Key Terminology (Variation + Grammar) Flashcards
HEGEMONY
The domination of one language over another and, the subsequent use and acceptance of that language by all social groups.
PEJORATIVE TERM
A judgemental term that usually implies disapproval or criticism
METALANGUAGE
Metalanguage is words or symbols for talking about language itself. For example, the words ‘verb’, ‘noun’ and ‘adjective’ .
UTTERANCE
A segment of speech
CONTEXT
The background against which a text convey it’s meanings
FILLER
A non-verbal sound that acts like a pause - either to signal uncertainty or simply as a ‘breathing space’ for the speaker i.e. Er, erm
FALSE START
When a speaker begins to speak, stops and then starts again i.e. Well I was (1) well I was going to the shops
REPAIR
When a speaker corrects some aspect of what they have said-the error might be a grammatical one or the use of a wrong word, either by accident or mentioning something that is inappropriate i.e. We was (.) were going out
SKIP-CONNECTOR
A word or phrase that returns the conversation to a previous topic i.e. Anyway, coming back to our original discussion
ELLIPSIS
The omission of words i.e. A: What do you want for lunch? B: ham sandwich (‘I would like’ is ellipted)
SPEAKER SUPPORT
Words or phrases (both verbal and non-verbal) that show attention or agreement, and encourage a speaker to carry on talking i.e. Mmm, yeah, Ok
ACCENT
The ways in which words are pronounced. Accent can vary according to the region or social class of a speaker
ADJACENCY PAIRS
Parallel expressions used across the boundaries of individual speaking turns. They are usually ritualistic and formulaic socially i.e. ‘How are you?’ / ‘Fine thanks;
BACK-CHANNEL
Words, phrases and non-verbal utterances [e.g. ‘I see’, ‘Oh’, ‘uh huh’, ‘really’] used by a listener to give feedback to a speaker that the message is being followed and understood.
CONTRACTION
A reduced form often marked by an apostrophe in writing - e.g. can’t = cannot; she’ll = she will. See also ELISION
DEIXIS / DEICTICS
Words such as ‘this’, ‘that’, ‘here’, ‘there’ which refer backwards or forwards or outside a text - a sort of verbal pointing. Very much a context dependent feature of talk
DIALECT
The distinctive grammar and vocabulary which is associated with a regional or social use of a language.
DISCOURSE MARKER
Words and phrases which are used to signal the relationships and connections between utterances and to signpost that what is said can be followed by the listener or reader e.g. ‘first’, ‘on the other hand’, ‘now’, ‘what’s more’, ‘so anyway’ etc.
ELISION
The omission or slurring [eliding] of one or more sounds or syllables - e.g. gonna = going to; wannabe = want to be; wassup = what is up
ELLIPSIS
The omission of a part of a grammatical structure. For example, in the dialogue: ‘You going to the party?’ / ‘Might be.’ - the verb ‘are’ and the pronoun ‘I’ are missed out. The resulting ellipsis conveys a more causal and informal tone.
FALSE START
This is when the speaker begins an utterance, then stops and either repeats or reformulates it. Sometimes called self-correction. See also REPAIRS.
GRICE’S MAXIMS
Grice proposed four basic conversational ‘rules’ [maxims] as criteria for successful conversation: quantity [don’t say too much or too little]; relevance [keep to the point]; manner [speak in a clear, coherent and orderly way]; quality [be truthful]
HEDGE
Words and phrases which soften or weaken the force with which something is said - e.g. ‘perhaps’, ‘maybe’, ‘sort of’. ‘possibly’, ‘I think’.
IDIOLECT
An individually distinct style of speaking
COMMON NOUN
The name of any person, place or thing. Common nouns do not have capital letters.
PROPER NOUN
The name of a particular person, place or thing
COLLECTIVE NOUN
The name of a group of people or things all of one kind e.g. goverment
ABSTRACT NOUN
The name of something you cannot touch or see e.g. honesty, love, humour
PHONEME
The basic unit of sound
DIPHTHONG
A vowel sound that is the combination of two separate sounds, where a speaker glides from one to another.
