English Language Key Terms
- Created by: caitlinoxo
- Created on: 05-05-15 13:59
Adjacency Pairs
An utterance and response that are often seen together:
A: "How are you?"
B: "I'm fine, thanks."
Adjective
A type of word class. Adjectives refer to words that describe a noun.
Adverb
Another word class. Adverbs describe the verbs and usually end in "-ly". For example: she walked quickly.
Alliteration
Repetition of a series of consonant or vowel at the beginning of words.
Assonance
Repetition of the vowel sound in a series of words.
Auxiliary Verb
Helps to establish when the action took place.
e.g. The cat was sitting beside the bowl.
"Was" tells us it's in the past.
Cataphoric Reference
Using a series of pronouns before introducing the proper noun.
"He's the current World No. 2. He's known as 'the Rocket'. He comes from the UK. It's Ronnie O'Sullivan!"
Colloquial
The language of speech.
Connotations
From "con" which means "with", theses are the psychological associations that come with words.
Declarative
The type of sentence function that states something/describes something.
Denotation
The dictionary definition of a word.
Discourse Structure
The structure of the text, including beginning, middle, end, any ordering.
Elision
Missing out letters or sounds.
Ellipsis
Missing words out, because the listener/reader can fill in the gaps.
Emotive
Language (often hyperbole) used to evoke emotions within the reader.
Euphemism
A word or phrase used to soften a harsh reality. For example, "passed away" is a euphemism of "death."
False Starts
Starting again to correct yourself.
Fillers
Similar to voiced pause, but actually adding a word. For example: "kinda", "like", "and stuff".
Hyperbole
Exaggeration. (pronounced: hi-per-bo-lee)
Idiolect
Individual language. Accent, pitch, favourite phrases, etc. all make up someone's personal language style.
Imperative
The type of sentence function that commands.
Interrogative
The type of sentence function that is a question.
Lexis
Individual word choice.
Litotes
Understatements.
Non-fluency Features
A general term for anything that removes fluency in spoken language - such as voiced pauses, non-voiced pauses, fillers, false starts.
Onomatopoeia
Where a word sounds like what it's describing. For example: crash, smash, hiss, bang...
Paralinguistic Features
From "para" which means "outside" and "linguistic" which is about language, paralinguistic features are features of conversation outside of the speech. For example: facial gestures, posture, eye contact, laughing...
Passive Tense
A sentence where the object is being acted upon to it by the subject.
E.g. The ball was kicked by the boy.
Patterning
Repeating sentence structure.
Personification
Giving something inhuman, human qualities.
Phonology
From "-ology" meaning "the study of" and "phone" meaning sound, this is the study of sound.
Pragmatics
The underlining meaning.
Preposition
Used to position things in a sentence.
Examples are: to, under, in, behind, on, by, at...
Prosodic Features
Aspects of voice (pitch, volume, intonation, stress) that contribute to understanding.
Semantic Field
Semantics is concerned with meaning. When a group of words are together with similar connotations, they're part of one "theme" or semantic field.
Sentence function
What the sentence does. There are three basic functions: interrogative, imperative, declarative.
Voiced Pause/Unvoiced Pause
Voiced pause: "erm", "um", "err".
Unvoiced pause is naturally a pause but without a sound.
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