Post-It Questions

Hi everyone,

In the list below I've provided a definition for the elements of the course people aren't quite confident on based on your Post-Its from Thursday's lesson. Hope this helps!

• Parenthesis - This is a word or a phrase that is inserted into a sentence or passage, and the sentence would be grammatically correct and complete without it. It's usually marked by brackets, dashes or commas. Basically, it refers to the phrase which is in brackets.

• Colloquialisms - This is the term for slang, informal language and dialectal words. 

• Lexical field - This refers to a group of words in a text which all relate to one particular word or subject. For example, the Mumsnet text we are looking at in class has a lexical field of proms.

• Discourse structure - This is the term used to describe the way in which an entire text is organised (i.e. how its parts are assembled). For example: a question and answer format; problem – solution structure; narrative structure; adjacency pairs in a spoken interaction.

• Discourse markers - This refers to words, phrases or clauses that help to organise what we say or write (e.g. OK, So, “As I was saying…, However, In Addition, Subsequently” etc.).

• Pre-modified noun phrase - This refers to an adjective coming before a noun in a noun phrase. As soon as we modify a noun, it becomes a 'noun phrase'. A noun phrase usually begins with a determiner ('a' or 'the') and usually has the noun as the most important word. The usual word order in English implies that an adjective should go infront of the noun, as in 'The brown dog' etc. This is known as pre-modification. But we can post-modify noun phrases too, e.g. 'The dog, which is brown, ran down the street. 

• Grammar - This term refers to sentence structure, function and word order (syntax) and verb tense. Any time you analyse these things, you are analysing the grammar of the text.

• Pragmatics - This refers to language in use and the contexts in which it is used and the inferences a reader makes from a text. It refers to what the author is implying, and not directly saying, and what prior knowledge and understanding the reader would need in order to understand the text and its meaning. It also refers to: the implied meanings of words, utterances and speech acts in their specific contexts, how attitudes, values and ideologies can be signalled through language choices, how language is used to enact and reflect relationships between people, aspects of culturally-based routines that are founded on shared assumptions and tradition

• Semantics - This refers to the meanings of words and the relationships between them. It can be applies to entire texts or single words. For example, 'destination' and 'last stop' technically mean the same thing, but semantically they have subtle differences in meaning. 

• Lexis - Very simple, lexis means words and vocabulary!