Quiz: Do you know your bants from your manspreading?

Quiz

An online dictionary has released a list of 1,000 new words, how many of them do you know? test your knowledge of contemporary English.

Pragmatics

Pragmatics is the area of language study associated with exploring how contextual factors influence meaning. One way of looking at this is to explore how the act of interpretation itself relies on all kinds of background knowledge about the world that text producers and receivers hold. 

Your schematic knowledge

You can test your own schematic knowledge by looking at the following list of countries. What do you think of when you read the name of each? What differences are there between the kinds of knowledge you hold for each? For which countries do you have a rich schema, and for which a relatively poor one? What might have influenced this? Think about those you might have visited, read about, seen on television and so on.

• France
• Spain
• Algeria
• Australia
• Japan
• Honduras.

Conversational maxims

One of the things we can assume when someone speaks to us is that they intend to convey some kind of meaning, and therefore that communication is essentially a cooperative enterprise between speaker and listener.

One of the ways that language study has explained this cooperative principle is through the use of what the linguist and philosopher Paul Grice (1975) called conversational maxims:

The maxim of quantity: do not say too little or too much.

The maxim of quality: speak the truth.

The maxim of relevance: keep what is being discussed relevant to the topic in hand.

The maxim of manner: be clear and avoid ambiguity.

Grice didn't claim that these maxims acted as rigid rules but rather that when they were broken (as often happens when we speak to each other) they gave rise to what he called implicatures, implied meanings that listeners were intended to infer from speakers’ comments. 

Politeness

Another way that speakers support communication with each other is through what might be called a ‘super-maxim’: being polite by being mindful of others’ personal or face needs.

In face theory, first developed by the sociologist Erving Goffman (1955), an individual has both positive and negative face needs. Positive face needs are those associated with feeling appreciated and valued, while negative face needs are the desire to feel independent and not be imposed upon. Interactions between people therefore have the potential to be face-threatening acts (FTAs), and consequently speakers can choose from a range of politeness strategies to minimise this loss of face.

Deixis

A final important area of study in pragmatics is deixis. Deictic words are words that are context-bound in so far as their meaning depends on who is using them, where they are using them, and when they are using them.

Deictic terms belong to one of a number of deictic categories, the three main ones being:

• Person deixis (names and personal pronouns)
• Spatial deixis (adverbs of place such as ‘here’, ‘there’, demonstratives showing location such as ‘this’ and ‘that’, orientational words such as ‘left’ and ‘right’, and deictic verbs such as ‘come’ and ‘go’)
• Temporal deixis (adverbs of time such as ‘today’, ‘yesterday’ and ‘tomorrow’). Each of these both locates a speaker in and points from a particular deictic centre.

Deictic expressions are commonly used when speakers share the same time and space since they can point to objects and refer to events that can commonly be understood.

All information from Cambridge Elevate

Graphology

Many texts rely on the use of layout, space, images, colour and different font types to help convey their meaning. Often, these can be used in very obvious ways to help support meaning; at other times, their use may be more subtle. In all cases, graphological features tend to combine with other language levels to help support interpretation.

Types of graphological features

Layout, shape and space

The layout of a text is often related to its genre. For example, shopping lists, emails, menus and advertisements all tend to have prototypical layout features so that they are visually easily recognisable. 

Typography

Typographical features are those related to the way that fonts are used and set out in texts. These may include aspects of type, size, colour, effects (for example, using bold, underlined or italicised font), the choice of background against which a font is set, and any spacing that is used. The careful use of typographical features can help readers to follow writing clearly, highlight important points, and aim to produce dramatic effects.

Grammar

Morphology

Morphology is the study of how words are formed. For example, a noun in its plural form such as apples, is made up of two morphemes, a base or root apple, and an ending or suffix -s. In some words, the root has an element added before it, for example unhealthy has a prefix un- added to its root healthy. Together prefixes and suffixes are known as affixes.

Some affixes have an inflectional function as they show the tense of verbs and the plural form of nouns (for example -s). Others have aderivational function as they help to form a new word by being added to a root (for example un-).

Phrases

Words can be categorised into word classes related to the function they serve and the kinds of characteristics group members display. Moving up the rank scale, these words can form larger structures called phrases.

Noun Phrases

Noun phrases are groups of words centred round a noun that acts as the ‘head’ of the phrase. Other words in the phrase fulfil certain functions in relation to this head.

For example, the noun television can form the larger structure the television, which is a noun phrase with a head word television and adeterminer the. It can also form a longer noun phrase, the expensive television (this time containing a determiner and a pre-modifier,expensive). And, it can form an even longer noun phrase – the expensive television in the corner (this time adding a qualifier that doesn't modify the quality of the television itself but rather gives information as to its location as a post-modifier). Together then a noun phrase's constituent elements are:

• head word (h)
• determiner (d)
• modifier (m)
• qualifier (q).

Verb Phrases

In a similar way to a noun phrase, a verb phrase is built around a head word, the main verb. Verb phrases are generally less complex than noun phrases but can, in addition to main verbs, include auxiliary verbs that help to show either tense (the primary auxiliary verbs be, do and have), or show someone's degree of commitment towards an event or person (the modal auxiliary verbs such as may, could, must).

