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Task 2 (NEA) Original Non-Fiction Creative Writing 

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Task 2 (NEA) Original Non-Fiction Creative Writing 

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Sample Question Paper 1 - Non-Fiction Anthology

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Sample Question Paper 1 - Non-Fiction Anthology

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H474/01 - Sample question paper and mark scheme

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Sample Candidate Answers (a selection showing 15-32 mark response with examiner comments)

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Sample Candidate Answers (a selection showing 15-32 mark response with examiner comments)

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Some excellent examples of the 150-word introduction to the non-fiction creative writing task (Task 2)

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Task 1 NEA Coursework Marking Criteria and Feedback

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Task 1 NEA Coursework Marking Criteria and Feedback

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Task 1 Marking Criteria and Feedback on Draft 1

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independent charity for secondary and FE teachers and students of English Language, Literature and Media Studies (run by academics and teachers)

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emagazine - EMC's quarterly magazine & subscription website for advanced level English Literature, English Language and Language and Literature students.

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This document provides a list of the key linguistic and literary features that can be found in a range of genres or text types

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English Language and Literature Specification H474

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Advance information : English Lit/Lang H474

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Advance information : English Lit/Lang H474

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Please complete this document with details of your Task 1 and Task 2. Then send a copy to me via email. Thank you

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Yr2 A2 480988-anthology-of-non-fiction-and-spoken-texts v2.1 Oct2020 new version (3)

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levels of linguistic analysis-crib sheet (1)

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Owing to its origin in ancient Greece and Rome, English rhetorical theory frequently employs Greek and Latin words as terms of art. This page explains commonly used rhetorical terms in alphabetical order. The brief definitions here are intended to serve as a quick reference rather than an in-depth discussion. For more information, click the terms.

Adjunction. When a verb is placed at the beginning or the end of a sentence instead of in the middle. For example (from Rhetorica ad Herennium), "At the beginning, as follows: 'Fades physical beauty with disease or age.' At the end, as follows: 'Either with disease or age physical beauty fades.'"

or Amphibology. A sentence that may be interpreted in more than one way due to ambiguous structure.

Amplification. The act and the means of extending thoughts or statements to increase rhetorical effect, to add importance, or to make the most of a thought or circumstance.

Anaphora. From the Greek ἀναφέρω, "I repeat". A succession of sentences beginning with the same word or group of words.

Anecdote. A brief narrative describing an interesting or amusing event.

Antanaclasis. From Greek ̩̩ἀντανάκλασις, a figure of speech involving a pun, consisting of the repeated use of the same word, each time with different meanings.

Antinome ( AN-tə-nohm). Two ideas about the same topic that can be worked out to a logical conclusion, but the conclusions contradict each other.

Antistrophe. In rhetoric, repeating the last word in successive phrases. For example (from Rhetorica ad Herennium), "Since the time when from our state concord disappeared, liberty disappeared, good faith disappeared, friendship disappeared, the common weal disappeared." Also see: epiphora.

Apophasis / Apophesis. Pretending to deny something as a means of implicitly affirming it. As paralipsis, mentioning something by saying that you will not mention it. The opposite of occupatio.

Apostrophe. From Greek ἀποστροφή, a figure of speech consisting of a sudden turn in a text towards an exclamatory address to an imaginary person or a thing.

Appeals. Rhetorical devices used to enhance the plausibility of one's argument; Aristotle's appeals included ethos, logos, and pathos.

Arete. Virtue, excellence of character, qualities that would be inherent in a "natural leader", a component of ethos.

Artistic proofs. Rhetorically-produced methods for persuasion. For Aristotle, three possibilities would be ethos, pathos, and logos.

Aureation. The use of Latinate and polysyllabic terms to "heighten" diction.

Backing. Supporting an argument's merit.

Bases. The issues at question in a judicial case.

Belles lettres. Written works considered quality because they are pleasing to the senses.

Belletristic movement. Movement of rhetoric in the late 18th and early 19th centuries emphasizing stylistic considerations of rhetoric. It also expanded rhetoric into a study of literature and literary criticism and writing.

Burden of proof. Theory of argument giving the obligation of proving a case to the asserting party.

Buzzword. A word or phrase used to impress, or one that is fashionable.

Canon. A term often used to discuss significant literary works in a specific field, used by Cicero to outline five significant parts of the rhetorical composition process.

Catacosmesis. A reverse climax: an arrangement of phrases or topics in decreasing order, as with best, worse, worst. Its extreme form is anticlimax.

Charisma. An attribute that allows a speaker's words to become powerful.

From the name of the Greek letter "χ", a figure of speech consisting of the contrasting of two structurally parallel syntactic phrases arranged "cross-wise", i.e., in such a way that the second is in reverse order from the first.

Circumlocution. Use of many words where a few would do.

Circa rem. Latin: The circumstances surrounding the act in one Roman topical system.

Classicism. A revival in the interest of classical antiquity languages and texts.

Colon. A colon (Greek κῶλον) is a rhetorical figure consisting of a clause that is grammatically, but not logically, complete.

Colloquialism. A word or phrase that is not formal or literary, typically one used in ordinary or familiar conversation.

Comparatio. Arguments by comparison.

Consubstantiality. Substance commonality.

Constraints. Referring to "persons, events, objects, and relations that are parts of the situation because they have the power to constrain decision and action needed to modify the exigence". Originally used by Lloyd Bitzer.

Contingency. In rhetoric, it relates to the contextual circumstances that do not allow an issue to be settled with complete certainty.

Context. The circumstances surrounding an issue that should be considered during its discussion.

Conversation model. The model, in critique of traditional rhetoric by Sally Gearhart, that maintains the goal of rhetoric is to persuade others to accept your own personal view as correct.

Cookery. Plato believed rhetoric was to truth as cookery was to medicine. Cookery disguises itself as medicine and appears to be more pleasing, when in actuality it has no real benefit.

Critical theory. Systematically analyzing any means of communication for hidden assumptions and connotations.

Concession. Acknowledgment of objections to a proposal.

Deconstruction. Analyzing communication artifacts by scrutinizing their meaning and related assumptions, with the goal of determining the social and systemic connotations behind their structure.

Deduction. Moving from an overall hypothesis to infer something specific about that hypothesis.

Delivery. Canon #5 in Cicero's list of rhetorical canons; traditionally linked to oral rhetoric, refers to how a speech is given (including tone of voice and nonverbal gestures, among others).

Demos. The ruling body of free citizens in ancient Athens and other city states, considered as a political entity; population; the common people. A root of the word democracy.

Descriptio (energia, diatyposis): Clear, lucid, and vivid description (especially of the potential consequences of some action)

Dialectic. A rhetorical term that has been defined differently by Aristotle and Ramus, among others; generally, it means using verbal communication to come to an agreement on a topic.

Diallage. Establishing a single point with the use of several arguments.

Diminutio (related to meiosis, litotes): a form of understatement, and implication of more than the words say

Dispositio. In the classical theory of the production of speech, pronuntiatio dispositio refers to the stage of planning the structure and sequence of ideas. Often referred to as arrangement, the second of Cicero's five rhetorical canons.

Dissoi logoi. Contradictory arguments.

Distribution. Dividing a whole subject into its various parts.

Divisio. (prosapodosis): Distinguishing the alternatives of a question, and resolving each, by subjoining a reason

Dramatistic. Way to look at the nature of language stressing on language as an action. ex. uses expressions such as 'thou shalt' and 'thou shalt not'.

Dubitatio. Expression of uncertainty as to which of two phrases is most suitable.

Dysphemism. A term with negative associations for something in reality fairly innocuous or inoffensive.

Ellipse. The suppression of ancillary words to render an expression more lively or more forceful.

In the classical theory of the production of a speech (Pronuntiatio), elocution refers to the stage of elaborating the wording of a text, using correct grammar and diction.

Enallage. The switching of grammatical forms for an expressive purpose.

Energia. The Greek word for 'energy' that was used by Aristotle in reference to the force or vigor of expression in writing or speech.

Enthymeme. A type of argument that is grounded in assumed commonalities between a rhetor and the audience. (For example: Claim 1: Bob is a person. Therefore, Claim 3: Bob is mortal. The assumption (unstated Claim 2) is that People are mortal). In Aristotelian rhetoric, an enthymeme is known as a "rhetorical syllogism:" it mirrors the form of a syllogism, but it is based on opinion rather than fact (For example: Claim 1: These clothes are tacky. Claim 2: I am wearing these clothes. Claim 3: Therefore, I am unfashionable).

Epanalepsis. A figure of speech in which the same word or phrase appears both at the beginning and at the end of a clause.

Epideictic. Ceremonial rhetoric, such as might be found in a funeral or victory speech.

Epistemology. Philosophical study directed at understanding how people gain knowledge.

Epistrophe. A succession of clauses, phrases or sentences that all end with the same word or group of words.

Epithet. A term used as a descriptive and qualifying substitute for the name of a person, place or thing.

Eristic. Communicating with the aim of winning the argument regardless of truth. The idea is not necessarily to lie, but to present the communication so cleverly that the audience is persuaded by the power of the presentation.

Erotema. The so-called 'Rhetorical Question', where a question is asked to which an answer is not expected.

Ethos. A rhetorical appeal to an audience based on the speaker/writer's credibility.

Ethopoeia. The act of putting oneself into the character of another to convey that persons feelings and thoughts more vividly.

Euphemism. An innocuous, inoffensive or circumlocutory term or phrase for something unpleasant or obscene. E.g., in advertising for female hygiene products any liquid shown is never red, it's usually blue.

Evidence. In rhetoric, facts or testimony used to strengthen a claim.

Exclamatio. (apostrophe): an expression of grief or indignation, addressed to a person, place, or object.

Exemplum. The citation of an example, either truthful or fictitious.

Exigence. A rhetorical call to action; a situation that compels someone to speak out.

Expression. applying the correct language to an argument.

Fable. A short allegorical story.

Faculty psychology. 18th century, the mind contains faculties that include understanding, imagination, passion, and will.

False consciousness. (Marxism), a distorted view of reality, people, and the world.

Feminist rhetoric. Rhetorical theory concerned with feminism and its critique of social structures.

Figure. Unusual arrangement of language that tries to achieve unique meaning for ideas.

Figura etymologica. Repetition of two etymologically-related terms.

Forensic oratory. speaking in a courtroom.

Hendiadys. Using two nouns linked by a conjunction to express a single complex idea.

Hermeneutics. The theoretical underpinnings of interpreting texts, usually religious or literary.

Heteroglossia. Refers to use of a variety of voices or styles within one literary work or context.

Heuristics. Determining or applying the proper methods for investigation.

Homoioteleuton. From the ancient Greek όμοιοτέλευτος/homoioteleutos (ὅμοιος/hόmoios = "same", and τελευτή/teleutế = "ending") is a figure of speech where adjacent or parallel words have similar endings inside a verse, a sentence. Authors often use it to evoke music or to give a rhythm to their phrase.

Hypothesis. An educated guess; usually a clause claiming "if" something happens, "then" a result will come of it.

Hypsos. Great or worthy writing, sometimes called sublime. Longinus's theme in On the Sublime.

Hysteron proteron. A rhetorical device in which the first key word of the idea refers to something that happens temporally later than the second key word. The goal is to call attention to the more important idea by placing it first.

Icon. Using imagery to create resemblance.

Ideology. A way of understanding one's external surroundings.

Inartistic proofs. Discovered information stemming from the raw data of experience.

Inclusio. A literary device based on an envelope structure.

Indefinite questions. In Quintlian, questions that are discussed without referring to anything specifically.

Induction. Rhetorical method for coming to general conclusions through specific examples.

Interlacement. Combining the figures Antistrophe and Epanaphora for rhetorical style and emphasis. For example (from Rhetorica ad Herennium), "Who are they who have often broken treaties? The Carthaginians. Who are they who have waged war with severest cruelty? The Carthaginians."

Intersubjective agreements. agreements on the fair conduct of an argument among individuals participating in dialogue.

Invention. Described by Cicero as the process of determining "valid or seemingly valid arguments;" the first of his five rhetorical canons.

Invitational rhetoric. (Foss and Griffin, 1995) rhetoric involving "an invitation to understanding as a means to create a relationship rooted in quality, immanent value, and self-determination". Emphasizes the relationship between the speaker and freedoms of the audience to make decisions for themselves in order to promote equality.

Ioci. Jokes, see: Cicero's De Oratore and his theory of humor.

Irony. A deliberate contrast between indirect and direct meaning to draw attention to the opposite.

Isocolon. A string of phrases of corresponding structure and equal length.

Issues of definition. Things related to naming an act.

Issues of fact. Issues related to an act's occurrence.

Issues of quality. Issues related to the seriousness of an act.

Jargon. Highly technical language used by specific group.

Judicial. Type of oratory used to attack or defend someone in a court of law.

Latinitas. Stylistic feature involving the proper use of language.

Lexis. Style.

Litotes. Stating a positive by negating the negative - a form of understatement. ("I am not unaware of your difficulties.")

Localism. A word, phrase, or custom particular to one's location.

Logical fallacy. Misconceptions resulting from faulty reasoning.

Logical positivism. The effort to make scientific standards applicable for resolving all issues.

Logical proof. Arguments used to persuade audience. Reasoned.

Major premise. Statement in a syllogism. Generalization.

Material fallacy. False notion concerning the subject matter of an argument.

Memory. Described by Cicero as the "firm mental grasp of matter and words;" the fourth of his five rhetorical canons.

Mesodiplosis. The repetition of a word or group of words in the middle of successive clauses.

Metanarrative. Universal theories positing to know all aspects of humanity.

A figure of speech that substitutes one word or phrase for another with which it is closely associated. For example (from Rhetorica ad Herennium), "one should say 'wine' for 'Liber', 'wheat' for 'Ceres'." In UK, people speak of "Crown property" meaning property belonging to the State. Similarly: "The White House had no comment to make." ("White House", the residence and office building of the president of the United States, is used as a metonymy for the president or the president's administration.

Metron. Greek, measure.

Minor premise. Statement in an argument.

Moral reasoning. Reasoning employed in rhetoric that determines a conclusion based on evidence. Used in issues of ethics, religion, economics, and politics.

Motive. Something that plays a role in one's decision to act.

Narration. Story telling, involving the elements of time, place, actor, action, cause and manner.

Necessary cause. Cause without which effect couldn't/wouldn't have occurred.

Neoplatonism. School of thought emanating from the works of Plato and Aristotle in early BCE Rome.

