Glossary of terms

A

Abstract

A short summary of the story provided before a narrative begins, capturing the ‘point’ of the story. It signals that a narrative is about to commence, and is a bridge to make the narrative relevant to the preceding conversation.

Actional process

(see narrative process)

Activation of existents

(see existential process)

Activation of experiences

(see mental process)

Activation of tokens

(see relational process)

Active

One kind of grammatical voice. Clauses can differ according to whether they are in the active voice or the passive voice. In the active voice the subject of the sentence is the participant who acts, speaks or experiences. In the equivalent passive sentence this participant, if mentioned at all, will be in a by phrase, and the subject will be the participant affected or what is experienced. For example:

the dog bit the man	active
the man was bitten by the dog	passive
I noticed the bird first	active
the bird was noticed by me first	passive

Actor

(see material process)

Adjective

The part of speech that describes, modifies or gives extra meaning to a noun or noun phrase, for instance (1) ‘the green bottles’ (2) ‘the bottles are green’. Most adjectives can have very in front of them. They can usually be used attributively, before the noun, as in (1), and predicatively, following the noun, as in (2).

Adverbial

A word or phrase (or sometimes a clause) that gives information about the process described in the rest of the clause (or another clause). It gives information about the time, manner/attitude, position/direction, accompaniment, beneficiary or purpose of the process. e.g. ‘Yesterday (time) I reluctantly (manner/attitude) went to a football match (direction) with my children (accompaniment) for my wife’s sake (beneficiary), to give her a break from the kids (purpose).’ The first two of these adverbials are words, the next three are phrases, and the last one is a clause. They all give us extra information about ‘I went’.

Affected

(see material process)

Affective words

We use this phrase to mean words that are empty or drained of conceptual meaning and simply convey emotion, e.g. swear words, which show negative emotion, and empty subjective words like nice, fine, cool, good, great, wonderful, smashing, fabulous, much used in advertising copy.

Agreement maxim

An aspect of the politeness principle that says it is more polite to agree than disagree (see also preferred seconds).

Analytical process

(see conceptual process)

Animation

Using a verb, adjective or noun normally associated with an animal or living thing for an insentient or non-living entity, e.g. the mountain breathed on my face, the shivering trees, the blind building.

Anthropocentricism

The ideology that humans are central or most important. This view tends to marginalise nature as a resource rather than something existing and acting in its own right.

Approbation maxim

An aspect of the politeness principle that says it is more polite to show approval or give praise than to voice disapproval or criticise.

Assertive

A kind of speech act in which the speaker describes and gives information about the world. Speech act verbs that describe assertives include state, swear, inform, remind, tell.

Assured readers

Readers who are highly motivated to read or continue reading a text. Non-assured readers are reluctant or show little interest in the text. Texts for assured readers need to be less visually informative than those for non-assured readers.

Attribution

The element of the generic structure of news reports that indicates the source of the information in the report, for example a news agency such as Reuters.

Attributive clauses

(see relational clauses)

B

Background

One of the elements in the generic structure of news reports. It includes references to previous events, even those stretching back into history, and details of the physical circumstances in which the event took place. It resembles Labov’s orientation.

Balance

One basic design for paragraphs or texts, in which there is a weighing up of descriptive facts, or arguments for and against a proposition, giving equal proportion to each side.

Behavioural process

A process intermediate between a mental process and a material process, which describes the outward manifestation of an inner feeling or condition, or an intentional perception. Here we find verbs describing facial expressions, gestures, etc., and verbs like watch and look at , which contrast with the mental perception verbs like see and notice.

C

Carrier

The thing or participant in a relational clause to which some quality is attributed; see also attribute.

Chain

A paragraph design where the sentences appearing in succession are linked most obviously only to the sentence before. Cohesive links are achieved by repeating vocabulary, or using pronouns to refer ‘back’ to something that has come in the previous sentence.

Change of state presupposition

When a text mentions a change of state and thereby assumes that the thing or person that changes is or was in a different or opposite state. For example, ‘Your food will get cold’ presupposes that the food is not cold, i.e. it is hot or warm.

Classificational process

(see conceptual process)

Cluster

A basic means of visual organisation of texts, consisting of a local grouping of verbal or visual items next to each other on a printed page or webpage, and separated from other clusters by space or other graphic means. Cluster hopping means reading one cluster followed by another cluster (and then perhaps going back to the first cluster), in a modular rather than a progressive reading style.

