Language + texts

• Meanings: messages that are communicated + meanings vary according to text.
• Multimodal: a text that employs more than one mode of communication.
• Salient: most important, noteworthy.
• Computer-mediated communication: human communication that takes place via the medium of computers.
• Oracy: speaking + listening
• Face Theory:

  Erving Goffman - idea that we all have a public self-image that we need to project + protect.
• Face-threatening act - something that threatens a person’s self-image.
• Face-work - the effort that we put in to manage our public image.
• Negative face need - the need not to be imposed on by another person.
• Positive face need- the need for positive reinforcement, the feeling that we are all appreciated + liked by others.
• Subject position - perspective taken on a topic, where some aspects are foregrounded + emphasised whereas others are downplayed.
• Modal verbs - accompany main verbs + are often used to express degrees of certainty, desirability + obligation.
• Monostylistic - having one style of communication.
• Possessive determiners - help determine what a name refers to e.g ownership (my,our)
• Active voice - person/thing doing the action specified by the verb is the subject of the sentence.
• Disjunct - an adverb that expresses a writer’s or speaker’s attitude e.g fortunately, unfortunately.
• Noun phrase - a phrase that has a noun or pronoun as its main word.
• Passive voice - person/thing being acted upon goes at the front.
• Nominalization - process of timing different grammatical elements into nouns or noun phrases.
• Colloquial - expressions are items of everyday language used in informal contexts.