VOICING
The act of the vocal cords either vibrating (voiced) or not vibrating (unvoiced) in the product of a constant sound.
PLACE OF ARTICULATION
The position in the mouth where a consonant sound is produced
MANNER OF ARTICULATION
The extent to which airflow is interrupted by the parts of the mouth in the production of consonant sounds.
SYLLABLE
A sound unit with a vowel at its centre.
ACCOMODATION
The ways that individuals adjust their speech patterns to match others.
SOUND ICONICITY
The use of the sound system to mirror form or meaning.
INTERNATIONAL PHONETIC ALPHABET (IPA)
An internationally recognised system of phonetic transcription.
DENOTATIVE AND CONNOTATIVE MEANINGS
The literal (denotative) and associated (connotative) meanings of words
FIGURATIVE LANGUAGE
Language used in a non-literal way in order to describe something in another’s terms i.e. simile, metaphor
SEMANTIC FIELDS
Groups of words connected by a shared field of reference e.g. medicine, art
SYNONYMS
Words that have equivalent meanings
ANTONYMS
Words that have contrasting meanings.
HYPERNYMS
Words that label categories e.g. animal (this category includes for example dog, cat and rabbit)
HYPONYMS
Words that can be included in a larger, more general category (e.g. the hyponyms car, bus, aeroplane as a form of the hypernym transport)
LEVELS OF FORMALITY
Vocabulary styles including slang, colloquialisms, taboo, formal and fixed levels
OCCUPATIONAL REGISTER
A technical vocabulary associated with a particular occupation or activity
SOCIOLECT
A language style associated with a particular social group
NEOLOGY
The process of a new word formation, including the following blends, compounds, acronyms, initialisms, eponyms
SEMANTIC CHANGE
The process of words changing meaning, including the following: narrowing, broadening, amelioration, pejoration, semantic reclamation.
MORPHEME
The smallest grammatical unit
FREE MORPHEME
A morpheme that can stand on its own as a word
AFFIX (OR BOUND MORPHEME)
A morpheme that cannot stand on its own as a word, but combines with others to create a new word
PHRASE
A group of words centred around a head word
HEAD WORD
The central word in a phrase which gives the phrase its name (e.g. noun phrase, adjective phrase) and may be modified by other words.
MODIFICATION
The adding of additional words to provide more detail to a head word in a phrase either before it (pre-modification) or after it (post-modification)
CLAUSE
A group of words centred around a verb, which may be either grammatically complete (main clause) or incomplete (subordinate clause)
ACTIVE VOICE
A clause where the agent (doer) of an action is the subject.
PASSIVE VOICE
A clause where the patient (the entity effected by an action) is in the subject position, and the agent either follows or is left out.
TENSE
How the time of an event is marked 9usally through verb inflection): past, present & future)*
ASPECT
Another element of marking the time of an event, by specifying whether they are progressive (ongoing) or perfective (completed)
COORDINATION
The joining of two or more independent clauses via coordination conjunctions. Single words and longer phrases can also be co-ordinated.
SUBORDINATION
The joining of two or more clauses where only one is independent (the main clause) and the others dependent (subordinate clause/clauses)
SENTENCE
A larger unit of meaning, which may be formed of a single clause (simple sentence) or several clauses (compound or complex sentences). Minor sentences are sentences without a verb.
SENTENCE FUNCTION
The purpose of a sentence fulfils in communication: as a statement, question, command or exclamation. These are also referred in many grammar books as (respectively): declaratives, interrogatives, imperatives and exclamatives.
WORD CLASS
The grammatical category into which words can be placed, including noun, adjective, verb, adverb, determiner, pronoun, preposition, conjunction.
IMPLICATURE
An implied meaning that has to be referred as a result of a conversational maxim being broken
INFERENCE
The process of deriving implied meanings.
IRONY
Using language to signal an attitude other than what has been literally expressed.
SPEECH ACTS
Communicative acts that carry meaning beyond the words and phrases used within them, for example, apologies and promises.
POLITENESS
The awareness of others’ needs to be approved of and liked (positive politeness) and/or given freedom to express their own identity and choices (negative politeness).
