GLOSSARY: DEVELOPING A SHARED LANGUAGE

What are the different terms we need to describe language? In order to analyse and compare texts,
you are expected to understand these words. Supplement them with words you hear in class
discussions and practice using them in your language analysis.

Alliteration: The repetition of sounds, in headlines and news articles, most often involving the
repeated first letter of each word.

Ambiguity: Double meaning, often used deliberately by authors.

Audience: The intended readership for a piece of writing. Is it for an adult audience? A specialist
audience who would understand the technical terms? A younger audience?

Bias: inclination to hold a particular view or perspective; revealed through the text structure,
selected details, and word choices; subjectivity.

Borrowing / load words: the process of importing linguistic items from one linguistic system into
another, a process that occurs any time two cultures are in contact over a period of time.

Cliche: An over-used or outworn phrase that has lost its effectiveness.

Connotations: The significances and associated meanings implied by the choice of a certain
word.

Content (of a text): the ideas or information contained within a text. See also context.

Context: the surrounding text, topic, conditions, or activities that affect how we understand specific
words, sentences, and ideas within a text. See also content.

Denotation: the literal meaning of a word; the use of words to name or symbolise particular things,
for example, Labrador denotes a certain breed of dog.

DiscourseLanguage in use and understood as participating in social systems and so having

determining effects in social life.

Emotive language: Language directed to respond to or inspire an emotional response; but try to
be clear about what emotion/s are involved.

Figurative meaning/figurative language: non-literal meaning of a word or phrase; used for

comparison, emphasis, clarity, or freshness of thought (e.g., euphemism, hyperbole, idiom,
metaphor, oxymoron, paradox, personification, pun, simile, symbol).

Formal style: avoids colloquial and conversational elements of informal writing

GenreA typified rhetorical way of recognizing, responding to, acting meaningfully and
consequentially within, and thus participating in the reproduction of, recurring situations. Genres
both organize and generate kinds of texts and social actions, in complex, dynamic relation to one
another. While traditional views of genre emphasize its application as a tool of classification, con-
temporary rhetorical, linguistic, and literary views of genre understand it to be an ideologically
active and historically changing force in the production and reception of texts, meanings, and so-
cial actions. Genres often have certain conventions or expectations which you can follow, or
sometimes break with, to great effect.

Genre knowledgeA knowledge not only of a genres formal features but also of what and whose
purposes the genre serves, how to negotiate ones intentions in relation to the genres social
expec- tations and motives, what reader/writer relationships the genre maintains, and how the
genre relates to other genres in the coordination of social life.

IdeologyAn abstract system of beliefs, values, and ideas that directs goals, expectations, and
actions. Ideology and genre are related in that to recognize genres as socially situated and
culturally embedded is to recognize that genres carry with them the ideologies of particular
communities and cultures. Genre provides the ideological context in which a text and its users
function, relate to other genres and texts, and attain cultural value.

Infer: To lead the reader to draw a conclusion.

Irony:

Jargon: Technical or difficult language specific to a profession or sub-culture.

Informal style: times at which a speaker or writer may incorporate a more relaxed tone and may,
for effect, ignore some standard grammar and usage rules.

Onomatopoeia: A word that literally sounds like the thing its describing. Words like bang and
pop are obvious examples, other more subtle examples could include whisper or murmur.

Personification: Giving human qualities to non-human objects such as animals, the sea, the wind,
etc.

Procedural texts: a sequence of actions or steps needed to make or do something (e.g., recipes,
science experiments, assembly manuals, instructions for playing games).

Pun: A play on words, usually involving one word having two meanings.

Purpose: Often, this might be more about multiple purposes, but revolves around what the piece is
trying to do: is it to persuade, to inform, to record and document, or to make the reader feel
something specific?
Nominalisation: forming a noun from a verb or adjective.

Rhetorical devices: literary, figurative, and syntactic devices used in text intended to influence the
audience (e.g., allusion, analogy, understatement, parallelism, repetition)

Tabloid: This refers to the smaller paper size of newspapers such as the Herald Sun. Also used as
a pejorative term to describe sensationalist or prurient reporting.

Text: a piece of spoken, written, or visual communication that is a whole unit, for example, a
conversation, a poem, a web page, a speech, or a poster.

Text features: a general term for all the written, graphic, and interactive characteristics that make
one text similar to or different from another. Text features include the generic structure of the text
(which is linked to its purpose); the layout of the text; the use of visual language features (such as
headings, maps, diagrams, and illustrations); the language used; and the voice and register.

Text form: the essential structure of a text type with characteristic features, for example, a poem, a
magazine article, or a letter to the editor.

Text type: a particular kind of text, with features and conventions linked to the texts purpose, for
example, an illustrated article to explain how something works, a letter written to argue a case, or a
narrative written to entertain.

Tone (in writing): the phrasing and/or vocabulary used to express the emotion or perspective that
the writer wants to convey.

Topic: an identified theme or subject.

Visual language features: text features that consist of graphic elements (for example, headings,
text boxes, maps, charts, diagrams, illustrations, and photos as well as links, menus, and buttons,
as found in web pages). See also written language features.

Vocabulary: a set of words and other terms (including phrases or idioms that have a single
meaning), for example, activate, exercise book, and bury the hatchet are all vocabulary items (or
lexical items.)

Written language features (in contrast to visual language features): text features that consist of
verbal elements in written texts. This includes all kinds of language features, including vocabulary,
sentence structures, and figurative language.