GLOSSARY OF LINGUISTIC TERMS
 

Accent and dialect

Accent refers to the way words are pronounced, e.g. in the south of England it is normal to pronounce the word path as p-ar-th, but in the north, the phoneme 'a' is short and pronounced as in, 'cat'.

Dialect refers to which particular words are chosen, which can either be from the vocabulary (i.e. lexicon) of the Standard English dialect or from, for example, a vocabulary of a specific regional area; for example, the word 'bread roll' has a number of different names in different parts of the country such as 'cob', 'bap'.

Active and passive voice

This can be an important aspect of style. Verbs can either (and most often) tell what a subject is doing, as in 'The cat sat on the mat', or the object can be placed in the normal subject position to create what is called 'the passive voice', e.g. 'The mat was sat on by the cat'.

The passive voice is used when the style demands that the object of the action is emphasised over the subject. It is even possible, using a passive construction, to remove the reference to the subject entirely - a style popular in newspaper headlines, e.g. 'Woman murdered in gangland shooting'

The passive voice is the style of choice for reports where the subject is not important (e.g. the person who carried out an experiment or interview is usually of far less importance than the details and results of the experiment). See also voice.

Adjective
(adjectival)

A word class which contains words that can add more detail (i.e. modify) to a noun or pronoun - e.g. the busy teacher (pre-modification); it was awful (post-modification). Adjectives are gradable depending on whether a comparison is made with one other thing or many other things: big, bigger, biggest; difficult, more difficult, most difficult.

Agreement

In English grammar, it is necessary that certain linked words 'agree' with each other, for example, a verb is given an inflexion (suffix) to allow it to 'agree with' its subject when in the 'third person', e.g. he talks (not he talk).

Adverb
(adverbial) 

A word class which contains words that add extra detail about the way an action occurred (i.e. the verb) but which can also modify another adverb or an adjective, e.g. 'The girl worked especially hard.'; 'He was just too much!' Adverbs can give detail concerning time (soon), place (there) and manner (nearly).

Adverbial

A kind of phrase that provides extra information in a clause usually to supply extra information about the action (i.e. the verb) by indicating time, place or manner of action. A clause can contain several adverbials (which, unusually for an English grammatical structure, can be located in various places). Adverbials are usually 'optional' elements in a clause - its central meaning being reasonably unaffected if they are left out.

Ambiguity

This means 'more than one possible meaning'. The rules of grammar exist to allow a structure of words to be created that has a single meaning, i.e. to be unambiguous. Here is an ungrammatical sentence that was an actual warning notice at the bottom of an escalator: 'Dogs must be carried on the escalator'. What does this mean? Are you allowed to ride on the escalator without a dog in your arms?

Archaic
(archaism)

If a word is described as archaic, it suggests its use is now old-fashioned. Many words in poems are still used that seem archaic, and many formal words may seem to be so, especially in a religious or legal register. Such words may not be fully archaic - it may simply be that you are unaware of these particular registers.

Article

One of a class of words, rather like adjectives, that are called determiners. The definite article is the and the indefinite article is a or an.

Audience

Audience means the kind of reader or listener the text was intended for. As this is unlikely to be you, sadly you do need to attempt the near impossible and “become” the intended reader. Always consider a text in this way or you will run the risk of “misreading” it. Also, avoid being overly specific or informal when describing an audience’s likely characteristics: “this writing is suitable for clever so and so’s of about 23 and over” sounds rather less impressive than, “the style of this text seems geared towards an educated and sophisticated adult audience”. For module 1 in your exam, audience is one way to categorise similar texts.

Auxiliary verb

English verbs are very limited in what they can indicate through their own morphology: using inflexions, they can show past (e.g. cooked) and present tense (e.g. cook), third person agreement (e.g. she cooks), and continuous action (e.g. cooking). Often the main verb needs 'helping out' with a secondary verb form. These are called auxiliary verbs. Auxiliaries are used, for example, to give a sense of time to the main verb (e.g. 'He will be working soon.') or to create a question, 'Have you won?', 'Do you believe it?', 'Could it be true?'.

Common auxiliary verbs are forms of to be (is/am/was/are/were/will), to have (has/had/have) and to do (does/did); some auxiliary verbs add a kind of 'mood' to the sentence to suggest that the action is only a potential not a reality. These are called modal auxiliaries, e.g. may, might, would, could, should.