Notaries. Secretaries trained in rhetoric for dealing with the agreements that were needed for commercial cities in Italy to function.

Onomatopoeia. Words that imitate the sounds, objects, or actions they refer to. (ex. "buzz", "hullabaloo", "bling")

Opening. First part of discourse. Should gain audiences' attention.

Opposed or markedly contradictory terms joined together for emphasis.

Parachesis. Repetition of the same sound in several words in close succession. Alliteration (initial rhyme) is a special case of parachesis.

Paradeigma. Greek, argument created by a list of examples that leads to a probable generalized idea.

Paradiastole. Greek, redescription - usually in a better light.

Paradox. An apparently absurd or self-contradictory statement or proposition.

Parallelism. The correspondence, in sense or construction, of successive clauses or passages.

Parallel syntax. Repetition of similar sentence structures.

Parallel structure. Using the same tense and structure.

Paraprosdokian. A sentence in which the latter half takes an unexpected turn.

Parataxis. Using juxtaposition of short, simple sentences to connect ideas, as opposed to explicit conjunction.

Parenthesis. An explanatory or qualifying word, clause, or sentence inserted into a passage that is not essential to the literal meaning.

Paremvolia. An interference of speak by speaking.

Paromoiosis. Parallelism of sound between the words of two clauses approximately equal in size. The similarity of sound can occur at the beginning of the clauses, at the end (where it is equivalent to homoioteleuton), in the middle or throughout the clauses.

Paronomasia. A pun, a play on words, often for humorous effect.

Particular audience. In Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca, the actual audience the orator addresses.

Perfectus orator. Latin, a complete orator.

Periphrasis. The substitution of many or several words where one would suffice; usually to avoid using that particular word.

Peroratio. Latin, the last section of a judicial speech where the speaker is the strongest.

Petitio. Latin, in a letter, an announcement, demand, or request.

Phallogocentrism. Examines the relationship between logos (reason) and the phallus (representative of male genitalia). Just as the phallus is implicitly and sometimes explicitly assumed to be the only significant sexual organ, the masculine is the accepted as the central point of reference of validity and authority for a society.

Phronesis. Greek, practical wisdom; common sense.

Physis. Greek, nature.

Pian. Ancient China, the art of disputing.

Pistis. Greek, belief.

Plausibility. Rhetoric that is believable right away due to its association with something that the audience already knows or has experienced.

Pleonasm. The use of more words than necessary to express an idea.

Poetriae, Ars. Latin, poetry as an art.

Polis. Greek, the city-state, especially the people in the city-state.

Polyphonic. Having multiple voices.

Polyptoton. The repetition of a word or root in different cases or inflections within the same sentence.

Polysemy. The capacity of a word or phrase to render more than one meaning.

Polysyndeton. The repeated use of conjunctions within a sentence, particularly where they do not necessarily have to be used.

Position. The stance taken by a rhetor that s/he is attempting to prove through argumentation.

Postmodernism. Related to rhetoric, a field of inquiry concerned with the ideological underpinnings of commonly held assumptions.

Praedicandi, Ars. Latin, Preaching.

Pragmatism. Approach based on practical consideration and immediate perception to the exclusion of moral (in the sense of 'should') and ethic arguments.

Pragmatographia. Description of an action (such as a battle, a feast, a marriage, a burial, etc.).

Presence. In Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca, choosing to emphasize certain facts and ideas instead of others, leading the audience along that path.

Presumption. An idea is reasonable or acceptable only until it is sufficiently challenged.

Preterition. Mentioning something by professing to omit it.

Priamel. A series of compared alternatives which serve as foils to the true subject of a poem.

Proof surrogate. An expression used to suggest that there is evidence or authority for a claim without actually citing such evidence or authority.

Protreptic. Greek, the potential to persuade through language.

Prudence. Judging practically.

Psogos. Greek for blame.

Psychagogos. Greek for a poet.

Psyche. Greek for the mind or soul.

Public sphere. Place where individuals can engage in discussion without the political or state interests interfering.

Purpose. What the speaker or writer is trying to do with language.

Quadrivium. The major subjects taught in medieval times: geometry, arithmetic, astronomy, and music.

Quaestiones. Debatable points around which disputes are centered.

Repetition, repetition, repetition is the simple repeating of a word for emphasis.

Rhetor. A person who is in the course of presenting or preparing rhetorical discourse.

Rhetores. (Greek) Those who make a living by speaking persuasively.

Rhetoric. The study and practice of good effective expression. Also a type of discourse- focusing on goals of the speech or piece of writing that attempts to sway the mind of the audience.

Rhetoric of fiction. Wayne Booth's idea "the author's judgement is always present" in a narrative.

Rhetorical audience. Those who can be persuaded by rhetoric.

Rhetorical discourse. Discourse created within the boundary of the principles of rhetoric.

Rhetorical opposition. Protagoras's idea that there are two sides to everything.

Rhetorical question. A question asked to make a point instead of to elicit a direct answer.

Rhetorical theory. The organized presentation of the art or rhetoric, descriptions of the various functions of rhetoric, and clarifications of how rhetoric achieves its goals.

Salience/Agenda; Meaning/Spin. The basic components of all rhetorical struggles, per Richard E Vatz, The Only Authentic Book of Persuasion, (Kendall Hunt, 2013).

Salon. Intellectual assembly in an aristocratic setting; primarily associated with France in the 17th and 18th centuries.

Scare-line. A word or phrase that is quoted to scare the reader, or, in a political campaign, to smear an opposing candidate, or to cause an estrangement or cause something to seem unfamiliar in a supernatural way

Scholasticism. Rhetorical study of Christianity that was intellectually prominent in 11th-15th-century Western Europe, emphasizing rhetorical concepts by Aristotle and a search for universal truth.

Scientific method. A system of observing and analyzing data through induction; prominent school of thought since the 17th century whose proponents are often critical of rhetoric.

Scientific reasoning. Moving from axioms to actual conclusions. Also Syllogistic logic.

Scientism. In Weaver, applying scientific assumptions to subjects that are not completely natural.

Scientistic. Kenneth Burke. Way of looking at the nature of language as a way of naming or defining something. ex. 'It is' or 'It is not.'

Second Sophistic. Rhetorical era in Rome that dealt primarily with rhetorical style through some of the Greek Sophists' concepts, while neglecting its political and social uses because of censorship.

Semantics. Philosophical study of language that deals with its connection to perceptions of reality.

Semiotics. Branch of semantics concerning language and communication as a system of symbols.

Sensus communis. A society's basic beliefs and values.

Shui. Formal persuasion in ancient China.

Skepticism. Type of thought that questions whether universal truth exists and is attainable by humans.

Sophists. Considered the first professional teachers of oratory and rhetoric (ancient Greece 4th century BC).

Spin. In Vatz, the act of competing to infuse meaning into agenda items for chosen audiences.

Starting points. In Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca, the place between the speaker and audience where the argument can begin.

Stasis system. System of finding arguments by means of looking at ideas that are contradictory.

Structural ambiguity. A sentence that may be interpreted in more than one way due to ambiguous structure.

A type of valid argument that states if the first two claims are true, then the conclusion is true. (For example: Claim 1: People are mortal. Claim 2: Bob is a person. Therefore, Claim 3: Bob is mortal.) Started by Aristotle.

Symbol. A visual or metaphorical representation of an idea or concept.

Symbolic inducement. Term coined by Kenneth Burke to refer to rhetoric.

Symploce. A figure of speech in which several successive clauses have the same first and last words.

Synecdoche. A rhetorical device where one part of an object is used to represent the whole. E.g., "There are fifty head of cattle." (Head is substituting for the whole animal). "Show a leg!" (naval command to get out of bed = show yourself)

Syntactic ambiguity. A sentence that may be interpreted in more than one way due to ambiguous structure.

Tapinosis. Language or an epithet that is debasing. This term is synonymous with Meiosis (figure of speech).

Taste. A learned admiration for things of beauty.

Techne. Greek for a true art.

Terministic screens. term coined by Kenneth Burke to explain the way in which the world is viewed when taking languages and words into consideration.

Theme. The central topic of discussion.

Thesis. The major claim or premise made in an argument to be proved or dis-proved.

Thesmos. Greek. The law that comes from the authority of kings.

Tmesis. Separating the parts of a compound word by a different word (or words) to create emphasis or other similar effects.

Topical systems. Methods for finding arguments.

Toulmin Model. A method of diagramming arguments created by Stephen Toulmin that identifies such components as backing, claim, data, qualifier, rebuttal, and warrant.

Translative issue. Dealing with procedure of an ensuing case.

Tricolon. The pattern of three phrases in parallel, found commonly in Western writing after Cicero. For example, the kitten had white fur, blue eyes, and a pink tongue.

Tropes. Figure of speech that uses a word aside from its literal meaning.

Understatement. A form of irony, also called litotes, in which something is represented as less than it really is, with the intent of drawing attention to and emphasizing the opposite meaning.

Universal audience. An audience consisting of all humankind (most specifically of adult age and normal mental capacity).

Utterance. Statement that could contain meaning about one's own person.

Validity. Apprehension over the structure of an argument.

Validity claim. Claiming to have made a correct statement.

Verba. The part of an argument that advances the subject matter.

Verbum volitans. A word that floats in the air, on which everyone is thinking and is just about to be imposed.[citation needed ]

Visual rhetoric. A theoretical framework describing how visual images communicate, as opposed to aural or verbal messages.

Vir bonus dicendi peritus. Latin: The good man skilled at speaking well.

Ways and means. One of the five main matters that Aristotle claims political speakers make speeches on. It consists of the speaker's country's revenue and sources, as well as the expenditures of the country.

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Owing to its origin in ancient Greece and Rome, English rhetorical theory frequently employs Greek and Latin words as terms of art. This page explains commonly used rhetorical terms in alphabetical order. The brief definitions here are intended to serve as a quick reference rather than an in-depth discussion.

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In rhetoric, a rhetorical device, persuasive device, or stylistic device is a technique that an author or speaker uses to convey to the listener or reader a meaning with the goal of persuading them towards considering a topic from a perspective, using language designed to encourage or provoke an emo…

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Search
This site is optimally viewed using a frames-capable browser (MSIE 3 or above; Netscape 3 or above).

T his online rhetoric, provided by Dr. Gideon Burton of Brigham Young University, is a guide to the terms of classical and renaissance rhetoric. Sometimes it is difficult to see the forest (the big picture) of rhetoric because of the trees (the hundreds of Greek and Latin terms naming figures of speech, etc.) within rhetoric.

This site is intended to help beginners, as well as experts, make sense of rhetoric, both on the small scale (definitions and examples of specific terms) and on the large scale (the purposes of rhetoric, the patterns into which it has fallen historically as it has been taught and practiced for 2000+ years).

If you'd like an overview of the entire "forest" of rhetoric, consult the "trees" (major categories) in the left frame.

If you'd like to look up specific terms of rhetoric, either scroll through the list of figures of speech (or "flowers" of rhetoric) on the right, or Search the Forest (above or here).

Cross-references throughout the website will help you see the relationship between, for example, a topic of invention, such as "comparison" and its related figures of speech, " metaphor," etc.

For students of rhetoric, literature, or communication, don't forget to look at the examples of Rhetorical Analysis (at the bottom of the "trees").

A forest is the metaphor for this site. Like a forest, rhetoric provides tremendous resources for many purposes. However, one can easily become lost in a large, complex habitat (whether it be one of wood or of wit). The organization of this central page and the hyperlinks within individual pages should provide a map, a discernible trail, to lay hold of the utility and beauty of this language discipline.

Don't be scared of the intimidating detail suggested by the odd Greek and Latin terms. After all, you can enjoy the simple beauty of a birch tree without knowing it is betula alba and make use of the shade of a weeping willow tree without knowing it is in fact salix babylonica. The same is possible with rhetoric. The names aid categorization and are more or less conventional, but I encourage you to get past the sesquipedalian labels and observe the examples and the sample criticism (rhetoric in practice). It is beyond the definitions that the power of rhetoric is made apparent.

Your input (contributions of examples, explanations, links, and bibliography, or your clarifications and corrections) is heartily welcomed.
If you are not viewing this document inside of a frame, you should be! Please click here.
This site was awarded the
Wise Owl Site of the Month for September, 1997 "in recognition of exemplary design and educational excellence."

Featured in the Scout Report, January 2, 1998

© 1996-2002, Gideon O. Burton, Brigham Young University
Please cite "Silva Rhetoricae"(http://humanities.byu.edu/rhetoric/silva.htm)

Trees | S ILVA RHETORICAE | Flowers

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Trees | S ILVA RHETORICAE | Flowers

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Search This site is optimally viewed using a frames-capable browser (MSIE 3 or above; Netscape 3 or above). T his online rhetoric, provided by Dr. Gideon Burton of Brigham Young University, is a guide to the terms of classical and renaissance rhetoric.

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King Edward VIII's Abdication Speech 1936

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Newsnight archives (2008) - Dizzee Rascal for Prime Minister!

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Horrible Histories 'The Stone Age Report'

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Horrible Histories 'The Stone Age Report'

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Another cracker from the brilliant CBBC sketch show HORRIBLE HISTORIES: the complete history of cavemen in just a couple of minutes! Just like a weather report.

Savage Stone Age

Hello and welcome to the news at when. When? Prehistoric time, when caveman slowly evolved into modern man, very slowly and in many different stages. Here to guide you through them is Bob Hale, with the Stone Age report. Bob.

Thanks Anne. Well, as you can see it's about 750,000 years ago. That, believe it or not, is Britain and here comes the Stone Age. And there go the stones. There's plenty to go around because the ground's about 125 metres higher than it is today. In fact, you could walk to France, but please don't, because we have guests, starting with... ta-ta-da-da... homo heidelbergensis. Or Heidi to his friends.

There he is, he's 6 foot 1 and he is tons of fun and hard as nails. And Heidi likes to hunt animals in big groups. Animals like hippos, and elephants and hamsters and lions, except no hamsters, and it's all jolly good fun until, suddenly, they're gone! And why? Because it's cold like ice, for an age. It's called an ice age. And the whole country empties and after here nothing happens.

But not for long! The sun comes out and the melting ice makes the English Channel. We are now an island, hooray! But no one can get here because they haven't invented boats. So the only things in Britain are animals. Animals like mammoths, and wolves and, best of all, megabears. Yes, megabears, like a grizzly bear but twice the size. No, it's bigger than that. Always bigger than that. There it is! It's mean, it's lean and you wouldn't want to run into it on a dark night. And then one dark night someone runs into it!

