Formal Language Flashcards
What are the social purposes of formal language?
- Facce needs
- Reinforcing social distance
- In group membership
- Establishing expertise
- Promoting social harmony
- Negotiating social taboos
- Clarify, Obfuscate, Manipulate
What is taboo language?
Language that is deliberately offensive, controversial, or insensitive
What are profanities?
Obscene or offensive language.
What are obceneties?
Utterance that’s offensiveness depends on time period “cum-dumpster”.
What are expletives?
Swear words
What are epithets?
Word/phrase to describe a person (often negative) like chink.
Name and define phonological patterning features in texts.
- Alliteration: The repetitiion of an initial constanant sound
- Assonance: Repetition of vowel sounds in words “Get” and “Better”
- Consonance: Refers to repetition of constanant sounds in words “Pitter” “Patter”
- Onomatopea: Sound words “BANG”
- Rhyme: Word endings that have the same (or similiar) vowel and constanant sounds.
Name 5 purposes of euphamisms
- Help maintain social harmony
- Avoid confronting truths
- Enhance prestige
- Avoid embarrassment (funct)
- Avoid taboo topics
What is double speak?
Use of euphamistic, ambigous and indirect language to deliberately mislead, confuse, or obscure meaning.
What is political correctness?
A style of language designed to avoid offence or inclusion
What are norms?
There are overt and covert types. They are the behaviours/expectations of a group.
What is prestige?
The language valued by a group. Comes in overt and covert form.
What are some functions and social purposes of jargon?
- Satisfy communication needs
- In group membership
- Establish expertise
THE PRIMARY FUNCTION OF JARGON IS TO BE INCLUSIVE AND EXCLUSIVE.
What are 2 positives of jargon?
- Enhances communication
- Adds prestige
What is an example of morphological stylism in formal language?
Adding “-ese” at the end of every word adds prestige.
What is an initialism?
Sounded letters, “DNA”
List 3 purposes of complex language
- Circumlocution: Too many words
- Obfuscation
- Creating euphamisms
What is active voice?
Agent is start of sentence (Noun that causes the verb)
“Bob punched the wall”
What is passive voice?
The patient (what is being affected by the agent) takes subject position
“The wall was punched by Bob”
What is an agentless passive?
A passive sentence with no agent
“The wall was punched”
List two purposes of active voice
- Clarify
- To give focus to the agent
List two purposes of passive voice
- Aids social harmony by minimising imposition on social harmony
- Adds complexity
- Distances audience from text as it is impersonal
What is nominalisation?
When a verb or adjective is turned into a noun
What is front focus?
Subject at start of the sentence
