Language Change Terminology Flashcards
What is orthography?
The method of spelling/correct spelling.
What is an ampersand?
the symbol ‘&’, which is more prominent in the past
What is non-standard capitalisation?
Where capital letters are allocated mid-sentence to words other than proper nouns. This could be for emphasis or arbitrarily.
What is archaism/archaic language?
A word which has fallen out of common usage or is old fashioned.
What is a semantic shift?
The shift in a word’s meaning over time, e.g. ‘sick’ now meaning something which is cool, rather than someone being unwell
What is globalised vocabulary?
An influx of new words and phrases due to the advent of mass-media and international travel
Overt prestige
Refers to the status speakers get from using the most official and standard form of a language.
Covert prestige
Refers to the status of speakers who choose not to adopt a standard dialect get from a particular group within soceity
Obsolete
No longer having any use
Influential power
Power used to influence or persuade others
Instrumental power
Power used to maintain and enforce authority
Prescriptivism
An attitude to language use that makes judgements about what is right and wrong and holds language up to an ideal standard that should be maintained
Descriptivism
An attitude to language use that seeks to describe without making value judgements
What is a neologism?
A newly coined word
What is a lone word?
Words borrowed from another language
What is compounding?
LAP + TOP = LAPTOP
What is blending?
SMoke + fOG = SMOG
What is abbreviating?
TELEPHONE = PHONE
What is backformation/clipping?
E.g. televise from television
What is affixation?
Adding a suffix or prefix.
E.g. UN + FRIENDLY = UNFRIENDLY
What is broadening?
A word is extended.
E.g. A butcher = seller of goats
NOW means a seller of meat
What does narrowing mean?
Words become narrow.
E.g. A doctor = Once meant a teacher or a learned man
What is amelioration?
Where a word meaning becomes more positive
What does pejoration mean?
Where a words meaning becomes negative
What is semantic shift?
Where a words meaning has completely shifted
Synthetic Personalisation
Synthetic personalisation is the process of addressing mass audiences as though they were individuals through inclusive language usage.
Proposed by Fairclough
Fonts
FONTS – DIFFERENT FONTS CAN BE USED TO PORTRAY DIFFERENT TONES AND MEANINGS, E.G.
Layouts
Layouts – Layouts can make a page busy, easy to follow, formal or informal and often reflect the context in which they would be found.
Colours
Different colours connote different moods and feelings, for example red suggests violence and blue suggests calm and serenity.
Images
Photos, graphs and diagrams provide additional information to the written text and also grab the reader’s attention.
Long ‘s’
Loss of the ſ - it was initially at the beginning of a word and then to the middle but the short s was used at the end of the word. It was left over from Old English and continued into Late Modern English.
Why was the long ‘s’ removed?
Printing practices as Francoise Ambroise Didot in Paris, who in 1781, initiated the cutting of the letters known as the ‘modern face’. The ſ could have been confused with the grapheme ‘f’. The examples were followed from printers’ influences. One of the influences was John Bell who was given credit for the removal of the long s.
Commas and fullstops
Commas are used more often to link extended clauses and full stops were replaced by commas.
Coinage
Creation of new words