Yes, the humans are back. But it's not Heidi anymore. He's evolved into Neanderthal, big brow, big nose, big news! And he loves to hunt. He chases bears, he's chased by bears. He chases mammoths, he's chased by mammoths. It's all one big party until in 35,000 BC another guest turns up.

Do you recognize this fellow? It's you, it's me, it's modern man. Yes, homo sapiens, our great, great great great great tons of million grandparents are here to hang out with the Neanderthals, and I hope they brought their kilts because, wouldn't you know it? Here comes another ice age. And when it's over, only homo sapiens are left. No more Neanderthals. And since the weather's nice, great, great, great grand-dad gets a few jobs done.

He invents the wheel, beer, painting, archery, and most important of all, farming, which gets even easier when... bronze is invented. Yes, it's goodbye Stone Age, hello Bronze Age. Then it's Iron Age, Roman Age, Middle Age, Industrial Age, Modern Age, Act-Your-Age, Old Age, and then death... Uhg.

SAVAGE= /s v ɪ dʒ/ Wild, uncontrolled.

CAVEMAN= Men living in caves.

STAGE= Phase, part of a process.

THE STONE AGE REPORT= It is a parody of the weather report (or weather forecast) but talking about the Stone Age.

BELIEVE IT OR NOT= We use this expression when we are going to say something shocking, hard to believe, but we assure it's true.

PLENTY= A lot, more than enough.

6 FOOT 1= 1 foot = 0.305 metres, so 6.1 feet is 1.86 ms.

HE IS TONS OF FUN= He is great fun, it's a lot of fun with him. (ton /tʌn/ )

HARD AS NAILS= A common expression meaning "very hard", very tough, strong.

IT'S ALL JOLLY GOOD FUN= It's all tons of fun ("jolly" is emphasizing).

THE MELTING ICE= The ice which is melting. To melt is when a solid turns into a liquid.

MEGABEARS= Very big bears (the prefix MEGA- is a Greek word meaning "very big").

GRIZZLY BEAR= A bear which lives in the forests of America.

TWICE THE SIZE= Twice as big.

ALWAYS BIGGER THAN THAT= Much much bigger than that. The word "always" here is emphasizing.

MEAN= Malicious, bad.

LEAN= Not fat.

RUN INTO= Meet by chance, unintentionally.

BROW= Forehead.

CHASE= To follow (game) in order to capture or kill; hunt.

TURN UP= Arrive unexpectedly. To appear.

FELLOW (BrE)= Guy (AmE). A colloquial way to refer to a person.

GREAT GREAT... GRANDPARENTS= Going back in your family tree there is your father, your grandfather, your great-grandfather, your great great grand-father, and so on (add a "great" for every generation).

HANG OUT WITH= Go out and have fun together, as friends.

KILT= A garment similar to a thick skirt worn by Scottish men (but never tell them it looks like a skirt!).

ACT-YOUR AGE= This is not a historical period, it's a joke. The expression "act your age" means "behave according to the age you are". So if a man in his 40s behaves like a spoiled child, you can tell him "come on, act your age!".

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The Stone Age report (Horrible Histories)

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Another cracker from the brilliant CBBC sketch show HORRIBLE HISTORIES: the complete history of cavemen in just a couple of minutes! Just like a weather report. Savage Stone Age Hello and welcome to the news at when. When? Prehistoric time, when caveman slowly evolved into modern man, very slowly and in many different stages.

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Russell Brand Gives Evidence to a Committee

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Russell Brand Gives Evidence to a Committee

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Russell Brand - 2012-04-24 - Committee on Addiction (complete)

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George Saunders Commencement Speech 2013

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"It is about a search, too, for daily meaning as well as daily bread, for recognition as well as cash, for astonishment rather than torpor; in short, for a sort of life rather than a Monday through Friday sort of dying."

STUDS TERKEL - WORKING XI

Working in America Audio Series

The individuals of the Working in America exhibit speak for themselves with honesty and beauty.
Below, you can ﬁnd the full and vibrant collection of audio interviews for all 24 people proﬁled.

The Working in America Audio Series was edited in collaboration with independent producer Bill Healy. Additional assistance was provided by Nicolas Rivero and Natalie Escobar, who edited and read the English translation respectively for Bianca Sanchez's proﬁle.

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Working in America explores authentic, raw, and honest stories focused on the daily desire to survive, thrive, participate and contribute-stories of how we locate ourselves in society, how we are seen or made invisible, and how we find meaning.

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H474/01 - This candidate style answer with commentary exemplifies a ‘high level’ response.

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eMargin is a collaborative annotation tool. You can highlight, colour-code, write notes and assign tags to individual words or passages of a text. These annotations can be shared amongst groups online, generating discussions and allowing analyses and interpretations to be combined.

Highlight and annotate parts of a text...

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eMargin is a collaborative annotation tool. You can highlight, colour-code, write notes and assign tags to individual words or passages of a text. These annotations can be shared amongst groups online, generating discussions and allowing analyses and interpretations to be combined. Highlight and annotate parts of a text...

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Andrew Moore's AQA A-Level English (Lit/Lang) Pages

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Andrew Moore's AQA A-Level English (Lit/Lang) Pages

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Founder member site of ATW, the Association of Teachers' Websites. ATW recommends quality sites only, created by teachers. Click on the icon to go to the ATW Website at www.byteachers.org.uk.

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lawrence ferlinghetti: two scavengers in a truck

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moniza alvi: presents from my aunts in pakistan

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william butler yeats: the song of the old mother

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william wordsworth: the affliction of margaret

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william shakespeare: sonnet 130 - my mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun

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oliver goldsmith: the village schoolmaster

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john clare: sonnet - i love to see the summer...

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any distance greater than a single span'

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from 'i've made out a will; i'm leaving myself'

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Andrew Moore's resource site home page - default

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Founder member site of ATW, the Association of Teachers' Websites. ATW recommends quality sites only, created by teachers. Click on the icon to go to the ATW Website at www.byteachers.org.uk.

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Check out these independent learning videos to help you get to grips with some of the key frameworks (discourse, pragmatics, grammar/syntax, lexis/semantics, phonology, etc)

Especially useful are the A Level English Language Independent learning videos (1-8) and the Revision videos

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The Youtube channel of Ashton Sixth Form College’s English Department. Please be kind: we are doing this in between marking billions of essays and teaching squillions of students, and we’ve only just stopped writing letters with a quill.

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Mr Bruff's A-Level English Language/Literature YouTube vids

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Mr Bruff's A-Level English Language/Literature YouTube vids

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There is some useful stuff here related to (mostly AQA) A-Level English, so take a look at Mr Bruff's site for useful tips relevant to English Language. There are also useful videos relating to some of the key texts you are studying for the literature components so explore the wider site too.
Bear in mind, that most of the videos were made with AQA in mind (we are studying OCR specification)

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Share your videos with friends, family, and the world

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A level English Language and Literature H47401 annotated SAM

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Revision Strategies for Non-Fiction Anthology - why not try out some of the following suggestions:

Print the anthology texts and re-annotate (Use the e-margin annotation tool if you prefer working electronically - you could also do this collaboratively with a partner or small group)

Make a set of notes on each text on a side of A4 - using a grid-style framework (see LEARN for a grid template), then compare your notes to the class notes for the text you are working on

Create a mind map for each text

Complete a grid-style sheet of notes for all texts in the anthology (Use a couple of sheets of A3)

Create a set of flashcards with key details and examples related to GAPSS and the 5 frameworks (Try the Quizlet link if you prefer working electronically)

Use the sample assessment materials, OCR mark schemes, candidate exemplars, and OCR examiners' reports (see suggestions below)

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Using Candidate exemplars to help with revision

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Using Candidate exemplars to help with revision

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These are real student responses taken from actual exams which are often accompanied by a commentary from an examiner, explaining why the response achieves the level it has been given. You could use them to:

Test your understanding of the mark scheme by reading the first section of the response and trying to give it a level using the relevant mark scheme (don’t look at the mark or commentary first!)

Mark up the exemplar, using the commentary to guide you if you want, for strengths and weaknesses. You could also write notes for: Assessment Objectives, ideas/phrases you want to use for your own work, subject specific terminology.

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Using Mark Schemes to help with revision

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Using Mark Schemes to help with revision

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You can use mark schemes to mark your own work.

Pick a level to look at and write down all the repeated words for that level to make a key descriptors list.

Comb through the mark scheme to build a list of key terminology/studies/concepts you can use as a glossary.

Turn anything from the indicative content column into a bullet point list. Then, rank them from things you’re most to least confident on. Use this as a study order for when you’re making notes.

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Using Examiner reports to help with revision

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Using Examiner reports to help with revision

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You can use examiners’ reports to help direct what you need to focus on, or to think about skills the examiners are looking for. You could:

Summarise comments in a table for points about strong responses vs weaker responses.

Reduce what the examiner is trying to say into only ten bullet points.

Note down areas of weakness the examiner points out and rate how confident you are with that idea/skill.

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Lots of useful links here related to all things English Language and Literature

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Lots of useful links and ideas relating to English Literature and Language

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Coursework Cover Sheet 2022 (from OCR website)

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Coursework Cover Sheet 2022 (from OCR website)

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Englicious - Resources for Students (KS5)

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Englicious - Resources for Students (KS5)

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Check out the index!
If there are particular aspects of English grammar and usage that you find trickier than others, take a look at the resources and lessons available. Plenty of examples and helpful support available throughout this site

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This is the privacy notice for the Englicious website.

It explains in plain English what data we collect on registered users and the lawful purposes we use this data for.

It also explains what you can do if at any time you are unhappy with how we process your data.

A separate page explains about Cookies, which are small bits of data used as part of the interface to Englicious to make it work.

User data is different from cookies. User data is personal data as defined in European law, and we are obliged to process it accordingly.

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This is the privacy notice for the Englicious website. It explains in plain English what data we collect on registered users and the lawful purposes we use this data for. It also explains what you can do if at any time you are unhappy with how we process your data.

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Lancaster University Stylistics Course Page

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Lancaster University Stylistics Course Page

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sections relating to poetry, prose and drama. Check out especially the pages on simple and complex clause structure.

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Ling 131 Language & Style is a Stylistics course within the Department of Linguistics and English Language (LAEL) at Lancaster University.

Language & Style covers all three major literary genres (poetry, prose and drama), and also other text-types, such as advertisments.

Throughout the course, you will learn different aspects of how to analyse the language of texts, using what we like to call our 'Stylistics Toolkit'.

!!!!!!HAPPY BIRTHDAY PALA!!!!!!

Getting started:
Welcome & Introduction
Course Contents

Other information:
Who Language and Style is for
& how it came into being
Acknowledgements
Comments
Copyright Declaration

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Ling 131 Language & Style is a Stylistics course within the Department of Linguistics and English Language (LAEL) at Lancaster University. Language & Style covers all three major literary genres (poetry, prose and drama), and also other text-types, such as advertisments.

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EngLangBlog: A blog for A Level English Language students and teachers

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EngLangBlog: A blog for A Level English Language students and teachers

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Written by Dan Clayton at St Francis Xavier College; provides excellent materials and discussions, plus lots of links to
other relevant sites.

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This one is another from Neil Hutchinson, who teaches at Kirkbie Kendal School in the Lake District (on Twitter as @Hutchinsonnet) and here he looks at the foundations of Meanings and Representations when approaching Paper One: Section A.
For students and teachers it can sometimes feel as though the analysis of texts is an arduous uphill struggle. It needn't be. It's always heartening to discover you're not alone on the expedition. The thought that you're isolated in your decision making is so often the foundation of existential panic. So it was a huge relief to me, and I'm sure countless others, to read this post from fellow guest blogger Mr McVeigh. In this excellent entry, he talks about his approach to Paper One: Section A with a focus on questions 1 and 2. It was heartening to see that there are other practitioners out there making planning a response by examining meaning, before effect, the focus of approaching the questions.

My own approach is broadly similar, with a few differences, and based on the needs of the small bunch of Year 12 students sitting in front of me, sometimes struggling to meet the demands of these questions and scale the heights of the mark scheme, due to shaky foundations beneath their feet.

To remedy this I decided to refine my approach. The historical 'framework' approach is of course useful. I do want my students to be able to spot clause elements a mile away. Or label lexical items, with precision, but these alone are not summit markers in a response. Making meanings and representations the top and bottom of their approach, with terminology acting more like the gear to help them along the journey, seems the most sensible route plan.

Mr McVeigh wrote:

I like students to identify at least three representations. I normally say that the author is always represented within a text so that is always a good starting point.

This after he has them, "contextualise the text by identifying the purpose, audience and form of a text (PAF)".

This is similar to my approach. We spend a lot of time focusing on the layers of representations as a starting point and then allow the meaning to reveal itself as the trek begins. I use the simple image of a triangle (mountain if my extended metaphor has landed thus far), which I will go into in more detail below.

As an example, for upcoming exam(ish) preparation we looked at the June 17 paper, featuring the article from the Metro on athlete Veronica Campbell Brown. Spoiler warning ahead.
The 'What'
The first thing I asked the students to do was to read the text and simply list all of the representations they can find in the text. I don't want them to come up with ideas about these representations at this stage. For the students who struggle to generate ideas to discuss in the questions I find this is extremely valuable as it gives them something to aim for. They're mapping out their route through the questions already before they've even thought of anything analytical to say.

At this stage I will write all of these representations on the board:

They listed Veronica Capbell Brown as the most obvious person represented, but from there I encouraged them to consider who else or what else was being represented through her. It stands to reason that people don't exist in representational vacuums. Especially with celebrities and the world of sport, people see themselves reflected back in those they look up to or hold in high esteem. They were then able to say:

And just as the students wearing their uniforms outside of school represent our institution I ask them to consider how the individual might represent organisations or institutions. This led to:

And then through polarisation present in the article, and again similar to Mr McVeigh, they were able to identify:

Britain/British Identity

British Athletics

And as Mr McVeigh always reminds them, I ask them to consider how the writer is representing themselves or the publication they're writing for. So to cap it all off:

This really gives the students a solid base camp with a variety of routes to follow. And it is something every student of every ability can do in an exam context. Naturally, those aiming for the highest bands will be more able to discuss the wider implications of the representations on display. They will even be able to spot patterns of wider discourse, which is really going to help them with AO3. More on that later. While those at the lower end will all be able to explore the representation of the individual named in the text, often the most obvious, yet still, the most salient of all listed above.

