Jargon
Jargon is specialist language that is specific to an activity, hobby, profession, academic subject, or trade. In order for specialist language to be considered ‘jargon’ it needs to exclude people who don’t understand it.
Array A-level
Litotes
Litotes is a language device where you combine a negative word (like “no”, “not”, “don’t”, “isn’t”, etc) with a word or phrase to express the opposite thing for effect. For example, “I’m not happy” means you’re unhappy.
Hedging
In linguistics, hedging is when you use certain words and phrases to make what you’re saying sound less harsh, more cautious or more unsure.
Syntax
Syntax is one of the six micro-linguistic levels you study in English language. It is about how we order words to make phrases, clauses and sentences.
Implied Reader
The implied reader is the person (or group of people) that we infer a text was made for. We base this inference on the text producer’s decisions about language, narration, characters, plot, structure, form, layout, mode, context, genre, etc.
External Deviation
External deviation is a kind of foregrounding where the text producer breaks conventions or “rules” that people accept for the type of text they’re writing. They do this to draw attention to specific parts of their writing.
Free Direct Speech [FDS]
Free direct speech is a type of speech presentation that indicates you are repeating the actual words of another person. You do this by surrounding the speech in punctuation (usually speech marks or inverted commas), but you do not use a reporting clause.
Narrator Interference
When a narrator quotes someone else’s words, they have some influence over how we interpret and react to the quoted words. We call this “narrator interference”.
Direct Speech [DS]
Direct speech is a type of speech presentation that indicates that you are repeating the actual words of another person. You do this by surrounding the speech in punctuation (usually quotation marks or inverted commas) and using a reporting clause (such as “she said”).
Pragmatics
Pragmatics is one of the six microlinguistic levels you study in English language. It is about how language is used in context.