21st century language part 1

English Language

Phatic Speech Acts

Turns in conversation designed to maintain a sense of cooperation.

Valediction

Items that act as a farewell

Metatalk

Talk that draws the attention to talk itself.

Phonetic Spelling

Spelling a word how it sounds

Vowel omission

Leaving out a vowel in a word

Initialism

An abbreviation that takes the first letter from a group of words, and each letter is pronounced.

Acronym

An abbreviation that takes the first letter from a group of words to create a new word.

Variant spelling

Deliberate non-standard spelling for effect

Prosodic features

Loudness, pitch, intonation, used in spoken language for emphasis.

Discourse structure

Overall structure of a conversation

Asynchronous discourse

An interaction that has delays in between replies

Synchronous discourse

Instant replies in a conversation.

Lexical accommodation

The way people mirror each other’s lexical choices

Trolling

Messages intended to cause offence.

Blend/Portmanteau word

A new word created by ‘blending’ two individual words together.

Borrowing

Introducing a loan word from one language to another

clipping

Creating a new word of the same word class and of the same denotation by dropping a syllable (Thurs = Thursday).

Code switching

When people switch from one language/variety to another in certain situations.

Coinage

Creation of new words.