English Language and Technology
The basics of language and technology
- Created by: Shauni
- Created on: 07-05-12 15:52
Summons/answer:
a sequence that opens the channel of communication on the telephone.
Identification/recognition:
a sequence in which speakers identify themselves to each other.
Greetings Sequence:
a series of turns designed to initiate a shared social space.
'How are you' Sequences:
examples of phatic talk that maintain the social relationship before the main business of the telephone call commences.
Pre-closing Sequence
signals that one (or both) speaker wishes to end the conversation.
Metatalk
talk that draws attention to the act of talking itself.
Phatic Speech Acts:
turns designed to maintain a sense of cooperation or respect for the other speaker.
Valediction:
an item that acts as a farewell.
Textspeak:
the language (in terms of both lexis and grammar) used by those sending text messages on a mobile phone.
Vowel Ommission:
leaving out vowel sounds in textspeak and other electronic communication.
Homophonic Representation:
the use of single letters and numbers to represent words based on a similarity in sound.
Phonetic Spelling:
a spelling that represents the sound of a word as opposed to its conventional spelling.
Initialism:
an abbreviation that uses the first letters or a group of words ans is pronounced as individual letters.
Acronymy:
the process of abbreviating that uses the first letter of a group of words but, unlike an initialism, an acronym is pronounced as a single word.
Variant Spelling:
deliberately non-standard spelling for effect.
Prosodic Features:
paralinguistic vocal elements of spoken language uses to provide emphasis or other effects.
Framing:
cutting and pasting parts of an original message into a new message.
Asynchronous Discourse:
discourse in which there are delays between turns that participants take.
Synchronous Discourse:
discourse that takes place in real time.
User:
an individual using a message board.
Username:
the name chosen by a user of a message board that is known to all on that board and appears every time a post is made.
Thread:
a topic area initiated by a post to which others can respond.
Stickie:
a thread that is considered important and remains near to the top of the message board regardless of how many times it is read or has responses.
Moderator:
an individual or group of individuals who run the message board and have the right to edit or delete threads or posts.
Go off-topic
a term for posts that stray from the original topic of the thread.
Lexical Accommodation:
the way in which speakers mirror each others lexical choices as a sign of community membership.
Flaming:
the act of posting aggressive threads or responses to threads.
Lurker:
a user who reads a message board as a member or guest but who rarely,if ever, posts.
Trolling
the posting of messages with the intention of irritating others.
Web Log:
a site that is set up to allow an individual or several individuals to post frequent entries.
Blogger:
an individual who uses a web log.
Neologism:
A new word.
Dyadic:
One-to-one speech.
Schlegoff:
Discourse structure of a telephone conversation.
Summons/answer - opening the channel of communication
Identification (and/or recognition) - which may be necessary for non face-to-face communication
A greeting sequence - initiating a shared space
'How are you' sequence - strengthening the shared space
Radio Language
On the radio there aren’t any visual clues, so listeners have to rely on what speakers say and how they say it
This affects the type of language used in each medium.
Radio is usually compared to tv language because of this obvious difference.
The basic linguistic features of radio commentary are:
- Sentences full of information
- Full sentences
- Lots of adjectives
- Short pauses
Television Language
TV language has the support of pictures, gestures and facial expressions, and sometimes text
This is short because there are no real linguistic features.
The most basic of features to look out for:
- Minimal Information (because audience can see as well as hear the information)
- Incomplete sentences since it is more ‘live’
- Long Pauses
Telephone Language
focus on phonetics and context.
shares many features with face-face dialogue including non-fluency features like fillers and false starts and non-verbal aspects of speech like intonation and stress.
The opening sequence is very formulaic, and generally involves the same adjacency pairs – the person answering says hello, and the person phoning say who they are or who they wish to speak to. Differences in this sequence usually depend on the age of the speaker
Mobile phones are an exception to this. You can usually see who’s calling before you answer so the opening sequence is more flexible and casual.
includes quite strict turn taking, because there are no visual clues to indicate when a speaker has finished and there are few pauses.
text language is a mixed mode of communication, because it’s a written language that contains many features of spoken language.
Internet Language
Emails are a mixed mode, containing spoken and written features. The mode that dominates depends on how formal the email is.
Internet language is dependent on context. An email from one business to another might be set out like a formal letter and use standard English. But friends communicating in a chatroom might use textspeak, and language normally associated with informal spoken English – e.g. slang and non-standard grammar.
Internet communication involves certain conventions, known as netiquette. This includes things like avoiding using all capital letters, because this is the equivalent of shouting.
Clipping:
A shortened word becomes a word in its own right.
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