English Language A-Level
English Language A-Level glossary
121 key terms for English Language A-Level, A to Z, each linked to the topic pages that use it.
121 terms found. Open a term to try a short memory check.
A
- Academic register and cohesion
- A formal register and measured tone with signposted development and coherent paragraphs that guide the reader.AQA
- Accessibility and register
- Explaining linguistic concepts in plain terms and choosing a tone, such as persuasive, informative or reflective, that suits a non-specialist reader.AQA
- Accuracy in public communication
- Keeping linguistic claims accurate while simplifying expression, so that accessibility does not become distortion.AQA
- Analysis of stance and positioning
- Identifying the attitude a text conveys, the language choices that create it, and how the writer positions the reader.AQA
- Annotation as a planning and analytical tool
- Recording analysis as annotations on the model itself, linking each observation to a specific technique and its effect.AQA
- Applying model craft to original writing
- Understanding the model's craft so you can make informed choices in your own original writing rather than copying it.AQA
- Articulation of speech sounds
- How speech sounds are physically produced, described using terms such as plosive, fricative, alveolar or bilabial.AQA
- Attitudes and prescriptivism
- Attitudes to variation and change include prescriptive and descriptive positions, and analysis should distinguish descriptive observation from prescriptive…AQA
- Attitudes to language diversity and change
- The views expressed in texts about language diversity and change, which students study across a range of texts rather than describing linguistic facts.AQA
- Audience address and positioning
- How audiences are addressed and positioned, for example through direct address, modality or assumed knowledge.AQA
- Audience and purpose
- The readers a piece is written for and the aim it is meant to achieve, which together shape content, tone and structure.AQA
- Audiences
- Addressed via direct address or imperatives, and positioned through presuppositions or evaluative lexis.AQA
C
- Caregiver and peer interaction
- How caregivers, siblings and peers scaffold or extend the functions a child uses, for example through questions, expansions or recasts.AQA
- Causes and explanations of change
- Explanations for why language varies and changes include contact, prestige, identity marking or technological influence, and each should be judged for how…AQA
- Close linguistic and stylistic analysis
- Examining how language and structure create effects rather than merely retelling content.AQA
- Construction of authorial identity and stance
- How the producer builds an identity through tone, register, claimed expertise, personal anecdote or institutional voice, and how that identity supports the…AQA
- Construction of identity
- How identity is constructed for participants, producers or groups through language choices and patterns.AQA
- Construction of meanings and representations
- Language is used to construct meanings and representations of people, groups, events or ideas, rather than merely to describe.AQA
- Context
- The participants, setting, relationships and wider social debates about language that shape what discourse does.AQA
- Context and inferred meaning
- The contextual aspects of language use, where shared knowledge and setting guide interpretation of what speakers imply rather than state.AQA
- Context and language variation
- Language varies because of personal, social, geographical and temporal contexts, and analysis should explain how these contexts shape language choices.AQA
- Context as a constraint and resource
- Wider context constrains and enables language choices, and contextual knowledge is used to justify claims without asserting fixed effects.AQA
- Context-dependent meaning
- The contextual aspects of language use, where meaning is shaped by context beyond literal wording.AQA
- Context, audience and purpose
- Linking graphological features to the text's producer, audience and purpose, such as how a charity leaflet creates an urgent yet approachable impression.AQA
- Conventions and audience awareness
- Each genre has characteristic structural and linguistic features, such as narrative past tense and temporal connectives, or instructional imperatives and…AQA
- Cooperative principle and implicature
- Grice's principle with its maxims of quantity, quality, relation and manner, flouting which generates conversational implicature.AQA
- Critical evaluation of a style model
- Considering and evaluating the style model, explaining what techniques were borrowed and why they suited your purpose.AQA
D
- Denotation and connotation
- A word's literal sense is its denotation, while its associations contribute to meaning beyond that literal sense as connotation.AQA
- Development of communicative competence
