Essential Terminology
Function: Aim/purpose of text |
Social Purpose: How desired function is achieved |
Face Needs: Strategies around politeness contributing to public self-image |
Face Threatening Acts: Either conveys dislike or imposes a demand on listener |
Discourse: The manipulation of language (like a flexible toolkit) to aid in successful communication |
Coherence: Features that make a text clear - for
clarity/better understanding |
Cohesion: Features that helps with linking/connecting ideas in a text logically |
Political Correctness: Avoiding expressions/actions that cause hurt/harm |
Clarity: To make things clear & easy to understand |
Informal Social Purposes
Intimacy: For creating close familiarity/friendship |
Solidarity: For creating unity/agreement of feeling/action (especially common interests) |
In-Group Membership: For creating a sense of belonging & identity to a certain group |
Equality: For creating a sense of equality between two parties |
Building Rapport: For establishing a connection |
Reducing Social Distance: For a sense of
closeness/equality |
Formal Social Purposes
Maintaining & challenging positive/negative face needs |
Reinforcing social distance & authority |
Establishing expertise |
Promoting social harmony |
Negotiating social taboos |
Building rapport |
Clarifying, manipulating, confusing (via doublespeak) |
Sentence Types (Syntax)
Declarative: To inform |
Interrogative: To ask a question |
Imperative: To instruct |
Exclamative: To exclaim/show emotion |
Nominalisation: Replacing words with noun forms |
Other Syntax Features
Nominalisation: Replacing words with noun forms |
Active Voice: SVO format, for clearly conveying info - 'default' voice |
Passive Voice: Object before subject, for improving logical connections between sentences |
Agentless Passive: Removing subject/agent in sentence, avoids blame - similar to passive voice |
Marked Theme: Syntactic choice where the subject isn't at start of sentence - through beginning with either a subordinate clause, adverbial or passive voice use |
Connected Speech Features (Phonology)
Acronym: EVIA |
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Elision |
e.g 'stralia |
Vowel Reduction |
e.g /ə/ fish 'n chips |
Insertion |
e.g AustraliYa |
Assimilation |
e.g godda, didja |
Prosody Features (Phonology)
Acronym: TVIPS |
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Tempo |
Volume |
Intonation |
Pitch |
Stress |
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Other Discourse Features
Front Focus: Moving a phrasal element to the front for focus/importance - for restating info or comparing/contrasting |
End Focus: Moving a phrasal element to the back for focus/importance - for suspense/drama |
Collocation: Words that are constantly used together within phrases - well known & predictable, aiding cohesion & coherence for faster processing |
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Clefting |
Moving a phrase to another position within a sentence |
For drawing focus to a specific part of the sentence |
It-Cleft: 'It' + 'to be' verb variant used for front focus |
Pseudo/Wh-Cleft: 'Wh-' used for end focus |
Coherence Features (Discourse)
Acronym: FLICCC |
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Formatting |
Heading: Signposts/head's up of what's to follow |
Subheadings: Guides reader through info |
Paragraphs: Separates topics |
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Logical Ordering: Sentence sequencing - develops ideas logically built on previous info |
Inference/Assumed Knowledge: For assumption making based on reader's prior knowledge (extra info in brackets explains jargon) |
Consistency: Consistent lexical/semantic fields & syntactic/discourse features throughout text |
Conventions Of Text Type: The expected text's rules/
expectations for their structure (e.g recipes list
instructions step-by-step) |
Cohesion: Needed for coherence/clarity |
Cohesion Features (Discourse)
Acronym: CAR SLIDER |
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Conjunctions: Joins sentences - for making direct connections to other ideas |
Adverbials: Joins paragraphs - for making direct connections to other ideas |
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Repetition |
Lexical Patterning: Repeated words |
Phonological Patterning: Repeated sounds - alliteration, rhyme, consonance, assonance |
Syntactic Patterning: Repeated clauses - parallelism |
Semantic Patterning: Repeated ideas |
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Substitution: Replacing whole phrases with simple nouns |
Lexical Choice: Semantically linked words: synonyms, antonyms, hyponyms |
Information Flow: Discourse structures that help introduce new info in a sentence - clefting, end focus, front focus |
Deictics/Dexis: 'Pointing' words used under shared context. Must be understood by both parties for cohesion |
Ellipses: Partial removal of a sentence, usually implied/inferred by reader |
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Referencing |
For unnecessary repetition & reducing lexical density |
Cataphoric Referencing: Pronoun used first, then noun is later established |
Anaphoric Referencing: Noun established first, then referenced later with a pronoun |
Face Needs
Positive |
Negative |
The need to be well liked |
The freedom to act as one wishes |
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Positive Face Supported/
Affirmed Through... |
Negative Face Mindfulness Through... |
Love, support & praise |
Space |
Careful listening |
Freedoms |
Taking interest |
Independence |
Showing closeness |
Silence |
Positive responses |
Privacy |
Remembering names |
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Associated Metalanguage |
Imperatives |
Politeness markers |
Address terms (vocatives) |
Self-effacing
(accomplishment minimising) words |
Conditional sentences |
Modal auxiliary verbs |
Interrogatives |
Declaratives |
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Spoken Discourse Features
Occurring vocal linguistic elements due to conversation's nature |
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Openings & Closings: Formulas/structures that begin/end a conversation (greetings/salutations, names/address terms (vocatives), phatic elements etc.) |
Adjacency Pairs: Somewhat predictable conversation routines (question/answer, greeting/response, apology/acceptance etc.) |
Overlapping Speech: 2 speakers talking at the same time |
Interrogative Tags: Declaratives turned into questions. For involving other speakers (co-operative strategy) |
Strategies Of Spoken Discourse
Used tactics for co-operative & successful conversations |
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Topic Management: Ensuring that the focused topic is on track, via discourse particles or back-channelling |
Topic Loop: Returning to a previous topic |
Discourse Particles: 'Filler' words/sounds for specific functions: Topic shifts, interrogatives, turn-taking, expressing attitude/emotion and hedging |
Non-Fluency Features: Natural parts of speech for reduced formality: Pauses, voiced hesitation, false starts, repetition, repairs |
Back-Channelling/Minimal Responses: Short responses/noises indicating attentiveness to speaker. Also for maintaining topic |
Subject ellipsis + auxiliary verb → Friendly sounding, conversational & fun |
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Turn-Taking |
Taking The Floor: Getting your turn |
Holding The Floor: Maintaining your turn |
Passing The Floor: Giving someone else a turn |
Stylistic Features
Phonological Patterning |
Alliteration: Repetition of identical initial consonant sounds |
Assonance: Repetition of identical vowel sounds close to each other |
Consonance: Repetition of identical consonant sounds close to each other & appears anywhere in the word |
Onomatopoeia: Word imitating a sound |
Rhythm: Stressed & unstressed syllable patterns |
Rhyme: Repetition of similar sounds in final syllables |
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Syntactic Patterning |
Listing: A list of things - for emphasise, showcasing knowledge or offering ideas |
Parallelism: Repeating the same grammatical structure for one/more sentences |
Antithesis: 2 opposite ideas put together for contrasting effects |
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Semantic Patterning |
Simile: 2 things compared using comparison words |
Metaphor: 2 things compared that aren't alike but have something in common |
Animation: Metaphor type that gives life/movement to lifeless objects, places or ideas |
Personification: Object/idea represented as a person |
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Lexical Choice |
Lexical Ambiguity: When it's difficult to understand the multiple interpretations without additional info |
Puns: Jokes that exploit the various possible meanings of a word |
Oxymoron: A self-contradicting word/group of words |
Irony: Expression of something that's opposite in its literal meaning |
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