TERM DEFINITION PAGE accent The way in which a speaker of a particular linguistic variety pronounces 17 words and the rules that govern these pronunciations acceptance The sub-process of standardization in which speakers (consciously or 41 subconsciously) agree to use the standard form and view it as prestigious acrolect A language variety used in a contact situation that is most similar to the 287 superstrate language acronyms An abbreviation formed from the initial components of some or all of the 138 words of a phrase, e.g., Absent WithOut Leave = AWOL affixes Morphemes added to the roots of words to create a change in meaning or 68 function, e.g., prefixes and suffixes African American A linguistic variety spoken in the US that developed out of the history, 144 English culture, and experiences of African Americans in North America age-grading The idea that speech correlates to the stage of life that speakers are in, such 128 as adolescence, irrespective of the time period they live in analytic See "isolating" 264 Anglicization The process by which words that English borrows from other languages 81 become more English-like, most often in terms of pronunciation Anglo Saxon The earliest form of the English language, also referred to as Old English, 10 which developed from the varieties of language brought to the British Isles by Germanic tribes that included the Angles, the Saxons, the Frisians, and the Jutes articulatory The study of the physiological processes in the production of speech sounds 4 phonetics aspectual A grammatical form that gives additional meaning to a verb, e.g., that an 155 markers action is ongoing or completed aspiration The articulation of a consonant with an added breath of air; in English, for 29 instance, stop consonants are typically aspirated when they appear word- initially assimilation A phonological process in which a speech sound adopts the characteristics 263 of a sound or sounds in its linguistic environment basilect A language variety used in a contact situation that is least similar to the 287 superstrate language bilingual Educational programs in which two languages are taught and used (to some 217 education degree) as the language of instruction call-and-response The verbal, often spontaneous, back-and-forth interaction between a 159 speaker and his/her audience calque A word created by literal translation from one language to another, e.g., 82 flamethrower is a calque of Flammenwerfer from German card/cord merger The merger of the low back vowel and the mid back vowel before /r/ in 114 minimal pairs such as barn/born, card/cord, and farm/form in some dialects of English, particularly associated with the speech of Utah and St. Louis careful style A style of relatively guarded speech elicited in sociolinguistic interviewing; in 123 Labov's New York City study, this was typically elicited in a follow-up to the fourth-floor question case The grammatical function of a noun that expresses its semantic relationship 69 to the other words in a given sentence, e.g., nominative, genitive, accusative © 2014 Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group, an Informa Business casual style A style of relatively unguarded speech elicited in sociolinguistic interviewing; 123 in Labov's New York City study, this was typically an informant's first response to the fourth-floor question circumlocution Refers to the use of several words when the idea could be conveyed more 284 clearly with fewer words, e.g., "on the brink of extinction" instead of "endangered" clipping A process whereby a word is shortened to form a new word, e.g., meds 114 from medications, doc from doctor code talkers Native speakers of Choctaw, Navajo, and other Native American languages 274 who used their languages to create indecipherable codes for the American armed forces in World Wars I and II codeswitching An alternation of two or more linguistic varieties by a speaker within a 220 conversation codification The sub-process of standardization in which individual features are 40 determined to be standard, producing minimal variation in form colonial lag The idea that colonial varieties of a language tend to be more conservative 88 and develop more slowly than those varieties used in the place of origin colonial leveling A process by which differences between language varieties used in the place 88 of origin are reduced or eliminated in colonial varieties complaint The common practice of disparaging language use, particularly with regard 44 tradition to variation and change compounding A word-formation process in which two or more words are joined together 85 to form a new word, e.g., book + worm = bookworm contact Systems that are formed out of linguistic necessity by speakers who do not 280 languages share a common language; such systems include pidgins, creoles, and mixed languages. content words Nouns, verbs, and adjectives that refer to objects, actions, and 283 characteristics copula In English, the verb "to be" and its inflected forms, including is, am, and are 154 cot-caught See "Low Back Merger" 105 merger creaky voice A type of speech created by the tightening of the vocal folds, often 132 producing a low pitch at the end of utterances creole A complex linguistic system with native speakers, which is created in a 280 language contact situation and typically develops from a pidgin creole continuum An approach to creoles that views varieties of these languages in terms of 287 their similarities to the superstrate language creolization A process whereby the linguistic system of a pidgin moves toward full 285 grammatical complexity as its range of uses and the needs of its speakers expand crowd-sourced A dictionary in which the entries are written and edited by the general 36 dictionary public danger-of-death A question used in the sociolinguistic interview, as created by Labov, which 125 question is meant to obtain the informant's most unguarded speech by asking them about a time in which they thought they might die deaf Referring to profound hearing loss or to individuals who are hard of hearing 302 © 2014 Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group, an Informa Business Deaf Referring to a shared connection with a community, identity, and culture, 302 regardless of an individual's ability to hear deficit approach Analyzing speech in such a way as to suggest that the differences it has with 131 another variety show that it is lacking in sophistication or intelligence compared to that variety descriptive The rules of naturally occurring speech 24 grammar dialect A variety of language associated with a specific region or social group 17 dialectology The study of language variation, often with an emphasis on the influence of 95 geography on language difference Analyzing speech in such a way as to indicate that the differences are simply 132 approach differences rather than deficits that one variety has compared to another diglossic A language in which distinct varieties are reserved for specific social 246 language situations; for example, variety X is used in educational settings and variety Y is used in places of worship discourse A linguistic unit that is longer than a single sentence, such as a conversation 159 Don-Dawn See "Low Back Merger" 105 merger Ebonics Term, meaning "black sounds," which refers to the linguistic varieties 147 spoken in the African diaspora. Sometimes used as a synonym for African American English ejectives A class of voiceless consonants whose articulation includes closure of the 290 glottis elaboration The sub-process of standardization in which the use of the codified system is 40 extended to other social contexts, such as education or government, thus producing maximal variation in function English as a The use of English by non-native speakers, or courses in which English is 189 Second Language explicitly taught to non-native speakers ESL See "English as a Second Language" 189 etymology (The study of) the origins and development of words 34 euphemism Words or phrases that replace other words that are considered offensive or 19 as having unpleasant associations external factors Social factors that introduce or promote language change, such as 13 technological changes or the influence of speakers of other languages fingerspelling The manual representation of the letters of a written system incorporated 307 into signed language focus marker A morpheme that highlights new information that is being conveyed in an 131 utterance folk etymology A faulty inference that an unknown word has a certain meaning or history 81 based on its superficial similarity to a known word, e.g., garden snake from garter snake folk linguistics The study of non-expert views on language 49 free variation A phenomenon in which the alternation of two or more linguistic features in 121 the same environment does not contribute to a change in meaning function words Words that have little semantic content, used to meet the demands of 283 grammar; prepositions and conjunctions are two parts of speech that are © 2014 Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group, an Informa Business considered function words functional shift The conversion of a word from one part-of-speech to another without 130 explicit change in its form, e.g., the verb run and the noun run in the respective sentences "She will run in the marathon" and "She takes a run every morning." Morphological and syntactic characteristics of English allow for the productive use of functional shift, whereas in some other languages this word-formation process is uncommon. grammar The underlying structure of a linguistic system 23 grammatical A word or phrase that adheres to the structure, or grammar, of a linguistic 30 system grammatical A system of noun classes in which words are categorized as masculine, 8 gender feminine, and/or neuter.