English Metalanguage list

Phonetics and Phonology

International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA)

- Stops: Voiced (bit, dip, got), Voiceless (pit, tip, cat)

- Fricatives: (fat, vat, thorn (θ), then (ð), sit, zoo, shimmer (∫), measure (Ʒ), genre (ʒ),
hot)
- Nasals (mat, no, song (ŋ))
- Lateral Approximant (like)
- Affricates (chat (t∫), jar (dʒ)
- Approximants (rope (ⱹ), yes (j), wand)
- Monophthongs (seen, sit (ı), set (e or ɛ), sat (æ), about (ǝ or schwa), turn (3), mark,
hut (Λ), hot (ɒ), thought (ɔ), look (Ʊ), hoot (u))
- Diphthongs (try (aı), day (eı), toy (ɔı), cow (aƱ), boat (oƱ), beer (ıǝ), bare (eǝ), tour
(Ʊǝ))

Elision – the omission or deletion of a sound in connected speech.

- Fish ‘n’ chips
- Library -> libry
- Want to -> wanna

Vowel Reduction – the omission of vowels in unstressed positions and replaced with a schwa
or removed completely.
- ‘tu’ (to) -> ‘tǝ’
- ‘and’ -> ‘n’
- ‘ju’ (you) -> ‘jǝ’

Assimilation – the connection of two voiceless consonants to form one voiced phoneme.
- ‘bitter’ -> ‘bidder’
- ‘want to’ -> ‘wanna’ (mixed with vowel reduction)

Insertion – the insertion of phonemes within a lexeme where they did not exist prior.
- Athlete -> athalete
- Law and order -> loran order (Australian English)
- Drawing -> Drawring (linking r) (Australian English)

Prosodic Features – the phonological properties of the pronunciation of syllables, words and
phrases.
- Stress – the degree of strength used to produce a syllable. The result of stress is
rhythm. Stress is marked by a movement of sustention of pitch when uttering the
stressed syllable plus greater amplitude and greater duration. Stress typically falls on
a vowel and is often used to distinguish verbs from nouns. Nouns tend to have the
first syllable stressed where verbs have the second (Australian English).
 - Pitch – the height of sound in auditory terms. If we speak with a high pitch, it
generally means we’re excited, while if we speak with low pitch, we may be trying to
be authoritative or serious.

- Intonation – the pattern of pitch changes in speech (made by rising and falling pitch).
Useful terms to know are intonation phrases or contours. Intonation can highlight
grammatical structure like punctuation in written texts. Anger, uncertainty,
agreement or anger can be expressed through intonation along with other prosodics.
Statements are ended with falling intonation while questions tend to end with rising
intonation. High rising terminal is common in Australian English generally with
young females where high rising intonation is used at the end of a statement. HRT is
said to be used either when one feels insecure or as a floor holding strategy where
they invite others to present feedback (a means of building rapport or establishing
solidarity/empathy).

- Tempo – The speed at which we speak. Fast speech indicates excitement or

nervousness, while slow speech indicates deliberation or reflection. Can be used in
place of brackets (speeding up complimentary information).

- Volume – The volume of speech. Loud volume is used when angry or insistent, while
softness may be used to sooth someone.

Vocal Effects – Effects on one’s voice e.g. coughs, laughter, breath and can sometimes be
considered paralinguistic features.
- Coughs – Might indicate nervousness, anxiety or dishonesty.

- Laughter – Might indicate happiness, solidarity or perhaps sarcasm depending on the

context.

- Breaths – Might indicate a sigh, relief, surprise and change in topic.

Australian English (Phonologically) - Standard Australian English (SAE), Aboriginal English

and Ethnocultural English varieties.

Phonological Features of Australian English – Non-Rhotic (Australians do not pronounce the

r’s in words such car, darn and mother contrasting against some English’s in England,
Scotland, Ireland and the United States/Canada).
Yod-Dropping (Australians tend to not drop their yods or {j} sounds in words like news or
tune unlike in America, but words such as suit, Australians have dropped the yod).
Flapping (Australians seem to convert {t} sounds to {d} sounds in words like ‘city’ or ‘thirty’.
Vocalised {l} (Australians tend to vocalise the {l} sound like it is a vowel in ‘Milk’ which turns
into ‘Miwk’.
Some Glottalise (The tendency for some to eliminate the ‘t’ sound and replace with a glottal
stop which is a stop used in expressions like ‘uh oh’ so the ‘butler’ will turn into ‘buhler’ or
‘fatten’ will turn into ‘fahen’.
High Rising Terminal (explained above ^^^)
Diphthongisation – the conversion from monophthong to diphthong.
Accent (Australian English) – The Australian accent is generally homogenous across the
whole of Australia but can be split into three terms.
- Broad accent – Stereotypically Australian, and typically the accent of the working
class. Broad vowels are longer and more drawn out and the tongue is lower in the
mouth.
- General Accent – The accent of the majority of Australians and is regarded as the
middle of the three classifications.
- Cultivated Accent – The accent of the high class. This accent is strikingly similar to
that of the elitist British accent.