At this point it is worth reminding them that they can't discuss everything. This is where the interactive whiteboard comes in handy because we now organise that list into a hierarchy (see images below). We decide on this together based on the text in front of us. I ask them is the representation of Veronica Campbell Brown more salient than the representation of black people or women in general? We decide yes. After all she is named in the headline as opposed to say, "Black athlete runs in wrong lane..." or "Female athlete runs in wrong lane..." We do discuss that Campbell Brown is referred to as "The Jamaican" but we consider this as part of the patriotic, tribal stance The Metro is adopting, which we discuss later.

Before developing that, I first ask them if this seems more openly critical of black people or of women? For simplicity, does it seem more racist or sexist? That is not to say it is neither, arguably these prejudices exist between the lines because they feed into the wider social discourses, which are still present in our society. What we are doing at this stage is glancing back over the whole text and spotting what jumps out, again before we have really started to think of the 'How'. They decide that for a number of reasons, the representation of women seems salient. They look to the overall discourse structure of listing Campbell Brown's achievements in the opening and then following it with the angry sounding second paragraph, in which Giles utilises the verb phrase, "managed to RUN..." They felt this fed into a wider social discourse of belittling successful women's achievements.

The final order is listed above in the images of my board. The triangle/mountain image comes into its own here because although Veronica Campbell Brown is undoubtedly the peak in terms of representation, that can only exist on the foundation of typical/historical representations that exist within society. Her image in this article rests on the patterns of how women, black people, athletics etc are represented in our wider culture.

Before moving on to discussing how these representations were being established through language, I emphasised with students that once they had organised them in order of salience they could choose any three to focus on in their answer. Again this is crucial in eliciting a response from every student which is personal and potentially different. The lower ability students may want to focus on the top three whereas those aiming for the highest marks may want to start at the top and pull in something less obvious and perhaps more perceptive.

The 'How'
As this article is more about an approach to the questions, I will focus less on this part. But it is here where we start to come up with statements about how these people and institutions are being represented. Again, nothing too linguistic at this stage. Simply what seems to be jumping out? These can be seen in red in the image, but they decided VCB was being represented negatively as either a heartless cheat or as an incompetent woman who did not seem deserving of her accolades. As mentioned above it was very easy for them to now suggest that women are often ridiculed in our wider culture as a way to downplay their achievements. Some discussed, away from the world of sport, the ongoing, relentless and hateful treatment of Mary Beard here.

It is only now we get to frameworks. Once they have organised their thinking in this way, the language and structure seems to reveal itself in a way it otherwise wouldn't have done before. They have a solid route and the terrain looks easier for them to negotiate. If you want a more detailed approach for this stage, I recommend this one.

With these representations and meanings in mind we explored that second paragraph in more detail:

But despite all that experience, she has still managed to run in the wrong lane.

Verb phrase aside, they discussed the sentence opening with the coordinating conjunction functioning as the opening of the adverbial, something I'm sure would have led to much prescriptivist moaning, if they happened upon the Metro that morning on their commute. Why make this deliberate "error"? Well it must be to emphasise that what follows is bigger than all of those achievements just listed. This ramps up the tone of anger, sarcasm, humour and does a great job of reducing this successful athlete to the status of either 'silly girl' or 'evil witch' or both. We re-wrote this sentence in a variety of ways and decided the fronted adverbial was loaded with meaning, which supported what they had already said about the representations. Then there's the obvious graphology of the capitalisation to anchor this.

The 'Why'
If in reading this so far you have wondered where the PAF (purpose/audience/form) or GCAP (genre/context/audience/purpose) as I teach, comes in. Well it's here. I call these the macro concepts of linguistic analysis. The micro elements come from the areas of the frameworks or language levels and should always be used to comment on the macro concepts.

We now make decisions about these macro concepts and the impact they have had in the writing of the text. Did Will Giles set out to destroy this athlete because she is a woman or is this an unfortunate consequence of something else from GCAP? Starting with the macro concept of Context of production, we looked at the date (2015), and the patterns of language which seemed to focus on British athletics and came up with the idea that there may have been a renewed interest in the sport in this country as a result of the 2012 Olympics. This focus on nationalism and tribal loyalties to Team GB goes some way to underpinning what The Metro might have been trying to do in this article through these representations. They have perhaps tried to position us against this Jamaican athlete to drum up tribal support for our team, but have used conventional negative representations of women to do it. We also discussed the impact of The Metro and its tabloid style in the informal register adopted in our example. On the part of the producer, it may only be a funny (not funny) story for someone to read in 5 mins on the bus (Audience+context), but as we know, context of reception is everything and for a young woman aspiring to be an athlete this could have a far reaching impact.

This layering of meaning according to GCAP is going to unlock a variety of interpretations of features and patterns that will allow the students to score highly in AO3. As with subject terminology for AO1, points about genre, context, audience and purpose are only as valuable as the argument you pin them to.

So just because we come to the macro concepts of GCAP last in this strategy does not make it an afterthought. Quite the opposite in fact. An understanding of the construction of a given text from the perspective of GCAP is part of the foundation to understanding the representations in the first place. But rather than taking the approach of, 'this is a tabloid newspaper article therefore it will represent x as y', I much prefer, 'x is represented as y, possibly because this is a tabloid newspaper article but it may be more to do with z.'

I think that the macro concepts should be something outlined and discussed in introductions as part of the foundation on which the students can build. As long as they're tied to meanings and representations and contribute to the direction of travel. So putting all of the above together a successful intro to a Question 1, with this text as a basis, may look like:

In Text A, The Metro and writer Will Giles, offer a stereotypically negative representation of women, through Veronica Campbell Brown, as a means of generating national support for British Athletics in the wake of the 2012 Olympics. At various points Campbell Brown is represented as foolish and dull-witted, someone undeserving of her previous achievements and at worst, a dishonest cheat. Giles adopts a classically tabloid style to create these meanings, potentially for click-bait in an online format or to entertain a tribal sports fan on their daily commute.

This is slightly wordy, but you get the picture. This intro condenses everything into one paragraph, which covers three strands of representation and their link to audience, genre and two contextual factors.

Hopefully this has given you some ideas about how to approach the Paper One mountain with students, particularly mixed ability students. Well done for reaching the summit!

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This one is another from Neil Hutchinson, who teaches at Kirkbie Kendal School in the Lake District (on Twitter as @Hutchinsonnet) and here he looks at the foundations of Meanings and Representations when approaching Paper One: Section A. For students and teachers it can sometimes feel as though the analysis of texts is an arduous uphill struggle.

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English and Media Centre E-Magazine for Teachers and students of English Language, Literature and Media

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English and Media Centre E-Magazine for Teachers and students of English Language, Literature and Media

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Contains past articles from the ever-helpful ‘e’magazine. Covers both Language and Literature. You will need to ask
your teachers or the LRC for a special password.

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emagazine Close Reading Competition 2023 - The Results! (emagazine 101, September 2023)

An African Hamlet - The Tragedy of Les Blancs (emagazine 101, September 2023)

Ludics and Laughter - Feminism in The Bloody Chamber (emagazine 101, September 2023)

What Can TikTok Comments Teach Us About the English Language? (emagazine 101, September 2023)

Constraint and Freedom - Domestic Spaces in Mrs Dalloway (emagazine 101, September 2023)

View full list of contents

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English and Media Centre (EMC) is an educational charity providing CPD and innovative & award-winning teaching materials to secondary English & Media teachers

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Geoff Barton's English Lang/Lit/Media Student Resources Page

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Geoff Barton's English Lang/Lit/Media Student Resources Page

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Scroll right down the page to the sections for A-Level students

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This page contains various resources for GCSE English, A-level English Language and Communication Studies. They are materials I have put together for my own teaching over a number of years. I have recently overhauled the site to make it clearer and easier to use.

I also post occasional links to articles and other documents that seem to me of interest to A-level English Language students and their teachers: Pick 'n' Mix.

If you're keen on competitive debating, you may like our regular debating blog. It contains information about our weekly debates (including audio), news about competitions, and other stuff from this addictive school activity.

All of the files can be downloaded, by right-clicking on the underlined text and choosing 'save as'.

GCSE A/A* REVISION ARCHIVE

These are the resources I used at this session for GCSE students aiming for that elusive-but-so-satisfying A* grade in English. Note that all GCSE specifications changed from 2016, so these resources may not directly correspond to the examination you are sitting.

GCSE REVISION ARCHIVE

I've added some PDF resources here from my GCSE revision sessions (especially about moving from C to B to A). Note that all GCSE specifications changed from 2016, so these resources may not directly correspond to the examination you are sitting.

GCSE ENGLISH ADVICE & PRACTICE

I have been testing out various new ideas and resources for developing reading and writing skills with my Year 11 classes. They are collected here. Note that all GCSE specifications changed from 2016, so these resources may not directly correspond to the examination you are sitting.

GCSE ENGLISH ARCHIVE

Because of the big emphasis on getting as many students as possible to gain C or higher in GCSE English and Maths, I get asked to do lots of talks to students, teachers and school leaders about what are the key ingredients for grade C and grade A/A*.

Since April 2010, I've begun to store all the resources here, and will keep adding to them as I write them. As ever, they're free, but not all will make sense without attending the original talk. Note that all GCSE specifications changed from 2016, so these resources may not directly correspond to the examination you are sitting.
GCSE REVISION SUMMARIES:
"C in English - guaranteed" handout is a simple and straightforward guide to how to write well. You won't become a C grade writer just by downloading and reading it: you need to practise the advice a bit, to get the approach into your bloodstream.

But if you do that, it will work, and you'll find yourself a more confident and effective writer. In fact, you'll probably end up getting higher than a grade C. Let me know if you do!

Here's the companion handout: "How to get an A* at GCSE". Good luck.

GCSE RESOURCES ARCHIVE:

A-LEVEL ENGLISH LANGUAGE ARCHIVE

Accent & Dialect:

Child Language Acquisition:

Gender:

Language & Race:

Language Change:

Misc Theory:

Editorial Writing:

Revision:

A-LEVEL ENGLISH LANGUAGE

I teach the A2 AQA English Language Change unit. Here are some of the resources I have produced:

SIXTH FORM LITERACY WORKSHOPS

I have been running a series of 30-minute workshops for Year 12 students (not just English students) on effective writing. The handout is here:

COMMUNICATION STUDIES

Technology:

Media Ethics:

Models & Approaches:

Theory Sheets:

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Student resources, communication studies, writing skills and literacy

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This page contains various resources for GCSE English, A-level English Language and Communication Studies. They are materials I have put together for my own teaching over a number of years. I have recently overhauled the site to make it clearer and easier to use.

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Go to the homepage, then use the filters on the left hand-side to narrow down your search.

Try searching for keywords, such as:
non-fiction anthology; OCR anthology; non-fiction texts; Captain Scott; Satire; Craig Brown; terminology; ...

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Quizlet - for creating flashcards of key terms

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Quizlet - for creating flashcards of key terms

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Use the search tool at the top of the page to look for vocabulary lists related to key terminology for English Lit/Lang papers

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Labov's Narrative Structure for non-fiction texts

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Labov's Narrative Structure for non-fiction texts

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Advance information for OCR non-Fiction anthology Summer 2022

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Advance information for OCR non-Fiction anthology Summer 2022

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Dear all, Advance information has been published today showing the texts from the non-fiction anthology that will be assessed in the 2022 A-Level exam. Please use the revised list to focus your revision.

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What is Freytag's Pyramid, and how can it help you write better stories? In simple terms, Freytag's Pyramid is a five-part map of dramatic structure itself. Understanding the five steps of Freytag's Pyramid will give you a clearer sense of what makes a strong, compelling story.

Most stories follow a simple pattern called Freytag's Pyramid.

Storytelling is one of the oldest human traditions, and although the art of creative writing traverses dozens of genres and thousands of languages, the actual storytelling formula hasn't changed all that much. Whether you're writing short stories, screenplays, nonfiction, or even some narrative poetry, the majority of stories follow a fairly simple pattern called Freytag's Pyramid.

Introduction to Freytag's Pyramid

What is Freytag's Pyramid? Novelist Gustav Freytag developed this narrative pyramid in the 19th century, as a description of a structure fiction writers had used for millennia. It's quite famous, so you may have heard it mentioned in an old English class, or maybe more recently in one of our online fiction writing courses.

Freytag's Pyramid describes the five key stages of a story, offering a conceptual framework for writing a story from start to finish. These stages are:

Here is the five-part structure of Freytag's Pyramid in diagram form.

Stages of a Story: Freytag's Pyramid Diagram

If you're looking to write your next story or polish one you just wrote, read more on Freytag's Pyramid and what each element can do for your writing.

1. Freytag's Pyramid: Exposition

Your story has to start somewhere, and in Freytag's Pyramid, it starts with the exposition. This part of the story primarily introduces the major fictional elements - the setting, characters, style, etc. In the exposition, the writer's sole focus is on building the world in which the story's conflict happens.

The length of your exposition depends on the complexity of the story's conflict, the extent of the world being written, and the writer's own personal preference. Tolkien's Lord of the Rings is wrought with backstory and exposition, often spanning chapters of pure worldbuilding. By contrast, C. S. Lewis offers very little exposition in the Chronicles of Narnia series, choosing instead to entangle conflict with worldbuilding. Still, whether your exposition is fifty pages or a sentence, use this part of the story to draw readers in. Make your fictional world as real as this one.

Your exposition should end with the "inciting incident" - the event that starts the main conflict of the story.

2. Freytag's Pyramid: Rising Action

The rising action explores the story's conflict up until its climax. Often, things "get worse" in this part of the story: someone makes a wrong decision, the antagonist hurts the protagonist, new characters further complicate the plot, etc.

For many stories, rising action takes up the most amount of pages. However, while this part of the book explores the story's conflict and complications, the rising action should investigate much more than just the story's plot. In rising action, the reader often gains access to key pieces of backstory. As the conflict unfolds, the reader should learn more about the characters' motives, the world of the story, the themes being explored, and you may want to foreshadow the climax as well.

Finally, when you look back at the story's rising action, it should be clear how each plot point connects to the story's climax and aftermath. But first, let's write the climax.

3. Freytag's Pyramid: Climax

Of course, every part of your story is important, but if there's one part where you really want to stick the landing, it's the climax. Here, the story's conflict peaks and we learn the fate of the main characters. A lot of writers enter the climax of their story believing that it needs to be short, fast, and action-packed. While some stories might require this style of climax, there's no strict formula when it comes to climax writing. Think of the climax as the "turning" point in the story - the central conflict is addressed in a way that cannot be undone.

