Language & Meaning Flashcards
1
Q
Minority…
A
- small group of people whose views differ from the majority.
- sexual orientation, religion etc.
2
Q
Language…
A
- is an imperfect means of transmission
- symbols, letters, words governed by rules and used in comm.
- through others’ verbal comm you decode or assign meaning to words. Thoughts are never decoded identically from one person to the other.
- intertwined with culture, organises and classifies reality and is abstract.
3
Q
Language has 3 rules:
A
- semantic rules: how humans evoke meaning in others. Focus on individual words and their meaning.
- syntactic/syntax: words arranged to form phrases and sentences. You encode by translating thoughts into words.
- Pragmatic: language used in social contexts and effects communicators.
4
Q
Phatic comm
A
- small talk used to socialise rather than share ideas or info.
- no in-depth answers.
- constitutive rules: content of message, its words and their meaning and how to make sense of them.
- regulative rules: what is appropriate to say or not.
5
Q
Culture
A
- defined as socially transmitted behaviour patterns, beliefs, attitudes, values, class, community or population.
6
Q
Sapir Whorf Hypothesis
A
- states that our perc of reality is determined by our thought processes.
- our thought processes are limited by language, so language shapes reality and behaviours.
- not accepted by people studying language.
7
Q
Social constructionism
Language is arbitrary.
A
- Morreale - reality and relationships are created through interaction with others.
- words are arbitrary, meaning they have no inherent meaning, they have meanings that are given to them by people.
- denotative - dictionary definition, agreed upon.
- connotative - individualised meaning.
8
Q
Language is abstract…
A
- words are abstractions or simplifications they stand for.
- Hayakawa - introduced the ‘ladder of abstraction’. Words become increasingly abstract the higher you go up the ladder.
9
Q
Language to avoid…
A
- grammatical errors - common in oral comm. problem when used in formal situations.
- slang - informal, casual language used amongst equals and in informal situations.
- cliche - expression lost originality due to overuse. Used in everyday convos. Expresses human thought, seen as invalidating and annoying.
- euphemisms - polite expressions used instead of a socially unacceptable form.
- profanity - swearing using indecent words.
10
Q
…
A
- Jargon - used by professionals, groups and cultures that is not understood by others.
- regionalisms - words and phrases specific to regions or parts of a country.
- doublespeak - used to disguise meaning, 1950s origin and related to political talk.
11
Q
Cultural talk…
A
- collectivist - benefits people as a group.
- individualist - benefiting themselves.
12
Q
Improving language skills…
A
- descriptiveness - practice of describing observed behaviour instead of offering personal judgment or reactions.
- paraphrasing - restating another person’s message by rephrasing the content or intent of the message.
- operational definitions - identifies things by revealing how they work, what they’re made from or what it consists of.
13
Q
Use concrete language…
A
- concrete language - words and statements that are specific rather than vague.
- dating - specifying when you made an observation because everything changes over time.
- frozen evaluation - contrary to dating - does not change over time.
- indexing: contrary to stereotyping - identifies uniques of objects, events and people.
14
Q
Observations and inferences
A
Observation - description of what is seen
Inferences - conclusion drawn from observation.
15
Q
Language prejudice …
A
- gender biased language - privileges a specific gender over another.
- racist language - insults a group due to race/ethnicity.
- heterosexist language - implying or assuming that everyone is heterosexual ie: ‘what’s your bf’s name?’
- ageist - denigrates people for being old or young (infantilising)
