Metalanguage

Informal language purposes

•Encouraging intimacy, solidarity and equality

•Maintaining and challenging positive and negative face needs

•Promoting linguistic innovation

•Supporting in-group membership

Formal language purposes

•Maintaining and challenging positive and negative face needs

•Reinforcing social distance and authority

•Establishing expertise

•Promoting social harmony, negotiating social taboos and building rapport

•Clarifying, manipulating or obfuscating

Things to analyse with register

Degree of formality - eg. highly informal, moderately formal etc

Consistency - are there any shifts in register?

Conventions for domain and text type - formal or informal registers

Informal language examples

non standard english

speech connected processes

phonological patterning - eg. onomatopoeia

slang/ colloquial

inclusive language eg. personal pronouns

syntax - sentence fragments, ellipsis

interrogative tag

taboo language

Formal language examples

standard english - overt prestige

nominalisation

passive voice

high modality modal verbs

elevated lexis

rhetorical devices - eg. parallelism

jargon

Spoken language - must discuss

prosodic features

turn-taking strategies

topic management strategies

spontaneous or planned?

Written language - must discuss

Cohesion and coherence

Pitch (P)

The ‘highness’ of one’s voice, or how quickly their vocal cords vibrate.

Prosodic features

pitch, stress, volume, tempo, intonation

Stress (P)

The loudness/length of different syllables’ utterances; can differentiate between stressed & unstressed syllables, and level of stress (light/heavy).

Volume (P)

The loudness of a voice during speech.

Tempo (P)

The speed at which one speaks.

Intonation (P)

The way that pitch can change during an utterance.

Vocal effects (P)

Any form of non-speech (coughing, breath, laughter, etc.) communication which can add or change information in an utterance.

Speech sound production

consonants: voicing, place of articulation, manner of articulation

vowels: height, backness, roundedness

Flapping

/t/ → voiceless alveolar stop

becomes

/d/ → voiced alveolar stop

H deletion

Glottal fricative: /h/ is elided

Non-rhoticity

voiced alveolar approximant /r/ is elided

Some other speech sound production examples

• Alveolar stop: /t/, /d/

• Bilabial stop: /p/, /b/

• Velar stop: /k/, /g/

• Alveolar nasal: /n/

• Bilabial nasal: /m/

• Velar nasal: /ŋ/ (“sing”)

• Alveolar lateral approximant: /l/

• Alveolar approximant: /ɹ/

• Labiodental fricative: /f/, /v/

• Dental fricative: /θ/, /ð/ (“thin”, “then”)

• Alveolar fricative: /s/, /z/

• Post-alveolar fricative: /ʃ/, /ʒ/

• Affricates: /tʃ/ (“ch”), /dʒ/ (“j”)

• Glottal fricative: /h/

Connected speech processes

assimilation, vowel reduction, elision, insertion

Assimilation (P)

The process of sounds changing to become more similar to each other.

Vowel reduction (P)

A change to the sound of an utterance as a result of changes in prosodic features.

Elision (P)

The phonological slurring or omission of sounds; an example of such being ‘old man’ to ‘ol’man’.

Insertion (P)

The (accidental) addition of sounds as the vocal tract moves from one sound to another; an example being ‘family’ to ‘fambly’.

Broad accent (P)

One of the three main accents of Australia; it is further from standard English, and is considered the stereotypical (or bogan) Australian accent.

General accent (P)

One of the three main accents of Australia; it is in the middle of this sociolectal continuum, and can be heard from most Australians.

Cultivated accent (P)

One of the three main accents of Australia; it is closest to the UK’s highly formal 'Received Pronunciation'.

Phonological patterning

• alliteration, assonance, consonance

• onomatopoeia, rhythm, rhyme

Alliteration (P)

The repetition of consonant sounds at the beginning of nearby words.

Example: Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers.
→ Repetition of the /p/ sound.

Assonance (P)

The repetition of similar vowel sounds to provide special effect.

Example: The rain in Spain falls mainly on the plain.
→ Repetition of the /eɪ/ vowel sound.

Consonance (P)

The repetition of consonants in a sequence of words.

Example: The lumpy, dumpy road.
→ Repetition of the /mp/ sound.

Onomatopoeia (P)

The process of words conveying the sounds that they represent; these could mimic real sounds, or be used for literary effect.

Example: buzz, bang, sizzle, crash, meow.

Rhythm (P)

A pattern of stressed and unstressed syllables in speech; it is often used by poets to emphasise ideas or to create mood.

Example: “I wandered lonely as a cloud” — (regular rhythmic beat in poetry).
→ Alternating stress gives it musicality.

Rhyme (P)

The recurring pattern of identical or similar sounds at the end of two or more different words, often used by poets.

Example: The cat sat on the mat.
→ “cat” and “mat” rhyme.

Word classes

• nouns, including pronouns

• verbs, including auxiliary verbs and modal verbs

• adjectives

•   adverbs

• prepositions

•  conjunctions (coordinators, subordinators)

• determiners

• interjections

Noun (M)

A word which represents any ‘thing’.

concrete noun

tangible item 

• eg. table, cat, mountain

abstract noun

intangible ideas

• eg. love, freedom, happiness

collective noun

groups

• eg. team, audience, flock

countable noun

can be counted

• eg. apple

uncountable noun

cannot be counted

• eg. water, sugar, info

Pronoun (M)

A function word which replaces nouns, sometimes to avoid repetition.

First person pronoun

The speaker or writer themselves

- eg. I, me, we, us

I am talking.