Clause
(clausal)

A clause is a key grammatical structure. Clauses are formed when a noun or noun phrase is linked with a verb; because of this, clauses always manage to tell what something (the subject - usually a noun or pronoun) is doing or being (the verb).

Clauses are the 'building blocks' of sentences. A single clause, if it begins with a capital letter and ends with a full stop is called a simple sentence; but if it were joined to other clauses in the same structure, it is merely a part of a longer sentence and is then called a main clause.

There are several kinds of clause. The main clause as mentioned above can make a sentence on its own. Another important clause acts to 'help out' or add extra meaning to a main clause in a sentence: these clauses are called subordinate or dependent clauses. They are often introduced by subordinating conjunctions which stop the clause being able to be a main clause (in the example below, the subordinating conjunction is the phrase, even though - but there are many others such as however, therefore, because, if...); you can see how the clause cannot be a sentence on its own and so must be acting only to add meaning to another main clause in the sentence (He hit him).

Another kind of subordinate clause is called a relative or adjectival clause. These clauses act like adjectives to add extra description to the subject or object noun of the sentence. They are often inserted between the subject and its verb, e.g. 'The girl who wore a red dress left early.'

The structure of clauses is important to learn. There are seven basic structures that depend upon aspects of the verb contained in the clause (S = subject; V = verb; O = object; C = complement; A = adverbial):

S+V: Alison / sang.
S+V+O: Alison / sang / a song.
S+V+C: Alison / is / a good singer.
S+V+A: Alison / sings / in the choir.
S+V+O+O: Alison / sang / her mum / a ballad.
S+V+O+A: Alison / sang / the song / from the song-book.

Cohesion
(cohere / coherent / coherence)

This is an important idea to understand and it can be difficult at first - the penny needs to drop!

Many patterns of words exhibit a quality known as cohesion. This means that they are coherent - they can be seen to act not as individual words but as a single unit, e.g. 'inside out', 'at three o'clock', 'the awful creature', 'has been eating', 'in a traditional manner'. These examples of coherent groups are all phrases, but clauses and sentences are also coherent.

At levels larger than the sentence, in a discourse or text, the reader or listener also needs to be able to link the different sentences and paragraphs (or stanzas in a poem, etc) in a logical way. This is achieved by many linguistic means including graphology, semantics, pragmatics, narrative structure, tone, lists, pronouns, proper nouns, repetition of either logical or similar ideas, use of synonyms, and so on.

Collocation
(collocates / collocated)

Collocation is the process whereby some words seem to 'belong together' in a phrase. Many idioms or idiomatic phrases exhibit collocation, e.g. in a jiffy.

Colloquial / slang
(colloquialism)

A 'colloquy' is a formal word meaning a conversation, so colloquial language means the informal language or register we adopt when chatting to friends, for example, e.g. 'Hello Fred, how's the new mother-in-law these days?'.

Slang is a particular form of colloquial language used by certain social groups, e.g. 'Hey-up Fred! How's the new battle-axe then?'; 'Hey cool man!'

Complement

A word, phrase or clause that follows a verb and which simply adds further information concerning, usually, the verb's subject. Complements usually follow stative verbs such as 'to be' to create a statement (i.e. a declarative sentence), e.g. 'He is happy'. Here the adjective 'happy' is the subject complement. However, in the sentence, 'He made me happy',  the adjective happy is called an object complement as it gives more information about the verb's object, me.

Conjunction

A word used to link words, phrases and clauses. Common conjunctions are and, but, or, either..or, neither...nor. These can link 'equal units' such as words, phrases or main clauses. A special kind of conjunction that can link 'unequal' independent and dependent clauses is called a subordinating conjunction. There are many of these, e.g. however, because, although, even if, etc. Also see sentence and clause.

Connotation / denotation
(connote / connotative; denote / denotative)

The denotation of a word is its direct, literal or specific meaning (as can be found in a dictionary). If a word also has implied or associated meanings when used in a certain way, these are called the word's connotations. The word 'bat' in this sentence is being used with its denotation: 'A bat is a flying mammal.'; however, the word, 'bat' can also take on extra meanings, often metaphorical, e.g. 'He went like a bat out of hell'.

Interestingly, the word 'bat' also happens to have several possible denotations: 'a cricket bat', 'a vampire bat', 'They bat next' (as well as other slang and dialect meanings): words that have several denotations are called polysemic. Polysemy is an area of semantics and pragmatics.

Context
(contextual / contextualise)

Context can be a crucial aspect to consider when analysing a text.

