LANGUAGE DEVICES Flashcards
Hegemony
How one social group can use language to get other people to accept its way of seeing the world as natural.
Pejorative term
A judgemental term that usually implies disapproval or criticism.
Metalanguage
Language about language.
Utterance
A segment of speech.
Context
The background against which a text conveys its meaning.
Discourse event
An act of communication occuring in a specific time and location involving writers/speakers and readers/listeners.
Text producer
The person or people responsible (through writing or speaking) for creating a text.
Text receiver
The person or people interpreting (through reading or listening to) a text.
Mult-purpose text
A text that clearly has more than one purpose.
Primary purpose
The main and most easily recognisable purpose.
Secondary purpose
An additional and perhaps more subtle purpose.
Implied reader
A constructed image of an idealised reader.
Actual reader
Any person or groups of people who engage with and interpret a text.
Implied writer
A constructed image of an idealised writer.
Actual writer
The ‘real’ person or people responsible for text production.
Discourse community
A group of people with shared interests and belief systems who are likely to respond to texts in similar ways.
Mode
The physical channel of communication: either speech or writing.
Oppositional view
A way of defining the difference between modes by arguing that they have completely different features.
Continuum
A sequence in which elements that are next to each other are not noticeably different but elements at the opposite ends are very different from each other.
Blended-mode
A text which contains conventional elements of both speech and writing.
Prototype model
A model of looking at differences within a category or mode by thinking about typical and less typical examples.
Genre
A way of grouping texts based on expected shared conventions.
Intertextuality
A process by which texts borrow from or refer to conventions of other texts for a specific purpose and effect.
Variation
The differences associated with particular instances of language use and between groups of language users.
Register
A variety of language that is associated with a particular situation of use.
Situation of use
A specific place, time and context in which communication takes place.
Situational characteristics
A key characteristic of the time, place and contexts in which communication takes place.
Dialect
Variation in words and structures associated with a particular geographical region.
Accent
Variation in pronunciation associated with a particular geographical region.
Sociolect
Variation in language use associated with membership off a particular social group.
Idiolect
Variation in language use associated with an individual’s personalised ‘speech style.’
Representation
The portrayal of events, people and circumstances through language and other meaning-making resources (e.g. images and sound) to create a way of seeing the world.
Word class
A group of words that fulfil the same kind of role and function in speech and writing.
Noun
A word that names a thing or concept.
Verb
A word that shows a state of being, action or concept.
Adjective
A word that modifies a noun.
Adverb
A word that modifies a verb, an adjective or another adverb.
Open (or lexical) word class
A word class that is generally open to new membership.
Closed (or grammatical) word class
A word class which doesn’t readily admit new members; a word class that isn’t generally open to new membership.
Pronoun
A word that substitutes for a noun. e.g. he, she, they, it.
Determiner
A word that adds detail or clarity to a noun. e.g. the, my, some.
Preposition
A word that shows connection between other words often showing a sense of place or time. e.g. in, on, between, during.
Conjunction
A word that connects larger structures such as phrases, clauses and sentences.
Synonym
A word that has equivalent meaning to another word.
Euphemism
A more socially acceptable word or phrase.
Dysphemism
Using a blunt or direct word instead of a more polite or indirect alternative, close to taboo.
Antonyms
Words that have opposite meanings
Hyponymy
The way of viewing the relationship between more general and specific words.
Metaphor
A structure that presents one thing in terms of another.
Morphology
The study of word formation.
Syntax
The study of how words form larger structures such as phrases, clauses and sentences.
Descriptive
Taking an approach to language study that focuses on how language is actually used.
Prescriptive
Taking an approach to language study that focuses on rules and notions of correctness.
Root
A morpheme that can stand on its own and can usually form a word in its own right.
Suffix
A morpheme that comes after a root word to modify its meaning.
Prefix
A morpheme that goes before a root word to modify its meaning.
Affix
The overall term for an addition to a root (a prefix or suffix) to modify its meaning or create a new word.
Infix
An affix inserted inside a root word to create a new word or modify its meaning. e.g. abso-blooming-lutely.
Inflectional function
The way that an affix shows a grammatical category such as a verb tense or a plural noun.
