METALANGUAGE IN ENGLANG !

plus important concepts !

Function

reason for language being used
e.g., Emotive

Purpose

background reason for text to exist
e.g., to reinforce authority of conditions for Snapchat

Intent

underlying reason for a text to exist
e.g., protecting oneself with legal protections

Maintaining positive face needs + positive politeness strategies

Making people feel wanted, like, respected and valued as a member of a group

• Politeness markers

• Preferred pronoun use

• Staying on topic

• Cooperating + turn taking

Challenging positive face needs + how?

Making people feel unwelcomed, disliked and left out

• Speaking rudely

• Gossiping

• Ignoring someone

• Discussing inappropriate contexts or irrelevant topics

Maintaining negative face needs + negative politeness strategies

Making people feel independent, having a choice and free

• Using indirect interrogatives

• Using passives

• Using possibility hedges (maybe)

• Apologising

Challenging negative face needs + how?

Making people feel imposed and has no freedom

• Imposing on someone’s time

• Demanding help

• Giving advice

• Being incoherent, forcing effort to understand

All modal verbs

can, could, will, would, shall, should, might, must, may

Modal verbs

verbs expressing obligation, possibility, permission

How can modal verbs affect face needs?

1. Using ‘must’, ‘should’ will indicate obligation, not giving freedom and choice to reject

2. Using ‘can’ and ‘may’ will indicate possibility which will allow choice and freedom

Social distance

A psychological distance between people

• People who are close = smaller social distance

• People with hierarchal relationship = larger social distance

Authority

person/organisation who has the right to tell other people how to act and have power

How do imperative sentences reinforce authority and social distance?

These gives directions, commands and instructions showing that the user has more power

How does the second/third person reinforce authority and social distance?

2nd person pronoun ‘you’ indicates direct statement, additionally if paired with modals the speaker will have to listen
3rd person ‘she’ depersonalises the text and shows no connection to the listener, also using general terms

How does jargon reinforce authority and social distance

If jargon used was unfamiliar, jargon can seem more distant and formal

How does nominalisations and passive voice reinforce authority and social distance?

They depersonalise the text, removing focus from someone doing the action, changing focus to the action itself causing less humanity

How do modal verbs reinforce authority and social distance?

Modal verbs with obligation/permission gives speaker a sense of authority

Nominalisations

the process of turning verbs/adjectives into nouns
e.g., racist → racism

Reasons for using nominalisations

• Focuses on the concept, not person or action

• Becomes more abstract and objective, therefore less personal

• Less room for responsibility or blame

Passive voice and nominalisations can make a text appear:

• Neutral

• Detached

• Impartial

• Indirect

• Less threatening

• Distanced

• Objective

• Authoritative

Expertise

having extensive knowledge in a particular topic, often knowledge other people don’t have

How does jargon affect establishing expertise?

It can demonstrate a level of expertise in their area by sounding precise and often hard to understand

How do proper nouns affect establishing expertise?

Using a proper noun shows precise knowledge in the area also showing how they are aware of different types or is important
e.g., Smartphone vs iPhone

How do nominalisations affect establishing expertise?

a verb, now a noun adds to lexical density (more information added), which makes the text sound more knowledgeable

How does the use of declarative sentences establish expertise?

Declaratives give information, showing more confidence in the information presented also seeming more factual

How does listing affect establishing expertise?

increases lexical density (increased information) allowing to show more knowledge by presenting information in a concise way

Social harmony

the idea of having society work together, supportive and having no conflict and is accepting of all people

Taboo

topics considered impolite to discuss that may upset or offend people
e.g., death

Building rapport

having a good rapport means to have a friendly relationship and get along with people

How does politeness affect social harmony, negotiating taboos, or building rapport?

using politeness markers such as ‘please’ or titles/honourifics promotes social harmony, making people feel respected

How do euphemisms affect affect social harmony, negotiating taboos, or building rapport?

using a euphemism can negotiate a taboo by using a softer word rather than a blunt word

How does Non-discriminatory language (politically correct language) affect social harmony, negotiating taboos, or building rapport?

indicating language and behaviour to avoid offence

How do pronouns affect social harmony, negotiating taboos, or building rapport?

using appropriate pronouns for people show thar you want them to feel respected and want a harmonious relationship

Public language

language that is designed to be for the public audience

Spoken discourse features: openings and closings

how the text starts and finishes, which can be formulaic - following certain patterns and expectations

Spoken discourse strategy: topic management

how a speaker manages topics, using topic shifts and is able to do a topic loop (returning to a previous topic)

Features indicating topic management

• conjunctions

• pauses

• intonation

• tempo changes

• volume changes

• stress

• pronouns

• discourse particles

Clarifying

making things clearer to understand

Manipulating

controlling people usually sneakily, can be positive or negative

Obfuscating

making things difficult to understand, hiding true meaning and avoid being direct

How does declaratives affect clarifying?

generally used to provide information, they can assist with clarifying what a text is about

How dos imperatives affect clarifying?

imperative sentences gives clear instructions, making steps of a task clearer

How do proper nouns affect clarifying?

using precise names for things can clarify what is being referred to

How do synonyms affect clarifying?

providing synonyms can help make the text more easy to understand

How does jargon affect clarifying?

by being precise by having words related to the topic

How does jargon affect obsfuscating?

when jargon is not something that everyone knows about

How does listing affect clarifying?

placing similar ideas in a list shows connections and importance

How do euphemisms affect manipulating/obsfuscating?

can negotiate taboos but to misdirect

How does doublespeak affect manipulating/obsfuscating?

to distort, disguise or reverse meanings of words

Syntactic patterning

Listing, antithesis, parellelism

Listing

presenting series of ideas that are related and connected
(e.g., I like cats, dogs and snakes)

Parellelism

repetition of grammatical structures two or more times
(e.g., work hard, stay focused)

Antithesis

two contrasting ideas near one another in parallel structures
(e.g., war and peace)

How does syntactic patterning make a text more formal?