Whether the climax is only one scene or several chapters is up to you, but remember that your climax isn't just the turning point in the story's plot structure, but also its themes and ideas. This is your opportunity to comment on whatever concept is driving your story's narrative, giving the reader an emotional takeaway.

Note: for playwrights, the climax is usually the middle act, though of course not every theatrical production follows the rules.

4. Freytag's Pyramid: Falling Action

In falling action, the writer explores the aftermath of the climax. Do other conflicts arise as a result? How does the climax comment on the story's central themes? How do the characters react to the irreversible changes made by the climax?

The story's falling action is often the trickiest part to write. The writer must start to tie up loose ends from the main conflict, explore broader concepts and themes, and push the story towards some form of a resolution while still keeping the focus on the climax and its aftermath. If the rising action pushes the story away from "normal," the falling action is a return to a "new normal," though rising and falling action look dramatically different.

At the same time, the story must still engage the reader. When writing the story's falling action, be sure to expand on the world of the story, the mysteries that lie within that world, and whatever else makes your story compelling.

5. Freytag's Pyramid: Resolution/Denouement

How do you end a story? One of the most frustrating parts of writing is figuring out where the narrative ends. Theoretically, the story can continue on forever, especially in the aftermath of a life-altering climax, or even if the story is set in an alternate world.

The resolution of the story involves tying up the loose ends of the climax and falling action. Sometimes, this means following the story's aftermath to a chilling conclusion-the protagonist dies, the antagonist escapes, a fatal mistake has fatal consequences, etc. Other times, the resolution ends on a lighter note. Maybe the protagonist learns from their mistakes, starts a new life, or else forgives and rectifies whatever incited the story's conflict. Either way, use the resolution to continue your thoughts on the story's themes, and give the reader something to think about after the last word is read.

Some writers also use the term "denouement" when discussing the resolution. A denouement [day-new-mawn] refers to the last event that ties up the story's loose ends, sometimes expressed in the story's epilogue or closing scene.

Closing Thoughts on Dramatic Structure

Though some literary works break the traditional narrative structure of Freytag's Pyramid or try to invert it, every story has a relationship to these five dramatic elements. Having a dramatic structure is the first step to a full story outline, which is especially important for longer works of fiction-especially writing the novel. Once you've fine-tuned these parts of the story, you'll have written your next creative work from start to finish!

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The 5 Stages of Freytag's Pyramid: Introduction to Dramatic Structure

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Learn how the simple five-part pattern of Freytag's Pyramid describes dramatic structure, and start writing better stories.

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Lexical Change (Late Modern English, 18th Century and beyond)

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Lexical Change (Late Modern English, 18th Century and beyond)

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Lexical Change 18th Century Late Modern English

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Advance information for OCR non-Fiction anthology Summer 2022

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Advance information for OCR non-Fiction anthology Summer 2022

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Dear all, Advance information has been published today showing the texts from the non-fiction anthology that will be assessed in the 2022 A-Level exam. Please use the revised list to focus your revision.

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English GCSE and A-Level revision, English Language revision covering Child Language Acquisition, Groupings, Language Change and Language and Power

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Revising for the Death of a Salesman or The Great Gatsby (Monsieur Gat as the French like to call him)? Prepare for your A Level English Literature exam now using the UK's greatest free revision platform. Instead of flipping through boring revision guides or reading your interactive textbook (or PDF...), you can now learn with instant feedback, all concepts broken down into bitesize chunks, GIFs, animations, and videos, all whilst tracking your weaknesses.

Interested? Seneca's content has been authored by senior examiners, so you can be sure that the quality is the very best. As Lady Macbeth once said, why not also try out their famous smart learning algorithm, to help you learn 2x faster? More about that later. First, let's look at why so many students use Seneca?
English Literature A Level - Death of a Salesman, Great Gatsby, Handmaid's Tale, Frankenstein, Othello, Dracula, A Streetcar Named Desire

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Free English Literature Revision

Are you getting bored of flipping through these densely-populated English Lit study guides or sick of skimming the book again and again pretending to read it? Escape the pathetic fallacy & use Seneca to boost your concentration and differentiate your vampires from your monsters (personification is on the menu).
Which exam boards? Learn 2x faster?
The platform has been created by the best engineers and neuroscientists, combining the best of tech and science into one smart learning algorithm. Could it be your unfair advantage come exam day?

Our adaptive learning algorithm identifies the areas that you need to improve on. It will then automatically repeat these English sections in a variety of question formats and between predetermined time intervals, based on your exact knowledge, memory & performance. This triggers your brain the most effective and is based on neuroscience principles such as imagery and spacing.

So whether you're 6 months or 6 hours before your English exam. Going through the revision course will give you an edge over other students. What do you think? Ready to see your English knowledge score?
Free English Literature Revision

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Seneca | Free A Level English Literature Revision Tool

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Revising for the Death of a Salesman or The Great Gatsby (Monsieur Gat as the French like to call him)? Prepare for your A Level English Literature exam now using the UK's greatest free revision platform.

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Not specifically for English Lang/Lit, but try searching for relevant revision sets using key words related to concepts, e.g. discourse, spoken language, genre, word class, sentences, non-fiction, pragmatics, politeness, gender, accent, dialect, etc ...

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Learn A Level - Language - Politeness Theory and much more on Memrise

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N.B. Whilst this seeks to be a helpful checklist of terms students can employ, it's not an entirely exhaustive list of possible terms that could be used when analysing language change texts.

Lexis

Lexis

'Lexis' refers to the words or vocabulary of a text.

Lexical field

The subject or topic area of a group of words. Another term which is often used interchangeably with 'lexical field' is 'semantic field', which emphasises the connection between the words being based on meaning. A text may have several lexical / semantic fields.

Archaism / archaic language

This is language which belongs to an earlier period, now considered old-fashioned and out of general use, although sometimes used in poetry, religious or legal texts, or for other specialised purposes. 'Thee' can be considered to be archaic.

Obsolete / obsolescence

Obsolete language is language which is no longer used in any context, e.g. 'pacative' (which means calming).

High frequency

High frequency words are those which are in regular use and would be widely known among all speakers of a language, e.g. 'house', 'book', 'jump'. The term is used in relation to children's acquisition of reading skills, as learning to read the high frequency words enables children to gain access to a large amount of written text.

Low frequency

Low frequency words are less regularly used than high frequency words, although not rare, e.g. 'neuron'. Low frequency words might be used by some groups more than others.

Elevated lexis

This is language which is regarded as sophisticated, elegant and 'high register'. A common misconception is that elevated lexis is polysyllabic, but this need not be the case. Other ideas are that such language is often derived from the higher status origins of Latin, Greek or French, as opposed to the lower status Old English (the language of the Anglo-Saxons), e.g. 'enquire' compared with 'ask'.

Technical lexis

This is language which is specialised, and has a meaning for the specific field in which it is used, e.g. 'dendrite' (science), 'purl' (knitting), 'travel' (basketball), 'shrinkage' (retail). Another term for this type of language is 'jargon'.

Vocatives

A vocative is a word or phrase which addresses someone, e.g. 'Lord, hear my prayer!'

Generic term

This is a word which indicates the overall type of something, e.g. for 'men' and 'women' the generic term would be 'people'. A generic term is inclusive and general, without individual characteristics or any brand name attached to it.

Gender-neutral / inclusive pronouns

In older usage, the words 'he', 'him' and 'his' have been used generically to refer to the whole of humanity. However, more recently, there has been criticism of these terms, as well as words like 'mankind' and 'Man', and increased pressure to use gender-neutral or inclusive terms. This is largely possible in the English language, but some problems remain with pronouns, as there is no satisfactory gender-neutral pronoun for Third person singular. Some writers choose 'they' or 'them', e.g. 'If anyone wants their coat, they must collect it before ten.' Other possibilities include '(s)he' or 'he/she', or completely avoiding the need for a pronoun by recasting the sentence.

Grammar

Nouns

Common

Common nouns are all the nouns which are not proper nouns (proper nouns are names of specific people, places and things, e.g. 'George', 'Britain', 'Boeing 737').

Concrete

Concrete nouns are used to refer to entities that can be perceived with at least one of the senses, e.g. 'table', 'sky', 'atom'.

Abstract

Abstract nouns are used to refer to abstract entities such as ideas, emotions or concepts e.g. 'happiness', 'time', 'information'.

Apposition

Nouns in apposition are single nouns or noun phrases which are placed alongside each other e.g. The owner John has leased the property.

Pronouns

First person

First person singular personal pronouns are 'I' and 'me'
First person plural personal pronouns are 'we' and 'us'

Second person

Second person personal pronoun is 'you' - the same word is used for singular and plural forms.

Third person

Third person singular personal pronouns are 'he / him', 'she / her', 'it', and the plurals are 'they / them'

Masculine

Third person singular personal pronouns have a masculine form, which is 'he' and 'him'

Feminine

Third person singular personal pronouns have a feminine form, which is 'she or 'her'

Singular

This form is used if there is only one thing being referred to, e.g. 'it (is)'.

Plural

This form is used if there are two or more things being referred to, e.g. 'they (are)'.

Possessive pronouns

This form is used to indicate belonging, e.g. 'my' / 'your' / 'his' / 'her' / 'its' / 'our' / 'their'

Adjectives

Predicative position

Adjectives can be placed either before (attributive position) or after (predicative position) the noun or noun phrase they modify. The use of the predicative position without a linking verb e.g. 'times past' is now considered archaic.

Comparative and superlative adjectives

Comparative adjectives modify a noun by comparing it with others, e.g. 'better' / 'worse'. They are often created by the suffix 'er'.

Superlative adjectives take this comparison to its furthest limits, e.g. 'best' / 'worst'. They are often created by the suffix 'est'.

So we get modifications such as: 'young' / 'younger' / 'youngest'.

Adverbs

Temporal adverbs / Adverbs of time

There are many of these words and phrases in the English language, e.g. 'yesterday', 'afterwards', 'then', 'earlier', 'hourly'. They are used to indicate the time that something happens or how often it happens.

Verbs

Inflections

Inflections (also spelled 'inflexions') are the endings of words which indicate the tense, person, or number. Modern English has very few inflections, e.g. '-s' for plurals, '-ing' for the present participle, '-ed' or '-t' endings for the past tense, and '-s' for the Third person singular form of verbs.

Infinitive

This is the form of a verb which follows 'to', e.g. 'to run' or 'to write'. It can be used with 'to' ('I want to find the ball') or without ('Help me find the ball').

Verb phrase

For the purposes of analysing language in older texts the definition of verb phrase is restricted to the main verb, auxiliaries and any other forms of verbs being used, e.g. 'I should have chosen that colour.'

Auxiliary

Auxiliary verbs are also known as 'Helping verbs' as these help to form a verb phrase such as 'he was writing' where the verb phrase created is 'was writing'. There are several types of auxiliary, including modal auxiliary and dummy auxiliary verbs.

Modal auxiliary

This type of verb helps to convey subtle meanings of obligation ('should', 'must', 'ought'), certainty or prediction ('shall', 'will'), possibility or ability ('might', may', 'can', 'could', 'would'), and permission ('may'). Depending on the context, these words can convey other ideas as well, e.g. 'I would like a cup of tea' which is more wishful than 'She would be able to win if she trained more'.

Dummy auxiliary

This type of verb is sometimes known as 'dummy do' because the word 'do' is used to create verb phrases. This occurs in question structures 'Do you want eggs?', in negative structures 'He doesn't like eggs' or in commands 'Do not drop the eggs!'. In older texts, the dummy auxiliary is used more often, in phrases such 'He did speak to his followers' (in modern texts this would be interpreted as being emphatic, but here it has the meaning 'he spoke').

Prepositions

These words and phrases indicate the relationship between elements in a sentence, often in terms of their location or movement, e.g. 'The bus was next to the car', although there are many other ways in which prepositions are used. Common prepositions include 'by', 'with', 'from', 'to, 'for', 'in', 'under', 'after' and 'before'.

Conjunctions / connectives

Conjunctions or connectives are used to show the connection between words, phrases, clauses or sentences. There are two types: coordinating (and, but, or) and subordinating (because, since, although, despite etc.

Sentence construction:

Types of sentence

Declaratives

Sentences which are statements and end with a full stop, e.g. 'I like ice cream.'

Interrogatives

Sentences that ask a question and end with a question mark, e.g. 'How are you?'.

Imperatives

This simply means 'commands' - sentences might be described as imperative if their function is to give a command, e.g. 'Put your pens down and look at the board.' This must be carefully considered, however, as some sentences also imply a command but do not directly issue a command, e.g. 'It's freezing in here! Someone needs to shut the door!'

Exclamatories

Sentences (which may be any of the above) that express emphatic intention / emotion and end with an exclamation mark, e.g. 'Have a great party!' / 'Please go away!'

Clause

A clause is part of a sentence, usually containing a verb. A clause can be a main clause or a subordinate clause, depending on whether it can stand alone in the sentence. In the example, 'Peter ate his lunch before it went cold' the main clause is 'Peter ate his lunch' and the subordinate clause is 'before it went cold'.

Subordination

This term refers to the use of a subordinate (or dependent) clause within a sentence, creating a complex sentence.

A subordinate clause will not make sense on its own without an independent clause. For example, in the sentence: 'The dog, which was bought when no-one knew it had serious problems, immediately fell ill and died.'

'The dog ... immediately fell ill and died' would be the independent clause, as it makes sense on its own

'which was bought when no-one knew it had serious problems' does not make sense on its own but only in relation to the main clause, and is therefore subordinate.

As the above demonstrates, subordination may involve several levels of complexity within a sentence.

Passive voice

Verbs can be formed using as either the active voice or the passive voice. Using the active voice creates a sentence such as 'Farah returned the library book' whereas using the passive voice creates the sentence 'The library book was returned by Farah'. The difference is mainly one of focus, as the use of passive voice draws attention towards the object of the verb and away from the subject (sometimes the subject is even omitted completely, e.g. 'The library book was returned.'). It is often a sign of formality.

Rhetorical structures

Parallelism

A similar construction in a series of sentences or clauses.

Antithetical parallelism

Balanced sentences or clauses with contrasting ideas.

Repetition

Using a word or phrase more than once for emphasis.

Syntax

This term refers to the order and combination of words in a sentence.

