Lexical Density Informalisation In English Language

Lexical Density In imposingisation In side of meat Langu mount upBoth of these terms indoors the study of English style atomic number 18 commonly utilize as markers that help to differentiate in the midst of the spoken and written modes of Language.Lexical Density is a measure of how much culture there is in a particular piece of language. Lexical words (content words) ar words which carry information. Texts which have a senior high proportion of lexical items compared to function words (grammatical items) are said to have a high lexical density. Written texts are managely to have a higher lexical density than spoken texts which course to have much grammatical items than content. Scientific texts are also likely to have a very high lexical density due to their educational nature. H alonei mean solar day defines lexical density as a measure of the density of information in any passage of text, jibe to how tightly the lexical items (content words) have been jam-packed into the grammatical structure. It is important to consider in this definition however that lexical density can be high in the more formal written texts because of the use of nominalisation (where star syntactic form is replaced by another) which although creating a high Lexical Density enumerate can also lower the level of information content.An example of the residuums in Lexical Density between written and spoken language can be shown when i asked my niece what she had learned in school that daywe did electricity in science today.(lexical density count 3) which when compared to her summary lesson text for that dayMaterials that can carry electricity are listed conductors they conduct electricity.(lexical density count 6) primary school text book.Informalisation is the breaking down of divisions between formal public use and informal private use of English. Linguists argue that language utilize in public and institutional contexts is changing and that styles of private language have crossed borders to be used in public situations in a raw(a) form of address. They say that increasingly professional encounters are becoming more conversationalised (Fairclough in Maybin Et Al, pg205). This can be seen frequently on business websites such as Recycle Now (www.recycle forthwith.com) advertised to us by our local council. They demonstrate informalisation through their use of some of the ordinary markers of informal English pronouns, unsophisticated English and contractions of negatives (Maybin et al, pg 207) Keep it simple, Dont worry about removing labels, its as simple to recycle as to throw away However this could also be an example of the use of this marketisation where the informalisation of language is used intentionally by an organisation for a specific marketing reason.Another key marker of informalisation is the term of address. The observation that my doctor, and some of my regular customers now call me Sharon and not Mrs Tyrrell (without being asked ) are excellent examples of the informalisation of the English Language indoors my day to day life.Part 2Baynham and Maybin (2007, p. 123) assert that electronic elbow room of communication seem to have shifted the consanguinity between public lecture and makeup. Discuss this statement, using brief examples of your own to illustrate your points. Modern technology has allowed language to look for a new medium- Electronic Discourse (ED), different in fundamental ways from typical conversational speech and writing found in other situations. The first task therefore is to look at the differences between the two more traditional mediums of speech and writing looking at if, and how, the singingship between them has been changed by ED through analysing its lingual properties.Written English is most often planned, while spoken English is most often unplanned. This simple distinction results in many notable differences although the main differences lie within their differences in for m. Form refers to grammatical, lexical, phonological and graphological aspects of language. I will look at the differences between the two in these respects and then look at the features of ED and how that relates to both written and spoken language. In the grammatical traits for speech, there is a deficiency of clear sentence boundaries which makes it difficult to know when one has ended and when one can begin. Usually in speech between populate who know one another, the boundaries are erased and overlapping occurs. In contrast, in typical written text you are expected to write in full sentences, include paragraphs and have an admit structure. When using typical writing in a formal document punctuation is essential and the agreement between nouns and verbs is crucial. Typical speech and typical writing also have a different grammatical intricacy. Typical speech has a simpler grammatical structure because there are fewer clauses, less mastery and often shorter units whilst typical writing has more grammatical intricacy because it contains subordinate clauses in complex sentences, it also contains pre-modifiers and past modifiers. Typical speech contains looser contraction sentences that are linked with words such as and and lengthy coordinate sentences. Also non-standard subject-verb agreements, ellipsis, non-standard word order, fragmented sentences are all very common. The lexis vocabulary of typical speech is colloquial and slang. It contains taboo language, nonsense words and contracted words. This is in contrast to the much wider vocabulary that is to be typically found in more formal writing. Typical writing also includes words that are never spoken, such as long chemical compounds and also relies on the greater degree of formality. In typical speech, inexplicitness is expected and much repetition occurs whilst in typical writing one must be explicit and repetition