When parallelism and antithesis is deliberately planned, the text is more formal

Coherence

how well a text can be understood; whether or not a text makes sense

What influences coherence?

• Formatting - making text clearer to read

• Logical ordering - clear order of information

• Inference - may decrease coherence, if too many knowledge to infer and audience lacks background knowledge

• Conventions - rules for a text type, audience have expectations in certain texts

• Consistency - whether or not a text stays the same throughout

Cohesion

how well a text links together

Synonymy and antonymy

Synonymy: using synonyms to connect ideas
Antonymy: using antonyms to contrast ideas and provide comparisons

Hyponymy and hypernymy

Hyponyms is apart of a larger vocabulary set to reinforce a message while hypernymy is above hyponymy
e.g., Hypernymy → Flower

Hyponymy → Rose

Collocation

pairs or group of words that typically go together
e.g., Cookies and Milk

Repetition

repeating key words or phrases to reinforce a message

Ellipsis

deleting unnecessary words to avoid repteition when the context makes it clear on what is meant

Substitution

a general word is substituted for a more specific one to avoid repetition

Conjunctions

sets up relationships between clauses

Adverbials affecting cohesion

creates cohesion by adding detail to a verb or a clause or by linking one clause or sentence to another

Anaphoric reference

the pronoun comes after the referent

Cataphoric reference

the referent coming after the pronoun

Deictics

words or phrases that cannot be understood without further contextual information

Clefting

converting simple sentences into complex sentences to maximise understanding through linking new and old information

e.g., “Sarah helped Phillip” → “IT WAS Sarah who helped Phillip”

Information flow

the order of constructing sentences, including end and front focus

End focus

Where new information is given at the end and then becomes old information at the next sentence

Front focus

placing adverbial or prepositional phrase infront of a sentence instead of a subject to have more interest abd suspense
e.g., SUDDENLY, the band began to play

Language features more likely to lower formality

• Connected speech processes

• Idioms

• Initialisms

• Shortenings

• Sentence fragments

• Slang

• Taboo language

• Swearing

• Dysphemisms

• Emoticons + emojis

• Non-standard punctuation

Purpose + intent of informal language: Intimacy

a close affectionate, possibly loving relationship with another person

More likely to:

• Have exclusive language

• Use slang

• Write using non-standard spelling

• Write using emojis

• Use nicknames

• Celebrities and fans

Purpose + intent of informal language: Solidarity

working together to achieve a goal, having a shared responsibility
More likely:

• Have exclusive language

• Use jargon

• Non-standard language

• Use of hashtags

Purpose + intent of informal language: Equality

being equal in social class, level of respect

More likely:

• Have exclusive language

• Swear

• Non-standard language

• Write emojis

• Using nicknames

• Can be advertisements

Swearing types

• Expletive - emotive reaction

• Abuse/insult

• In-group solidarity marker

• Stylistic swearing

Dysphemistic language

Opposite of euphemisms, deliberately confrontational, harmful

Slang

type of language that is bound by time and age or generation

Colloquial language

informal language
e.g., ‘wanna’

Idioms

specific type of colloquialism, expressed with no meaning or logical

Linguistic innovation

• Creativity

• Making up words or expressions

• Playing with language

• Can be used with word formation processes

Algospeak

refers to coded language and euphemisms used on social media to avoid having content removed or filtered by algorithm

Openings and Closings (Spoken discourse features)

How we start and finish a spoken text, often follow an expected pattern

Adjacency pairs (Spoken discourse features)

Pairs of utterance that go together including:

• Initiating utterance

• response

• feedback

e.g., greetings or farewells, questions and answers

Minimal responses/backchanneling

process of showing someone that you are listening without attempting to take over the conversation
e.g., ‘uh-huh’ or ‘yeah’

Overlapping speech

Indicated by [ ] in a transcript

Can either be positive or negative:

• Collaborating (positive)

• Interrupting (negative)

Discourse particles/markers

Has no grammatical meaning in a sentence, can be removed and mean the same thing.

They can show feelings or intentions of the speaker, reducing distance, hedge or showing uncertainty
e.g., ‘like’ , ‘so’

Non Fluency features

• Pauses: indicated by (…), can be spontaneous or unplanned, or deliberate

• Filled pauses: includes ‘uhm' or ‘er’, indicates uncertainty

• False starts: begins an utterance, realising incorrect so restarts utterance

• Repetition: when a speaker restarts the phoneme, word not deliberately

• Repairs: when a speaker fixes a word or utterance that was said incorrectly

Topic managements

• Topic shift: changing topic

• Topic loop: going back to previous topic

Turn-taking

• Taking the floor: taking turn in the conversation

• Holding the floor: continuing to speak when it is your turn

• Passing the floor: giving someone else the opportunity to speak

Code-switching

using more than one language within the same conversation or text

Assimilation

when a sound changes to become more similar to neighbouring sound in word/phrase

Vowel Reduction

not stressing the vowel sounds

Elision

merging together sounds

e.g., ‘dunno’

Insertion

adding a phoneme
e.g., ath a lete

Alliteration

words starting with the same phoneme
e.g., Peppa Pig

Assonance

repetition of vowel sounds
e.g., pee pee

Consonance

repetition of consonant phonemes
e.g., beeS treeS

Onomatopoeia

words representing sounds
e.g., squawk