Coda

An element of generic structure by which a narrative is completed. It is a bridge out of the narrative and often uses changes of tenses and time adverbs to bring us back to the present.

Cohesion

The patterns of language in a text that help it to hang together across sentence boundaries to form larger units like paragraphs. Cohesion can be lexical or grammatical. Lexically, chains of words related in meaning across sentences make a text cohere; grammatically, words like this, the, it, the latter can establish cohesion.

Comments

Part of the episode in the generic structure of news reports. It comprises evaluations of the other elements and speculations about what might happen next.

Commissive

A kind of speech act in which the speaker/writer commits to some future action by the speaker/writer. Speech act verbs that describe commissives include promise, threaten, vow, volunteer, undertake, agree to.

Complicating action

The most essential generic element in a narrative. It contains clauses describing linked events or actions, in past or present tense, ordered chronologically. If the order of clauses is reversed we have a different narrative. For instance, ‘He went to Harvard and got a bachelor’s degree’ is a different story from ‘He got a bachelor’s degree and went to Harvard.’

Conceptual process

In visual communication this is a process that represents the identities, qualities and essence of things/people, rather like relational or existential processes in the grammar. Conceptual processes are classificational, analytical or symbolic. The classificational assign to classes, the analytical assign possessive attributes to a thing or person, and the symbolic suggest an extra meaning to what is represented.

Conjunction

A word that is used to link two clauses into a larger clause. Examples would be and, but, although, unless, if, when, so that.

Consequences

An element in the generic structure of news reports. The consequences are anything that was caused by the main event, namely another event, or a human physical reaction or verbal reaction.

Contact

The degree of intimacy or solidarity in social relationships. Frequency of meeting, variety of contexts in which we meet, and the time period over which our meetings last are all factors in determining contact.

Contested terms

Words that provoke an emotional or other reaction because of the ideology recognised in their use, and the fact that some people deliberately object to their use, e.g. poetess, chairman.

Core vocabulary

The most basic vocabulary in a language: the most frequently used, most accessible and that first learned by a child.

D

Dateline

In the generic structure of news reports, the place (not time) from which the news story was filed by the reporter

Declarative mood

The grammatical mood usually used to make statements (rather than issue commands or ask questions). The test for declarative mood is whether the subject precedes the finite verb, e.g.:

Subject		Finite
He	took	the chestnuts.
He	did	look a fool.

Declaration

A kind of speech act in which the speaker/writer brings about an institutional change by the mere act of speaking/writing. The speaker/writer has to be ratified by society and its institutions and to be in the correct institutional context. Speech act verbs that describe declarations include christening, marrying, declaring war, sentencing, pleading (guilty or not guilty), signing (a contract).

Deductive structure

The structure of a paragraph or text where the main point or idea comes first. In inductive structures the point comes last. Deductive structures allow skimming or abandoning reading halfway through the text. Inductive structures emphasise the process of reading rather than simply the information as a product.

Degrees of involvement

(see perspective)

Degrees of power

(see perspective)

Derived expression

(see parody)

Direct speech

A form of reporting speech in which the words actually spoken are included within quotation marks, and in which there is a reporting clause preceding or following the quote. For instance ‘John said, “I will come tomorrow.”’ Or ‘“I did not have a sexual relationship with Monica Lewinsky”, Clinton said.’

Directive

A type of speech act in which the writer/speaker attempts to make the reader/hearer do something, e.g. ‘Could you type out the agenda?’ Examples of directive verbs would be ask, command, request, suggest, plead, beg.

Discourse

As I use the term, the interpersonal act of communication in which the writer intends to affect a reader, and the reader attempts to work out the writer’s intentions. The writer may encode some of her meaning in text as part of this act of communication. But beware, there are many conflicting definitions of this term in the literature.

Discussion

A genre that presents information and opinions about more than one side of an issue: it may end with a recommendation based on the evidence presented. It is associated with the kind of text organisation known as a balance.

Dispersonification

Describing humans in terms that are normally used for animals, plants or inanimate objects; for example, furrow referring to lines on a human face, or eruption to refer to a pimple or boil on human skin.

Displacing content

(see parody)

Dispreferred second

(see preferred second)

E

Effective

A term used to describe ergative material process clauses in which there are two participants. When there is only one participant the clause is called middle. The terms effective and middle are roughly equivalent to the more traditional transitive and intransitive.