Phonological Patterning – Processors of sound patterns in language.

- Alliteration – the repetition of initial consonant sounds used as a stylistic device or to

make something memorable.
- Assonance – the repetition of vowel sounds within words.
- Consonance – the repetition of consonant sounds within words.
- Rhyme – the repetition of word endings in order to make a statement catchy and
memorable.
- Onomatopoeia – imitation of real life sounds such as miaow or splash.
- Rhythm – Patter of stressed and unstressed syllables in speech.

Morphology and Lexicology

Morphemes – the smallest written unit which combine to form words.

- Free morphemes – they can stand alone as words in their own right.

- Bound morphemes – they must be attached to a free morpheme and are generally
used for grammatical purposes.

- Derivational Morphemes – bound morphemes which have the ability of changing

meaning completely or changing the root words word class.

- Inflectional Morphemes – bound morphemes which add grammatical information

such as plurality or possession.

Affixation – the process of adding affixes to words

- Prefix – a morpheme attached to the beginning of a word.
- Infix – a morpheme inserted into the middle of a word.
- Suffix – a morpheme attached to the end of a word.

Word Classes – words can be organised into certain classes depending on their purpose or
meaning within a sentence, clause or phrase.

Nouns – lexemes which name people, places, things, qualities or actions.

- Common Nouns – common words that are not specific to something.
- Proper Nouns – words that are specific, such as names of people or places.
 - Abstract Nouns – words that name thoughts, feelings, emotions, and other abstract
things.
- Collective Nouns – words which describe a collective of animals, people or things.

Adjective – words which describe nouns and are commonly found directly before or directly
after a noun.

Adverbs – their primary function is to describe verbs but they can also be used to modify
adjectives as well as adverbs. Adverbs can relate to time (soon, later), frequency (always,
occasionally), place (around, everywhere), degree (completely, totally) and manner
(unconvincingly, slowly).

Verbs – Verbs denote actions (e.g. running), processes (e.g. thing) and states (e.g. be). They
also have a complex morphological make up where they can be classified by person (first,
second, third), number (singular and plural) and tense (present, past, past participle etc.)
- Regular Verb – a verb which is modified by its past tense form.
- Irregular Verb – a verb which the stem has to be changed (swim to swam)

Auxiliary Verbs – verbs that modify the main verb which are used to create tenses, to form
negatives, to form questions and to create constructions such as to passive voice. (was
dancing, has been wailing, I do not like pumpkin, do you like pumpkin, was congratulated)

Modal Verbs – a type of auxiliary verb made up of nine words, ‘can’, ‘could’, ‘shall’, ‘should’,
‘will’, ‘would’, ‘may’, ‘might’ and ‘must’. They are used to denote obligation, permission,
ability and likelihood.

Determiners – introduce noun phrases and function as modifiers. The three articles ‘a’, ‘an’,
‘the’ (two indefinite and definite respectively), possessive adjectives ‘my’, ‘your’, ‘our’,
demonstratives ‘this’, ‘that’, indefinite determiners ‘each’, ‘every’, ‘all’ and numbers. They
are only determiners if they are a part of a noun phrase.

Pronouns – Words that replace nouns and noun phrases

- Subject Pronouns (I, we, they, you, she, he, it)
- Object Pronouns (me, us, them, you, her, him, it)
- Possessive Pronouns (mine, ours, theirs, yours, hers, his, its)
- Relative Pronouns (that, who, whoever, whom, whomever, which, whichever)
- Demonstrative Pronouns (this, that, these, those)
- Reflexive Pronouns (myself, herself, himself, themselves)

Prepositions – words that show a relationship between nouns and other words in terms of
space and time e.g. ‘under’, ‘before’.

Interjections – words that express a sudden emotion or feeling. E.g. ‘ouch’, ‘hello’, ‘yes’

Conjunctions – words that connect words, clauses and phrases.

