Language Levels

Lexis and Semantics

key terms

denotative meaning: literal meaning of words

connotative meaning: associated meaning of words

figurative language: langugae used in a non-literal way (eg similies and metaphors)

semantic fields: a group of words connected by shared reference eg medicine or art

synonyms: words with equivalent meanings

antonyms: words with opposite meanings

hypernyms: words that label categories, ie fruit or animals

hyponyms: words that can be included in wider categories, ie apple or dog

sociolect: a language style associated with a specific social group

dialect: a language style associated with a specific geographical region

neology: the process of creating new words, includes: blends, compounds, acronyms, initialisms, eponyms

semantic change: the process of a word's meaning changing, by way of: narrowing, broadening, ameliaration, pejoration, semantic reclamation

Grammar

key terms

morpheme: the smallest grammatical unit

free morpheme: a moprheme that can stand on its own as a word

affix or bound morpheme: a morpheme that cannot stand on its own but can combine with others to make a new word

phrase: a group of words centered around a head word

head word: a central word in a phrase that gives it its name, ie noun phrase or adjective phrase, and may be modified by other words

modification: adding more words to head words to create more detail either before (pre-modification) or after (post-modification)

clause: a group of words that are centered around a verb that can be grammatically complete (main clause) or incomplete (subordinate clause)

active voice: when the subject of the sentence is the agent (do-er) of an action

passive voice: a clause where the patient (the entity affected by the action) is the subject and the agent either follows or is left out entirely

word class: the grammatical category into which words can be placed: noun, adjective, verb, determiner, pronoun, preposition, conjunction

Pragmatics

key terms

implicature: an implied meaning that has to be inferred

inference: the process of deriving implied meanings

irony: using language to signal an attitude other than what is being expressed

speech acts: communicative acts that carry meaning beyond the words and phrases used within them, ie: apologies and promises

politeness: the awareness of others' needs to be approved of or liked (positive politeness) and/or given freedom to express their own identity and choices (negative politeness)

face: the concept of how all communication relied on presenting a 'face' to listeners and audiences, and how the management of positive and negative face needs to contribute to interaction

Discourse

key terms

discourse markers: words, phrases or clauses that help organise what we say or write, eg 'Ok', 'so'

narrative structures: how events, actions and processes are sequences when recounting a story

adjuncts: non-essential parts of a clause (usually adverbials) that can be omitted, eg 'I'll see you in the morning'

disjuncts: sentence adverbs that help to express an attitude or stance towards smth that follows, eg 'franky...', 'sadly...'

anaphoric reference: making a reference back to smth that has been previously identified in the text, often using pronouns, eg 'the woman liked cake. She baked it often and her favourite was chocolate'

cataphoric reference: making a reference to smth that has not been previously identified in a text, eg 'it was warm, it was living, it was a rabbit'

exophoric reference: making reference to things beyond the language of the text itself ( as opposed to endorphic which is within the language of the text), eg look at that

intertextuality: the use of discourses from one field as a part of another, eg the use of science discourses in the selling of beauty products

critical discourse analysis: the use of linguistic analysis to explore and challenge the ideologies, positions and values of texts and their producers

Graphology

key terms

multimodal texts: texts that rely on the interplay of different modes, eg images, writing and sound, to help shape meaning

orthographical features: the features of the writing system such as spelling, capitlisation and punctuation

typographical features: the features of fonts used in text like font type, size and colour

layout: the way in which a text is physically structured

Additional Key Terms

positioning: how a text producer places or orientates themselves to the subject being presented and towards the audience or reader being addressed

style: the level of formality in a text. this can be seen as distinct from its register (eg an occupational register can exist at different levels of formality)

point of view: the way in which events and and experiences are filtered through a particular perspective to provide a particular version of reality. point of may be:

  • related to how a narrative is presented in terms of space and time through the use of deixis, time frames, and flashbacks and flashforwards
  • related to a particular ideological viewpoint, such as an individual's way of seeing the world or thinking about events (often in an extreme way). these might be shown through the use of modal verbs, adjectives and adverbs to stress belief or commitment and/or the use of idiosyncratic words and phrases
  • related to a distinguishing between who tells and who sees, as in the case of a narrative told in the third person but which seems to be filtered through a particular character's consciousness

purpose: the intention or objective behind a text in terms of what it is designed to do and how it is used. Texts can have many different and overlapping purposes

register: a variety of language that is associated with a particular field of reference eg occupational discourse,. Registers may either be written, spoken or multimodal

poetic voice: the way in which a sense of indentity 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.

narrative: a type of text or discourse that functions to tell a series of events. a narrative is the organisation of experience told by a narrator to any number of narratees. a narrative has 2 distinctive parts: the story = the events, places, characters and time of actions that act as the building blocks of the narrative and the narrative discourse = the particular shaping of those building blocks into something worth telling through specific choices in language and structure

representation: how experiences, views and ideas are 're-presented' to readers, listeners and viewers through language and other meaning-making resources in order to influence their way of seeing the world

mode: the way in which language is communicated between text producer and reciever eg an image, in writing, in speech or a logo. the term mode (from semiotics and linguistics) is related to the term medium (from media studies) which is how messages are mediated (eg paper or digital text) and also to the term channel (from communication studies) which is the physical means of transmission (eg auditory, visual or olfactory). Mode also encompasses ideas around planning and spontaneity, distance between text producer and reciever, how transitory or long-lasting a text is. Mode is more than a binary opposition, is sometimes visualised as a continuum and is constantly changing as new communication technologies blur the line between older forms

literariness: the degree to which a text applies certain qualities for people to regard it as literary or literature. However, since so many 'non-literary' texts display features of creative language that is often seen as a marker for of being literary, it is better to regard literacy as a continuum instead of there simply being 'literary' and 'non-literary' texts

genre: the way of categorising and classifying texts according to their features or expected shared conventions or functions. Genres exist due to people agreeing about percieved similar characterstics in terms of content or style. Genres are fluid and dynamic and new genres continually evolve due to new technology and social practices

foregrounding: the way in which texts emphasise key events or ideas through the use of attention-seeking devices (in terms of lexis, semantics, phonolgy or grammar) that either repeat content (parallelism) or break established patterns (deviation) - deviation might include: external = breaking from normal conventions of language use, eg for the use of nonsense words or ungrammatical constructions; and internal = breaking from a pattern that has previously been set up in the text for a striking effect

discourses: used in many different ways, can be used to refer to a mode of language (written and spoken discourse), a register (medical or legal dicourse), a way of thinking about or presenting smth (representing language using a discourse of decay)

audience: the recievers or intented recievers of a text (written, spoken, multimodal), the concept of an ideal audience or reader is often found in critical discourses - texts may also have mutliple audiences