is frowned upon. Typical speech is unremarkably unplanned and can be full of non-fluen cy features and running repairs such as false starts, hesitations, repetitions, discourse particles and fillers, words such as umm and like, and yknow. Another noticeable difference is that the lexical density of spoken discourse is usually much lower than that of written due to the high content of grammatical items used in relation to that of content words.The phonology traits are not able to be used in typical writing. In typical speech however, the intonation is extremely important, the metrics also makes a huge difference and a word or phrase could have a different impact if pronounced with the wrong prosody. inflection may reveal the boundaries for clauses and is vital in social and emotional conversations, as it helps to explain ones point of view. Prosody is also used to make the conversation more lively and interesting. In typical writing, the tone can only be deputed by the use of question marks (?), exclamation marks (),underlining, CAPITALS or by describing the tone. I n literature, the tone of the poem is achieved in the rhyme and the rhythm. The graphology feature of language is not used in typical speech. Spelling, punctuation and the use of paragraphs are all seen as graphology features. These all appear and play an important part in typical writing. The amount or size of paragraphs and the use of italics, underlining, and emboldening can all depart a certain impression. Pictures, emoticons and columns are all graphology features. Paralinguistic features such as the movement of the hands, a shrug or a smile are crucial in Spoken English where the use of more than just words context cues, tone, gestures, eye contact, pace and body language-all play a part in communicating meaning, while written English generally lacks these. Having highlighted some of the main differences and therefore the relationship between spoken and written English it is also important to banknote that these differences are not absolute and there are a range of forms an d genres across both speech and writing- for instance a spoken lecture or a job interview is closer to writing than a pub conversation between friends and a personal letter closer to speech than a page from a textbook-. This is often dependant on the formality of the situation in which the discourse is taking place.Now to look at the notable linguistic features of ED in comparison to the definitions already visited above. It is important to note that the proportion of these features exhibited by a ED text can vary enormously according to criteria such as formality, subject and the personal characteristics of the individual writer (including age, identity, etc.).Grammatically ED tends to use many of the typical spoken traits such as telegraphic language Have forwarded the P the email, Will do, but am not back in office this week(see appendix A) and also uses interaction features (e.g. questions) ill call then, ok? (ibid) and overall a very un-complex grammatical structure similar to informal speech. However this omission of grammatical words gives the text an extremely high lexical density which is traditionally more a characteristic of writing.The lexical features of ED are also hard to categorise, as in some ways, it is like conversation in that it presents a number of performance features generally characteristic of in process or in situ communicative events and behaviours, such as repetition, form address, disfluencies, and markers of personal involvement, including syntactic and lexical items (Davis and Brewer, 1997). However, because turn taking occurs differently in ED, the interruptions and overlaps so characteristic of conversation do not occur (see Appendix B). thither is also an absence of the fillers so often seen in oral conversations (Brown Yule, 1983) although these are present urrrrrr not sure, think so (appendix B) The vocabulary used in ED is typically very informal and frequently uses abbreviations, auxiliary verbs, colloquialisms and famil iar terms of address (see appendix B) much like that associated with speech.Phonologically and graphologicaly ED utilises many techniques to try and predicate tone or meaning that previously has been difficult to do in writing. The use of emoticons, o) , capitalisation, letter repetition, use of graphics, sounds, punctuation and phonetic spelling (see appendix B) to indicate emotions, pauses, emphasis and intonation all demonstrate the fact that ED is a much more multimodal method of communication than was previously possible within typical writing and is often successfully able to create the impression of speech within written form.It is apparent from the examples provided that electronic communication does not fall within the standard definitions of narrative and text (Jones, 1995, p. 5) but in fact appears to embody aspects of each. It is clear that this new and still evolving medium that ED also demonstrates the process of informalisation within the written English language, cle arly showing the majority of the markers that are used to define it casual terms of address, informal vocabulary, intonation and contractions of negatives. It has been suggested that the electronic medium creates a feel of distance between the author I know that i, certainly, am guilty of being too casual in situations when i am contacting people by means of electronic communication and even guilty of using marketisation when corresponding with customers for my online business to make me seem more approachable. So, in conclusion, whilst the medium of electronic communication may not have changed the relationship between speech and writing it has certainly blurred it. Perhaps in this technology surrounded age we need to readdress the definitions of speech and writing to reflect the numerous varieties that now exist.WORD COUNT 1642