Second person pronoun

The person or people being spoken to

eg. ‘you’

you are listening

Third person pronoun

The person or thing being spoken about

eg. he, she, it, they, them

she is studying

Personal pronoun

Identify participants (subject/object/possessive)

I, me, you, he, she, it, we, they

possessive pronoun

eg. mine, ours

Reflexive pronoun

Refer back to subject

myself, herself, themselves

Demonstrative pronoun

Point to items (can link to deixis)

this, that, these, those

Interrogative pronouns

Ask questions

eg. who, what, which

Relative pronouns

Introduce clauses

eg. who, that, which

Indefinite pronoun

Refer to nonspecific items

eg. someone, anything

Reciprocal pronouns

express mutuality

each other, one another

• analysis: Shows cooperation, mutual support, or shared responsibility.

Adjective (M)

A word which describes things/nouns.

descriptive adjective

describes qualities

eg. happy/tall

quantitative adjective

indicates amount

• eg. few, several

Demonstrative adjective

describes which noun

• eg. this book is interesting, those houses are old

• (whereas demonstrative noun is “this is interesting,” “those are old”)

Possessive adjective

show ownership

eg. his bag, my life

interrogative adjective

ask questions about nouns

eg. which bag, whose jacket

comparative adjective

taller

superlative adjective

tallest, best

Types of adverbs

• manner (how eg. quickly)

• time (when eg. now/soon)

• place (where eg. here, outside)

• frequency (how often eg. always, never)

• degree/intensity (how much eg. extremely, very, almost)

Verb (M)

A word which represents the actions of a thing/noun.

Adverb (M)

A word class, typically referring to time, frequency, place, manner, etc. Many adverbs can be identified by the -ly suffix.

Auxiliary verb (M)

A type of verb used to support non-finite forms of main verbs, and which are inflected for person and number and tense.

eg. to be, to have, to do + modal verbs

Modal verb (M)

A type of auxiliary verb, used to signal the attitude of the speaker, and to express various notions. These verbs lack any inflection.

• eg. can, could, may, might, must, shall, should, will, would

Preposition (M)

A function word which is used for a number of purposes, mainly being spatial relations and grammatical information.

Conjunction (M)

A word used to connect clauses or sentences together.

coordinating

connect equal words/phrases/clauses

• eg. and, but, or, not

subordinating conjunction

connect main and subordinate clause

• eg. because, although, since, if

correlative conjunction

paired conjunctions

• eg. either…or, neither…nor, both…and

additive conjunction

adds info

eg. and, also, too, moreover

contrastive conjunction

eg. but, yet, however

temporal conjunction

shows sequence in time

eg. then, next, finally

Determiner (M)

A word class, which expresses notions like quantity, number, possession and definite-ness.

articles

definite

eg. the

indefinite

eg. a

Interjection (M)

A word class that encompasses words with emotional meaning (such as ‘D’oh’).

eg. wow!, ouch!, hey!

Morphological patterning (M)

Any set of associations or operations which can build the forms of a lexeme.

Affix (M)

Any bound morpheme attached to a root; these morphemes can be in front of (prefix), behind (suffix), or inside (infix) that root.

Root morpheme (M)

A single lexical (usually free) morpheme, representing the core (or root, hence the name) of a word.

• eg. teach in teacher (gives it the meaning)

• often stem

Bound morpheme (M)

Any morpheme which cannot stand on its own, hence having to be attached to a free/root morpheme.

• eg. “un"

Free morpheme (M)

Any morpheme which is able to stand on its own as a word.

• eg. happy

inflectional vs derivational

inflectional adds grammatical info (eg. s suffix for plural, or -ing for progressive)

derivational can change meaning or word class. (eg. quick to quickly or happy to unhappy)

Hypocoristic use of suffixes

must be shortened and then adding suffix such as -ie, -o, -a, -sy

Function word (L)

Any type of word with purely grammatical meaning, without reference to any real thing.

Content word (L)

Any type of word with real-life meanings. They are sometimes known as lexical words.

Inflection (L)

A closed set of affixes that add grammatical information to the word.

Derivation (L)

An open set of affixes which form new words, change parts of speech, and carry lexical meaning. They irregularly show close to the stem in some word classes.

Suffixation (L)

The process of adding suffixes to a word, frequently found in Australian English.

Blending (L)

A word formation process resulting from a fusion of two elements of a word. An example is ‘bagonise’, which combines 'baggage' and 'agonise'.

Initialism (L)

Any word formed through the initials of a word, pronounced through those initialisms. An example is ‘IPA’.

Acronym (L)

Any word formed through the initials of a word, pronounced as a single word. An example is ‘PIN’ (as in 'PIN number').

Shortening (L)

A word formation process which produces abbreviations of longer words; for example, ‘loony’, which originates from ‘lunatic’.

Compounding (L)

A word formation process that combines two or more free morphemes; the result can be written as two words, one word, or a word split by a hyphen.

Contraction (L)

A process of shortening two words into one by abbreviating one and turning the other into a bound morpheme, the two separated by an apostrophe.

Collocation (L)

A group of words which frequently combine with each other; an example would be ‘rotten eggs’.

Neologism (L)

Any word which is invented to describe something new (such as ‘yeet’, used to describe the throwing of an object).

Borrowing (L)

The adoption of linguistic features like words from other languages; those words are referred to as loan-words.

Commonisation (L)

The process of a proper noun turning into a regular noun, usually by its introduction into common use (such as ‘google’).

Archaism (L)/ obsolescence

Any word which has fallen out of use by the wider population, frequently in favour of newer and more descriptive words.