Context refers to those particular elements of a situation that could affect the text in some way (for example, the effects of time, place, ideology, relationships, etc.). Importantly, language has two potentially important contextual effects: that in which it is created and that in which it is interpreted. A letter from a manager to a worker will be affected by context: that of the situation itself and that of the power relationship that exists between the manager and the worker. When you speak to your parents or when you speak to a friend on the phone you should be able to recognise how context will affect the style of the discourse in some important way.

When a commonly met with context (such as a discussion with a doctor, or with a child) creates a general and typical effect on style, the resultant style is called a register (e.g. a medical register, a child's register, a formal register). Context can also be an effective way to categorise texts in module one of your AS exam.

Determiner

One of a small group of words that can precede and pre-modify a noun, e.g. a, the, some, this, that, those, each. Determiners include the three 'articles' (i.e. a, an, the) and similar words: e.g. some, those, many, their. Each of these are said to determine the number or 'definiteness' of their noun, e.g. 'That man is the one!' Determiners can themselves be pre-modified by 'pre-determiners', e.g. 'Even the apples were rotten'; 'All the books were lost.'.

Discourse / discourse analysis

Within language study, discourse means a stretch of language used in a particular context. Discourse is a way of looking at the way language is actually used in real situations and social settings. Hence, a conversation between scientists, a chat between manager and worker, teacher and student, doctor and patient, and so on all constitute different kinds of discourse that will have particular features worthy of study.

We all have the linguistic ability to create discourses. We do this by combining phonemes and morphemes into words, words into phrases, phrases into clauses, clauses into sentences, and sentences into a text or discourse. The ability to make such combinations of words derives from our ability to connect them logically by following the rules of syntax as well as our knowledge of the conditions that apply to that particular discourse.

Discourse analysis involves the close study of the linguistic performance of a speaker or writer, in particular of his or her style within the discourse. It attempts to describe and explain how and what meaning is created within and across a text both at the surface (semantic) level as well as at the subtextual (pragmatic) level.

Discourse analysis pays close attention to all of the important aspects of the creation and interpretation of a text, including close attention to the effects of genre and context. Clearly pragmatics is a major aspect of discourse analysis as much language is used with specific reference to the context in which the language is used and the meanings of the language use often have to be pragmatically inferred from a knowledge of the words used in that particular context rather than from their basic semantic value.

An important part of discourse analysis is to determine what is called orders of discourse. In any discourse, it is clear that speakers or readers are rarely 'on equal terms'. Usually there is a hierarchy of power or a power relationship involved, wherein one participant - through language choices - can 'position' the other participant in a less powerful position. An analysis of men/women dialogue has revealed many ways in which apparently innocent uses of language creates a power relationship between the participants.

Element

An element is a distinct grammatical unit - a 'building block' or segment of a sentence; there are three important grammatical elements: word, phrase and clause. Some of the elements of a discourse or text are their sentences, paragraphs, chapters and so on.

Ellipsis
(elliptical)

English grammar sometimes allows certain words to be left out of a grammatical construction (i.e. for a sentence to be grammatically abbreviated) and yet for it still to allow full meaning to be achieved, e.g. 'I bought half a dozen eggs and [I also bought] six rashers of bacon.' The reader or listener is able to 'add back in' the elements that have been left out and thus understand what is meant.

Form and content

Form means the shape, appearance and structure of something, e.g. two forms of the word please, are pleases and pleased. The form of the sentence, e.g. 'He pleased himself.' can be explained by referring to two kinds of structure: that of its individual words (i.e. their morphology) and the way its words relate to each other (i.e. their syntax). The study of both of these aspects of sentences is called grammar; the study of the form of a text is called discourse analysis.

The content is the meaning of a word, phrase, clause or sentence and this is involved with its function. The separation of form, function and content is a theoretical exercise as all are inextricably linked in the way that are the two sides of the same coin.

Function

The function of a word is what it is doing in its sentence, i.e. connected to its meaning. The function of a sentence what it is intended to 'do', e.g. to make a statement), ask a question) or give a command or order. Grammar is involved not with function directly, but with what form words can take (i.e. their structure) so that their function is unambiguous.