- How functional range develops with age and social experience, moving from immediate needs towards information sharing, storytelling and sustained social…AQA
- Dialect
- A variety of English that is regional, national or international.AQA
- Discourse
- Extended stretches of communication occurring in different genres, modes and contexts, analysed as language beyond the single sentence.AQA
- Discourse and ideology
- A patterned way of talking and thinking about a topic, carrying assumptions, values and typical vocabulary.AQA
- Discursive argument and balanced evaluation
- Writing that explores more than one side of a debate, weighs evidence and reaches a reasoned position.AQA
- Diversity of producers and audiences
- Texts from various writers and speakers, for various audiences and purposes.AQA
E
- Enactment of relationships and positioning
- Language enacts relationships between writers, speakers and audiences, or between participants within a text, including power, solidarity, distance or intimacy.AQA
- Engagement with language discourses
- Referencing relevant discourses about language, such as prescriptivism or language change, to support analysis.AQA
- Evaluation of a finished text against audience and purpose
- Judging how well the final piece meets its audience and purpose and supporting that judgement with evidence from your own text.AQA
- Evidence from transcribed child data
- Analysing authentic child data means quoting the utterance and linking it to a level and a developmental claim.AQA
- Evidence-based commentary using linguistic terminology
- Supporting evaluative comments with precise evidence from both the style model and your own writing, using appropriate linguistic terminology to discuss…AQA
- Evidence-based discussion of language issues
- Presenting and weighing different perspectives using evidence, examples and linguistic concepts rather than assertion alone.AQA
- Evidence-based interpretation
- Analysis that links close language evidence to wider arguments about language, rather than summarising the text or agreeing with it.AQA
F
- Folder completeness and organisation
- The folder is submitted as a whole, so each of the four elements must be clearly labelled and present, as missing any component weakens the submission.AQA
- Form and genre conventions
- The typical features of a chosen form, such as a headline, salutation or direct address, which must be sustained throughout.AQA
- Functions and purposes of child language
- The many things children's language does beyond naming objects, such as satisfying needs, controlling others, expressing feelings, creating imaginary worlds,…AQA
G
- Genre
- A socially recognised text type with conventional purposes, audiences and structural expectations, such as a news report, a speech or an advice column.AQA
- Genre and purpose variety
- Working across genres such as journalism, advertising, conversation, blogs, speeches and social media, serving different purposes.AQA
- Genre as purpose-driven text type
- A recurring text type shaped by purpose, audience and context, such as narratives, instructions, arguments, jokes and classroom talk in speech, or stories,…AQA
- Grammar as a meaning-making resource
- Labelling structures and explaining how they create effects, support meanings or position readers, rather than merely spotting them.AQA
- Graphology
- The visual aspects of textual design and appearance, studied by describing and interpreting features such as typeface, layout and spacing.AQA
H
- Historical semantic change
- Historical variation appears in archaic lexis and semantic change such as amelioration, pejoration, broadening and narrowing, and new formations.AQA
- Historical variation
- Includes archaic terms, semantic broadening, narrowing, amelioration and pejoration.AQA
I
- Identity
- Constructed when creators select forms projecting a persona or stance, like an author choosing inclusive pronouns.AQA
- Implicature and the cooperative principle
- Speakers imply more than they state, and Grice's cooperative principle and its maxims help explain how hearers infer intended meaning when a maxim is flouted.AQA
- Independent data collection
- Students gather their own spoken, written or multimodal material as the basis of their study, rather than being given a ready-made data set.AQA
- Integration of graphology with other language levels
- Showing how visual design works alongside lexis, semantics, grammar and discourse structure rather than as a separate list.AQA
- Interlocking language levels
- Development is studied across phonological, pragmatic, lexical, semantic and grammatical levels, which can overlap.AQA
- Intonation
- A prosodic feature, not a phonological one, such as falling intonation on a tag question that invites agreement.AQA
L
- Language attitudes and debates
- The ongoing debate about language to which a text about language contributes rather than neutrally describing.AQA
- Language data collections
- Collections from which items can be drawn, alongside research findings, to inform study.AQA
