English Language Terminology (A01)
Areas of language:
Phonetics, phonology and prosodics:
How spoken language sounds...
Phoneme - The basic unit of sound.
Diphthong - Vowel sound that is the combination of two separate sounds, where a speaker glides from
one to another (e.g. 'ie', 'ou' etc.).
Syllable - Sound unit with a vowel at its centre.
Accent - Regional variety of speech that differs from other regional varieties in terms of pronunciation.
Accommodation - Ways that individuals adjust their speech patterns to match others.
International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) - An internationally recognised system of phonetic transcription.
Graphology:
The visual aspects of textual design and appearance...
Layout - Way in which a text is physically structured i.e. visual design, structure and website navigation.
Typographical features - Features of fonts used in texts such as bold font, font type, size and colour.
Orthographical features - Features of the writing system such as spelling, capitalisation and
punctuation:
Ellipsis - indicates an intentional omission of a word, sentence, or whole section from a text
without altering its original meaning, possibly to allow the audience of the text to make their
own conclusions.
Multimodal texts - Texts that rely on the interplay of different modes (e.g. images, writing and sound) to
help shape meaning.
Other graphological features - Emoticons, hyperlinks, and tabs.
Lexis and semantics:
Vocabulary and social/historical variation...
Denotative and connotative meanings - Literal (denotative) and associated (connotative) meanings of
words.
Figurative language - Language used in a non-literal way in order to describe something in another’s
terms:
Simile.
Metaphor - portraying a person, place, thing, or an action as being something else.
Semantic fields - Groups of words connected by a shared field of reference (e.g. medicine, art etc.) to
describe the key topic (not the actual key topic itself).
Synonyms - Words that have equivalent meanings.
Areas of language:
Phonetics, phonology and prosodics:
How spoken language sounds...
Phoneme - The basic unit of sound.
Diphthong - Vowel sound that is the combination of two separate sounds, where a speaker glides from
one to another (e.g. 'ie', 'ou' etc.).
Syllable - Sound unit with a vowel at its centre.
Accent - Regional variety of speech that differs from other regional varieties in terms of pronunciation.
Accommodation - Ways that individuals adjust their speech patterns to match others.
International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) - An internationally recognised system of phonetic transcription.
Graphology:
The visual aspects of textual design and appearance...
Layout - Way in which a text is physically structured i.e. visual design, structure and website navigation.
Typographical features - Features of fonts used in texts such as bold font, font type, size and colour.
Orthographical features - Features of the writing system such as spelling, capitalisation and
punctuation:
Ellipsis - indicates an intentional omission of a word, sentence, or whole section from a text
without altering its original meaning, possibly to allow the audience of the text to make their
own conclusions.
Multimodal texts - Texts that rely on the interplay of different modes (e.g. images, writing and sound) to
help shape meaning.
Other graphological features - Emoticons, hyperlinks, and tabs.
Lexis and semantics:
Vocabulary and social/historical variation...
Denotative and connotative meanings - Literal (denotative) and associated (connotative) meanings of
words.
Figurative language - Language used in a non-literal way in order to describe something in another’s
terms:
Simile.
Metaphor - portraying a person, place, thing, or an action as being something else.
Semantic fields - Groups of words connected by a shared field of reference (e.g. medicine, art etc.) to
describe the key topic (not the actual key topic itself).
Synonyms - Words that have equivalent meanings.
