Levels of Language

AO1: Apply appropriate methods of language analysis, using associated terminology and coherent written expression (Paper 1 - Question 1 & 2, Paper 2 - Question 1 & 2)

AO2: Demonstrate critical understanding of concepts and issues relevant to language use (Paper 2- Questions 1 & 2, Paper 2 Question 3)

AO3: Analyse and evaluate how contextual factors and language features are associated with the construction of meaning (Paper 1 Question 1 & 2)

AO4: Explore connections across texts, informed by linguistic concepts and methods (Paper 1 - Question 3)

AO5: Demonstrate expertise and cretivity in the use of English to communicate in different ways (Paper 2 - Question 3)

What you should know:

• The poneme as a basic unit of sound.
• The different types of vowel phonemes (long, short and dipthongs).
• How consonant phonemes are found in terms of voicing, place of articulation and manner of articulation.
• How individual phonemes combine to form syllables.
• How variations of the same phoneme may occur in pronounciations of certain words.
• Variations in speech patterns of individuals and groups in terms of regional accent, and as a result of accomodation.
• The representation of the speech patterns of individuals and groups in different discourses, occupation, friendship groups, etc.
• The use of sound iconicity (e.g. onomatopoeia, alliteration, assonance, consonance) for effect.
• How speakers use variations in pitch, intonation, volume and speed depending on situational aspects.
• How the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) can be used to represent the different aspects of the sound system.

Key Terms:

• Phoneme: the basic unit of sound.
• Dipthong: A vowel sound that is the combination of two seperate sounds, where a speaker slides from one to another.
• Voicing: The act of the vowel cords either vibrating (voiced) or not vibrating (unvoiced) in the production of a consonant sound.
• Placing of Articulation: The position in the mouth where a consonant sound is produced.
• Manner of Articulation: The extent to which airflow is interrupted by parts of the mouth in the production of consonant sounds.
• Syllable: A sound unit with a vowel at its centre.
• Accent: A regional variety of speech that differs from other regional varieties in terms of pronunciation.
• Accomodation: The ways that individuals adjust their speech patterns to match others.
• Sound Iconicity: The use of the sound system to mirror form or meaning.
• International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA): An internationally recognised system of phonetic transcription.

Types of Speech Sound:

Stop Consonants (so-called because  the airflow is stopped) or Plosive Consonants (because it is subsequently released, causing an outrush of air and a burstof sound) are: - Bilibial Voiced /b/ (as a boat) and voiceless /p/ (as a post) - Alveolar Voiced /d/ (as in dad) and voiceless /t/ (as in tap) - Velar Voiced /g/ (as in golf) and voiceless /k/ (as in cow)Affricates are a kind of stop consonant, where the expelled air causes friction rather than plosion. The are palatal /tf/ (as in cheat) and palatal /d3/ (as in jam)Fricatives come from restricting, but not completely stopping, the airflow. The air passes through a narrow space and the sound arises from the friction this produces They come in voiced and unvoiced pairs: - Labio-dental Voiced /v/ (as in vole) and unvoiced /f/ (as in foal) - Dental Voiced /d/ (as in those) /O/ (as in thick) - Alveolar Voiced /z/ (as in zest) and unvoiced /s/ (as in sent) - Palatal Voiced /3/ (as in the middle of leisure)  and unvoiced /f/ (as at the end of trash)

Types of Speech Sound:

Lateral Consonants allow the air to escape at the sides of the tongue. In English there is only one such sound, which is alveolar /l/ (as at the start of lamp)

Approximants do not impede the flow of air. They are all voiced with an open mouth, but are counted as consonants chiefly because of how they function in syllables. They are:Bilabial /w/ (as in water) Alveolar /r/ (as in road)Palatal/j/ (as in yet)

What you should know:

• The denotive and connotative meanings of words.
• The meanings are constructed through the use of figurative lanuage such as a metaphor.
• Sense relationships between words through the conceptsof semantic fields, synonyms, antonyms, hypernyms and hyponyms.
• How individuals and groups vary vocabulary choices according to audience and purpose, and how levels of formality may vary according to these contextual factors.
• How speakers may use specialist registers.
• How speakers' sociolects and dialects reflect variations according to group membership and geographical region.
• How variation in text design reflects variation in language use between individuals, groups, and communities.

Key terms:

Denotative and connotative meanings: The literal (denotive) and associated (connotative) meanings of words.

Figurative language: Language used in a non-literal way in order to describe something in another's terms (e.g. simile and metaphor).

Sematic Fields: Groups of words connected by a shared field of reference, e.g. medicine, art.

Synonyms: Words that have equivalent meaning.

Antonyms: Words that have contrastign meanings.

Hypernyms: Words that label catergories, e.g. animal, cats, dogs.

Hyponyms: Words that can be included in a larger, more general category (e.g. the hyponyms car, bus, aeroplane as a form of the hypernym transport).

Key Terms (continued):

Levels of Formality: Vocabulary styles including slang, colloqualisms, taboo, formal and fixed levels.

Occupational Register: A technical vocabulary associated with a particular occupation or activities.

Sociolect: A language style associated with a particular social group.

Dialect: A language style associated with a particular geographical group.

Neology: The process of new word formation, including the following: blends, compounds, acronyms, initialisms, eponyms.