 - Coordinating – link words, phrases and clauses but only those of equal value. The
acronym ‘FANBOYS’ standing for, ‘for’, ‘and’, ‘nor’, ‘but’, ‘or’, ‘yet’, ‘so’ denote these
conjunctions.
- Subordinating – explicitly link clauses together generally subordinate to another
clause.

Backformation – the formation of a word from an existing word.

Morphological Over-Generalisation – common practice of those who are young and those
who’s English is their second language and is where these few attach the wrong morphemes
to words.

Function Words – exist to perform a job, most commonly to convey grammatical

relationships between words.
- Determiners
- Auxiliary verbs
- Modal verbs
- Prepositions
- Pronouns
- Conjunctions
- Interjections

Content Words – words that carry real world meaning

- Nouns
- Adjectives
- Nouns
- Adverbs

Word Formation Processes – ways in which words form

- Neologisms – newly formed words that have not been ripped off from another
lexeme.
- Blends – blend between parts of two words.
- Initialisms – a form of word which is pronounced by stating each letter, similar to an
acronym structure wise.
- Acronyms – similar to an initialism but the word is pronounced.
- Shortenings – forming a new word by eliminating letters from a word, gymnasium ->
gym.
- Compounding – process of creating new words by putting two free morphemes
together.
- Conversion – the process in which a word changes word class, e.g. email (noun) to
email (verb).
- Contractions – shortening a phrase into one word split with an apostrophe.
- Collocations – collocations are words within a phrase which are so closely associated
with one another, they fell as though when said independently that something is
missing.
- Borrowing – borrowing words from other languages, including Aboriginal English
(boomerang and corrobboree for example)
 - Commonisation – the process of turning a proper noun into a common noun e.g.
Google -> google.
- Archaism – words that are no longer used in everyday speech.

Morphological Patterning – the pattern in creative word formations spoken above as well
as non-Standard affixation.

Lexical Patterning – the presents of a word in its various forms.

- Simple lexical patterning – the repetition of a word in its identical form or with very
simple changes.
- Complex lexical patterning – involves words and any forms of them created through
affixation.

Lexical Choice – the choice of words an author or speaker uses which are linked to
situational and cultural contexts.

Syntax

Phrases – a collection of words that do not form a sentence for they do not contain both a
subject and a predicate but can contain one or the other, or both.
- Noun phrase – contains a noun and related words that help describe it (typically
modifiers and determiners)
- Verb phrase – comprises of a main verb plus related words (auxiliaries, complements
and other modifiers). Verb phrases can form the predicate of a sentence.
- Prepositional phrase – contains a prepositions and an object of the preposition
typically beginning with a preposition and ending in a noun phrase. These phrases
generally replace adjective phrases and adverbs.
- Adjective phrase – group of words functioning as an adjective. Prepositional phrases
can sometimes act as adjective phrases and are called Adjectival phrases.
- Adverb phrase – consists of an adverb or words acting as adverbs. They modify
verbs, adjectives or other adverbs. Prepositional phrases can also act as adverb
phrases and called adverbial phrases.

Clauses – minimally consists of a verb and an subject (a noun phrase and a verb phrase).
- Main/Independent clauses – a clause that can stand by itself as a sentence.
- Subordinate/dependent clauses – a clause that cannot stand alone as a sentence.

Sentences – a group of words that contains at least one main clause.

Sentence Structures –
- Sentence Fragments – act as a sentence but are not a complete main clause.
- Simple Sentences – contain a single main clause.
- Compound Sentences – contain two or more main clauses all joined together by a
coordinating conjunction.
- Complex Sentences – contains one main clause and one or more subordinate clauses.
- Compound Complex Sentences – contains two or more main clauses as well as one
or more subordinate clause.
Ellipsis – the removal of words or phrases from an utterance. Noun phrases can be omitted
when the phrase has been stated already. Verb phrases can be omitted when it does not
change over successive clauses. Large amounts of ellipsis can reduce the formality of a
written or spoken text.

Nominalisation – the conversion of word class from any word class (generally a verb) to a
noun. E.g. participation is encouraged instead of using to participate. This can be found by
eliminating suffixes from words to see if they become nouns.

Coordination – using coordinating conjunctions to form sentences.

Subordination – using subordinating conjunctions to form sentences.

Sentence types – sentences categorised by their function/purpose.

- Declarative – sentences which declare information.
- Imperative – sentences which state a command.
- Interrogative – sentences which ask questions.
- Exclamative – sentences which exclaim.

