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English Language > All Terminology > Flashcards

All Terminology Flashcards

1
Q

Abstract nouns

A

refer to ideas and concepts that only exist in the mind

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2
Q

Accent

A

the distinct pronunciation patterns of a group of people

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3
Q

Accommodation

A

where a speaker adapts to another speaker’s accent, dialect or sociolect

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4
Q

Acronomy

A

abbreviation using the first letter of a group of words and pronounced as a single word. eg OPEC, NASA, RAM

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5
Q

Active voice

A

clause construction where the subject is also the actor (they are doing or have done something to somebody/something)

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6
Q

Adjacency pair

A

a pair of utterances in a conversation that go together (greeting and reply, question and answer, etc.)

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7
Q

Adjective

A

a word that modifies a noun (e.g. ‘the orange sky’

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8
Q

Adverb

A

a word that modifies a verb telling you how, where or when an action takes place; can also modify adjectives, telling you how much (e.g. ‘I am really delighted’)

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9
Q

Adverbial

A

words. phrases or clauses which act as adverbs and which
identify where, when and how when modifying the verb.

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10
Q

Affordance

A

linguistic and behavioural choices provided by technology

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11
Q

Agenda setting

A

where a speaker sets up the main topic of conversation

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12
Q

Analogical overextension

A

associating objects which are unrelated but which have one or more features in common (e.g. both being the same colour)

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13
Q

Anchored relationship

A

an online relationship where two participants know each other in the offline world

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14
Q

Article

A

a determiner such as ‘a’ or ‘the’

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15
Q

Asymmetrical power

A

an imbalance of power between people

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16
Q

Asynchronous:

A

unlike synchronous, there is a delay between utterance and response. Responses posted on a forum, which may occur
months or even years after the original post, are an example of discourse that is asynchronous

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17
Q

Audience

A

the person or people reading or hearing the text

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18
Q

Auxiliary verb

A

assists the main verb; primary auxiliary verbs do, have and be denote changes of tense

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19
Q

Avatar

A

an image used by a user that accompanies a username

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20
Q

Backchannelling

A

supportive terms such as ‘oh’ and ‘really’

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21
Q

Bald on-record

A

where a speaker is completely blunt and direct (e.g. ‘Sit down!’)

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22
Q

Bias

A

a form of prejudice in favour of or against an idea, person or group, expressed through language/images and so on. It can take obvious or implicit forms, or a mixture of the two, and
can arise from what is omitted as well as from what is stated or shown

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23
Q

Bidialectalism

A

a speaker’s ability to use two dialects of the same language

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24
Q

Categorical overextension

A

the most commonly occurring form of overextension in a child’s language, and relates to confusing a hypernym (broad category, e.g. fruit) with a hyponym (specific example)

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25
Q

Catenative

A

chain-like structure in a sentence (‘so we… and then… and then we…’)

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26
Q

Chaining

A

a speaker responds and sets up the other speaker’s next utterance in a chain that runs on past an adjacency pair

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27
Q

Child-directed speech (CDS)

A

speech patterns used by parents and carers when communicating with young children

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28
Q

Clause

A

a structural unit that contains at least one subject and one verb - it can include other features as well such as object, complement and adverbial.

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29
Q

Closer

A

spoken expressions which are designed to close

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30
Q

Codification

A

a process of standardizing a language

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31
Q

Cohesion

A

the many parts of a text that help to draw it together into a recognizable whole. (For example, the headline, picture and caption in a news article will all have words/images that link
together in terms of the meaning and subject matter of the article.)