Clauses

In the same way that words form phrases, phrases form larger structures called clauses. These are groups of words centred round a verb phrase.

Clauses also have constituent elements that we can label and comment on depending on their function.

Constituent element	Description
Subject (S): usually a noun phrase	Acts as the key focus of the clause and is often the focus of a relational verb process or the agent of a material verb process
Object (O): usually a noun phrase	Identifies the entity being acted on by the action of a verb process
Complement (C): usually a noun phrase	Is the attribute of a subject in a relational verb process
Adverbial (A): usually an adverb or prepositional phrase	Identifies the circumstances of a verb process in terms of time, place or manner

Sentences

The terms simple, compound and complex sentences can be used to describe single or multi-clause structures. This fits in with the traditional definition of the sentence as having to contain a verb. Sentences that do not contain a verb, but are recognised as such through the use of a capital letter and full stop are orthographic sentences, and are a common feature in written texts and are often used to give a punchy, emphatic stress to an idea or feeling.

Sentence functions

In use, clauses and sentences have one of four functions:

1. 1forming statements (e.g., I read a ghost story.)
2. 2forming questions (e.g., Did you read that ghost story?)
3. 3giving commands (e.g., Read that ghost story!)
4. 4making exclamations (e.g., What a scary ghost story!)

All information from Cambridge Elevate

Sub-word classes

Most word classes can also be further examined and broken down into sub-classes. This is useful because it helps you both to understand some subtle differences within the broad word class categories and to fine-tune your identification of a particular feature in order to explain how and why it operates in a text.

Word class	Sub-class	Description	Example
Nouns	Proper	Refer to names of people or places	James, England
	Abstract	Refer to states, feelings and concepts that do not have a physical existence	love, anger
	Concrete	Refer to objects that have a physical existence	countable (can be pluralised, e.g., cup)
			non-countable (do not take a plural form, e.g., furniture)
Verbs	Material	Show actions or events	hit, jump, wash, build
	Relational	Identify properties or show states of being	be, appear, seem, become
	Mental	Show internal processes such as thinking	think, believe, wish
	Verbal	Show external processes of communicating through speech	say, shout, scream, whisper
Adjectives and adverbs	Base	The basic form of an adjective or adverb, modifying another word	big, interesting, carefully
	Comparative	A form used to compare two instances either adding ‘-er’ or using ‘more’	The parcel was bigger. That was a more interesting game. He read more carefully.
	Superlative	A form used to compare more than two instances, identifying a best example	That was the biggest parcel. The most interesting game. It was the most carefully he had ever read.
Pronouns	Personal	Refer to people and are differentiated in terms of person (1st, 2nd, 3rd), number (singular or plural) and gender (male or female)	I (first person singular), you (second person singular/plural), she (third person, singular, feminine), they (third person, plural)
	Demonstrative	Orientate the reader or listener towards a person, object, or idea either nearby or further away	this, these, that, those
	Indefinite	Refer to a person, object or idea that is non-specific	someone, anybody, everything
Determiners	Articles	Show that something is definite or indefinite	the (definite), a/an (indefinite)
	Possessives	Show ownership	my, your, her, our
	Quantifiers	Show either specific or non-specific quantities of a noun	one, two (specific), some, any, a few (non-specific)
Conjunctions	Co-ordinating	Link words or larger structures such as phrases and clauses together where they are equal (see also Unit 6)	and, but, or, yet
	Sub-ordinating	Link clauses together to show one is dependent on another (see also Unit 6)	because, although, while, for

All information from Cambridge Elevate.

Word Classes

Together these categories form three of the four main word classes – nouns, verbs and adjectives:

• noun: a word that names a thing or concept
• verb: a word that shows a state of being, action or event (we can call this a process)
• adjective: a word that modifies a noun.

In addition, a fourth major class of word is the adverb. Adverbs act in a similar manner to adjectives, but they modify verbs, adjectives or other adverbs, for example:

He ran quickly (adverb modifying the verb ‘ran’).

It was a very slow game (adverb modifying the adjective ‘slow’).

They were incredibly well organised (adverb modifying another adverb ‘well’).

These four word classes have the most members and are generally open to new membership. Nearly every new word that comes into the English language can be placed in one of these classes. Consequently, noun, verb, adjective and adverb are known as open or lexical word classes.

In contrast, a smaller group of word classes exists that tend to have a much smaller membership, have very fewer new members and tend to be used to provide connections and cohesion between other words. The following are known as closed or grammatical word classes:

• pronoun: substitutes for a noun, often referring back or forwards to them (e.g., ‘he’, ‘she’ ‘they’ ‘it’)
• determiner: adds detail or clarity to nouns (e.g., ‘the’, ‘my’, ‘some’)
• preposition: provides connections between words often showing a sense of place or time (e.g., ‘in’, ‘on’, ‘between’, ‘during’)
• conjunction: provides connections between the larger structures phrases, clauses and sentences (see Unit 6, e.g., ‘and’, ‘but’, ‘because’).

All information from Cambridge Elevate.