Basic functions in clause structure

- Predicate – verb and all its modifiers. The verb is referred to as the predicator.
- Subject – the person or thing that executes the predicate.
- Object – what has been affected by the predicate. Direct objects are directly involved
in the action while indirect objects are affected by the action.
- Complement – essential information which can be encompassed by an adjective
phrase, noun phrase, pronouns, proper names and numbers etc.
- Adverbial – are pieces of non-obligatory information but provide information
nonetheless. They are commonly prepositional phrases, adverb phrases, noun
phrases or subordinate clauses.

Active and Passive Voice – As verbs can denote tense, they can also comment on who/what
did something which is referred to as the agent, and the thing affected by the action is the
patient.
- Active voice – the agent is the subject of the sentence. Agent *action* the patient.
E.g. Carry ate the pie. Active Voice is used to be clear in expressing a declaration.
- Passive voice – the agent moves out of the subject position and is replaced by the
patient. Patient was *action* by the agent. E.g. The pie was eaten by Carey. ‘to be’
(and its varied tense changes) is placed before the verb. Verb changes to past
participle form (loses original tense).
- Agentless passive – passive voice but the agent has been ellipted.

Syntactic Patterning – texts of a usually planned nature make use of syntactic patterning for
literary effect or for clarity etc.
- Listing – a list of items separated by commas and other grammatical features. Listing
is a feature of coherence.
 - Parallelism – two or more parts of a text which occur near each other sharing some
form of similarity in terms of syntax. E.g. the meal was beautifully prepared, expertly
cooked and tantalisingly aromatic, where all the adjective phrases are in parallel. It is
used to create clarity and understandability.
- Antithesis – a form of parallelism where two of the items that are parallel are
antonyms of each other.

Discourse

Phatic talk – rapport talk or social chit-chat.

Paralinguistic features – the non-vocal aspects of conversation such as facial expressions,

body gestures, body language and eye gaze.

Code-Switching – when multilinguals change languages during speech.

Openings and closings – openings are simply (commonly formulaic phrases) openings to a
conversation such as greetings, salutations and vocatives while closings are the opposite and
close the conversation.

Adjacency Pairs – is a pair in speech such as questions and answers. Openings and closings
commonly form an adjacency pair.

Overlapping Speech – when interlocutors overlap one another and is common in spoken
discourse.

Interrogative tags – are tags attached to the end of a sentence which turns a declarative
sentence into an interrogative sentence.

Discourse particles – little fillers placed within our speech for some sort of purposes such as,
‘y’know’, ‘well’, ‘like’ etc. Some discourse particles act as hedges which are expressions that
reduce the force of what we’re saying.

Non-fluency features – features in spoken discourse which are employed when someone is
trying to formulate their sentences.
- Pauses – simply pauses in speech.
- Filled pauses/voiced hesitations – words such as ‘um’, ‘ah’ and highlight that one is
trying to think.
- False state – when someone mistakenly says something.
- Repair – when the speaker corrects themselves.
- Repetition – repetition of a words.

Topic management – the way a speaker manages the topics of discussion. Topics can be
changed through discourse particles.

Turn-taking – floor holding (one’s desire to start talking, keep talking or finish talking).
 - Taking the floor – is the initiation of one’s turn in conversation which is usually done
through a discourse particle, an expression or some use of paralinguistic features.
- Holding the floor – is the continuation of one’s turn talking. This is done mostly
through intonation, continuing intonation signals one has not finished, rising
intonation signals that more is to come. Filled pauses and conjunctions also signal
that one’s turn speaking has not ended yet.
- Passing the floor – ceasing one’s turn of speech. This is generally done through an
interrogative or perhaps falling intonation.

Minimal responses (back-channelling) – a signal through noise that gives encouragement to

another speaker while they hold the floor. This can be done through filled pauses as well as
vocal effects like laughter.

Coherence – a text that is understood and makes sense. Statements lead to examples,
questions lead to answers etc.

