English Language Paper 1

Elision

The omission or slurring of one or more sounds or syllables. E.g. "going to" becomes "gonna"

Idiolect

An individually distinctive style of speaking

Intonation

The quality or tone of voice in speech, which can stay level or rise and fall

Latch-on

A smooth link between speakers in an exchange

Phatic talk

Words phrases and clauses that serve a social function. E.g. "Morning", "Lovely day isn't it?"

Phoneme

The smallest unit of sound

Prosodic feautures

The use of pitch, pace, rhythm and volume in speech

Rallentando

A term used to describe speech that is getting slower, usually marked as 'rall' on a transcript

Sociolect

A distinctive style of speech used by a particular group of people

Utterance

A line/sentence in a transcript

Accelerando

A term used to describe speech that is getting faster, usually marked 'accel' on transcripts

Accomodation

A term used to describe the way in which people change their speech, prosodic features and gestures in order to emphasises or minimise the difference between them.

Assimilation

The way in which sounds in a word can effect neighbouring sounds in phonology. E.g. "handbag" becomes "hambag"

Comment clause

A commonly occurring clause in speech which adds a remark to another clause. E.g. "I mean...", "I think"

Contraction

A reduced form of a phrase often marked by an apostrophe in writing. E.g. "cannot" becomes "can't

Deixis

Words such as 'this', 'that', 'here', 'there' which acts as sort of verbal pointing

Dialect

The distinctive grammar and vocab that is associated with a regional or social use of language

Convergence

A process in which two speakers adapt their language and pronunciation to reduce the difference between them. Can be 'upward' or 'downward'

Diveregence

A process in which two speakers adapt their language and pronunciation to increase the difference between them

Hedging

A strategy used to avoid directness or to minimise potentially face-threatening acts. E.g. "kind of", "sort of", "maybe", "perhaps"

Tenor

The relationship between producer and receiver of a text shown by pronouns, questions and formality

Mode

Medium of communication, whether it is written or spoken

Register

How formal something is

Grice's Maxims

A set of 'rules' one should adhere to in order to maintain cooperation in conversation. They are: quantity (appropriate amount of detail), quality (speak the truth), relevance (discuss what is relevant to the topic) and manner (avoid ambiguity)

Implicature

When Grice's Maxims are broken or flouted, this gives rise to implied meanings

Negative face

An individual's need to feel imposed on or have their freedom or action threatened. Things which would threaten this include orders, requests and threats

Positive face

An individual's need to feel valued, liked and appreciated. Things which would threaten this include disapproval and criticism

Purposes of speech

Referential, expressive, transaction, interactional and phatic

Referential speech

Speech that provides information

Expressive speech

Speech which expresses feelings/emotions

Transactional speech

Speech which gets something out of it

Interactional speech

Social speech

Power assymetry

A marked difference between the power status of individuals involved in discourse

Fillers

Non-verbal sounds that can act as pauses in speech, either naturally or to give he speaker some time to think. E.g. "er", "um"

Discourse marker

A signal to a shift in conversation or topic, or announce a counter-argument. E.g. "ok", "right then", "so", "but"

Back-channelling

The verbal signals given by the listener to indicate interest, attention. E.g. "mhm", "yeah", "ok"

Field

The general purpose of communication, e.g. to inform, entertain, persuade, etc.

Transition relevance points

A point at which it is natural for another speaker to take a turn in a conversation

Powerful participants

Those who hold some degree of status in a conversation and can to some extent control its direction and the potential of speakers to contribute

Topic management

The control of conversation in terms of who speaks and topic

Initiation-response-feedback (IRF)

A structure in speech that allows the first speaker to feedback on the response of a second speaker

Adjacency pair

Two utterances by different speakers which have a natural and logical link

False starts/repairs

When a speaker begins to speak, pauses and then recommences

Ellipses

Omission of words for economical purposes or to avoid awkward repetition. E.g. "Tonight, eight o'clock"

Tag questions

A question added onto the end of declarative statement that lessens the impact of that statement. E.g. "You did really well, didn't you"

Bold on-record

Where a speaker is blunt and direct

Off-record

A strategy of politeness where the speaker changes the subject and doesn't threaten the other's face, e.g. "anyway..."

Negative politeness

Hedging used to avoid threatening someone's negative face

Positive politness

Where the speaker shows interest or agreement with the speaker, e.g. tag questions, jokes.

Insertion sequence

An additional utterance between the two parts of an adjacency pair

Pejoration

The shift of word's meaning over time to becoming more negative

Amelioration

The shift of word's meaning over time to becoming more posotive

Denotation

The literal/surface-level meaning of a word

Connotation

The implied or associative meaning of a word

Hegemony

Leadership or dominance of a particular social group over others. It supports the status-quo and solidifies the idea that 'how it is' is 'how it should be'.

Propoganda

Information, especially that of a biased or misleading nature, used to promote a political cause of point of view.

Lexical reclamation

The process by which words which have historically been used to render people powerless have overtime been reclaimed by the social group it effects in order to foster a sense of community within the oppressed group, thus creating a new sense of power. E.g. "bitch", the 'n word'

Ideology

A belief system, attitude and world view that an individual or collective might hold. This is displayed trough the use of language.

