COMPARING AND CONTRASTING TEXTS EXAM Flashcards
GAPCR
Genre Audience Purpose Context Register
GENRE
The kind of text you have in front of you e.g. advert
AUDIENCE
The person or people reading or hearing the text
PURPOSE
Describes why the text was produced or uttered e.g. to entertain, advise, persuade, inform etc
CONTEXT
Where, when and how a text is produced or received
REGISTER
The type or variety of language that the writer or speaker has chosen to use e.g. formal register, medical register etc. Register is a useful term which linguists generally break down into 3 elements: field, mode and manner.
FORMALITY
Describes the degree to which texts stick to certain conventions and how impersonal they are- the more spoken features a text has the more informal it will tend to be.
FIELD
Word’s used in a text which relate to the texts subject matter e.g. the field of medicine, the field of golf.
MODE
Texts can be in:
- spoken mode (e.g. a spontaneous conversation between friends)
- written mode (e.g. an english essay)
- mixed mode (e.g. a political speech)
- multimodal (a text that uses more than one mode; can have a combination of texts and images)
- electronic mode (e.g. a text message or tweet)
MANNER
Used to express how formal or informal a text is
LEXICAL FIELD
Identifies the main subject matter of a text e.g. food in a recipe or money in an article on economics
MIXED MODE
Features of speech or writing in the same text
MULTIMODAL
A text that uses more than one mode; often used for texts that have a combination of text and images
LEXIS
Words and their origins
SEMANTICS
Meanings of words, both on their own and in relation to other words in the text
HIGH FREQUENCY LEXIS
Words that appear often in everyday speech
LOW FREQUENCY LEXIS
Words that appear more rarely in everyday speech such as specialist terms from a field e.g. medicine
SYNONYM
A word that has a similar meaning to another word e.g. ‘malady’ and ‘illness’
ETYMOLOGY
The history of a word, including the language it came from and when it began to be regularly used
FRENCH/LATINATE LEXIS
Words derived from French or Latin, or both, that are more rarely used; they are often seen as having a higher status or being more specialist
POLYSEMIC
Describing a word with more than one meaning (e.g. ‘set’ can refer to ‘a set of cutlery’, ‘a tennis set’, what happens to jelly and so on)
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’)
COMPOUND WORD
A word formed from two other words e.g. dustbin
DENOTATION
The literal, generally accepted, dictionary definition of a word
CONNOTATION
The associated meanings we have with certain words, depending on the person hearing or reading the word, and on the context in which the word appears e.g. we may associate the colour red with anger
SEMANTIC FIELD
A pattern of words with similar meanings found across a text or texts e.g. bolt, trap, cage
LEXICAL FIELD VS SEMANTIC FIELD
These two terms are often used interchangeably. However, there is a distinction. A lexical field identifies the main subject matter of a text whereas a semantic field is a group of words that have similar meanings which may not be the main subject matter of the text
GRAMMAR
The buildings blocks of sentences (words, phrases, clauses etc) and how they go together to mean something to the reader or listener
SYNTAX
The order of elements in a clause or sentence (subject, verb, object etc)
HIERARCHY OF GRAMMAR
- Morpheme- the smallest unit of meaning e.g. bird
Word- made up of one or more morphemes e.g. birds - Phrase- made up of more than one word (usually) e.g. two birds
- Clause- a complete grammatical unit, that makes sense, made up of words and phrases e.g. ‘One turns to the other and he says…’
- Sentence- a complete, grammatical unit which makes sense and can stand on its own e.g. ‘One turns to the other and he says, “Can you smell something fishy?”’
- Discourse- longer than a single sentence, will have some kind of structure which relates to the type of text you are looking at e.g. ‘Two birds are sitting on a perch. One turns to the other and he says, “Can you smell something fishy?”’
NOUNS
Words which name people, places, things, ideas and concepts e.g. frog
ADJECTIVE
A word that modifies a noun e.g. the orange sky
VERB
Describes an action or a state e.g. running
ADVERB
A word that modifies a verb telling you how, where or when an action takes place; they can also modify adjectives, telling you how much e.g. I am really delighted
DETERMINERS
Words determining the number or status of the noun e.g. a, the, some, most
PRONOUNS
A word which stands in place of a noun or noun phrase (usually used to avoid repetition of the noun) e.g. I, you, she/he/it, we, they, me, him/her, us, them
PREPOSITIONS
A word which shows how elements in a sentence or clause relate to each other in time or space e.g. in, on, under, below, with, to, from, by, at
CONJUNCTIONS
A word that joins clauses together e.g. and, but, or, because, since, if
PROPER NOUNS
Words for specific people, places or things e.g. Swindon
CONCRETE NOUNS
Refer to things we touch or can experience physically e.g. snow or butter
ABSTRACT NOUNS
Refer to ideas and concepts that only exist in the mind e.g. disaster, happiness, seperation
POSSESSIVE DETERMINER
Determiner which shows who the noun belongs to e.g. my, your, his, her
ARTICLE
A determiner such as ‘a’ or ‘the’
DEFINITE ARTICLE
the
INDEFINITE ARTICLE
‘a’ or ‘an’
NOUN PHRASE
A group of words with a noun at the centre of it
COPULAR VERB
A verb that takes a complement e.g. seems, appears, are, was, is etc
- Our insects are important
COMPARATIVE ADJECTIVE
The form of an adjective that designates comparison between two things, generally made by adding a suffix -er to its base form e.g. faster
SUPERLATIVE ADJECTIVE
Expresses the highest level of the quality represented by the adjective, generally made by adding -est to its base form e.g. fastest
HEAD NOUN
The main noun at the centre of a noun phrase
MODIFIER
Any word that describes a noun (can be an adjective, adverb or noun)
PRE-MODIFIER
Modification that comes before the head noun or phrase/clause
POST-MODIFIER
Modification that comes after the head noun or phrase/clause
PRIMARY VERBS
be, have, do
MAIN VERB
The verb that carries the main meaning or process in a verb phrase e.g. running
AUXILIARY VERB
Assists the main verb; primary auxiliary verbs do, have and be denote changed of tense e.g. he was running
IRREGULAR VERBS
Change their form when changing tense e.g. swim/swam
REGULAR VERBS
Take a regular -ed inflection when changing from present to past tense e.g. walk/walked
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
MODAL AUXILIARY VERB
A sub-category of auxiliary verb that expresses degrees of possibility, probability, necessity or obligation
Can, could, may, might, shall, should, ought, must, will, would
EPISTEMIC MODAL VERBS
Modal verbs used relating to belief and knowledge e.g. can, could, may, might, ought, would
DEONTIC MODAL VERBS
Modal verbs used relating to obligation and permission e.g. might, shall, should, must, will, would
DYNAMIC VERBS
Describe something happening e.g. ‘the bee sipped the nectar’
STATIVE VERBS
Describe something that exists or is e.g. ‘she seems quiet’