Revision from last term
What is positive face? Who’s theory is it? How would I go about ‘intruding’ on your positive face? What is negative face? How would I intrude on your negative face Who has created the ‘degrees of formality’ What is Frozen? Formal? Consultative Casual What is the final one? Informal Language introduction HMON 2014 Informal language
1. Adjective1.without formality or ceremony; casual: an informal visit.
2.Not according to the prescribed, official, or customary way or manner; irregular; unofficial: informal proceedings.
3.suitable to or characteristic of casual and familiar. Functions
Thinking about the functions: (THESE ARE QUITE BROAD) Rapport Information Instruction Persuasion Entertainment Ceremony/Ritual When we look at the following- What can we apply to them.
Airbnb new orleans -
Garden District
Marigny is great
Bywater is good - need bikes though
They are the three I would stick to
So devo I will not be there its the BEST PLACE! YOU RULE THANK YOU!
I love that town. When you are getting closer to being there I will give you bars and places to go. In pairs: Now looking at page 25 in your book
How is Ex 3 different from Ex 5? Why?
How is 4 different from 6? Report back in groups with reference to the features of at least two. To recap: Informal language – an introduction
The spread of informal language is spreading across domains.
Many text types are multifunctional
Important roles include rapport building and bonding
What are some other common features that you have picked up throughout the examples? Features of informal language
So we can identify informal language and some of its features. But are you able to look closely about what makes language informal? The ones we will look at are: Phonological patterning Lexical choice and semantic patterning Morphological Patterning Grammatical patterning Swearing We are going to go into ALL of these in more detail. Phonological Patterning in informal language
In casual settings phonological patterning or ‘cutbacks’ are more tolerated. A lot of you would do this without even noticing. Usually for these features to work- you need a level of comfort ability
This works as there is a familiarity (most of the time there is shared topic knowledge so shortening of adjusting words would still make sense)
As your text puts it- ‘When gestures of articulation become automatic, this triggers a reduction in the timing and magnitude of these gestures’
In other words- when we are in a comfortable environment or utilising words with a high level of familiarity- we are more likely to be more lax in our approach to phonology.
This is seen commonly in spoken via assimilation and Ellison. Do we pronounce everything anyway?
Looking at the other side- think about what would occur should we pronounce every single syllable. Consider my fair lady- How did this sound?
We do not in everyday speech articulate every single sound. They drop out in chit chat or merge with other sounds. This aids our speech to be fluent and flowing.
“Excuse me captain, I’m going to go and pick up my handbag from the station, would you mind watching my post until I return”
“How was your weekend” Speech processes in informal language
So the processes in connected speech that distinguish casual spoken language from formal include reductive processes- loss and modification.
ELISION
REDUCTION
ADDITION
ASSIMILATION Elision
Elision is the omission of sounds, syllables or words in speech. This is done to make the language easier to say, and faster. Example 'I don't know' /I duno/ , /kamra/ for camera, and 'fish 'n' chips' are all examples of elision. This is a characteristic of fast and furious speech. It is the slurring or omission of vowels and consonants
What might a prescriptivism perceive this to be? What, as discussed earlier- is this a feature or? The function words in English are most likely to have this happen to them. So pronouns, auxiliary verbs, prepositions, conjunctions and determiners)
This is mostly due to the fact that they’re not terribly informative but also being grammatical makes them frequent- short and we adjust our speech as a result of this. Activity
With a partner, state the below words (as you would in everyday speech) Write out phonetically how you would pronounce these words. Have you used elision?
telephone separate chocolate sophomore mathematics camera diamond history Which did you use ?
telephone (tel-e-phone/tel-phone) separate (sep-are-rate/sep-rat) chocolate (choc-o-late/choc-lat) sophomore (soph-o-more/soph-more) mathematics (math-e-mat-ics/math-mat-ics) camera (cam-er-a/cam-ra) diamond (di-a-mond/di-mond) history (his-tor-ee/his-tree) Difference between Contraction and Elision
By merely looking at contraction and elision examples, one would think the two are similar. However, there is a slight difference between them. Contraction is a more general term. Contraction is the combination of two words to form a shorter word. For instance, “can’t” is a contraction of can + not, which is a combination of two words. On the other hand, elision is a specific term. It is the omission of sounds, syllables, or phrases and replacing it with an apostrophe. For instance, “ne’er” is elided form of “never” and similarly, “gonna” is an elision of the phrase “going to.” Modification of sounds:
The most important modification of sounds is- Assimilation.
When sounds assimilate- they take on the sounds of their counterparts.
In linguistics, assimilation is a common phonological process by which one sound becomes more like a nearby sound. This can occur either within a word or between words. In rapid speech, for example, "handbag" is often pronounced [ˈhæmbæɡ]. As in this example, sound segments typically assimilate to a following sound (this is called regressive or anticipatory assimilation), but they may also assimilate to a preceding one (progressive assimilation). For example if you were to say the word pancake- You have most likely pronounced it. Pangcake This is not to say that we would change the word Pan in other instances however in this context- given the surroundings we adjust our speech as thus. Addition of Sounds-
Informal speech can also see sounds added. This is also ease of articulation but in a different way. We most commonly do this by adding vowels as there are existing difficult combinations of consonants.
For example an l and m Try and pronounce those two sounds quickly. Now try in the word film- what sound have you added Consonants can also be added- Typically as a result of mis-timing- For example Fambly – the M in family is nasal- so your soft palate is lowered (so you can have air coming out of your nose) if you raise this too fast then you automatically insert a little b (which is in the same place of articulation as the m) Our language is full of these phonological adjustments0 You will notice