Language and Identity

Closed network

A person whose personal contacts all know each other

Open network

An individual whose contacts tend not to know each other

Convergence

Strategies through which individuals adapt to each others communicative behaviours to reduce these social differences

Divergence

Strategies through which individuals accentuate differences between themselves and others

sociolect

the dialect which is associated with a social group. A person might have the ability to use multiple sociolects.

Overt prestige

refers to a dialect used by a culturally powerful group

Covert prestige

refers to where non-standard languages or dialects are regarded to be of high linguistic prestige by members of a speech community, but not by the 'culturally powerful'.

Embodied knowledge

Knowledge that is associated with memories of physically experiencing something

Schema

Bundle of knowledge about a concept, person or event - built up from our experience in the world

Co text

Other words or phrases surrounding a word in the text

Pragmatics

Area of language study associated with how contextual factors influence meaning

Deictic words

Context bound (meaning depends on who is using them, where they are using them, when they are saying them)

person deixis

Names & personal pronouns

spatial deixis

Adverbs of place, demonstratives showing location, orientationally words & deictic verbs

temporal deixis

adverbs of time & locates speaker in points

deitic categories

Types of deictic expressions

proximal/distal deixis

Refer to concepts, events or people at a distance from the speaker