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32
Q

Collocation

A

two or more words that are often found together in a group or phrase with a distinct meaning (e.g. ‘over the top’, ‘fish and chips’, ‘back to front’)

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33
Q

Comparative adjective

A

the form of an adjective that designates comparison between
two things, generally made by adding the suffix -er to its base
form (e.g. ‘this is a faster car’

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34
Q

Complement

A

a clause element that tells you more about the subject or the object

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35
Q

Complex sentence

A

has two or more clauses, one of which is a subordinate clause

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36
Q

Compound

A

a word formed from two other words (e.g. ‘dustbin’)

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37
Q

Compound sentence

A

has two or more clauses, usually joined to the main clause by the
conjunctions ‘and’ or ‘but’ and depends on the main clause to exist

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38
Q

Compound-complex sentence

A

a sentence that has three or more clauses, one of which will be a
subordinate clause and one of which will be a coordinate clause

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39
Q

Concrete nouns

A

refer to things we touch or can experience physically (e.g. snow,
butter)

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40
Q

Conditioning

A

the process by which humans (and animals) are taught or trained
to respond, and learn by positive reinforcement (e.g. praise from an adult) for whatever is deemed to be appropriate learning
within that specific context – for choosing the correct word or for
politeness for example

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41
Q

Conjunction

A

a word that joins clauses together

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42
Q

Connotation

A

the associated meanings we have with certain words, depending on the person reading or hearing the word, and on the context in which the word appears

43
Q

Consonant clusters

A

groups of consonants (e.g. ‘str’ or ‘gl’) that demand more muscular
control than single consonants or vowels, so tend to appear later
in the baby’s utterances

44
Q

Constraints

A

linguistic and behavioural restrictions provided by technology

45
Q

Context

A

where, when and how a text is produced or received

46
Q

Convergence

A

where a speaker moves towards another speaker’s accent, dialect
or sociolect

47
Q

Cooing

A

sounds a baby will make like ‘goo’ and ‘ga-ga’, generally around the age of 6–8 weeks. It is believed that during this period the child is discovering their vocal chords.

48
Q

Coordinate clause

A

a clause beginning with a coordinating conjunction and is
essentially a main clause joined to another main clause

49
Q

Coordinating conjunctions

A

these signal the start of a coordinate clause

50
Q

Copular verb

A

a verb that takes a complement (such as ‘seems’, ‘appears’ or a
form of the verb to be – ‘is’, ‘was’, ‘are’, etc.)

51
Q

Corpus

A

a collection of written texts

52
Q

Covert prestige

A

describes high social status through use of non-standard forms

53
Q

Declarative

A

a statement – a type of sentence which gives information and where the subject typically comes in front of the verb (‘Two fish are in a tank.’)

54
Q

Definite article

A

‘the’

55
Q

Deixis

A

terms that point towards something and place the words in context

56
Q

Denotation

A

the literal, generally accepted, dictionary definition of a word

57
Q

Determiner

A

words determining the number or status of the noun

58
Q

Diachronic change

A

refers to the study of historical language occurring over a period

59
Q

Dialect

A

a non-standard variety of a language, including lexis and grammar, particular to a region

60
Q

Digital technology

A

the technique of storing, transmitting and processing data used
for mobile phones and computers among others

61
Q

Direct object

A

the part of the clause that is directly acted upon by the subject

62
Q

Discourse

A

describes the structure of any text (or segment of text) that is longer than a single sentence

63
Q

Discourse marker

A

marks a change in direction in an extended piece of written or spoken text (e.g. ‘nevertheless’, ‘to sum up’)

64
Q

Discourse structure

A

the way a text is structured, according to the typical features of
the text’s genre

65
Q

Dismissal formula

A

a device used to close a conversation

66
Q

Dispreferred response

A

a response that is unexpected, although not necessarily rude
if phrased appropriately (e.g.: Speaker A: Dinner’s ready at 7. / Speaker B: Not dinner, I’ve only just had breakfast!)

67
Q

Divergence

A

where a speaker actively distances himself/herself from another speaker by accentuating their own accent or dialect

68
Q

Downward convergence

A

making your accent or lexis more informal

69
Q

Empirical approach

A

gaining knowledge by direct and indirect observation or experience

70
Q

Estuary English

A

a dialect of English that is perceived to have spread outwards from London along the South East of England. It has features of Received Pronunciation and London English

71
Q

Etymology

A

the history of a word, including the language it came from, if appropriate, and when it began to be regularly used

72
Q

Exophoric reference

A

a reference to something, often cultural, beyond the text

73
Q

Extra-linguistic variables

A

factors that affect the way you speak (e.g. age, where you live, etc.)

