English

• Target audience = the intended audience of a particular text.
• Purpose = what the text is trying to achieve - persuade, inform etc.
• Genre = categories based on shared elements of a type of text - topic etc.
• Phonetics = study of the sounds used in speech and the way these sounds are produced.
• Lexis = refers to the entire vocabulary of a language.
• Semantics = refers to the meaning of words.
• Gramma = refers to the system of rules that govern a language.
• Pragmatics = refers to the study of language through the filter of a social context.
• Discourse = refers to the study of a text as a whole.
• Graphology = study of the visual elements of language and communication in texts.
• Alliteration = occurs when the words start with the same sound.
• Onomatopoeia = occurs when a word mimics a sound.
• Rhyme = occurs when words end with the same sound.
• Sibilance = occurs when words share a /s/ sound.
• Consonance = occurs when words share the same consonant sound.
• Assonance = occurs when words share the same vowel sound.
• Prosody = study of rhythm and intonation in speech.
• Accent levelling = sometimes accents become more alike and lose distinctive features due to contact with other accents.
• Accomadation = speakers can change their accent, converging with or diverging from other speakers.
• False starts = a result of mispronunciation or misspeak.
• Fillers = allow speakers to stall while thinking.
• Pauses = an absence of sound allowing interlocutors to think.
• Voiced pauses = allow speakers to stall while thinking.
• Interruption = a speaker hijacks the previous speaker's turn.
• Overlap = two speakers speak at the same time.
• Dialect = a variety of language distinguished by social group or geographical location.
• Sociolect = a variety of language used by a particular social group.
• Idiolect = a variety of language used by an individual speaker.
• Register = a variety of language used in certain contexts.
• Vernacular = a dialect used by a specific group, often describes an informal dialect variant.
• Code switching = bilingual speakers switching between languages.
• Denotative meaning = the dictionary definition of a word.
• Connotative meaning = emotional meaning associated with a word.
• Reflected meaning = invokes additional meanings from other occurrences of the same or similar words in certain contexts.
• Social meaning = associated beliefs about social groups and markers.
• Collocative meaning = meaning derived from words that frequently appear together.
• Affective meaning = persona or emotional expression of the speaker or writer.
• Metaphor = allows us to explore a concept through another.
• Metonymy = a concept is referred to by an element associated with the concept.
• Synecdoche = a part is used to describe the whole of the whole is sed to describe a part.