Lexis🍋 Flashcards
Colloquialisms
Informal words, slang or phrases that are often used in comfortable environments.
Taboo/expletives
Swearing
Semantic field
Where words share a common theme or idea
Collocation
Typical phrases/words that go together
E.g. ‘bride and groom’ or ‘salt and pepper’
Filler/voiced pauses
E.g. ‘er’ ‘um’ ‘ah’
Dialect
The words and grammar we use
Idiolect
Our distinctive and individual style of speaking
Sociolect
Language used by a social group.
This creates a group membership and social identity.
Neologism
New words that enter the language
Denotation
The literal meaning of a sign
Connotation
The associated meaning of a sign
Paranomasia/pun
A play on words for comedic effect or to stimulate thinking
Initialism
Words that are shortened via letters.
E.g. ‘brb’
Jargon
Also known as specialist lexis.
Subject specific terms
Hedging
Softening language
E.g. ‘kinda’, ‘sort of’
Minimal responses
Words to show we are listening
E.g. ‘mm’, ‘yeah’
Recasting
When caregivers repeat words in the accurate way to educate children on standard words
Vulgarism
Language which falls short of taboo but is still not usually used in polite society
Conjunction/connection
Function words that link part of a sentence together
Interjection/exclamation
E.g. ‘hey’, ‘oi’, ‘ouch’, ‘huh’
Lexical ambiguity
Where a word or phrase has more than one potential meaning
Vague language
Unassertive language
E.g. ‘something’, ‘thingymajig’, ‘and all that’
Vernacular
The style of speech we chose to adopt in certain situations
E.g. an informal vernacular with friends
Anaphora
Form of syntactic parallelism
The repetition of a word or phrase at the beginning of a successive clause
Anadiplosis
Form of syntactic parallelism
Th repetition of a word or phrase at the end of a successive clause, which begins the next
Syntactic parallelism
Repetition in adjacent clauses and sentences
Antonym
Word opposites
Euphemism
Another way of phrasing something without explicitly saying it.
E.g. passed away
Dysphemism
A word or phrase people use to make something or someone sound negative, bad or unlikeable.
Malapropism/untypical collocation
Where a text uses an incorrect collocation
Polysemy/the use of polysemes
When ambiguity arises from having many possible meanings for a word or phrase
Homophones
Two or more words have the same pronunciation but different meanings
Homographs
Two or more words have the same spelling but different meanings
Homonym
Umbrella term for homophones and homographs
Anglo-Saxon
Structure words
Familiar everyday words
Monosyllabic words
French
Elegant and sophisticated words
Originate from France
Latinate
Long, impressive words
Polysyllabic words
Generalisation/extension/broadening
Use of a word in a broader realm of meaning than it originally possessed. Often refers to all items in a class rather than one specific item.
Specialisation
The opposite of generalisation.
Narrowing of a word.
Amelioration
A word’s meaning improves or becomes elevated, coming to represent something more favourable than it originally referred to
Pejoration
A word’s meaning worsens or degenerates, coming to represent something less favourable than it originally did
Etymology
A word’s origin, history and journey
Polysemy
Where a word has two or more meanings
The linguistic term for lexical ambiguity
Semantic change
The collective term for generalisation, specialisation, amelioration and peroration
Atypical collocation/malapropism
Unfamiliar collocations
Antithesis
The linguistic term for opposite
Positive reinforcement/expressives
Encouraging words used by one speaker to another, especially towards children to make it more likely the behaviour will occur in the future. Often shows a power inbalance.
Marked term
Words that standout from the norm
E.g. princess, priestess, governess
Unmarked terms
The normal form of a word
E.g. Prince, priest, governor
Negative reinforcement
When a caregiver corrects a child to help them learn, in the hope that the child will then imitate this behaviour
Operant conditioning
Umbrella term for positive and negative reinforcement.
Where a child tries out all sorts of utterances and is conditioned to repeat certain language patterns through negative and positive reinforcement.
Affirmatives
Agreement words
Used in positive reinforcement
Proto-words
Neologised words a child consistently uses
Reduplication
Repeated syllables
E.g. ‘da-da’ - dad
Overextension
- Where a child over applies a lexical category
- Can say ‘experimenting with lexical development’
- E.g. calling all animals dogs
Underextension
- Under applying a lexical category
* E.g. assuming their dog is the only ‘dog’ in the world
Categorical overextension
- One word is applied to everything in that category
- Can say ‘experimenting with a label’
- E.g. calling all round fruit ‘apple’
Analogical overextension
- One word is used to describe something in a different category
- Usually size and shape based
- E.g. calling an apple and the moon ‘ball’
Mismatch statements (overextension)
- Where children use a random word with loose associations with the objects
- This might be through the environment or the child’s personal experience
- E.g. ‘duck’ when they see a pond
Back-channeling
Words, phrases and non-verbal utterances used by a listener to give feedback to a speaker that the message is being followed and understood
E.g. “I see” “oh” “uh huh”
Interactional talk
Language in conversation used for interpersonal reasons and/or socialising
Repairs
An alteration that is suggested or made by a speaker, the addressee, or audience in order to correct or clarify a previous conversational contribution
Transactional talk
Language to get things done or to transmit content or information
Diminutive
•Version of a noun that refers to a small version of something (adding a prefix or suffix)
-E.g. notelet, kitchenette, duckling
•Version of a noun that indicated familiarity or fondness (adding a suffix)
-E.g. Aussie, sweetie, champers
•A short form of a personal name
-E.g. Tim, Katy
Epiphora/epistrophe
Repetition of a word or phrase at the end of a successive clause
What could be the word ‘like’ used for?
- Quotative
- Hedge
- Filled pause
Contextual factors of the word like
- Attitudes of this word are overwhelmingly negative
- Despite this, their usage remains common
- May have some covert prestige within a particular social group
- Could relate to Accommodation theory
Hyponymy
The study of hyponyms and hypernyms
Umbrella term
Hyponym
A word that describes things more specifically
E.g. proper nouns - Niagra Falls
Hypernym
A word that refers to broad cafe fires or general concepts
E.g. dog is a hypernym of border terrier
What is another word for holophrase?
Operator
Regional variation
Our accent and dialect choices
Semantic drift
- A process of linguistic change over a period of time in regards to lexis and how words evolved
- Synonymous with semantic change
Idiosyncratic
Peculiar to the modern reader
