formal language features Flashcards
collocation
dark and stormy night, fish and chips
alliteration
deliberate and deadly
assonance
beac’o’n for freed’o’m
consonance
‘f’lying into buildings, ‘f’ires burning… ‘f’illed us with disbelie’f’
onomatopoeia
the ‘hush’ and ‘rustle’ of leaves
rhyme and rhythm
the wind ‘blows’ and the smooth stream ‘flows’
accent
cultivated, general and broad
classical affixes
impede, dexterity, dismiss, disbelief
parallelism
layering, packaging, creating mirrored structures
‘our fellow citizens, our way of life, our very freedom…’
parallelism evident in the repetition of a possessive determiner and noun phrase.
antithesis
‘terrorist attacks CAN SHAKE the foundations of our biggest buildings (IC) but they CANNOT TOUCH the foundation of America (IC)’
can + cannot are opposite in meaning sitting within similarly constructed clauses= patterning
listing
structuring, layering, packaging, building a semantic thread
‘disbelief, terrible sadness and a quiet, unyielding anger’
passive voice
‘thousands of lives were suddenly ended by evil despicable acts of terror’
‘thousands of lives’= subject
prep phrase= agent
thousands of lives shifted to the grammatical subject position, foregrounded as it is intended to be the focus of the sentence but the agent is still included because its still relevant.
nominalisation
‘(the) implement (ation of) our government’s emergency response plans’
adds to the syntactic and lexical density and introduces abstractness as the subject is not mentioned in a literal sense making it objective and authoritative.
sentence types
declaratives , interrogatives, imperatives and exclamatives
exclamatives begin with WHAT or HOW eg. WHAT a loud train or HOW lovely is this steak
sentence structures
simple, compound, complex, compound-complex
information flow
syntactic feature that relates to clefting, front focus and end-focus. It contributes to a text’s cohesion.
clefting
It-clefts= DumS + V + S + relative pronoun + clause
eg. It was Meg who kicked the winning goal
What-clefts= What + SNcl + V + NP (complement)
cohesion: phonological patterning
alliteration, assonance, onomatopoeia, consonance, rhythm and rhyme
eg. ‘Love Living Local’
The lexemes in these phrases/clauses are connected through their similar sounds. This strings them together more closely and in a more cohesive way.
cohesion: conjunctions and adverbial/conjunctive phrases
eg. however, furthermore, so far as, consequently
These connect ideas within a text and show the relationship between these ideas.
cohesion: hyponymy
(classification) eg. I love all dogs but my favourite is a greyhound
These create links by highlighting the relationship between the general semantic field and specific lexical terms.
cohesion: collocation
words that go together eg. fast food, friends and family, strong coffee
Lexemes that go together build an expectation of what is coming next, helping to link lexemes and phrases together in a familiar way.
cohesion: subject specific lexis
‘we’ll start with barre and then move to centre work beginning with port de bras.’
The use of terms, specific to a semantic field draws connections within the text that tie the clauses together.
cohesion: antonymy
increase/decrease, huge/little
Lexemes with opposite meanings can be used to tie together phrases and clauses as they contrast each other in terms of semantics yet operate together to present meaning.
cohesion: synonymy
tranquil/peaceful
Lexemes with similar meanings can be used to tie together phrases and clauses connecting them to reinforce an idea/ add detail.
cohesion: ellipsis
eg. have you entered the data? No I haven’t ___
Connects two parts of a sentence by removing unnecessary words that form part of assumed knowledge/reference.
cohesion: syntactic patterning
parallelism: mirrored structures linked by their similar syntactic features
listing: a sequence of lexemes/phrases/clauses can provide greater cohesion as the sentence segments are linked together within the structure to form a cohesive unit of ideas
antithesis
cohesion: repetition/patterning
lexemes, phrases, clauses that are deliberately repeated create links and reinforce the ideas they present. At stitch level (they must be close together in the text)
cohesion: substitution
eg. chairs and benches sub w the furniture
one noun phrase is used in place of another noun phrase referring to the same ‘thing’
eg. Jack and Bill sub w they
anaphoric reference- a pronoun is used instead of the previous full noun phrase to which it refers
cohesion: deixis
eg. here, now, today, there, tomorrow
this term refers to linguistic features that help the reader link the text to its time and place setting. Relates to the context but not retrievable from the text.
cohesion: information flow
clefting: ‘It was the boy from school who saved the puppies’ moved from neutral syntax (simple sentence) clefted to marked syntax (complex sentence) which gives ideas together
front/end focus: ‘After training, the players met to discuss the game’ fronting the adverbial phrase creates cohesion around when the players met
passive voice: ‘several children were affected by the outcome’ ideas connected through the manipulation of syntax
coherence: formatting
headings: briefly outline proceeding content and help direct the reader
subheadings: same as headings but provide more detail within certain sections of the text
bullet points: form a structured list that more clearly sets out the information related to the overall idea/sentence/subheading
tables: clearer presentation of information, easily located by the audience
columns: can present related information or present information side-by-side for a specific purpose
bolding, italics, underline: if this occurs more than once in the text then there is a consistency in the way something is presented and aids the understanding of a particular point
