A Glossary of Applied Linguistics by Davies Alan;

Author:Davies, Alan; [Alan Davies]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 4354158
Publisher: Routledge

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markedness The view that less frequent (basic, natural) linguistic elements are marked whereas the more frequent (etc.) elements are unmarked. This has been applied to grammar: normal sentence order in English (subject-verb-object - SVO, for example: the boy kicks the bucket) is unmarked, while a less common order (object-subject-verb - OSV, for example: the bucket the boy kicks) is marked. It has also been applied to phonology (consonants such as p/t/k/s/n are said to be unmarked because they occur in most languages).

Marxism and language The influence of Marxism on ideas about language has been considerable. Tenets such as 'All signs are ideological in their very nature'; 'language is a central site for the class struggle'; 'language and politics are inseparable, perhaps even indistinguishable'; 'language is fundamentally dialogic and not monologic'; 'language is what keeps people apart'; 'linguistic analysis is mere abstraction unless it starts off from the recognition that its data consist of politically contextualised utterances' all show Marxist influence. Hence the insistence on Marxist inspiration in critical discourse analysis, which has an intellectual if not a political Marxist pedigree. There is a curious ambiguity in Marxist attitudes towards standard language in that, on the one hand, standard languages are tools of class dominance, while, on the other, the global spread of a standard language such as English can be seen to break down nationalistic ideologies that stand in the way of class consciousness. See also ideologies.

matched guise technique A technique to measure language attitudes which claims to control speaker difference/ effect. The technique was developed in Montreal by Lambert in the 1960s to study the attitudes of anglophones and francophones to each other's language. Speakers with native-like proficiency in both languages were recorded speaking translated texts in the two languages. Judges (both anglophone and francophone) were then invited to listen to the tapes and rate what they heard on various scales (such as friendliness, reliability, cooperativeness, religiosity, humour). The judges believed they were responding to two speakers, one francophone and the other anglophone, whereas in fact they were hearing two guises of the same person. The intention was to remove the factor of speaker personality, but doubt has been cast on the assumption that speaker personality can be discounted on the grounds that any two voices (of the same person or of two different persons) are likely to evoke the same stereotyped responses. If that is so, of course, then the complexity of the technique may not be necessary and the voices of two different speakers, matched by age, sex and educational background, would do just as well. Even so, the matched guise technique has been used very widely across a range of languages and situations, including clinical ones.

meaning What a language expresses by the use of its structure is its meaning. It is said to be the purpose of language to enable us to express the way we see the world. Word and sentence meaning are studied in semantics, discourse and text meaning in discourse analysis, in CA and in studies of comprehension.

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