Exam Definitions 20171114 Flashcards
Definition
Standardisation
The compilation of a systematic account of a language by providing dictionaries, style guides and grammars
Definition
Linguistic relativism
The idea that language influences our thinking
Definition
Linguistic determinism
The claim that language determines how we perceive and organise the world
Definition
Lingua Franca
A common language used between speakers of different linguistic backgrounds
Definition
Function
The role that language plays in communication or in particular social situations
Definition
Field
The topic discussed by the text and the nature of the activity performed
Definition
Prosodic features
Loudness, pitch, tempo and speech rhythm
Definition
Mode
The medium of communication
Definition
Language maintenance
The situation in which speakers continue to use their native language from generation to generation even though a new more powerful language is available to them
Definition
Language shift
When speakers abandon one language in favour of another
Definition
Language reclamation
The attempt to halt or reverse the decline of a language or to revive (or revitalize) an extinct one
Incentives for people to learn English as an additional language
5 Points
- Knowledge is increasingly created and disseminated in English
- English is the medium for education in very many countries across the globe.
- English is the language of economic development.
- Businesses have adopted English as the global lingua france.
- There is a perception that English will provide access to jobs.
Define
ethnolect
A variety that identifies its speakers by their ethnicity and usually influenced by their L1 (first language).
Identify six countries, which belong to Kachru’s Inner Circle of World Englishes.
- United Kingdom
- United States of America
- Ireland
- New Zealand
- Australia
- Canada
What are two important differences between a pidgin and a creole?
Any 2 reasonable differences
- Creoles are spoken as a mother tongue, are codified and standardised, are more complex, have a wider range of functions.
- Pidgins aren’t anybody’s first language, are short-lived typically, make do with limited vocabularies, used in limited contexts, lack the stylistic variation of a first language, require far less complex and flexible syntactic structures.
Describe the process of creolisation
Any one of the following:
- When children are brought up speaking the pidgin as their first language, it becomes a creole.
- A creole is a nativized pidgin.
- a historical process whereby a creole or creole-like language develops from a contact language/pidgin
Explain why the label “variety of English” may be problematic when describing a creole
Provide 3 reasons (List of 4 suggested)
- At the “vernacular end” of the standard creole-continuum, the creole would probably be unintelligible to English speakers/not mutually intelligible with Standard English.
- The very “unEnglish-looking” structures that characterize creoles also make this problematic.
- The speakers themselves would never call their language a kind of English either.
- Their unique development as contact language sets them apart from English.
Approximately how many Aboriginal languages have died since the arrival of white Australians?
Approximately 80-160 Indigenous languages have died.
Others estimate 110-160.
(Only around 120 of the original 200-250 languages remain today according to National Indigenous Languages Survey, p. 143 in LTL
Name one of the programs trying to revive Aboriginal languages.
- National Indigenous Languages Survey
- The Kaurna language project in South Australia
- The Aboriginal Languages Project in NSW
- Living Archive of Indigenous Languages.
