Terminology - Transcript

Discourse - the study of spoken language

Mode - the mode of how a text is presented, e.g. written or spoken or multi-modal

Vocabulary - the amount of words available to an individual

Paralinguistic features - 'beyond language', things that aid communication but don't constitute language, e.g. body language, facial expressions, laughter, sighs

Prosodic features - the 'sound effects' of spoken language, e.g. stress, intonation, pitch

Stress - the emphasis placed on certain words through volume, significant pauses, or inflexion

Intonation -  the rise and fall of an individual's natural speaking voice, e.g. variation or 'tune'

Pitch - the rise or fall of the voice, e.g. high = squeaky, low = deep

Turn taking - co-ordinated co-operation between two or more participants in a conversation

Adjacency pair - a moment in turn taking where one utterance constrains the response, e.g. Q&A

Back channelling - the process of giving feeback through encouraging noises to a speaker

Running repair - the process of socially organising a conversation if two people find they have been talking simultaneously

Topic marker - an utterance that establishes the topic of a conversation, e.g. "So Henry VIII's foreign policy..."

Topic shifter - an utterance that moves a conversation on to another topic, e.g. "Anyway..."

Interrupted construction - the breakdown of an utterance where halfway through the speaker will completely change tact, focus or even topic and move onto something else, abandoning the original utterance mid-word

False starts - the speaker realises the beginning of an utterance isn't working and so effectively re-starts by rephrasing

Hesitation indicators - moments in discourse that indicate that the speaker is playing for time, e.g. 'like', 'um', 'err'

Fillers - the insertion of words phrases or noises into a speaker's discourse, e.g. 'like', 'y'know', 'sort of', 'right'

Latch-ons - when a speaker takes their turn immediately after the preceding speaker has finished, leaving little to no pause

Overlaps - when one speaker speaks over another

Glottal stops - the omission of dental sounds in the middle of words like butter, letter, better, etc in pronunciation, can occur after words like 'what'

Non-fluency features - any feature which would indicate that the speaker is not speaking with fluency for whatever reason, e.g. stammer, inverted syntax, elision of words

Tag question - a question tagged onto the end of a statement, e.g. 'It's cold today, isn't it?'

Vocative - a direct reference to another speaker in discourse, e.g. 'Bob, can you...'

Elision - the omission of a vowel or syllable in the pronunciation of a word OR the omission of a vowel at the end of a word

Code switching - the ability of a speaker to alter the register or clarity of their speech to suit a different social situation

Received Pronunciation - the typical pronunciation associated with the social elite of Britain, e.g. The Queen's English, etc

Accent - the manner of pronunciation particular to a certain geographical region

Regional Dialect - the actual words used and the spoker grammar which is particular to a certain geographical region

Sociolect - the vocabulary and spoken grammar which is particular to a certain social group

Idiolect - the speech patterns of an individual