Emotion

An aspect of interpersonal relationships in which affect or feeling is expressed. It can be positive or negative, and fleeting or permanent.

Emotive spin

Words may share the same conceptual meaning but differ in emotive meaning, and this difference could be called ‘spin’. A famous trio are slim, thin and skinny. Slim spins positively, skinny negatively and thin doesn’t spin at all.

Episode

An element of the generic structure of news reports composed of events and consequences.

Ergative

A specific kind of verb (or language). The difference between ergative verbs and other verbs can be seen when we add a second participant to the clause. With non-ergatives the clause is extended to the right, with ergatives to the left.

	Non-ergative	Ergative
One participant	John ate	The boat sailed
Two participants	John ate a grape	Paul sailed the boat
	→	←

Euphemism

A word used to avoid a direct reference to something considered impolite. For example, comfort woman for sex slave. Sex, urination and excretion, and death are the most common topics for euphemism, though politically contested terms are also avoided by this technique.

Evaluation

An element in the generic structure of narrative. Labov identified evaluation with those clauses that don’t belong to the narrative action, but which delay its forward movement. These comprise comments by narrator or character, emotive devices, comparatives, if clauses, negatives, questions, exclamations and future tense clauses.

Event

An element of the generic structure of news reports comprising the main event and the background.

Exclusive we

(see pronoun)

Existential presupposition

The assumption that a (definite) noun phrase must refer to something that exists. If a new word or phrase is invented, such as shopaholic, then we assume that some people exist in the world who belong to this class.

Existential process

In the transitivity system of grammar existential clauses are those which represent the existence of a thing/person. This participant is known as the existent, e.g. ‘there is an elephant in my garden.’ Existents in existential processes can be grammatically re-encoded as actors in material processes. For example: ‘There is a grave in the valley’ → ‘A grave sits in the valley’, giving rise to what we call the activation of existents.

Experience

(see mental process)

Experiencer

(see mental process)

Explanation

The endpoint or aim of critical discourse analysis, showing what social and ideological forces underlie or determine text and discourse meanings.

Exposition

A genre whose purpose is to advance or justify an argument or put forward a particular point of view.

Expository questions

A question that the writer herself goes on to answer. It is a way of introducing or stimulating interest in an issue or discourse topic, or of providing a frame for the discourse that follows.

Expressive

A kind of speech act in which the speaker expresses an inner feeling. Speech act verbs which describe expressives include thank, congratulate, lament, complain, apologise.

F

Face

An aspect of interpersonal relationships. It has two aspects, positive face and negative face. Negative face is the basic claim to territories, personal preserves, rights to non-distraction – freedom of action and freedom from imposition. Positive face is the positive consistent self-image or ‘personality’, crucially including the desire that this self-image be appreciated and approved of.

Fan fiction

This has been defined in two ways: ‘the work of amateurs retelling existing stories’ or ‘the reworking of another author’s characters’. It might be regarded as a kind of parody, reacting humorously to a source text and displacing its content. There are various sub-genres. Slash fiction is a kind of fan fiction that originally featured characters from the source text in homosexual relationships but is now used to labelany pornographic fan fiction. Chanslash involves sex with minors. Femslash is lesbian porn fan fiction. Alternative universe (AU) fiction imagines hypothetical situations involving familiar fictional characters. In cross-over or mash fiction, characters from different works or genres appear in the same text. In self-insert fan fiction the author appears as a character.

Free direct speech

A way of representing speech in which the words actually spoken are quoted, but without a reporting clause, e.g. ‘“I will resign on Monday.”’

Free indirect speech

A way of representing speech in which there is no reporting clause, the lexical words actually spoken remain the same, but some of the grammatical words known as shifters change. For example, if the actual words spoken were ‘“I will visit you tomorrow”’, in free indirect speech this would become ‘He would visit him the next day.’

G

Gaze

(see vector)

Generic structure

The stereotypical structure of a particular genre, also known as a discourse schema. It provides a kind of template into which an author can fit her text. For example, the generic structure for each entry in a telephone directory is:

SURNAME followed by GIVEN NAME followed by ADDRESS followed by NUMBER

Grammatical metaphor

A way of encoding meanings in grammar that is not the most direct, simple or acquired first in learning a language. For example, the use of a noun to refer to a process rather than a thing, as in nominalisation: ‘She made a change to the cast’ rather than ‘she changed the cast’. Or the encoding of a circumstance as an experiencer: ‘Tuesday saw us climbing the Eiffel Tower’ rather than ‘We climbed the Eiffel Tower on Tuesday.’