Genre
(generic)

More generally, genre is a way of making the unfamiliar seem more familiar and hence, be more easily and quickly recognisable. New things might be unwanted, uncomfortable or even threatening. For instance, if we see an insect that looks different from a wasp but has black and yellow stripes and a pointy body – “genre” allows us to quickly label it and either run, squash or collect it. Genre is a kind of “survival instinct”. The world is naturally (sometimes worryingly and even threateningly) chaotic; things can and do happen at random – even dangerous things. To feel safe, we force order upon as much of the world as we can: we build houses, store food, name things and so on. We must feel secure. Your bedroom might not seem to reflect your instinctive ordering mentality, but it most certainly does: firstly, it is a defined space (it is a piece of the world that is more secure because it is contained) and, although your belongings may look like pure chaos to an untrained observer such as mum and dad, you know precisely what is in that heap of clothes, CDs, magazines, English Language homework and whatever else.

Grammar
(grammatical / grammaticality)

Grammar is the set of rules that tells how words can be put into a sequence in the proper form to create a sentence. The order of words in a phrase, clause or sentence is called its syntax and the form of words is called morphology (for example, to show plural we add the morpheme s, to show possession, we add the morpheme 's).

Graphology
(graphological)

Graphology refers properly to the look of handwriting; however, it is more generally used to refer to the layout and look of a text and how this affects its style and meaning in some way, e.g. the use of paragraphs, lists, 'bullets', font, underlining, italics, white space, colour, etc. Typography is the correct word to refer to different choices of typeface.

Head / head word

The head or head word of a phrase is the word around which the phrase is built, i.e. the main word that determines the meaning of the whole phrase, e.g. in the noun phrase the old-fashioned door, the head word is door; in the verb phrase, might be hit the head word is hit, in the prepositional phrase on the table, the head word is the preposition, on.

Ideology
(ideological)

Ideology refers to the important 'belief systems' adhered to by groups or whole societies - it is our 'world view' or 'mind set' concerning how things are and ought to be. A society is a group of people who share certain key values and ideas. These values and ideas are called that society's ideologies.

Texts are created by speakers and writers who share society's beliefs concerning “what is right” and “what is wrong” or about “the way things should be for the best” in society. These ideologies mw be “hidden” because they seem “natural” or “common sense”, as the result of “progress” in our “advanced” society, and so on.

If we closely examine and consider such ideologies, we might come to conclude that some of our most cherished ideas are also those ideas that maintain the existing hierarchy and power structures within society (with the wealthy holding the reigns of power, and the poor being attached to the reigns, perhaps?). This “political” way of considering the effect of ideologies is called Marxism, after the nineteenth century philosopher, Karl Marx. Marx recognised that those with power naturally enough wish to hold on to their status (those who “own the means of production”, i.e. the powerful, he called the bourgeoisie; lesser mortals are the proletariat or the masses). Marx thought that the bourgeoisie could effectively create and reinforce particular “ways of thinking” that tend to maintain a society’s status quo and hence, their status and power.

Ideas that “maintain the status quo” are referred to as a society’s dominant or prevailing ideologies. An example of such an idea might be, “He deserves to be rich because he’s worked hard for all he has”; but this ignores the plight of millions who work even harder but stay poor.  The point of ideological thinking is just that – it ignores, hides, sidelines, and “disappears” those groups whose ideas it does not support.

Marx felt that such ways of thinking act not only to keep the powerful in power but also to create the conditions necessary for the masses to justify their own lower position in society. The means by which ideas can support the status quo is called hegemony. Prevailing ideologies become a part of us as we grow up; we become “conditioned” into thinking that the way our society operates is for the best. This “social conditioning” is created through the family, school, religion, law and – very importantly for language study – the mass media; indeed, the media receive much of the focus of Marxist criticism because it is considered a major means through which powerful elite groups can increase their hegemony over others. It is hegemony that causes us to view our capitalist, consumerist “social-democracy”, with its hierarchies of status and power, its elitism, its individualistic self-centredness, its poverties and its suffering… as “the best of all possible worlds”.

In studying a text for its hegemonic or ideological power, you must learn to look for what is termed “ideologically loaded” language. Such language is that which has judgemental value as well as meaning. Look out for such language and consider its seductively persuasive effect as it subtly “ideologically positions” you as reader. Many ideologically loaded words have their judgmental value because their meaning is relational: they exist as “binary pairs”, e.g. “master/mistress”, “housewife/working mother”, “middle class/working class”, “freedom fighter/terrorist”, “hero/coward”, “normal/abnormal”, “gay/hetero”, “feminine/feminist, “The West/the East”, etc. Some linguists maintain that all language – all meaning – is an “ideological construct”.

