Lexis
Borrowing – Taking words from other languages, e.g. karaoke
Affixation – Meaning ‘to fasten’ – attaching parts of words to others to form
a new one, e.g. microbiology, eco-warrior
Compounds – Words
formed from joining together two other words with or without a hyphen, e.g.
laptop, see-through
Blends –
When parts of words are chopped off and put together to form a new word, e.g.
smog, frappe
Proprietary names – When a word is coined from a company name/ the name of the
inventor of a product, e.g. Hoover, Walkman
Acronym – A word made up of the first letters of
a phrase, which is pronounced as if it were a usual word, e.g. RADAR (Radio
Detection And Ranging) or TARDIS (Time And Relative Dimension In Space)
Initialism - A word made up of the first letters of a phrase, where the letters
are individually pronounced (e.g. CD, FBI)
Coinage/neologism – The creation of completely new words
Back-formation – The removal of part of a word, e.g. editor/edit
Clipping – A
more drastic form of back formation, creating new words by extracting an
arbitrary portion of a longer word.
Jargon –
Lexis specific to a particular job or interest. Requires previous knowledge.
Semantics
Narrowing
–
When the meaning of a particular word becomes more specific.
Broadening – When a word takes on additional new meanings.
Amelioration
–
When the meaning of a word becomes more positive, e.g. how ‘pretty’ used to
mean sly or cunning, ‘wicked’ can now mean great.
Pejoration – When the meaning becomes less favourable/more negative, e.g. how
‘hussy’ used to be a housewife.
Metaphorical extension/idiomatic usage – When words acquire new meanings because they have been used
metaphorically, e.g. ‘over the moon’, ‘under the weather’, ‘in the doghouse’.
Euphemism – An
inoffensive way of describing something distasteful.
Cliché – An
overused expression or idea
Antithesis – A figure of speech with sharply
contrasting ideas
Grammar
Negation –
Today multiple negatives (e.g. double negatives) are considered incorrect
grammar but in the past they were considered quite acceptable and were used for
emphasis. They were even used in Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales.
Clauses – Subordinate Clauses (an additional piece of information which
couldn’t stand on its own and is often parenthesised).
Pronouns – The
pronouns ‘thou’, ‘thee’ and ‘thine’ have generally disappeared from English.
Interestingly, in some regional dialects a distinction still exists between
singular and plural second person pronouns, with the use of ‘youse’ as a plural
word.
The be-ing construction – progressive – this has massively increased in usage, e.g Hamlet’s “What do you
read my Lord?” would now be “What are you reading?” The progressive suggests
instant action, involves the reader and focuses on the speaker’s immediate
feelings.
“Shall” or “Will” – There used to be more of a distinction between when “shall” and
“will” should be used (“shall” with 1st persons and “will” with
other persons).
Contractions – The increase in the use of contractions suggests a more
informal/conversational style today and non-contracted forms now suggest a
degree of formality or emphasis.
Inflections – The indication of the grammatical form (tense, person or number)
of a word, usually at the end of the word. With adjectives, inflections are used for comparatives and superlatives, as in
‘fast’, ‘faster’, ‘fastest’. Although there are still inflections in modern
English, there were once many more. Old English was very reliant on them, but
most Old English inflections disappeared during the Middle Ages.
Word Order – In Old English, inflections would indicate whether a word was
the subject of a sentence of the object. This meant that, compared with modern
English, the expression of meaning was less reliant on word order, so
construction of sentences was freer and word order showed more variation.
The subjunctive – expresses ‘unreal’ conditions such as wishes, doubts, etc. but
has recently declined in usage (“If I were you” is becoming “If I was you”)
The active voice – “The dog chased the cat”
The passive – “The cat was chased by the dog” – used to disguise blame but has
decreased in popularity, particularly in American English, where it is
discouraged (e.g. US Microsoft Word Auto correct)
Pragmatics
Implication
–
The intended message of a text
Shared Knowledge – Allows for the use of jargon, as the reader/audience of a text
shares an understanding of the topic being discussed.
Orthography - Spelling
Einar
Haugen’s stages of standardisation:
1. Selection of an existing language
as the basis for the standard.
2. Codification involving the
reduction in variability and the establishment of ‘norms’
3. Elaboration which ensures the
standard can be used for a range of functions
4. Implementation – more texts become available, pride
in the standard and the discouragement of alternatives.
Irregular spellings developed from the fact that Christian missionaries tried to use
their 23 letter alphabet for the 35 phonemes of the Old English dialect.
Discourse
- The way that a
text is set out, be it with a clear narrative, chronological, in a question and
answer format, etc.
Phonetics
Accent levelling – People’s accents converge (become more similar to those around
them). Upward convergence is where a person’s accent becomes more ‘upper
class’, i.e. in a formal situation, whereas downward convergence is where a
person’s accent becomes less received, perhaps as a method of decreasing social
class differentiations.
Accent strengthening – People’s accents diverge (become less similar to those around
them). This has often been considered to be a reflection upon the desire to
emphasise differences in dialect and status.
Vowel Shift – (1300-1500) a change in the pronunciation of all long vowel
sounds that took place between the Middle English and Early Modern English
period. This explains why words like “nail” and “name” have different spellings
– they were once pronounced differently, though they are not anymore.
Estuary English - A term coined as long ago as 1984 by
David Rosewarne, a teacher, characterised as 'a variety of modified regional
speech... a mixture of non-regional and local south-eastern English
pronunciation and intonation. If one imagines a continuum with RP and London
speech at either end, "Estuary English" speakers are to be found
grouped in the middle ground.' Basically, it is a name given to the form(s) of English widely
spoken in and around London and, more generally, in the southeast of England —
along the river Thames and its estuary.
Graphology
Fonts
–
different fonts can be used to portray different tones and meanings, e.g. sophistication, power, childishness and informality.
Layouts –
Layouts can make a page busy, easy to follow, formal or informal and often
reflect the context in which they would be found.
Colours –
Different colours connote different moods and feelings, for example red
suggests violence and blue suggests calm and serenity.
Images –
Photos, graphs and diagrams provide additional information to the written text
and also grab the reader’s attention.