74
Q

Feral children

A

children who are raised without human intervention (‘feral’ means existing in a natural/wild state, as opposed to domesticated). There are examples of children having been raised by animals such as dogs.

75
Q

Field

A

words used in a text which relate to the text’s subject matter (e.g. the field of medicine; the field of golf, etc.)

76
Q

Flaming

A

making an offensive and insulting post in a chatroom

77
Q

Flouts a maxim

A

where someone obviously does not obey the conversational maxims that have been suggested by Grice.

78
Q

Formality

A

describes the degree to which texts stick to certain conventions
and to how impersonal they are. The more spoken features a text
has the more informal it will tend to be.

79
Q

Framing

A

controlling the agenda of a conversation (its direction and subject); or making utterances that encourage a child to fill in the blanks

80
Q

French/Latinate lexis

A

words derived from French or Latin, or both that are more rarely used; often seen as having a higher status and/or being more specialist

81
Q

Genre

A

the kind of text you have in front of you (advert, speech, song)

82
Q

Gestural

A

a way of communicating that relates to movement and/or body language, either instead of words or (as would be likely in a multimodal media text) in addition to them

83
Q

Glottal stops

A

the building blocks of sentences (words, phrases, clauses, etc.) and how they go together to mean something to the reader or listener

84
Q

Grammarian

A

a scholar of grammar

85
Q

Grapheme–phoneme relationship

A

the correspondence between the written shape of a letter and its sound

86
Q

Head noun

A

the main noun at the centre of a noun phrase

87
Q

High-frequency lexis

A

words that appear often in everyday speech

88
Q

Holophrase

A

a single word representing a more complex thought generally created by a child. For example, the word ‘juice’ may be used to signify ‘I want some juice’ – in this context, ‘juice’ would be a holophrase. ‘Up’ is another commonly used holophrase, usually signifying ‘please lift me up’ or ‘I want to get up’

89
Q

Hospitality token

A

a polite utterance relating to context designed to put speakers at their ease

90
Q

Hyperlink

A

an electronic link embedded in a text that takes the reader to another website

91
Q

Hypernyms

A

categories (e.g. pets, vehicles and sweets) are all hypernyms

92
Q

Hyponyms

A

examples within categories (e.g. pony, truck and sherbet lemons) are all hyponyms

93
Q

Idiom

A

a form of common non-literal expression (e.g. ‘I was dead on my feet”)

94
Q

Idiolect

A

your own individual way of speaking

95
Q

Illocutionary act

A

implying something in what we say

96
Q

Imperative

A

a command – a type of sentence where the subject is usually left out and the verb is in its bare form (‘Give the hat to me.’)

97
Q

Indefinite article

A

‘a’ or ‘an’

98
Q

Indirect object

A

receives the action

99
Q

Inflection

A

an ending such as -ed, -s or -ing added to change a tense or number, or in the case of nouns to make a plural

100
Q

Infographic

A

(also micro infographic) a graphical format which can also be animated to display information (e.g. in mini blogs)

101
Q

Initialism

A

abbreviation using the first letter of a group of words and pronounced separately. eg FBI, CIA, DVD

102
Q

Interrogative

A

a question – a type of sentence indicated by the swapping round of subject and verb (‘Are you happy?’ rather than ‘You are happy.’), by the use of question words (who, what, where, when, how), or simply by the use of a question mark (‘You’re coming by train?’)

103
Q

Intertextuality/intertextual reference

A

a subtle reference to another text that helps to create a sense of shared context and can operate on a pragmatic level, creating a sense of imagined closeness between writer/producer and reader/recipient

English Language (13 decks)

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