- Inference – is a conclusion made through outside knowledge implied in a text or

spoken dialogue. E.g. Could you give me a ride home… sorry, I need to visit mum this
afternoon.
- Logical Ordering – how a text is ordered for it to make sense. For example, TEEL
paragraphs, Chronological ordering etc.
- Formatting – features in written texts which help focus the audience’s attention such
as through photos, titles, colour, bullet points etc.
- Consistency and Conventions – conventions refer to the way which a specific text
type is written. An article will always have an author’s name and title, a recipe will
have an ingredients list etc. Consistency is the consistency of these conventions being
used as well as for example, lexical choice throughout a passage etc.
- Cohesion – the means of establishing connections within a text.
- Lexical Choice – in order to avoid repition, writers employ linguistic devices
such as:
- Synonymy – (a form of substitution) is the process where lexemes
with similar meanings are used to vary the language used.
- Antonymy – (a form of substitution) to provide contrasting ideas in
order to make a text more efficient in delivering its message.
- Hyponymy – are words that are from a certain semantic field
(hypernym).
- Collocation - *spoken above*
- Information Flow – the manipulation of the order in which information is
presented to an audience.
- Clefting – involves the movement of a phrase to another position
within a sentence. It-clefs involve the substitution of ‘It’ towards the
front of the sentence along with the desired phrase of importance and
often insert a determiner. For example ‘I washed the cat last night’ ->
‘It was the cat I washed last night’. Pseudo-clefts or wh-clefts work
similarly to it-clefts but with the substitution of wh words, such as
‘what’, ‘where’ etc.
 - Front Focus – information which the author or speaker wishes to give
prominence is moved to the front. E.g. To all of use he seemed to be
acting suspiciously.
- End Focus – information which is to be emphasised is moved to the
end of the sentence to give it prominence. E.g. My cat dropped a
mouse on the doorstep this morning, dead!.
- Anaphoric Reference – the substitution of a pronoun (anaphor) for a full
phrase (referent) which had previously been mentioned in order to evade
repetition. E.g. Charbel really enjoyed the slice of cake he was given.
- Cataphoric Reference – the substitution of a pronoun (cataphor) for a full
phrase (referent) which has not yet been mentioned. Often in order to evade
repetition and to sometimes create suspense. E.g. Although an evil man,
Hitler liked animals.
- Deictics (Deixis) – the substitution of a pronoun or other term in place of a
specific contextual information. Only develops cohesion if the audience is
aware of the said contextual information. It can also highlight closeness and if
employed regularly, extreme closeness between the participants.
- Repetition – emphasises key information. Used as a mechanism for rhetoric.
- Ellipses – refer to previous definition of Ellipses.
- Substitution – relates to the substitution of any lexical/syntactic character
with pronouns, auxiliary verbs, verbs etc. in order to evade repetition.
- Conjunctions and Adverbials – conjunctions and adverbials have been
mentioned prior so refer to previous pages for definitions. Adverbials are used
to tie information together in meaningful ways. They have four main
purposes:
- Additives – adverbials in relation to providing more information
commonly paired with either, the coordinating conjunction ‘and’
(which highlights that the information is of equal weighting to the
rest) and subordinating conjunctions known as correlatives
(conjunctions that pair with another) such as ‘by the way’ and ‘not
only’. ‘I like pie and I like cake’.
- Contrastives – include examples such as ‘but’, ‘while’, ‘nevertheless’
and the correlatives ‘either or’ and ‘neither nor’ (these highlight a
level of lesser importance to the main information). They allow for
comparison and provide the means to demonstrate opposition,
alternatives, exclusions, contrasts and comparisons. ‘While I like
cheese for dessert, I like pie more’.
- Causes and Effects – Adverbials and conjunctions that act in a
causative way such as ‘for’, ‘therefor’, ‘thus’, ‘because’ etc. They show
that once clause is a direct result or consequence of another. ‘I was
grounded because I stole some pie and therefor couldn’t attend
formal’.
- Sequences and Timing – used to indicate sequencing such as ‘after’,
‘meanwhile’, ‘when’ etc. Also referred to as temporal adverbials as
they represent time. ‘Meanwhile, someone stole my cake after I had
left it on the table’.
Semantics

Semantic Field (Domain) – lexemes grouped with others that have interrelated meanings.

Etymology – the study of the origins of words and their meanings.

- Broadening – the widening of semantic meaning to encompass more objects.

- Narrowing – the lessening of semantic meaning to encompass less objects.
- Elevation – when a lexeme takes on a more positive meaning then it once had.
- Deterioration – when a lexeme takes on a more negative meaning then it once had.
- Semantic Shift – the meaning of a word changes and loses its original meaning.

Denotation – the literal meaning as defined in the dictionary.

Connotation – the social or cultural meanings and emotions behind a word encompassing
something greater than that of its denotative meaning.

Lexical Choice – mentioned earlier.

Semantic Patterning – otherwise known as figurative language.

