Lexical Density Informalisation In English Language

lexical Density In designalisation In side LanguageBoth of these terms within the study of slope language ar commonly apply as gradings that help to name amidst the mouth and pen modes of Language.Lexical Density is a cake of how oftentimes information there is in a particular minute of language. Lexical words (content words) argon words which carry information. Texts which study a high property of lexical items compargond to function words (grammatic items) are express to have a high lexical niggardliness. Written texts are seeming to have a higher lexical density than spoken texts which black market to have more well-formed items than content. Scientific texts are in like manner in in completely probability to have a in truth high lexical density ascrib subject to their educational nature. H every(prenominal)iday specializes lexical density as a measure of the density of information in any passage of text, according to how tightly the lexical items (content words) have been packed into the grammatical structure. It is important to consider in this exposition however that lexical density jackpot be high in the more formal compose texts beca intake of the use of nominalisation (where hotshot syntactic form is replaced by another) which although creating a high Lexical Density count sack up in any case lower the level of information content.An example of the residues 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 called conductors they conduct electricity.(lexical density count 6) native school text book.Informalisation is the breaking down of divisions between formal commonplace use and light private use of English. Linguists argue that language utilize in public and institutional con texts is changing and that styles of private language have crossed borders to be used in public situations in a impudent form of address. They say that increasingly professional encounters are befitting more conversationalised (Fairclough in Maybin Et Al, pg205). This can be seen frequently on trading websites much(prenominal) as Recycle Now (www.recyclenow.com) advertised to us by our local council. They test informalisation through their use of some of the classifiable markers of informal English pronouns, simple 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 to a fault 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 no w call me Sharon and not Mrs Tyrrell (without being asked) are excellent examples of the informalisation of the English Language within my day to day life.Part 2Baynham and Maybin (2007, p. 123) assert that electronic means of colloquy seem to have shifted the affinity between quarrel and pen. Discuss this statement, victimisation brief examples of your own to illustrate your points. Modern technology has allowed language to look a new medium- Electronic Discourse (ED), varied in fundamental ways from classifiable conversational oral communicating and writing set in motion in other situations. The first task therefore is to look at the differences between the two more traditional mediums of speech and writing sounding at if, and how, the relationship 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 some renowned differences although the main differences lie within their differences in form. Form refers to grammatical, lexical, phonological and graphological aspects of language. I will look at the differences between the two in these view 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 lack of clear condemn boundaries which makes it nasty to know when one has ended and when one can begin. usually in speech between people 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 becharm structure. When using typical writing in a formal chronicle punctuation is essential and the agreement between nouns and verbs is crucial. usual speech and typical writing also have a different grammatical intricacy. typical speech has a simpler grammatical structure because there are fewer cla uses, less subordination 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, bunk 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 foresighted 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. Ty pical speech is usually unplanned and can be full of non-fluency 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 prosody also makes a huge difference and a word or phrase could have a different impact if pronounced with the wrong prosody. Intonation may reveal the boundaries for clauses and is zippy in social and emotional conversations, as it helps to explain ones point of view. poetic rhythm is also used to make the conversation more lively and interesting. In typical writing, the tone can only be indicated by the use of question marks (?), e xclamation marks (),underlining, CAPITALS or by describing the tone. In 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 give 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 mediocre words context cues, tone, gestures, eye contact, pace and body language-all play a part in communicating meaning, while written English loosely lacks these. Having highlighted some of the main differences and therefore the relationship between spoken and written English it is also important to note that the se differences are not absolute and there are a range of forms and genres across both speech and writing- for instance a spoken lecture or a product line interview is closer to writing than a pub conversation between friends and a personalized letter closer to speech than a paginate 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 author (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, merely am not back in office this week(see appendix A) and also uses interaction features (e.g. question s) 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 edge or in situ communicative events and behaviours, such as repetition, direct 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). in that location 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 well-known(prenominal) terms of address (see appendix B) much like that associated with speech.Phonologically and graphologicaly ED utilises many techniques to try and imply 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 phonic 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 sheer from the examples provided that electronic communication does not fall within the standard definitions of register and text (Jones, 1995, p. 5) but in fact appears to embody aspects of each. It is clear that this new and still evol ving medium that ED also demonstrates the process of informalisation within the written English language, clearly 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 criminal 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 suppose the numerous varieties that now exist.WORD COUNT 1642