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Idiomatic language
(idiom / idiomatic phrase)

Idiomatic language (also loosely referred to simply as 'an idiom') refers to the words and phrases that are a natural and everyday feature of a person's idiom (i.e. idiolect). It is a comfortable, conversational style of language in which some of the words or phrases have a meaning that is quite different from their literal meaning, e.g. 'He wants his pound of flesh.'; 'You scratch my back, I'll scratch yours'; 'That's real cool'; 'No way, José', 'He's a pain in the neck!', etc.

Imperative

A command sentence which uses the second person plural form of a verb but misses out the subject pronoun “you”. It gives orders, e.g. Leave now!; Sit down.

Infinitive

A form of a verb without tense and often introduced by 'to'; infinitive forms can replace noun phrases as subject or object of a verb, e.g. Object: He likes to eat; subject: To fish is a very relaxing way to spend the morning.

Inflection
(inflexion / inflect / inflects / inflected) 

The way words can change their form to show, for example, that they are singular or plural (e.g. table becomes tables) and to indicate tense (e.g. change becomes changes/ changed/ changing) or possession (The cat's whiskers).

Interjection

A word class that is used to show emotion, e.g. 'Ouch!', 'Hey!'

Intransitive

A verb is called intransitive when no action transfers from their subject to an object, e.g. we swam like a fish; they sang beautifully; he died. A transitive verb always takes an object - the thing that takes its action, e.g. He hit his thumb with the hammer.

Irony

Irony is the name given to the effect of meaning created when one thing is said or written but another - sometimes opposite - thing is meant. In speech this effect is created by tone of voice; in writing by carefully chosen lexis. The study of such meaning falls within the area known as pragmatics.

Lexeme
(lexemic / lexicon)

The technical term for a single base unit of independent meaning such as a word, especially a word in its 'base form' as found as a head word in a dictionary's pages shown in bold, e.g. interest, bridge, mouse; but also including some 'phrasal verbs' that have separate meanings from their constituent lexemes, e.g. 'to see to', 'to break down', 'to put up with', 'to wind up'.

The collection of lexemes that forms your vocabulary is called your personal lexicon. A dictionary is another kind of lexicon.

Lexical and stative verbs

Lexical verbs tell of an action (to hit, to call, to sing); stative verbs tell of a state of being (to be - am, is, was, were - to think, hope, seem, appear, feel, etc.).

Lexis
(lexical)

The study of, or use of, words - especially those particular choices that are relevant to the style of a text. Lexical choice means word choice and is an important aspect of creating a style or register (i.e. writing or speech suitable for a particular audience and purpose). For example, lexical choices can be formal (e.g. from the standard English dialect) or informal (e.g. colloquial or slang), serious or flippant, etc.; it can be simple (e.g. monosyllabic, or maybe Anglo-Saxon) or complex (e.g. Classical, Latinate or polysyllabic, etc.); it can be literal (where meaning depends upon denotation) or metaphorical (including similes and personification, where meaning depends upon connotation), etc. Lexis can be inclusive or exclusive from an audience perspective, e.g. a highly formal lexis will exclude large numbers of potential readers or listeners.

Lexical cohesion occurs when words have an affinity for each other as in collocations.

Linguistic

Referring to the study or ways of language and the use of words to create meaning.

Modifier / Modification

Modification describes the grammatical process in which the semantic value of a word (usually a noun, verb or adjective) can be 'modified' or changed by the addition of another word or phrase (usually an adjective or adverb).

For example, nouns can be both pre-modified (by adjectives, e.g. A tall dark stranger' or other nouns, e.g. 'oven glove') as well as post-modified, e.g. 'He is tall'; 'He is a pig!'.

Mood
(modal / modality)

'Mood' describes an aspect of a verb that suggests that an action is potential, rather than actual, e.g. He might win; she could go. 'Mood' is created by using a modal auxiliary verb with the main verb.

Morphology / morpheme
(morphological)

An important aspect of grammar, but far less so than syntax. Morphology is the study of the way words are formed from smaller units called morphemes.

A morpheme is the smallest part of a word that can create or change the word's meaning or function (e.g. un-, happy, -ness). Prefixes and suffixes (i.e. affixes such as, e.g. un-; -tion) are called bound morphemes because they cannot exist without being bound to a base or root word; base words (e.g. interest, intent) are called free morphemes because they can exist as independent words.