- Simile – a literary technique that connects one thing to another using the
prepositions such as ‘like’ or ‘as’ perhaps with the intention of drawing attention to a
connections between two things or making a comparison. “as limp as a fresh-killed
rabbit”.
- Metaphor – a literary technique that connects one thing to another by stating that
something is something. Used for multiple reasons such as highlighting ones actions
or as a way to emphasise a point (there are infinite possibilities). “Emotions erupted
in court today”.
- Personification – a type of metaphor that gives non-humans human qualities. “Life is
but a walking shadow”.
- Animation – a type of metaphor that gives life or movement to inanimate objects,
ideas, or places commonly characteristics of animals. “the wind howled”.
- Oxymoron – a literary technique that combines two contradictory words. “O
brawling love, o loving hate”.
- Irony – a literary technique used for comedic or satirical purposes where a writer says
something but means the opposite. “What nice weather we’re having!”.
- Lexical Ambiguity – when a writer employs the use of a lexeme that has multiple
meanings and it is unclear what meaning they were trying to achieve. “The punch
made him unsteady on his feet”.
- Pun – a play on words where a writer exploits lexical ambiguity for comedic effect.
*at a drug rehabilitation centre, a sign stands on the lawn* “keep off the grass”.

Synonymy – referred to prior, words of similar meaning.

Antonymy – referred to prior, words of opposite meaning.

Idiom – widely understood fixed phrases with non-literal meaning. “out of the blue”.
Euphemism – a word or phrase that masks unpleasant meaning to avoid taboo topic. For
example, instead of one saying “Kevin has died” they say “Kevin has passed away”.
Euphemisms also enhance the prestige of certain things as in instead of calling a Garbage
Collector some might say “waste management and disposal technician”. This in effect is a
common ingredient of double speak which will be discussed later.

Dysphemism – the opposite of euphemism and seeks to magnify unpleasantries for humour
or to cause abuse. Common dysphemism’s are “take a piss” or to become “worm food”.

Other Metalanguage

Function – refers to the reason the speech or writing exists.

Field – semantic field or domain of a text.

Mode – the means of communication, whether that is written, speech or through sign.

Situational Context – when a text was written, why it was done, and who for.

Cultural Context – the values, attitudes and beliefs held by a participant within a discourse
or the author of a text which may impact their views on intentions.

Register – the level of formality a text is.

Prescriptivism – Conservative though in regards to language. Opposed to language change.

Descriptivism – accepting of change in terms of language.

Social Purpose – the underlying goals a writer or interlocutor is trying to achieve. Whether
that is to build rapport or to promote solidarity etc.

Slang – very informal speech recognisable to those of a certain social group. It is forever
changing (ephemeral).

Colloquial Language – language that is informal which is permanent and widely understood
by those of a certain nationality.

Taboo language – language with extremely negative connotations and are usually only used
in an informal environment.

Positive Face Needs – the need to be liked, respected, appreciated and recognised. Minimal
responses and rapport building strategies are generally seen as actions taken to appeal to
one’s positive face needs.

Negative Face Needs – the need to be autonomous, independent, and act without the
imposition from other. Honorific distinctions and hedging can be indicators of someone
appealing to one’s negative face needs.
Jargon – language particular to a specific trade, occupation or hobby. It is often not
understood by those outside of this domain and can be an indicator of one’s identity. It can
have the tendency of obfuscating information through over complicating a text.

Rhetoric – a type of language used in order to persuade. When analysing rhetoric, the
message trying to be told must be identified first as well as underlying inferences.

- Ethos – an appeal to authority. (guiding beliefs that characterise a community,

nation or ideology).
- Pathos – appeal to emotion.
- Logos – appeal to logic and reason.

Public Language – the language used in the public domain, such as politics, media, law and
bureaucracy.

Double-Speak – to obscure or obfuscate meaning or mislead and confuse and audience

through euphemistic, ambiguous and indirect language. For example, ‘peacekeeping’
meaning military intervention until a stable government or terrorist threat has been dealt
with.

Overt Norms – linguistic practices that are widely accepted as prestigious within society.

Covert Norms – linguistic practices that are given prestige within a small group and permit
the ability to include or exclude.

Ethnolects – cultural varieties of English associated with people of specific ethnicity’s.

Sociolects – linguistic varieties due to one’s social groups such as class, interests, occupation,
age and gender.

Idiolects – linguistic choices based on one’s personal identity influenced by factors like
personality, nationality, ethnicity, socioeconomic statues, age, gender etc.