with a coordinating conjunction and is
essentially a main clause joined to another main clause
Coordinating conjunctions
these signal the start of a coordinate clause
Copular verb
a verb that takes a complement (such as ‘seems’, ‘appears’ or a
form of the verb to be – ‘is’, ‘was’, ‘are’, etc.)
Corpus
a collection of written texts
Covert prestige
describes high social status through use of non-standard forms
Declarative
a statement – a type of sentence which gives information and where the subject typically comes in front of the verb (‘Two fish are in a tank.’)
Definite article
‘the’
Deixis
terms that point towards something and place the words in context
Denotation
the literal, generally accepted, dictionary definition of a word
Determiner
words determining the number or status of the noun
Diachronic change
refers to the study of historical language occurring over a period
Dialect
a non-standard variety of a language, including lexis and grammar, particular to a region
Digital technology
the technique of storing, transmitting and processing data used
for mobile phones and computers among others
Direct object
the part of the clause that is directly acted upon by the subject
Discourse
describes the structure of any text (or segment of text) that is longer than a single sentence
Discourse marker
marks a change in direction in an extended piece of written or spoken text (e.g. ‘nevertheless’, ‘to sum up’)
Discourse structure
the way a text is structured, according to the typical features of
the text’s genre
Dismissal formula
a device used to close a conversation
Dispreferred response
a response that is unexpected, although not necessarily rude
if phrased appropriately (e.g.: Speaker A: Dinner’s ready at 7. / Speaker B: Not dinner, I’ve only just had breakfast!)
Divergence
where a speaker actively distances himself/herself from another speaker by accentuating their own accent or dialect
Downward convergence
making your accent or lexis more informal
Empirical approach
gaining knowledge by direct and indirect observation or experience
Estuary English
a dialect of English that is perceived to have spread outwards from London along the South East of England. It has features of Received Pronunciation and London English
Etymology
the history of a word, including the language it came from, if appropriate, and when it began to be regularly used
Exophoric reference
a reference to something, often cultural, beyond the text
Extra-linguistic variables
factors that affect the way you speak (e.g. age, where you live, etc.)
Feral children
children who are raised without human intervention (‘feral’ means existing in a natural/wild state, as opposed to domesticated). There are examples of children having been raised by animals such as dogs.
Field
words used in a text which relate to the text’s subject matter (e.g. the field of medicine; the field of golf, etc.)
Flaming
making an offensive and insulting post in a chatroom
Flouts a maxim
where someone obviously does not obey the conversational maxims that have been suggested by Grice.
Formality
describes the degree to which texts stick to certain conventions
and to how impersonal they are. The more spoken features a text
has the more informal it will tend to be.
Framing
controlling the agenda of a conversation (its direction and subject); or making utterances that encourage a child to fill in the blanks
French/Latinate lexis
words derived from French or Latin, or both that are more rarely used; often seen as having a higher status and/or being more specialist
Genre
the kind of text you have in front of you (advert, speech, song)
Gestural
a way of communicating that relates to movement and/or body language, either instead of words or (as would be likely in a multimodal media text) in addition to them
Glottal stops
the building blocks of sentences (words, phrases, clauses, etc.) and how they go together to mean something to the reader or listener
Grammarian
a scholar of grammar
Grapheme–phoneme relationship
the correspondence between the written shape of a letter and its sound
Head noun
the main noun at the centre of a noun phrase
High-frequency lexis
words that appear often in everyday speech
Holophrase
a single word representing a more complex thought generally created by a child. For example, the word ‘juice’ may be used to signify ‘I want some juice’ – in this context, ‘juice’ would be a holophrase. ‘Up’ is another commonly used holophrase, usually signifying ‘please lift me up’ or ‘I want to get up’
Hospitality token
a polite utterance relating to context designed to put speakers at their ease
Hyperlink
an electronic link embedded in a text that takes the reader to another website
Hypernyms
categories (e.g. pets, vehicles and sweets) are all hypernyms
Hyponyms
examples within categories (e.g. pony, truck and sherbet lemons) are all hyponyms
Idiom
a form of common non-literal expression (e.g. ‘I was dead on my feet”)
Idiolect
your own individual way of speaking
Illocutionary act
implying something in what we say
Imperative
a command – a type of sentence where the subject is usually left out and the verb is in its bare form (‘Give the hat to me.’)
Indefinite article
‘a’ or ‘an’
Indirect object
receives the action
Inflection
an ending such as -ed, -s or -ing added to change a tense or number, or in the case of nouns to make a plural
Infographic
(also micro infographic) a graphical format which can also be animated to display information (e.g. in mini blogs)
Initialism
abbreviation using the first letter of a group of words and pronounced separately. eg FBI, CIA, DVD