Subject

This is the part of the sentence which does the action of the verb, e.g. 'the boy' is the subject in the sentence, 'The boy won a medal' and typically starts a main clause.

Compound subject

This term refers to a subject which is made up of several elements, e.g. 'The three boys and their mothers attended the meeting with the Head.'

Predicate

This is the part of the sentence which follows the subject - usually a verb and some other elements such as the object and any adverbials.

Inversion

This term is used when the usual order of words in a sentence or clause is altered or turned around, which can sometimes affect the meaning.

Question structure

The order and combination of words used to create a question, e.g. 'What did you see?' (Wh-word, auxiliary verb, subject, main verb)

Negative structure

The order and combination of words used to create a negative expression, e.g. 'He did not like his food.' (Subject, auxiliary verb, main verb, object i.e. 'his food')

Ellipsis

The omission of a whole word or more from a sentence, e.g. 'The meal was ready, the table set' (omitting 'was' in the second part). This should not be confused with elision or contraction, where part of a word is omitted e.g. 'don't' and 'we're'.

Contraction

This occurs where part of a word is omitted e.g. 'don't' or 'we're'. This is a type of elision, where sounds are lost, and should not be confused with ellipsis (omitting a whole word or more from a sentence).

Prescriptive grammar

This term refers to the rules of grammar which have been created and published in order to establish the 'correct' way to use the language. These rules are always subjective, and often reflect the usage of the writer or a social group with high status. Notable examples of prescriptive grammar include Bishop Lowth's 'A Short Introduction to English Grammar, with critical notes', published in 1762, and Lindley Murray's 'English Grammar' of 1795.

Semantics

Semantics

The study of how language is used to express meaning and how those meanings change. The change can be to do with context or situation, but can also be to do with changes that take place over time.

Connotation

The connotation of a word contrasts with its denotation or literal meaning. Connotation is the cultural associations that a word may have. Connotations can also be personal and can be positive or negative. It can be the difference between 'strong-willed' and 'pig-headed' or 'terrorist' and 'freedom fighter'.

Pejoration

A word develops a sense of disapproval. For example, 'Notorious' once meant 'widely known', but now means 'widely and unfavourably known'.

Amelioration

When the negative connotations of a word decrease. For example, using the term 'naughty' once indicated serious moral disapproval, but now tends to be less severe and is applied mainly to children.

Narrowing

A word becomes more specialized in meaning. Example: in Old English 'mete' referred to food in general (a sense which is retained in 'sweetmeat'); today it refers to only one kind of food.

Weakening

A word loses some of its force. Example: 'Mischievous' has lost its strong sense of 'disastrous', and now means the milder 'playfully annoying'.

Discourse

Register

The way language varies according to the situation in which it is being used. This will be affected by the context, the subject matter of the language and the audience. Formality and politeness features are an important part of register.

Formality

Formality in language is a measure of its precision and lack of ambiguity. It is closely associated with a prestigious written style.

Formal

A style associated with serious writing and characterised by long sentences and the use of abstract nouns. There is usually an absence of everyday conversational language.

Ultra formal

A style of language associated with great occasions e.g. state and religious ceremonies or important works of literature e.g. the Bible.

Informalisation

Language which has moved closer to the everyday conversational English and away from the conventions expected of a formal written style.

Genres

A French word meaning type or class. A major division of type or style in an art form. A sub-genre is a lesser division. This can refer to all types of texts, both literary, like novels and plays, and non-literary, like newspapers or letters.

Cohesion

How sentences, parts of sentences and paragraphs link together. This can be through:

The use of connectives or conjunctions

The use of pronouns

The use of lexical fields.
It is important in writing to show how ideas link together.

Graphology

It is the study of layout, the use of logos, images and any other feature of graphical communication.

Layout

The arrangement of words, diagrams and other features including space on a page in order to make it visually effective. For example, this material is divided by headings and sub-headings.

Capitalisation

Certain words other than proper nouns and those at the beginning of sentences and speech may be capitalised for effect, particularly in older texts.

Font effects

Different sections of a text may be printed in differing fonts for effect, or some words may be emboldened or italicised

Indentation

The placement of text a few spaces to the right in order to separate it from the rest of the text.

Orthography

The study of spelling to show the relationship between sounds and writing.

Inconsistent, archaic or foreign spelling

Within one text may be spelling variants, such as enquiry / inquiry, which indicate a less proscribed attitude to what constituted 'correct' spelling.

Some words have changed their spelling, e.g. The modern word 'show' sometimes appears in older texts as 'shew'.

There are some differences in the spelling of the English language used in the United States of America and that used in the United Kingdom. In the UK spelling was standardised by Dr Johnson in his dictionary of 1775. US spelling was standardised by Webster's dictionary in 1826. Webster was in favour of spelling reform and so some differences grew up. Specifically, there is the use of '-or' at the end of words like 'color' rather than the British 'colour', and '-er' at the end of 'theater' rather than the British 'theatre' which stays with the original French version.

Phonology

The study of sounds and how they function in language in order to produce meaning. Key areas to consider include:

Alliteration

A device whereby words begin with the same consonant to form a significant pattern.

Sibilance

The repeated use of 'ss' sounding consonants to create a soft, sometimes hissing effect (often with negative connotations).

Consonance

The repletion of a sequence of consonants but with a change in the intervening vowel, e.g. 'groan' / 'groin', 'lean' / 'lone'.

Assonance

The repetition of identical or similar vowel sounds in a sequence of words

Rhyme

The selection of words which sound the same, from the last stressed vowel and the consonants around it, e.g. 'late' / 'gate', 'tending' / 'mending'.

Rhythm

A distinctive beat to the words, created by any of the above or from a pattern of stressed syllables.

Rhetorical patterning

Sound effects created by patterns such as a similar construction in a series of sentences or clauses (parallelism) or using a word or phrase more than once for emphasis (repetition).

Pragmatics

A way of looking at the meanings created by language when used in a particular social context. It seeks to explain meanings which cannot be found in the plain sense of words or structures, often referred to as the sub-text.

It is to do with what is inferred or said indirectly and goes beyond the semantic values of the words. For example, when asked to go out for the evening, if your reply is 'I'm washing my hair', the sub-text is clearly that one is not interested in going out with said person!

For additional downloadable resources go to Successful study > English Language Resources

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Studying Early Modern Language: Language change - KS5 Definitions from Crossref-it.info

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N.B. Whilst this seeks to be a helpful checklist of terms students can employ, it's not an entirely exhaustive list of possible terms that could be used when analysing language change texts. Lexis 'Lexis' refers to the words or vocabulary of a text. Lexical field The subject or topic area of a group of words.

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EDEXCEL Guide to Genre and Generic Conventions

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EDEXCEL Guide to Genre and Generic Conventions

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A useful guide indicating key conventions for each of the major non-fiction genres (or text types). Equally relevant to OCR specification.

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Candidate Exemplars NEA Tasks 1 and 2 (June 2018)

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Candidate Exemplars NEA Tasks 1 and 2 (June 2018)

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includes examiner commentaries and feedback on student tasks

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Candidate Exemplars NEA Tasks 1 and 2 (June 2017)

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Candidate Exemplars NEA Tasks 1 and 2 (June 2017)

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includes examiner commentaries and feedback on student tasks

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Try this quiz to test your knowledge and see what you need to brush up on

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Quiz - Sentence Types: Structures and Functions

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Quiz - Sentence Types: Structures and Functions

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07 OBITUARY Clauses and Sentence Types: Structures and Functions

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07 OBITUARY Clauses and Sentence Types: Structures and Functions

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MR HENNEMAN'S ENGLISH LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE

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Free worksheets, study guides, essay writing, revision guidance and YouTube links. Writing styles, fiction and non-fiction reading skills. Analysis of plays, novels and poetry. For teachers and independent learners.

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Englishbiz : Glossary of Linguistic Terms

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Englishbiz : Glossary of Linguistic Terms

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© 2019 Steve Campsall GLOSSARY OF LINGUISTIC TERMS

Accent and dialect

Accent refers solely to the way words are pronounced, e.g. in the south of England, it is normal to pronounce the word path as p- ar -th, but in the Midlands and the North, the phoneme 'a' is articulated as a short vowel and pronounced as in, 'cat'. The accent known as ' Received Pronunciation' is considered as a prestige accent and is one frequently heard on television and radio news bulletins, for example.

Dialect refers to choices of vocabulary, grammar and pronunciation made by people in different geographical regions or social contexts. The dialect known as 'Standard English' is generally considered to be a prestige dialect and is the choice of many teachers, business people, newsreaders, etc.

Active and passive voice

This is an important stylistic choice that concerns the way we use verbs. A typical English sentence will be cast in what is called the active voice, e.g. 'The teacher led the lesson'. In such a sentence, the subject (S) is also theagent of the action told by the verb (V). This action is transferred to the object of the sentence (O).

A different type of sentence construction is possible. In this, the subject position can be filled not by the agent but by what, in the active sentence, was the verb's object, e.g. 'The lesson was led by the teacher.' The grammatical subject position is now filled by the noun phrase, 'the lesson' and the agent becomes a part of a phrase that follows the verb, introduced with the preposition 'by': 'by the teacher'. This is called a passive construction.

Importantly, passive constructions can even allow for the agent to be deleted and the sense still retained, e.g. 'The lesson was led'. This makes passive sentences potentially interesting as they can be made to carry a different pragmatic force, one that leads to different inferred meanings being created.

By fronting the object in place of the subject, the force of the sentence can be changed and the role of the agent can be diminished. Passive constructions are popular in newspaper headlines as it gives a concise, authoritative and impressive style but one that does not risk 'pointing the finger' of blame, e.g. 'Woman murdered in gangland shooting'. Here the See also subject is not even mentioned.voice.

A word class which contains words that can add more detail (i.e. modify) to a noun or pronoun with which they often form a noun phrase, e.g. 'The busy teacher' (pre-modification).

Adjectives can also a noun, as in: 'The dinner was post-modify awful'. Adjectives are gradable depending on whether a comparison is made with one other thing or many other things: big, bigger, biggest difficult, more difficult, most difficult.

Agent

The grammatical agent is the participant in a clause or sentence that carries out the action told by a verb. In the following sentence, the 'cat' is the agent: 'The cat sat on the mat'. In the passive form of this sentence, 'The mat was sat on by the cat', the 'cat' remains the agent, but the subject now becomes 'mat'.

It is easy to confuse the two terms agent and subject: the word subject refers syntactically to the word in a sentence or clause that is grammatically linked to a verb and which makes the verb finite. For more, see active/passive.

Agreement

In English grammar, it is necessary that certain linked words 'agree' with each other, for example, a verb is given an inflexion ((not suffix) to allow it to 'agree with' its subject when in the 'third person', e.g. he talk s he talk).

A class of words (many ending with the suffix - ly) that are often found helping to modify a verb in order to provide extra detail about the way the action told by the verb occurred; however, adverbs are also used to modify other adverbs or adjectives, e.g. 'The girl worked especially hard.' 'He was just too much!' Adverbs can give detail concerning time (e.g. soon, quickly), place (there, here), reason or purpose (consequently, since) and manner (wisely, almost).

'Adverbial' / Adjunct

A phrase that acts like an adverb to provide extra information about time, place, reason or manner. These are also called adjuncts. A sentence can contain several adverbial structures (which, unusually, can be located in more than a single syntactical position without any change of function). Adverbials are usually 'optional' elements in a clause - its central meaning being unaffected if they are left out.

Twice

during each day

I exercise

in the gym

in town

ADVERBIAL
manner

ADVERBIAL
time

SUBJECT+VERB

ADVERBIAL
place

ADVERBIAL
place

Ambiguity

This means 'more than one possible meaning'. The rules of grammar exist to allow a structure of words to be created that has a single meaning, i.e. to be unambiguous. Here is an ungrammatical sentence that was an actual warning notice at the bottom of an escalator: 'Dogs must be carried on the escalator'. What does this mean? Are you allowed to ride on the escalator without a dog in your arms?

If a word is described as archaic, it suggests its use is now old-fashioned. Many words in poems are still used that seem archaic, and many formal words may seem to be so, especially in a religious or legal register. Such words may not be really archaic - it may simply be that you are unaware of these particular registers. Take great care when writing about language in A2 change not to label a word archaic simply because you haven't heard of it - better to say 'formal'.

Article

One of a class of words, akin to adjectives, called determiners. The definite article is the and the indefinite article is a or an.

Audience

Audience means the kind of reader or listener the text was intended for. As this is unlikely to be you, sadly you do need to attempt the near impossible and 'become' the intended reader. Always consider a text in this way or you will run the risk of 'misreading' it. Also, avoid being overly specific or informal when describing an audience's likely characteristics: 'this writing is suitable for clever so and so's of about 23 and over' sounds rather less impressive than, 'the style of this text seems geared towards an educated and sophisticated adult audience'. For module 1 in your exam, audience is one way to categorise similar texts.

Auxiliary verb

English verbs are limited as to what they can indicate alone, i.e. through their own morphology. Morphological inflexions can be used, for example, to show that an event occurred in the past (e.g. cook ed) and in the present (e.g. cook); they can also show third person agreement (e.g. she cook s) and continuous action (e.g. cook ing).

More often, the main verb needs to be linked with a secondary verb form which accompanies it to create a verb phrase. These secondary verbs are called auxiliaries. Auxiliary verbs are used, for example, to give a sense of time to the main verb (e.g. 'He will be working soon.') or to create a question, ' Have you won?', ' Do you believe it?', ' Could it be true?'.

C ommon auxiliary verbs are forms of to be (is/am/was/are/were/will), to have (has/had/have) and to do (does/did).

Some auxiliary verbs are used to indicate that an action is not real but simply an idea or possibility. These are called modal auxiliaries, e.g. may, might, would, could, should.

A clause is a key grammatical structure and this means that clauses are things that you need to have, at the very least, a basic grasp of. Thought of at its simplest, a clause can be considered as a short 'sentence' - one that occurs either on its own (e.g. "I ate the jelly") or together with other clauses to make a longer sentence (e.g. "because I was hungry").

A clause, then, is a group of words that is either a whole sentence or is a part of a sentence.

Clauses are built up from individual words or from small clusters of words called phrases.

Most clauses are built around a main verb which tells, often, of an action, thought or state, e.g. "I ate the jelly because I was hungry".

A clause can be what is called independent. This mean it is acting as a simple sentence, as in the example, "I ate the jelly". Independent clauses can also exist as a part of a larger sentence when they are called not an "independent clause" but a main clause.