FACE
The concept of how all communication relies on presenting a ‘face’ to listeners and audiences, and how the management of positive and negative face needs to contribute to the interaction.
COOPERATIVE PRINCIPLES
In conversation: how interaction is thought to be based upon various kinds of cooperative behaviour between speakers.
ADJUNCTS
Non-essential elements of clauses (usually adverbials) that can be omitted (e.g. ‘I’ll see you in the morning’)
DISJUNCTS
Sentence adverbs that work to express an attitude or stance towards material that follows (e.g. ‘FRANKLY, I’m appalled at what she said’ or ‘SADLY, not one of them survived’).
NARRATIVE STRUCTURES
How events, actions and processes are sequenced when recounting a story.
ANAPHORIC REFERENCE
Making reference back to something previously identified in a text (often using pronouns to refer to an already established reference point e.g. ‘The woman stood by the door. SHE made detailed notes of what SHE could see’).
CATOPHORIC REFERENCE
Making reference forwards to something as yet unidentified in a text e.g. ‘It was warm. It was living, It was a rabbit’
EXOPHORIC REFERENCE
Making reference to things beyond the language of a text itself (as opposed to endophoric, which is within the language of the text), perhaps within a speaker’s immediate physical context e.g. ‘Look at that’
INTERDISCURSIVITY (OR INTERTEXTUALITY)
The use of discourses from one field as part of another (e.g. the use of science discourses in the selling of beauty products, or the use of commercial discourses in education).
CRITICAL DISCOURSE ANALYSIS
The use of linguistic analysis to explore and challenge the ideologies, positions and values of texts and their producers.
LAYOUT
The way in which a text is physically structured
TYPOGRAPHICAL FEATURES
The features of fonts used in texts such as font type, size and colour
ORTHOGRAPHICAL FEATURES
The features of the writing system such as spelling, capitalisation and punctuation.
MULTIMODAL TEXTS
Texts that rely on the interplay of different modes (e.g. images, writing and sound) to help shape meaning) see definition of MODE
AUDIENCE
The receivers or intended receivers of a text (written, spoken, multimodal). The concept of an ideal audience/reader/narratee is often found in critical discourse. Texts might also have multiple audiences.
DISCOURSES
Used in many different ways in language study. Can be used to refer to a mode of language (e.g. spoken or written discourse), a register (e.g. medical or legal discourse), a way of thinking about and presenting something (e.g. representing language using a discourse of decay).
FOREGROUNDING
The ways in which the texts emphasise key events or ideas through the use of attention-seeking (in terms of lexis, semantics, phonology or grammar) that either repeat content (parallelism) or break established patterns (deviation)
DEVIATION
External: breaking from the normal conversation of language use, for example in the use of nonsense words or ungrammatical constructions. Internal: Breaking from a pattern that has previously been set up in the text for a striking effect.
GENRE
The way of categorising and classifying different types of texts according to their features or expected shared conventions or functions. Genres come into being as the result of people agreeing about perceived similar characteristics in terms of content and style. Genres are fluid and dynamic and new genres continually evolve as a result of new technologies and cultural practices.
LITERARINESS
The degree to which a text displays qualities that mean the people see it as literary and as literature. However, since so many so called ‘non-literary’ texts display aspects of creative language use that is often seen as a marker of being literary, it is best to think of literariness as a continuum rather than viewing texts as absolutely ‘literary’ or ‘non-literary’
MODE
The way in which language is communicated between text producer and text receiver e.g. as an image, in writing, in speech or as a logo.
NARRATIVE
A type of text or discourse that functions to tell a series of events. A narrative is the organisation of experiences told by a narrator to any number of narrates.
NARRATIVE DISCOURSE
The particular shaping of those building blocks into something worth telling through specific choices in language and structure.
POETIC VOICE
The way in which a sense of identity is projected through language choices so as to give the impression of a distinct persona with a personal history and a set of beliefs and values.
REGISTER
A variety of language that is associated with a particular field of reference e.g. occupational discourse. Register may be either written, spoken or multimodal.
STYLE
The level of formality in a text. This can be seen as distinct from its register (e.g. an occupational register can exist on different levels of formality)
