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Language in Use 285-286

Glossary

ACTIVITY

In the units, activities for members of the class are set up by procedures adopted by the teachers.

AMBIGUITY/AMBIVALENCE

See headnote to D12. Also The Language Poets Use-Nowottny, chapter VII.

AUDIENCE

The person (or persons) addressed by a speaker or writer. A person's use of language is strongly influenced by his notion of who he is speaking to, or writing to or for. See PARTICIPANT and SETTING, and A3.

CATEGORY

Human beings begin, from their earliest days, to sort, or classify, their experience, so that their view of the world is built up from a vast number of individual entities which are classified into named categories. "This is done more or less automatically, continuously, and from our earliest days. The criteria we use consciously or unconsciously for classification vary with our purpose. that is, we select certain properties of a thing and ignore others, according to convenience; thus we may arrange books according to size, or colour, or author, or subject, or date of publication." (The Anatomy of Judgement-Abercrombie (Pelican), p. 133.)

CULTURE

The entire way of life of members of a community; what they habitually do; the network of values, attitudes and beliefs that gives a society, or part of a society, a recognisable identity.

ENQUIRY

The form of activity recommended, for example, in A9, in which the class first of all provides its own data, and then uses this data as the basis for its exploration of one aspect of the nature and function of language.

EXPRESSIVE

The way in which language conveys the views, attitudes and feelings of speaker or writer. See INFORMATION and Introduction to Part 1, p. 17.

FOCUS

The area of language study on which a unit concentrates. Thus A8 " 'focuses' upon the problems which arise when we try to convey information solely by diagram or solely by words. . ."

FORMALITY

The respect in which language varies according to the relationship between user and audience. Formality is a continuum from least formal to most formal, not a simple choice between formal and informal. Joos classifies this continuum into five broad ranges, which he calls intimate, casual, consultative, formal and frozen. For him, intimate style rarely occurs in written language, frozen style rarely in spoken. A three-fold division into casual, consultative and formal makes a useful beginning in the class-room. Joos's account is in The Five Clocks (Harcourt Brace) ; another account will be found in English in Advertising Geoffrey Leech (Longman).

INFORMATION

That which is conveyed by language other than the speaker's attitude and feeling. See EXPRESSIVE and Introduction to Part 1, p.17.

LANGUAGE

Common Language

What the speaker of a language would ordinarily use; the meanings which words carry in everyday usage; language not used technically by a trade or profession, or in a particular discipline or branch of knowledge.

Technical Language

MARKED/UNMARKED

A widely occurring feature of human behaviour is the habit of linking together bits of experience and treating one member of such a pair as the one we usually expect to find. We thus have to use a special name for, or otherwise mark, the one we are not expecting. Nurses are expected to be female, numbers to be positive and girls to be un-married. Otherwise, we say 'male nurse', place a minus sign in front of the number, and put a ring on the girl's finger. See D7 and D8, and Introduction to theme D, pp. 89 and 90.

MESSAGE

Everything a speaker or writer intends to convey by his use of language. Its content as opposed to its form. See UTTERANCE and Introduction to Part 1, p. 17.

PARTICIPANT

In a language SETTING (q.v.), a participant may be Speaker or Hearer, and will usually be both at different times. A participant may have a marked effect on the language used even though silent himself. The relationship between Writer and Reader is also a participant relationship.

PROCEDURE

See ACTIVITY.

ROLE

See Introduction to Part 111, page 193 and Communities in Britain - R. Frankenberg (Pelican), pp. 16-19, and 240-2.

SETTING

The context in which language is used, spoken and written. It is the various features of the setting, like the PARTICIPANTS and the location, which constrain the user's choice of language.

SOCIAL GROUPS

Individuals who come together for some purpose, whether professional, commercial, recreational, intellectual, or otherwise. Social groups may be temporary or persist over a long period of time. The persistence of a social group over any length of time brings about the development of particular ways of using language, which will distinguish members of the group from others, while giving cohesion and a sense of identity to the group itself.

SOCIAL TALK

Social talk covers the wide range of conversational gambits which people use, not merely to fill silence, but to maintain distance between each other, to deal with interruptions, or to signal the end of a meeting.

STYLE

See FORMALITY.

TERM

A word becomes a term when the particular distinction which it expresses is restricted to a particular field and essential for an under standing of the conceptual basis of that field. The entries in this glossary are, in this sense, terms. See LANGUAGE - Technical Language.

UTTERANCE

The form which conveys the MESSAGE (q.v.). It can be spoken or written. See Introduction to Part 1. p. 17.

VARIETY

Language distinguished according to user (e.g. dialect) or use (e.g. the language of sermons).

WRITE-OUT

The writing out of an utterance from live speech or from a tape in ordinary orthography. If this is done using phonetic symbols, the result is a transcription.

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