formal Flashcards
formal lang features
more explicit (eg jargon)
more cohesive
more rhetorical devices
more information flow
phonological features - patterning
sound symbolism (blend vs fructus)
alliteration (deliberate and deadly)
assonance (beacon freedom)
consonance (flying fires)
onomatopoeia (hush and rustle)
rhythm and rhyme (blows, flows)
accent (broad > general > cultivated)
morphological features
compounding (law enforcement)
classical affixes (impede, dexterity)
doublespeak (health improvement innovation -> lexical density)
acronyms and initialisms
lexical features
jargon
low frequency lexemes
Syntactic patterning
PAL
Parallelism (our fellow citizens,our way of life)
Antithesis (can shake but cannot touch)
Listing (disbelief, terrible sadness and anger)
Syntax - passive voice
object, verb, subject
thousands of lives were suddenly ended by
shifts focus
planned, crafted and drafted nature
ellipsis of agent (agentless)
carefully packaged
syntax - nominalisation
verb into a noun eg the implementation
abstract so removes human/subject
more sophisticated
information flow what
what lang users want to highlight
considered most important
assumed audience already knows
information flow eg
FEC
front focus, end focus, clefting
clefting (information flow)
it-cleft= DumS (it), V (was), S (Alice), RelPro (who), clause
what-cleft = What, SnCl (Alex), V (wants), NP (is a weekend)
use of a dummy subject before an existential clause
authoritative tone, objective
End focus (information flow)
places material with higher communicative value at the end (end weight)
grammatically complicated/heavily modified structures to end
eg she depended for inspiration on the presence of her books
Front focus (information flow)
FIP
Fronting (highlights the beginning of a sentence/something other than NP at start of IC > audience attn)
Inversion (Elements normally later eg AdvP in a clause are moved to the front/SVO > VSO)
Passive Voice (emphasis shifted - SV(O) > SV(A)
lexical repetition + purpose
the deliberate and considered repetition of the same lexeme
to reinforce, reiterate, strengthen, intensify, accentuate, highlight or underscore + content.