Another common type of clause exists just to help out the meaning of a main clause. This second kind of clause is, therefore, dependent on its main clause for its meaning. An example would be the dependent clause, "because I was hungry"; you'll see here that there is an extra word at the start of the clause: "because". It is this extra word that stops the clause being able to be independent or to be a main clause; the word "because" forces the clause to be dependent on some other main clause, e.g. "I ate the jelly because I was hungry". This words acts to subordinate its clause and so is called a subordinator. Subordinators create dependent clauses - more often, these days, called subordinate clauses (sometimes reduced to " sub- clauses").

There are many subordinators. Look at this example: "He hit him even though he was a friend":

He hit him

MAIN CLAUSE

DEPENDENT (subordinate) CLAUSE

An important kind of clause acts as if it were an adjective - it adds extra information about a noun or noun phrase. These clauses are called relative or adjectival clauses. They can seem confusing because they can be inserted in between their main clause, e.g. "The girl who wore a red dress left early." This sentence contains one main clause "The girl left early" and one dependent or relative clause, "who wore a red dress".

The subordinator in this example, the word "who", is acting as a pronoun (i.e. it is a word that takes the place of, and stands in for, a noun). Here it is called, therefore, a relative pronoun because it introduces a relative clause.

Other relative pronouns are "that" and "whom".

Sometimes the relative pronoun can be missed out to create an elliptical relative clause, e.g. "The joke [that] he told was funny"; here the relative clause is "he told".

The structure of clauses is fairly fixed in English (S = syntax subject V = verb O = object C = complement A = adverbial). In certain dialects and in poetry the syntax can be varied and the sense still kept, e.g. "A ballad Alison sang".

Many patterns of words exhibit a quality known as cohesion. This means that they form coherent units. Phrases are an important coherent grammatical unit. Words that cohere are cohesive: they appear to act not as individual words but as a single unit, e.g. 'inside out', 'at three o'clock', 'the awful creature', 'has been eating', 'in a traditional manner'. These examples of coherent groups are all phrases, but clauses, sentences anddiscourses are also, if they are to be effective in communicating ideas and facts, coherent.

At the level of discourse, the reader or listener also needs to be able to link the different sentences and paragraphs (or stanzas in a poem, etc) in a logical way. This is achieved by many linguistic means including graphology, semantics, pragmatics, narrative structure, tone, lists, pronouns, proper nouns, repetition of either logical or similar ideas, use of synonyms, and so on. The analysis of the cohesive qualities (i.e. the coherence) of a text is the analysis ofdiscourse structure.

Many words are habitually put together - or collocated. A collocation is any habitually linked group of words - a kind of lexical partnership, e.g. 'fish and chips', 'salt and pepper', 'don't mention it', 'it's nothing...', 'Oh well!', 'bangers and mash'... and so on. Manyidioms or idiomatic phrases exhibit collocation, e.g. in a jiffy.

A 'colloquy' is a formal word for 'conversation', so colloquial language means the everyday language orregister we adopt when chatting to friends, for example, e.g. 'Hello Fred, how's the new mother-in-law these days?'.

Slang is a particular form of colloquial language used by certain social groups, e.g. 'Hey-up Fred! How's the new battle-axe then?'; 'Hey that's some cool dude there!'

Complement

A word, phrase or clause that follows a verb and which simply adds further information concerning, usually, the verb's subject. Complements usually follow stative verbs such as 'to be' to create a statement (i.e. a declarative sentence), e.g. 'He is happy'. Here the adjective 'happy' is the subject complement. However, in the sentence, 'He made me happy', the adjective happy is called an object complement as it gives more information about the verb's object, me.

Conjunction

A word used to link words, phrases and clauses. Common conjunctions are and, but, or, either... or, neither...nor. These can link 'equal units' such as words, phrases or main clauses. A special kind of conjunction that can link 'unequal' independent and dependent clauses is called a subordinating conjunction. There are many of these, e.g. if, when, where, unless, etc. Also see sentence and clause.

/ Connotation denotation
(connote / connotative denote / denotative)

The denotation of a word is its direct, literal or specific meaning (as can be found in a dictionary). If a word also has implied or associated meanings when used in a certain way, these are called the word's connotations. The word 'bat' in this sentence is being used with its denotation: 'A bat is a flying mammal.' however, the word, 'bat' can also take on extra meanings, often metaphorical, e.g. 'He went like a bat out of hell'.

Interestingly, the word 'bat' also happens to have several possible denotations: 'a cricket bat', 'a vampire bat', 'They bat next' (as well as other slang and dialect meanings): words that have several denotations are called polysemic. Polysemy is an area of semantics and pragmatics.

Context is refers to those particular elements of the situation within which the text is created always an important aspect to consider whenever you analyse a text. Context and interpreted that in some way or another affect it (for example, the effects of time, place, ideology, social hierarchies, relationships, etc.).

Importantly, language has two potentially important contextual aspects: the context in which it was created and that in which it was interpreted. For example, a letter from a manager to one of his staff will be affected by context such as the situation itself, the power relationship that exists between the manager and the worker, the historical conditions and so on. Another example, when you speak to your parents or when you speak to a friend on the phone you will see that context naturally affects the linguistic choices - the style - of the discourse in important ways. Also see register.

Copula / linking verb

Verbs that act to link a subject to a complement, for example, the verb 'is' in, 'The rabbit is soft and furry', are called 'copulas' or 'linking verbs'.

Determiner

One of a small group of words - a word class - that precedes and pre-modifies a noun and creates a noun phrase, e.g. a, the, some, this, that, those, each.

Determiners include the three 'articles' (i.e. a, an, the) and similar words: e.g. some, those, many, their. Each of these are said to determine the number or 'definiteness' of their noun, e.g. ' That man is the one!'

Confusingly, determiners can themselves be pre-modified by 'pre-determiners', e.g. 'Even the apples were rotten' 'All the books were lost.'

Discourse / discourse analysis / discourse structure / discourse community / discourse communities

Whenever we use language for any purpose we create a discourse. What we are doing when we enter into a discourse is to try to express to someone else some of our thoughts, ideas and (whether on the surface or implied) feelings. These thoughts will have arisen as a reaction of our mind to the context in which it finds itself. Texts - discourses - arise from an individual's context. Sometimes this context will involve communication with a known person, sometimes with a group or audience, sometimes with an unknown individual or group. Conversation and letter writing are examples of the former, drama and media texts of the latter.

We have evolved into very sophisticated communicators; and of course we know how to use more than just language to create our discourse: we use language and paralanguage (non verbal features) as well as kinesics (body language) . This all combines to make discourse a subtle, sophisticated and complex area of study. But, even a basic understanding of discourse can help push your marks up to the highest bands.

Aspects of communication that affect discourses include genre, context, audience and purpose ('G-CAP'). All of these, and especially the first three, will act to affect our language choices, often to 'constraint' what we can say or write. 'Freedom' of speech is an illusion!Context is an especially important aspect of discourse analysis as the social and hierarchical aspects of life often bring all kinds of pragmatic meanings into the discourse.

A discourse occurs whenever we put thought into language. This could be for a whole range of reasons - we might be in a conversation, writing a novel, producing a piece of homework, holing someone to ransom, texting a friend... all kinds of reasons. The result of this 'conversion' of thought and ideas into language is the production of a discourse between the parties involved. And these discourses can ne productively analysed as an analysis at the level of discourse will reveal many interesting and subtle areas of language use.

Discourse, therefore, is no more than language - a kind of 'text' - but considered as a part of the original context of its use. When considering discourse, therefore, you need to consider all of the important aspects of context that affected either its creation, its reception or its interpretation. And remember that discourses or spoken - planned, spontaneous, to a known audience, an unknown audience, historical, etc..

Thus, everyday language, technical language, business language, children's language, cookery-book language, newspaper language... any and all kinds of language, can all be considered at the level of discourse. All texts will contain within them some discernible aspects of their user's personal, cultural, social and historical situation. Discourse analysis comments on these contextual aspects.

When analysing a text, it can be fascinating (and gain many extra marks because of its subtlety) to dig deeper than the surface meaning of the words to try to reveal interesting contextual aspects of the text's users. To make this clearer, you can imagine that our own society is far more liberal-minded than, say, the society of a century ago. This aspect will show up in the texts written in these periods through a variety of aspects including word choice and grammar. Similarly, aspects of social hierarchy and social power always manifest themselves within texts. Imagine a conversation between a patient and a doctor, for example - again, discourse analysis seeks to reveal this.

We can, somewhat artificially perhaps, but useful, 'lump together' certain discourses and see that they contain broadly similar elements because of the context, for example, in which they occur. Thus the idea of a ' discourse community' or discourse communities can be used, similar to the idea of a 'register'. Young people, to take an example, tend to use language that shares many similar features, and they can be called a 'discourse community'. In this instance, this is similar to the idea ofsociolect, also - but not all discourse communities share a sociolect.

An important part of discourse analysis is to determine what are called the orders of discourse. In any discourse, it is clear that speakers or readers are rarely 'on equal terms'. Usually there is a hierarchy of power or a power relationship involved, wherein one participant - through language choices - can 'position' the other participant in a less powerful position. An analysis of men and women in conversation has revealed many ways in which apparently innocent uses of language create a power relationship between the participants.

'Frameworks' are recommended by most exam boards to help you to analyse discourse. The basic aspects of a discourse are lexis and grammar; but meaning can be signified directly (' semantically') or through implication (' pragmatically'); the form of language is also important ( graphologically and phonologically); and the discourse structure is crucial (see below). Thus you can use frameworks to analyse discourse effectively.

can be a useful part of discourse analysis and is generally rewarded highly in your exams. Analysing a text at the level of its discourse structure sets out to reveal the various Discourse structure methods used, purposes intended by the language user to create acoherent and unified stretch of language. A text aimed at a child, for example, will have a much more obvious structure with clear 'linguistic signposts' to guide the child through it. If you compare such a text with, say, a broadsheet newspaper article, you will immediately notice that the means of linking ideas in the latter will be far more complex, sophisticated and subtle. Discourse structure, therefore, is one of the elements of style: those choices a language user makes to suit context,genre, audience and purpose. effects created and

Element

An element is a distinct grammatical unit - a 'building block' or segment of a sentence there are three important grammatical elements: word, phrase and clause. Some of the elements of a discourse or text are their sentences, paragraphs, chapters and so on.

Elision
(to elide)

is the Elision omission of one or more sounds from a word, e.g. a vowel, consonant or a whole syllable. It is used to create a word or phrase that is easier or more casual to suit an informal context, for example, e.g. the word 'comfortable' is usually elided when spoken.

Grammar allows some words to be missed from a grammatical construction (i.e. for sentences to be grammatically abbreviated) and yet for the sentence still to be meaningful, e.g. 'I bought half a dozen eggs and [...I also bought...] six rashers of bacon.' The reader or listener is able to 'add back in' the elements that have been left out and thus understand what is meant.

Ephemeral

A term that means 'lasting for a short time', i.e. transitory. In the study of language change, it refers to fashionable words that drift in and out of fashion. Speech is often considered to be an ephemeral thing in contrast to the more permanent nature of writing.

Finite / non finite

This word applies only to certain verbs. A verb in a sentence can exist on its own as in these examples: 'It's good to exercise' or 'I enjoy exercising'. In each of these sentences, the form of the verb is termed non-finite.

Alternatively - and every complete grammatical sentence has one at least by definition - the verb can be made finite. This simply means that it is 'attached' grammatically to asubject word. This subject is usually either a noun or noun phrase. Look at this example: I exercise to keep fit'). In this latter case the subject/verb combination work together to create aclause.

Form and content

Form means the . The form of the sentence, e.g. 'He pleased himself.' can be explained by referring to two kinds of structure: that of its individual words (i.e. their sound, shape and appearance of something, e.g. two forms of the word please , are pleases and pleasedmorphology) and the way its words relate to each other (i.e. their syntax). The study of both of these aspects of sentences is called grammar the study of the form of a text is called discourse analysis.

The content is the meaning contained by a word, phrase, clause or sentence and this is involved with its function. The separation of form, function and content is a theoretical way of discussing the effect of each even though all three are inextricably linked.

Function

The function of a word is what it 'does' in its sentence, e.g. its function is to act as a subject, object, verb, etc. The function of a sentence is what it is intended to 'do', e.g. to make a statement, ask a question or give a command or order.

Genre is a way of categorising texts according to similarities they share with those we already know. More generally, genre is a way of making the unfamiliar seem more familiar and hence, be more easily and quickly recognisable. New things might be unwanted, uncomfortable or even threatening. For instance, if we see an insect that looks different from a wasp but has black and yellow stripes and a pointy body - 'genre' allows us to quickly label it and either run, squash or collect it. Genre is a kind of 'survival instinct'. The world is naturally (sometimes worryingly and even threateningly) chaotic things can and do happen at random - even dangerous things. To feel safe, we force order upon as much of the world as we can: we build houses, store food, name things and so on. We must feel secure . Your bedroom might not seem to reflect your instinctive ordering mentality, but it most certainly does: firstly, it is a defined space (it is a piece of the world that is more secure because it is contained) and, although your belongings may look like pure chaos to an untrained observer such as mum and dad, you know precisely what is in that heap of clothes, CDs, magazines, English Language homework and whatever else.

What has this to do with language study? Well, surprisingly, we impose order and give labels even to things as unthreatening as language and media texts (you wouldn't want a romantic film to turn into 'The Chain Saw Massacre'). So, texts that share content (e.g. chain saws, fondling couples), function (e.g. to frighten, to arouse), andform (e.g. books, films) are categorised and 'made safe'. But because, as they say, familiarity breeds contempt, genres can and do change - but slowly (see Pulp Fiction or Reservoir Dogs for evidence).

Genre is an important idea because it affects the production as well as the reception of texts. Writers know what we expect from a particular genre, and - to keep us receptive and comfortable (and hence - importantly for language study - more easily influenced or persuaded) - they will stay broadly within a particular genre's expectations. Typical genres of fiction are adventure, detective and horror, and of non-fiction, reports (e.g. newspaper, school), biographical writing, advertising, recipes, etc. Taking account of genre allows you to comment on effective genre indicators ('signifiers') and stylistic devices within a text. Of course, genre is an ideal way of categorising similar texts.

Grammar is the set of rules that tells how words can be put into a sequence and a form that allows their meaning to become unambiguous in a sentence. The order of words in a phrase, clause or sentence is called its syntax and the form of words is called morphology (for example, to show plural we add the morpheme s, to show possession, we add the morpheme 's).

