Language Levels Flashcards
What is ‘phonology’?
Phonology is the sounds of speech that combine to help produce meaning. Eg, English accents and speech patterns.
What is ‘phonetics’?
Phonetics is the physical property of sounds/how they are produced. Eg, alliteration, onomatopoeia, plosives, fricatives.
What’s is ‘prosodics’?
Prosodics are the features of speech and how we change our voice. Eg, volume, pitch, intonation, rhythm, natural and emphatic stress, and tempo (speed - faster = accelerando, slower = rallentando).
What is ‘jargon’?
Jargon is specialised language for a group of specific people. Eg, haematoma = blood clot (doctor’s language/medical jargon).
What is ‘archaic’ language?
Archaic language is old language. Eg, thou. We know the meaning of the word but don’t use it as often anymore. It is an obsolete lexis.
What is ‘denotation’?
Denotation is the literal meaning of something. Eg, Monday morning is the start of the week.
What is ‘connotation’?
Connotation is the deeper/sociated meaning of something. Eg, Monday morning is bad.
What are ‘semantics’?
Semantics are how meanings are communicated - denotation and connotation. They include semantic fields
What is ‘morphology’?
Morphology is about the different forms and structure of words. Including prefixes, suffixes and inflections. Eg, pray, becomes prays, becomes praying. Biology becomes biography. (Comes under ‘grammar’).
What is ‘syntax’?
The patterns of language, eg, tricolons. Phrases, eg, noun phrases, verb phrases etc. Clauses, eg, independent/dependant, subordinate etc. Sentence moods and sentence types. (Comes under ‘grammar’)
What is ‘pragmatics’?
Pragmatics is the contextual aspects of language use. The use of language for different audiences and purpose. The effect of personal, social and cultural factors and situations. Shared understanding between the reader/writer, speakers. Deixis (words/phrases that requite contextual information to convey meaning).
What is ‘written discourse’?
Written discourse is the changes in genre over time.
What is ‘discourse structure’?
Discourse structure is the way a text opens/ends, order of information/details. Links with written discourse.
What is ‘spoken discourse’?
Spoken discourse is the prosodic features (how we change our speech eg, volume, pitch, rhythm, tempo etc). It is also the stretches of conversation between participants and the ways in which meanings, roles and situation is communicated (eg, non-fluency features, hedging, ellipsis, elision etc).
Ellipsis - a pause/missing out words in spoken language.
Elision - blurring together syllables/missing out letters. Eg, wanna.