Drew and Heritage's language theory

Members of a discourse community share inferential frameworks with each other, consisting of implicit ways of thinking, communicating and behaving. There are also string hierarchies of power within organisations, with asymmetrical relationships marked by language use

Muted group theory (Ardener)

A communicational theory which focuses on how marginalised groups are excluded via language. Language serves its 'creators' (the dominant group) and subordinate groups have to learn dominant language to express themselves which may result in the loss or distortion of identity or what they are trying to say

Lindsay Johns (prescriptivist) quotes

"language can be a threat to power", "anti-ghetto grammar", "language functions successfully because we have rules", "moronic street slang"

Language politics (April Baker Bell)

Language has political and social drives. There is a 'linguistic hegemony' which convinces others outside the 'standard' that they are inadequate at their own language

Language jails (Kushing)

The idea that enforcing Standard English and policing language (particularly in schools) perpetuates troubling language ideologies which disadvantage minoritised communities and only serves white, middle-class ways of talking

Three types of reader (Hall)

Dominant, negotiated and oppositional

Manufactured consent (Chomsky)

The phenomenon that a small ruling elite can shape public opinion in their favour by controlling the media. The media is filtered by - media ownerships (economic profit), advertising (how media is funded), media elite (owners of media), flack (pushing anything not agreed with to the side) and the common enemy (brings people together)

Dominant reader

Someone who fully accepts what they are reading and interprets it in the way the writer intended them to

Negotiated reader

Someone who partially believes the information they are reading but thinks some parts may be inaccurate or biased

Oppositional reader

Someone who's social position and moral values influence their belief on the content they are reading, causing the to disregard and reject the information presented

Androcentric language (Spender)

The theory that because of structural inequalities in society, women are not given as many opportunities as men to be in positions of power, thus, their language reflects this

Syntactical victimisation (Clarke)

When women are either: the passively acted upon, or the agent in the sentence- removing the blame for the perpetrator.

Power in discourse (Fairclough)

The ways in which power is manifested in situations through language

Power behind discourse (Fairclough)

The focus on the social, contextual and ideological reasons behind the enactment of power

Types of power (Wareing)

Political (politicians, police etc.), personal (power as a result of occupation, e.g. teachers) and social (power as a result of social variables such as class, gender, age)

Instrumental power

Power used to maintain and enforce authority

Influential power

Power used to influence or persuade others

The principle of linguistic relativity

The idea that the language a person speaks determines their thoughts and perception (also known as the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis)

Semantic derogation

A semantic shift that results in a word acquiring more negative associations or meanings. E.g. 'mistress' and 'lady' used to be used to refer to women or high status but now have less lower/negative associations

Dominance Theory

A social power theory which focuses on unequal power relations between men & women that manifest as language differences

Difference theory

A theory which suggests that neither gender is superior, simply that they are different. Male and females speak differently, e.g. males are more likely to swear.

The different linguistic behaviour appears to be due to socialisation, ie males and females are 'brought up' with different expectations on their language use.

Deficit theory

A theory that male language is the standard and women's language is deficit. Women aren't brought up to be assertive and therefore don't use language assertively and this restricts them in society

Etymology

The study of word origins. E.g. the word 'hysterical' stems fro. the Greek word for 'womb'

Marked expressions

Lexical items used to describe females are often marked to distinguish them from males, suggesting they are deviant from the norm. E.g. 'actress', waitress'

'Man-made language'

What Dale Spender called the English Language

Pragmatic failure

When an implied meaning does not match what is percieved

Amount of words for promiscuous females vs male (Stanley)

220 terms for females, 20 for males

Male vs female conversational style (Coates)

Women are co-operative and collaborative, whereas men are competitive and adversarial

The difference model (Tannen)

Women speak and hear language of connection and intimacy, whereas men speak and hear language of status and independence

Interactional shit work (Fishman)

Based on 52 hours of taped conversation between men and women in their homes, it was found that women use 2.5 time more tags than men. Women use these tags to facilitate conversation

Women's language (Lakoff)

Women use a range of specific features (tags, hedging, fillers, etc.) in order to appear less authoritative and assertive. As such, their speech can suggest tentativeness and uncertainty

How 'men engineer women's silence' (Zimmerman and Candace)

96% of interruptions in mixed-sex conversations are done by men. A sign that women are restricted linguistically and men sought to impose dominance through applying constraints in conversational practice

Powerless language (O'Barr and Atkins)

Many features of 'female language' and also present in men of lower status. Therefore, it can be theorised that the dominant factor in determining speech style is status rather than gender

Metonym

A word/phrase used to symbolise another entity. E.g. "my heart" = 'love', "10 Downing Street" = 'the priminister'

Sentence moods

Declarative, interrogative, imperative, exclamative

Declarative

A statement, declares something

Interrogative

A question

Imperative

A command or order

Exclamative

A statement marked by an exclamation mark

Minor sentence

A short sentence which is 'incomplete' and does not make sense grammatically. E.g. "sounds good", "nice weather", "absolutely"

Simple sentence

A sentence that has only one clause which must have a verb. E.g. "Joe waited for the train"