- Language discourses
- Public discussion about language diversity and change, which reading texts that express attitudes prepares students to discuss in their own writing.AQA
- Language discourses and ideological debate
- Wider debates about language, such as prescriptivism, descriptivism, standard language ideology, language and power, or language change, within which a text…AQA
- Language shaped by audience, purpose, genre and mode
- Language choices are constrained and enabled by audience, purpose, genre and mode, such as register, lexis, syntax or discourse structure.AQA
- Layout
- A visual choice of design including columns, white space and alignment.AQA
- Lexis
- The vocabulary of English, including social and historical variation.AQA
- Linguistic commentary and self-analysis
- An accompanying commentary that analyses the original writing using linguistic concepts and terminology, rather than simply describing what was written.AQA
M
- Meaning-making through layout and typography
- Explaining how each visual choice shapes understanding, attitude or response, rather than treating graphology as decoration.AQA
- Methods of language analysis
- The specification toolkit comprising phonetics, phonology and prosodics, graphology, lexis and semantics, grammar including morphology, pragmatics, and…AQA
- Mixed text types
- A mixture of text types, which students may choose to pursue for their study.AQA
- Mode
- The channel of communication, comparing spoken, written and multimodal texts in terms of planning, permanence, spontaneity and interactivity.AQA
- Mode, time and place
- Using a variety of modes (written, spoken, electronic), from different times and places (global, national, regional).AQA
- Morphological structure of words
- The word-level part of grammar, studying how morphemes build words, such as a free base with a bound inflectional suffix or derivational affixes creating new…AQA
- Multimodal
- Combining language with image, sound, layout or movement, so meaning is distributed across semiotic resources.AQA
- Multimodal data
- Data where meaning is carried by more than one mode at once, for example a webpage combining image, layout and wording.AQA
N
- Non-specialist audiences
- General readers or listeners addressed by material such as newspaper articles, blogs, radio phone-in transcripts or campaign leaflets.AQA
O
- Original writing as crafted language
- A piece of original writing that demonstrates your own crafting of language for a clear purpose and audience.AQA
P
- Phonetics
- The study of how individual speech sounds are produced, covering place and manner of articulation for consonants, tongue and lip position for vowels, and…AQA
- Phonological systems and patterns
- How sounds function as a system in a language, including phonemes and patterns.AQA
- Phonology
- The study of how sounds pattern in a language, including phonemes, assimilation, elision and insertion.AQA
- Phrase and clause architecture
- Words group into noun, verb, adjective, adverb and prepositional phrases, each with a head and optional modifiers, and phrases combine into clause elements…AQA
- Politeness and face
- Politeness theory explains how face needs influence indirectness, protecting or threatening face.AQA
- Politeness, face and power
- Politeness strategies and face needs influence choices such as indirect requests, showing how indirectness can soften a potentially imposing act.AQA
- Positioning and reader address
- How textual choices construct a stance and position the reader, for example through inclusive 'we' or alarmist metaphor.AQA
- Pragmatics and speech acts
- Frameworks for analysing what a child is trying to do with language, such as performing a demand or commenting on the world in context.AQA
- Production of representations
- How representations are produced through the selection and combination of linguistic features that create particular versions of people, events or ideas.AQA
- Prosodic features and effects
- Features such as pitch, stress, tempo, volume and intonation that create effects in speech.AQA
- Prosodics
- The study of suprasegmental features like pitch, stress, tempo, volume and pauses, which carry meaning beyond individual sounds.AQA
R
- Reader positioning and persuasion
- How the text positions the reader through direct address, shared assumptions, rhetorical questions, emotive lexis or appeals to common sense, seeking to…AQA
- Referencing across paper and web sources
- References list all sources you consulted, covering both paper-based and web-based materials, presented consistently.AQA
- Reflective awareness of the writing process
- Reflecting on the writing process by describing decisions, drafting, redrafting and problems you solved, such as tightening syntax or adjusting register for…AQA
- Representation of language and language users
- How texts portray language, for example as a resource, a threat, a skill or a marker of identity, through specific lexical choices and metaphors.AQA
