Spoken Language Vocab

Question 1

GASP/MAFF

Answer 1

genre, audience, subject, purpose/mode, audience, field, function.

Question 2

Speaker identity

Answer 2

identification of a person from the sound of their voice, use of lexis, grammatical structures. Age, gender, class, ethnicity, and occupation…

Question 3

Situational factors

Answer 3

relationship with the audience, status of the participants, setting, topic, purpose, comfort, spontaneous vs crafted.

Question 4

Paralinguistic features

Answer 4

body language, gestures, facial expressions, tone and pitch of voice.

Question 5

Overlapping

Answer 5

when a speaker’s speech overlaps anothers.

Question 6

Micro pause

Answer 6

a pause in speech less than a second.

Question 7

Rising intonation

Answer 7

describes how the voice rises at the end of a sentence.

Question 8

Emphatic stress

Answer 8

the placing of emphasis on a particular word of a sentence.

Question 9

Adjacency pairs

Answer 9

composed of two utterances by two speakers, one after the other.

Question 10

Turn taking

Answer 10

during an interaction, speakers take it in turns to speak - this is a politeness feature.

Question 11

Backchannel support

Answer 11

one participant is speaking and another participant interjects responses to the speaker.

Question 12

Fillers

Answer 12

words, sounds, or phrases we use to “fill in” the space when we don’t know what to say.

Question 13

Tag questions

Answer 13

a question converted from a statement by an appended interrogative formula, e.g. it’s nice out, isn’t it?

Question 14

Topic markers

Answer 14

how to identify the main topic of a conversation.

Question 15

Topic shifters

Answer 15

when the topic shifts to something else during a conversation.

Question 16

Topic loops

Answer 16

when the conversations loops back to a previous topic.

Question 17

Idiolect

Answer 17

the speech habits specific to a particular person.

Question 18

Sociolect

Answer 18

the dialect of a particular social class.

Question 19

Accent

Answer 19

a distinctive way of pronouncing a language, especially one associated with a particular country, area, or social class.

Question 20

Dialect

Answer 20

a regional variety of language.

Question 21

Interrupted constructions

Answer 21

false starts e.g. “You shouldn’t - you shouldn’t have done that”.

Question 22

Disjointed constructions

Answer 22

two phrases which don’t seem to go together.

Question 23

Incomplete constructions

Answer 23

grammatical elements are missing e.g. “You get sorted?”.

Question 24

Non-standard grammar

Answer 24

using double negatives or informality e.g. “We was half an hour late”.

Question 25

Maxim of quality

Answer 25

Truth: Do not say which you believe to be false, or cannot prove to be true.

Question 26

Maxim of quantity

Answer 26

Information: Make your contribution as informative as is necessary.

Question 27

Maxim of manner

Answer 27

Clarity: Avoid ambiguity. Speak clearly.

Question 28

Maxim of relevance

Answer 28

Relevance: Be relevant. Do not return to topics previously discussed.

Question 29

Positive politeness

Answer 29

makes the hearer feel good about themselves, interests, or possessions.

Question 30

Negative politeness

Answer 30

strategies involve showing respect for someone's autonomy and minimising imposition.

Question 31

Humour

Answer 31

the quality of being amusing or comic, especially as expressed in literature or speech.

Question 32

Satire

Answer 32

the use of humour, irony, exaggeration, or ridicule to expose and criticise people's stupidity or vices, particularly in the context of contemporary politics and other topical issues.

Question 33

Hedging

Answer 33

a writer may not be sure of the claims that are being made in their subject area, or perhaps the ideas are good but the evidence is not very strong.

Question 34

Positive Face

Answer 34

the need for self-image to be accepted, appreciated and approved of by others.

Question 35

Negative Face

Answer 35

is the need to be independent, to have freedom of action, and not to be imposed on by others.

Question 36

Face Threatening Act

Answer 36

is an act (linguistic or non-linguistic) that threatens someone's positive or negative face.

Question 37

Off Record

Answer 37

to express something general or different than the speaker's true meaning and relies on the hearer's interpretation to have the speaker's purpose conveyed.

Question 38

Divergence

Answer 38

a situation in which two things become different. Making our language different to the person’s we are talking to.

Question 39

Convergence

Answer 39

making our language more like the person's we are talking to.

Question 40

Upward Convergence

Answer 40

when a person with a strong regional accent tones their accent down and moves it closer to RP or Standard English.

Question 41

Downward Convergence

Answer 41

when an RP speaker tones down his accent in the company of working class speakers.

Question 42

Mutual Convergence

Answer 42

when both speakers move closer to each other (e.g. by modifying their accents/formality).

Question 43

Standard English

Answer 43

the form of English widely recognised and accepted as 'correct'.

Question 44

Received Pronunciation

Answer 44

the accent traditionally regarded as the standard and most prestigious form of spoken British English.