5 Describing language

I. Meaning in context

 In talking or writing are crucial two aspects: the context in which it is said and what the
speaker wants people to understand;
 Speakers and writers have to be able to operate with more than just words and grammar;
they have to be able to string utterances together;
 Our ability to function properly in conversation or writing, in other words, depends not
only on reacting to the context in which we are using the language, but also on the
relationship between words and ideas in longer texts.

II. The elements of language:

1) GRAMMAR
2) VOCABULARY
3) PRONUNCIATION

III. Forms and meanings

There are frequent instances, where the same language forms can be used to express
different meanings, or where a meaning can be expressed by many different forms.
 One form, many meanings
 Words can mean more than one thing, for example, ‘book’ (= something
to read, to reserve, a list of bets, etc.), ‘beat’ (= to win, to hit, to mix, e.g.
an egg, the ‘pulse’ of music/a heart) and ‘can’ (= ability, permission,
probability - and a container made of metal).
 With so many available meanings for words and grammatical forms, it is
the context the word occurs in which determines which of these meanings
is being referred to.
 One meaning, many forms
 A meaning or concept can be expressed in many different ways.
Consider, for example, the concept of the future. Different forms can
be used to express the same basic concept (though each form does
have a slightly different meaning):
I’ll see you tomorrow.
I’m going to see you tomorrow.
I’m seeing you tomorrow - that’s the arrangement, isn’t it?
I can get to you by about six o’clock.
I see you at six, and afterwards I have a meeting with John.
IV. Parts of speech

PART OF DESCRIPTION EXAMPLES EXAMPLES(sentences)

SPEECH (words)
NOUN A word(or -Rachel Rachel arrives tomorrow.
group of words) -New York I love New York.
that is the name -book I recommend this book.
of a person, a -sense
place, a thing or -town hall
activity or a
quality or idea
PRONOUN a word that is -her He met her on the
used in place of -she Internet.
a noun or noun -they Look at him!
phrase
ADJECTIVE A word that -kind What a kind person!
gives more -impetuous We all want a better life.
information -best
about a noun or
pronoun
VERB a word (or group -write I don’t believe you!
of words) which -believe I like to watch TV.
is used in -have
describing an
action,
experience or
state
ADVERB a word (or group -sensibly Please act sensibly this
words) that -carefully evening.
describes or -at home I checked my emails at
adds to the -in half an home.
meaning of a hour
verb, adjective,
another adverb
or a whole
sentence
PREPOSITION a word (or group -for Bring me two bottles of
of words) which -of wine.
is used to show -on top of I think I put it on top of
the way which the cupboard.
other words are
connected
 DETERMINER -definite article -the A beautiful daughter
-indefinite art. -a Few people believed
-possessives -my him.
-demonstratives -this Look at those buildings.
-quantifiers -few

CONJUNCTION A word that -and 1 lost my mobile phone,

connects -so so 1 couldn’t call you.
sentences, -but It’s great but 1 can’t
phrases or afford it.
clauses

V. Hypothetical meaning
When we talk about something that is not real, but that might be the case, we are talking
hypothetically.
Real=possible/likely;
Hypothetical= unlikely/impossible
English has many ways of expressing hypothetical meaning:
 Modal verbs( e.g.: It might rain);
 Conditional sentences.
These three conditional forms are often called first, second and third conditionals.
REAL
Talking about the present If you pay online, you get a
discount.
You get a discount if you pay
online
Talking about the future If you work hard, you’ll pass the
exam.
You’ll pass the exam if you
work hard.
Talking about the past If it was very warm, we ate
outside.
We ate outside if it was very
warm.
HYPOTHETICAL
If I had a dog, I’d take it for
walks.
I’d take a dog for walks if 1
had one.
If I won the lottery, I’d travel
round the world.
If I were you I’d get a new
jacket.
If I’d know about the rail
strike, I would have come by
car.
I would have come by car if
I’d known about the rail
strike.
 VI. Words together

 Students frequently worry about the meaning of individual words. Yet a

marked feature of the way we construct and understand language is that far
from putting together strings of individual words, we actually use collections
of vocabulary items that frequently occur together in pairs of groups;
 We will look at three specific instances of words that group together: -

 collocations,
 lexical chunks
 idiom.
1. COLLOCATIONS- If any two words occur together more often than just by chance, we
often call them collocations.
e.g. fast asleep
2. LEXICAL CHUNKS-strings of words which behave almost as one unit.
 Fixed(which means you can’t change any of the words, e.g. over the moon, out of the
blue)
 Semi-fixed(which means you can change some of the words, e.g. nice to see you/good to
see you/great to see you, etc.)
3. IDIOM -lexical phrase where the meaning of the whole phrase may not be
comprehensible even if we know the meaning of each individual word (e.g. ‘full of
beans’ = energetic, ‘as plain as the nose on your face’ = obvious).

VII. Language functions

A language function is a purpose you wish to achieve when you say or write something.
By ‘performing’ the function, you are performing an act of communication. If you say ‘I
apologize’, you are performing the function of apologizing; if you say ‘I promise’, you are
performing the function of promising.

VIII. Text and discourse

In order to be an effective language user, therefore, speakers and writers need to be able to
operate with longer texts (stretches of discourse) as well as with words, phrases, sentences
and questions.
We will now look at cohesion, coherence and the special features of spoken face-to-face
discourse.
Cohesion
-the way we connect ideas and sentences together
-lexical cohesion( using words and groups of words throughout a text to bind a topic
together);
-grammatical cohesion( uses pronouns, articles and tense agreement, among other
devices, for the same purpose)

Coherence
A text is coherent when it has some internal logic(the readers should be able to
perceive the writer’s purpose and follow their line of thought).

Conventional discourse
The conversational convention(face-to-face conversation) requires that only one
person speak at any one time.
Conventional skills:
 knowing how to keep your turn;
 knowing how to signal that someone else can take their turn;
 knowing how to show that you are listening.

IX. Language variables

The way English speakers use systems of grammar, vocabulary and pronunciation is
dependent upon a number of variables. We will look at speaking and writing, register and
language varieties.
1) Speaking and writing

Speaking:
 Contractions (e.g. ‘it is’ contracted to ‘it’s’, ‘I have’ contracted to ‘I’ve’ );
 Ellipsis (we might well shorten ‘It’s warm in here’ to ‘Warm in here’ or even
‘Warm’ )
 changing their tone of voice;
 giving added emphasis;
 whispering and shouting or speaking faster or slower;
 use gestures.
Writing:
 Punctuation marks;
 full grammatical sentences;
 content words (words that carry meaning like ‘flower’, ‘car’, ‘hot’, ‘sun’,
‘feel’)
2) Register
Register refers to both the topic we are speaking about and the tone (for example
formal or informal) that we wish to adopt.