Graphology is easily misunderstood and many teachers advise students to pay it little attention as it can lead to analysing the images and diagrams in a text - a habit that loses many marks in a language exam. But it needn't be that way at all as, properly applied, a graphological analysis can be very useful and subtle.

Originally, graphology applied only to the appearance of a person's handwriting; for your course, however, it applies to any aspect of the form and appearance of a text that modifies meaning in any way.

This means you would do well to consider analysing a text at the level of its graphology before looking at other methods of analysis such as lexis or grammar. The graphological features of a text determine subtle and important aspects such as genre and ideology: how we react to the text itself. Graphological features, therefore, carrypragmatic force and are an important part of our society's discourse.

For example, a text's layout, presentation, use of paragraphs, lists, 'bullets', font choices, underlining, italics, white space, colour, etc. can all create different kinds of impact, some of which will cause the reader to react differently for example, graphological aspects can create important pragmatic perceptions of power and influence.

Head / head word

All phrases have what is called a head or head word. This is the word within the phrase that determines its grammatical function (and which acts to provide its most general meaning); other words within the phrase act in a modifying capacity. For example, in thenoun phrase 'the old-fashioned door', the head word is the noun, door - the remaining words within the phrase act to modify this head word; in a verb phrase such as 'might be hit', the head word is the finite verb hit and in a prepositional phrase such as 'on the table', the head word is on.

Ideology
(ideological)

Ideology refers to the values and attitudes we all share towards such things as ourselves, others and institutions. Ideologies are general or cultural ways of thinking that form the foundation of the many important 'belief systems' that are adhered to by groups or whole societies. They form a society's and individual's 'world view' or 'mind set' concerning how things are and ought to be. A society is a group of people who share certain key values and ideas; these values and ideas are called that society's ideologies.

Texts are created by speakers and writers who share society's beliefs concerning 'what is right' and 'what is wrong' or about 'the way things should be for the best' in society. These ideologies mw be 'hidden' because they seem 'natural' or 'common sense', as the result of 'progress' in our 'advanced' society, and so on.

If we closely examine and consider some important ideologies, it can be seen that those ideas act to reinforce the structure of our society. Some thinkers - called Marxists - conclude that this might not be a healthy thing for a society as it helps maintain what they call society's status quo - ideas that maintain the existing social hierarchies and power structures (with, for example, the wealthy holding the reigns of power, and the poor being attached in important ways to those reigns, perhaps?).

This 'political' way of considering the effect of ideologies arose in the theories of the key nineteenth century philosopher, Karl Marx. Marx recognised that those with power naturally enough wish to hold on to their status (those who 'own the means of production', i.e. the powerful, he called the bourgeoisie lesser mortals are the proletariat or the masses). Marx thought that the bourgeoisie were able to create and reinforce particular 'ways of thinking' that would act to reinforce and maintain a society's status quo and hence, existing hierarchies of status and power.

Ideas that 'maintain the status quo' are referred to as a society's dominant or prevailing ideologies . An example of such an idea might be, 'He deserves to be rich because he's worked hard for all he has' but this ignores the plight of millions who work even harder but stay poor. The point of ideological thinking is just that - it ignores, hides, sidelines, and 'disappears' those groups whose ideas it does not support.

Marx felt that such ways of thinking act not only to keep the powerful in power but also to create the conditions necessary for the masses to justify their own lower position in society . The means by which ideas can support the status quo is called hegemony . Prevailing ideologies become a part of us as we grow up we become 'conditioned' into thinking that the way our society operates is for the best. This 'social conditioning' is created through the family, school, religion, law and - very importantly for language study - the mass media indeed, the media receive much of the focus of Marxist criticism because it is considered a major means through which powerful elite groups can increase their hegemony over others. It is hegemony that causes us to view our capitalist, consumerist 'social-democracy', with its hierarchies of status and power, its elitism, its individualistic self-centredness, its poverties and its suffering... as 'the best of all possible worlds'.

In studying a text for its . Look out for such language and consider its seductively persuasive effect as it subtly 'ideologically positions' you as reader. Many ideologically loaded words have their judgmental value because their meaning is relational: they exist as ' hegemonic or ideological power, you must learn to look for what is termed 'ideologically loaded' language. Such language is that which has judgemental value as well as meaning meaning - is an 'binary pairs', e.g. 'master/mistress', 'housewife/working mother', 'middle class/working class', 'freedom fighter/terrorist', 'hero/coward', 'normal/abnormal', 'gay/hetero', 'feminine/feminist, 'The West/the East', etc. Some linguists maintain that all language - all ideological construct '.
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Idiomatic language refers to many words or phrases that are a familiar and everyday feature of our language. Idioms are a part of the comfortable, conversational style of language we use daily - but to a foreigner, idioms are difficult to understand because their meaning is very different from the literal meaning of the words that make them up, e.g. 'He wants his pound of flesh .' 'You scratch my back, I'll scratch yours' 'That's real cool ' 'No way, José', 'He's a pain in the neck!', etc. Each of these are idioms - or idiomatic phrases. You will notice that idioms always exist as fixed collocations which do not work if the phrase order is altered at all. For example, we cannot really say, 'He scratched my back and I scratched his...'.

Imagery

Words can be chosen to create more than just meaning: they create feeling, too. Some words or phrases are able to create a particularly vivid mental sense of a picture, person, sound, taste, etc. This effect is called imagery. Imagery is a very important feature of all descriptive writing and, especially, of poetry. The most common way by which a writer can create imagery is through the use of figurative or metaphorical language, typically through the use of metaphor, simile and personification. Truly effective imagery acts almost to etch itself onto the reader's mind. This can be a very emotional and persuasive device as it acts to engage the reader intensely in the subject matter of the writing.

Imperative

A command sentence which uses the second person plural form of a verb but misses out the subject pronoun 'you'. It gives orders, e.g. Leave now! Sit down.

Infinitive

A form of a verb without tense and often introduced by 'to' infinitive forms can replace noun phrases as subject or object of a verb, e.g. Object: He likes to eat subject: To fish is a very relaxing way to spend the morning.

Inflection
(inflexion / inflect / inflects / inflected)

The way words can change their form to show, for example, that they are singular or plural (e.g. table becomes tables ) and to indicate tense (e.g. change becomes changes/ changed/ changing ) or possession (The cat's whiskers).

Intensifier

Intensifiers are a special kind of adverb. An intensifier is used when the semantic value of another adverb or adjective needs to be altered. Examples of intensifiers are: very, quite, absolutely and extremely but there are many more.

Intensifiers act to pre-modify their adverb or adjective. Can you identify the intensifier in this sentence: 'It's a terrifically bad accident.'?

Interjection

A word class that is used to show emotion, e.g. 'Ouch!', 'Hey!'

Intransitive

A verb is called intransitive when no action transfers from their subject to an object, e.g. we swam like a fish they sang beautifully he died. A transitive verb always takes an object - the thing that takes its action, e.g. He hit his thumb with the hammer.

Irony

Irony is the name given to the effect of meaning created when one thing is said or written but another - sometimes opposite - thing is meant. In speech this effect is created by tone of voice in writing by carefully chosen lexis. The study of such meaning falls within the area known as pragmatics.

Latinate

This term refers to those many rather formal words in English that derive from either Latin or French. These words entered the language most notably during the period following the Norman Conquest (1066). King William I spoke a northern French dialect that itself was heavily influenced by the classical Latin language of ancient Rome; he insisted that the nobility of newly conquered England learn to speak French and, from this, many French/Latin words entered the language. The Latinate equivalent now sits alongside the original Old English/Anglo-Saxon term and tends to be used in more formal occasions. Examples are motherly (Anglo-Saxon)/maternal (Latinate); inn (Anglo-Saxon)/hotel (Latinate). As a rule of thumb, if you can pronounce the word in a French accent it is Latinate! A text that relies heavily on Latinate words will be aimed at a more educated audience.

(lexical item / lexemic / lexicon) Lexeme

A lexeme or lexical item is a word - or occasionally phrase - in its most basic form, like the head words found in a dictionary that are listed each as separate entries. An example is the word 'spell'; from this lexeme there can be several derivations, e.g. spelled, spelt, spelling, etc. These inflected forms of the root word are not counted as lexemes. The word 'crane', as an example, is two lexemes, one meaning a large bird and the other a machine for lifting.

Also included under the heading of lexemes are the so-called phrasal verbs; these are short phrases whose meanings are different from their constituent lexemes, e.g. 'see to', 'break down', 'put up with', 'wind up'.

Idiomatic phrases that carry meaning as a unit are also counted as lexemes, e.g. 'give over, 'rain cats and dogs', etc.

The collection of lexemes that forms a person's vocabulary is called his or her lexicon. A dictionary is another kind of lexicon.

Lexical (dynamic) and stative verbs

Lexical or dynamic verbs tell of an action (to hit, to call, to sing); stative verbs tell of a state of being (to be - am, is, was, were - to think, hope, seem, appear, feel, etc.).

Lexis means the vocabulary of a language as opposed to other aspects such as the grammar of the text. Lexis is clearly an important aspect of creating a suitable style or register (i.e. when choosing language and language features to suit a particular genre, context, audience and purpose).

Lexis and semantics are very close and often used interchangeably.

Lexical cohesion occurs when words have an affinity for each other as in collocations.

Linguistic

Referring to the study or ways of language and the use of words to create meaning.

e-modification / Modifier / Modification /
Pr
Post-modification

Modification describes the grammatical process through which the meaning of a head word within a phrase can be altered, refined or modified. This is done by the addition of one or more words. The result of the modification of a word is the creation of a phrase e.g. in the noun phrase, 'A criminal act', the head word (the noun 'act') is modified by the noun 'criminal'.

N ouns can be both pre-modified (by linking with one or more adjectives, e.g. A tall dark stranger' or with other nouns, e.g. ' oven glove') as well as post-modified, e.g. 'The man with an ice-cream. Prepositional phrases can also act as modifiers when they act as the complement of a verb, as in, 'He's in a mess'.

Mode

'Mode' refers to the channel of communication of a text. A text might be spoken or written, for example, or it might show features of being 'mixed mode' is the sense that it contains features of both speech and writing, as in text messages and email.

'Mood' is an aspect of English verbs. Verb phrases can be categorised according to whether they express an actual or a potential action or state. The moods are: indicative mood: 'He plays well'; 'She is happy' (indicating an actual event or state); imperative mood: 'Sit down!' (issuing a command); interrogative mood: 'Will you please sit down?' (asking a question); subjunctive mood: 'If she were alive, then...' (pointing to a possibility or wish).

Mood is often created in a verb phrase through the use of a modal auxiliary. This kind of auxiliary verb usually creates the effect of suggesting that the action told of by the verb is not real but is potential.

The suffix "morph-" is to do with shape, and morphology concerns the form and shape of words. It is an important aspect of grammar (along withsyntax); morphology is the study of the way words are formed. The smallest part of a word that can exist alone or which can change a word's meaning or function is called a morpheme (e.g. un-, happy, -ness).

is an A b ound morpheme affix, i.e. usually a prefix or a suffix, e.g. un-, -tion. These are 'bound' called because they must be attached to another morpheme to create a word. Morphemes that can exist alone as a complete word are called free morphemes, e.g. happy.

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© 2019 Steve Campsall GLOSSARY OF LINGUISTIC TERMS Accent and dialect Accent refers solely to the way words are pronounced, e.g. in the south of England, it is normal to pronounce the word path as p- ar -th, but in the Midlands and the North, the phoneme 'a' is articulated as a short vowel and pronounced as in, 'cat'.

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07 OBITUARY Cooke/Monroe Obituary - Wendy's Annotated Copy

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07 OBITUARY Cooke/Monroe Obituary - Wendy's Annotated Copy

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Wish you were enrolled in an intro linguistics class this semester? Starting a linguistics major and looking for extra help? Trying to figure out whether you should study linguistics and what comes after? Whether you're just trying to grasp the basics of linguistics or you're trying to construct a full online linguistics course, here's a comprehensive list of free linguistics websites, podcasts, videos, blogs, and other resources from around the internet:

Linguistics Podcasts

Specific episodes:

Podcasts in general:

Linguistics Videos

Modular topics:

Structured video series like an online course:

Blog posts
General
Further linguistics resources about specific areas, such as sociolinguistics, psycholinguistics, language acquisition ( first/ second), historical linguistics, neurolinguistics, prescriptivism.
Phonetics & Phonology Morphology & Syntax Semantics & Pragmatics Teaching linguistics Academic/career advice Languages
Further link roundups

This list not enough? Try these further linkposts:

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How to teach yourself linguistics online for free

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Wish you were enrolled in an intro linguistics class this semester? Starting a linguistics major and looking for extra help? Trying to figure out whether you should study linguistics and what comes after?

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Useful text :  Resources for teaching creative writing (Young, 2009)

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Useful text :  Resources for teaching creative writing (Young, 2009)

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This resource book is designed to engage students in the process of creative writing. Using ideas and activities he has put into practice himself, Johnnie Young guides the teacher through a series of creative lessons designed to stimulate creative thinking.

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GCSE English Language - AQA - BBC Bitesize

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Easy-to-understand homework and revision materials for your GCSE English Language AQA '9-1' studies and exams.

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03 DIARY UPDATED 04.03.2022: Scott's Diary

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03 DIARY UPDATED 04.03.2022: Scott's Diary

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The link to the clip in the slides is available here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PyMLx2mv1Qg

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03 DIARY Scott's Diary - Wendy's Annotated Copy

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03 DIARY Scott's Diary - Wendy's Annotated Copy

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REVISED Planning and Writing the Set Text Comparative Essay

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REVISED Planning and Writing the Set Text Comparative Essay

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REVISED 11032022 Planning and writing the LangLit Comparative Essay

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OCR Student Exemplars (Comparative Set Texts Task 1) with in-text comments

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OCR Student Exemplars (Comparative Set Texts Task 1) with in-text comments

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OCR Student exemplars 2xTask 1 essays with examiner comments

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Candidate Exemplars NEA Tasks 1 and 2 (June 2017)

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Candidate Exemplars NEA Tasks 1 and 2 (June 2017)

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Candidate Exemplars NEA Tasks 1 and 2 (June 2018)

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Candidate Exemplars NEA Tasks 1 and 2 (June 2018)

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PLANNING and WRITING your LANGLIT Coursework