What you should know:

• How words combine with affixes to show tense or number (inflectional function), or to form new words (derivational function).
• How head words in phrases are modified to form larger structures to provide more detail about people, places, objects or events.
• How elements are arranged in clauses to support meaning and to achieve different kinds of effects.
• How clauses and sentences function in different ways, for example to form statements, form questions, give commands and make exclamations.

Key Terms:

• Morpheme: the smallest grammatical unit.
• Free Morpheme: A morhpeme that can sand on its own as a word.
• Affix (or bound morpheme): A morpheme that cannot stand on its own as a word, but combines with others to create a new words.
• Phrase: A group of words centred around a head word.
• Head Word: The central word in a phrase which gives the phrase its name (e.g. noun phrase, adjective phrase) and may be modified by other words.
• Modification: The adding of additional words to provide more detail to a head word in a phrase either before it (pre-modification) or after it (post-modification).
• Clause: A group of words centred around a verb, which may be either grammatically complete (main clause) or incomplete (subordinate clause).
•  Active Voice: A clause where te agent (doer) of an action is the subject.
• Passive Voice: A clause where the patient (the entirely affected by an action) is in the subject position, amd the agent either follows or is left out.

Key Terms (Continued):

• Tense: How the time of an event is marked (usually through verb inflections): Past, Present, and Future. Please note that there is a debate over whether or not there is a future tense in English. We use modal verbs to indicate future tense, whereas most European langauges use inflections.
• Coordination: The joining of two or more independent clasues via co-ordinating conjunctions. Single words and longer phrases can also be co-ordinated.
• Subordination: The joining of two or more clauses where only one is indeendent (the mainclause) and the others dependent (subordinate clause/clauses).
• Sentence: A larger unit of meaning, which may be formed of a single clause (simple sentence) or several clauses (compound and complex sentences). Minor sentences are sentences without a verb.
• Sentence Function: The purpose a sentence fulfils in communication: as a statement, question, command or exclamation. There are also referred to a declaratives, interrogatives, imeratives and exclamatives.
• Word Class: The grammatical category into which words can be placed, including noun, adjective, verb, adverb, determiner, pronoun, preposition, conjunction.

What you should know:

• The implied meanings of words, utterances and speech acts in their specific contexts.
• Face, politness and co-operation in language interaction.
• How people draw inferences from others' language uses.
• The influence of different contexts on the meanings of communicative acts.
• How attitudes, values and ideologies can be signalled through language choices.
• How language is used to enact and reflect relationships between people.

Key Terms:

• Implicature: An implied meaning that has to be inferred as a result of a conversational maxim being broken.
• Inference: The process of deriving implied meanings.
• Irony: Using language to signal an attitude other than what has been literally expressed.
• Diexis: Words that are context-bound where meaning depends on who is being referred to, where something is happening or when it is happening, (here, there, it, those, etc).
• Speech Acts: Communicative acts that carry meaning beyond the words and phrases used within them, for example, apologies and promises.
• Politeness: The awareness of others' needs to be approved of and liked (positive politeness) and/or the awareness of others may not want to do what you want (negative politeness).
• Face: The concept of how all communication relies on presenting a 'face' to listeners and audiences, and how the management of positive and negative face needs to contribute to interaction.
• Cooperative Principles: In conversation: how interaction is thought to be based upon various kinds of cooperative behaviour between speakers, (Grice, Accomodation, Convergence, etc).

What you should know:

• Discourse structure: how a text is structured overall (i.e. how its parts are assembled). For example: a question and answer format; problem - solution structure; narrative structure, adjacency pairs in spoken interaction.
• Narrative Structures in texts.
• How texts are related to and contribute towards wider beliefs, ideologies and values in society- i.e. discourses, in the plural.

Key Terms:

• Discourse markers: words, phrases or clauses that help to organise what we say or write (e.g. OK, So, "As I was saying...").
• Adjuncts: Non-essential elements of clauses (usually adverbials) that can be omitted (e.g. "I'll see you in the morning").
• Narrative Structures: How events, actions, and processes are sequenced when recounting a story.
• Anaphoric Reference: Making reference back to something previously identified in a text (often using pronouns to refer to an already established reference point e.g. "The woman stood by the door. She made detailed notes of what she could see").
• Cataphoric reference: Making reference forwards to something as yet unidentified in a text, e.g. It was warm. It was living. It was a rabbit".
• Intertextuality: The use of discourses from one field as part of another (e.g. the use of science discourses in the selling of beauty products, or the use of commercial discourses in education).
• Critical Discourse Analysis: The use of linguistic analysis to explore and challenge the ideologies, positions and values of texts and their producers.

What you should know:

• How text producers use aspects of text design to help create meaning, for example through the use of layout, space, typographical and prthographical features and colour.
• How images are used on their own in conjunction with writing and sound as multimodal texts to represent ideas, individuals or groups.
• How variation in text design reflects variation in language use within individuals and groups and across time, and as a result of advances in technology and shifting cultural practices.

Key Terms:

• Layout: The way in which a text is physically structured.
• Typographical Features: The features of fonts used in texts such as font type, size and colour.
• Orthographical Features: The features of the writing system such as spelling, capitalisation and punctuation.
• Multimodal Texts: Texts that rely on the interplay modes (e.g. images, writing and sound) to help shape meaning.