- Representation of social groups
- How language is used in texts to construct the identities of the different groups above.AQA
- Representations
- Emerge when repeated linguistic patterns construct a specific version of people or events.AQA
- Research design and feasibility
- Agreeing a focus and checking that planned collection is ethical and feasible with the supervising teacher before collection begins.AQA
- Research evidence and studies
- Longitudinal child language corpora, universal stages of acquisition and studies of atypical development that support or challenge a given theory.AQA
- Rule-governed development
- Errors are not random but show the systematic pattern behind forms such as 'runned' or 'foots'.AQA
S
- Semantics
- Concerns meaning, including denotation, connotation, sense relations and semantic change.AQA
- Sentence types and complexity
- Clauses combine into simple, compound, complex and compound-complex structures.AQA
- Sentence variety and complexity
- Simple, compound and complex sentences combine clauses through coordination or subordination.AQA
- Social and regional variation
- Social variation appears in dialect words, occupational jargon, slang and sociolect, such as 'bread' for money or 'sick' meaning excellent.AQA
- Social variation
- Includes dialect words, slang, sociolect and occupational lexis.AQA
- Sociolect
- A variety of language linked to social and occupational groups, gender and ethnicity.AQA
- Speech acts and deixis
- Utterances perform actions such as promising, requesting or apologising, while deixis ties language to context through words like 'here', 'now' and 'you'.AQA
- Speech acts and intention
- Utterances that perform an action such as promising, requesting or warning, with the intended action distinguished from the surface form.AQA
- Speech and writing as different modes
- Children switch between speech and writing according to situation, and comparing spoken and written versions of a genre shows differences in formality,…AQA
- Spoken data
- Data such as a recorded conversation, which students may choose to pursue for their study.AQA
- Spoken language analysis
- Analysing how phonetic, phonological and prosodic choices create meanings and effects in context.AQA
- Spoken mode
- Transient, interactive and supported by prosody, gesture and immediate feedback, so a child can repair meaning on the spot.AQA
- Stages and patterns of development
- Universal stages of acquisition: babbling, holophrastic, two-word and telegraphic.AQA
- Stages and sequences of acquisition
- Development traces morphology and syntax from one-word holophrases through telegraphic two-word combinations to complex clauses and inflections.AQA
- Strengths and limitations of theories
- Evaluation of each account, acknowledging both supporting evidence and empirical limitations rather than treating one theory as fully proven.AQA
- Student-selected analytical approach
- Students choose their own approach for analysis, such as a framework suited to their data, and justify why it suits their data and question.AQA
T
- Teacher consultation and supervision
- A negotiated process in which the supervising teacher advises on scope, ethics and appropriateness, while the data and analytical decisions remain the…AQA
- The Power of Information
- One of the three areas on which the original writing may be based, alongside The Power of Persuasion and The Power of Storytelling.AQA
- The Power of Persuasion
- One of the three areas on which the original writing may be based, for example a speech urging action on an environmental issue.AQA
- The Power of Storytelling
- One of the three areas on which the original writing may be based, alongside The Power of Persuasion and The Power of Information.AQA
- Theoretical accounts of acquisition
- Frameworks covering behaviourist, nativist/innatist, cognitive and social interactionist explanations of how children acquire spoken language.AQA
- Typography
- A visual choice of design including font, size, weight and colour.AQA
V
- Vocabulary and meaning
- Lexis is the vocabulary of English, while semantics is meaning, including denotation, connotation and sense relations.AQA
W
- Wide reading and model selection
- Studying a range of style models before selecting one that best supports your own writing intention.AQA
- Written data
- Data such as a set of letters or articles, which students may choose to pursue for their study.AQA
- Written mode
- Durable, monologic and decontextualised, demanding explicit vocabulary, punctuation and cohesion because the reader is absent.AQA
Where these terms come from
Each definition is one we publish on a English Language A-Level topic page or study guide. Open a term to see how each exam board words it and which topic it belongs to. For the full course, go to English Language revision or the glossary for every subject.
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