H

Heteroglossic texts

(see monoglossic texts)

I

Ideational meaning

Conceptual meaning, which represents, sorts and classifies the outside world and the mental world.

Identifying clauses

(see relational clauses)

Ideology

As I use the term it means the ways of thinking which (re)produce and reflect the power structures of society, or, more briefly, ‘meaning in the service of power’. This term has many different definitions in different political philosophies.

Imperative

The grammatical mood most obviously associated with commands. Imperative mood uses the bare or base form of the verb without any subject before or after it. For example: ‘fill in the form’; ‘have a drink’; ‘take a break’; ‘see me on Tuesday morning’.

Implying, implication

The unstated message the writer wishes to convey beyond what is encoded in the text. The reader is expected to make inferences about the writer’s implications. If someone says ‘I can’t open this briefcase’ and you reply ‘Here’s a key’, you are implying that the person should use the key to open the briefcase, and expecting the person to infer this. The process depends on familiarity with a schema in which keys are used for opening locks, and in which suitcases have locks.

Indirect speech

A way of reporting speech where there is a reporting clause, no change to the lexical words, but changes to some words to bring them into line with the time, place and person of the reporting clause. E.g. ‘John said “I will come here tomorrow”’ becomes, in indirect speech, ‘John said that he would go there the following day.’

Indirect speech act

Using one kind of grammatical mood structure to indirectly perform a speech act associated with another mood. For instance, using the declarative mood, instead of interrogative, as a question, e.g. ‘You went to Starbucks last night?’ Or the declarative mood, instead of imperative, as an indirect command, e.g. ‘The dog needs to be fed’ instead of the direct ‘Feed the dog.’ Indirect commands/requests are considered more polite than direct ones in imperative mood.

Inclusive we

(see pronoun)

Inductive structure

(see deductive structure)

Inference

(see implying)

Information report

A genre whose purpose is to represent factual information about a class of things, usually by first classifying them and then describing their characteristics.

Instigator

(see ergative)
In effective ergative clauses, those where the verb has an object, the participant who causes the process, e.g. ‘Paul’ in ‘Paul cooked the rice’.

Interpersonal meaning

The aspect of (textual) meaning that creates or reflects the roles and relationships between reader and writer (or speaker and hearer).

Interrogative mood

The grammatical mood associated with questioning. The grammatical test for the interrogative is that the finite verb precedes the subject

	Finite	Subject
	Did	you	eat the plums?
What	were	you	doing?

The only exception to this rule is with wh- interrogatives, when the wh- word is the Subject e.g.

Subject	Finite
Who	ate	the plums?

Intertextual chains

The process by which one text is passed on through a series of readers/writers and may be modified in the process. There are particularly long intertextual chains in the news-gathering process and on multiply-edited entries on Wikipedia.

Intertextuality

The way in which one text impinges on other, later texts, or, to put it another way, how texts feed off and relate to each other. Examples are quotation, paraphrase, fan fiction and parody.

Irony

Saying or writing something very different or opposite from what one knows to be true, with the intention that the hearer/reader will realise that it is not true. (If you intend them not to realise this falsity it is lying rather than irony). Irony often involves echoing or quoting what another speaker actually said or might have said and which turns out not to be true, as a way of showing dissatisfaction with or scorn for that person or their message.

L

Latent ideology

The ideology that we accept in our everyday life and discourse without being aware of it. Ideology very often becomes hidden through a process of naturalisation in which we come to accept that the texts we encounter and their language are the only natural way of representing experience. It is only because ideology is so well hidden that people can believe in the ideal of ‘objective’ or ‘unbiased’ reporting. Learning an exotic language or doing critical discourse analysis are good ways of becoming aware of latent ideologies.

Lead

The element of the generic structure of news that comprises the first paragraph of the news report. Along with the headline it gives a summary. It usually contains information about who did what, when, where and how.

Linguistic relativity

The claim that the language we speak determines the way we think about the world and ourselves. The weak version claims that speaking one language makes it difficult to think as the speakers of another language do; the strong version claims that it makes it impossible.

Localised or modular texts

Texts using graphic or visual devices to create easily perceptible sections that can be read selectively, and in any order. By contrast, texts that are not sectionalised by visual or graphic information tend to be progressive, and to be read in linear order, from start to finish.

Location circumstance

An adverbial of place, telling where a process took place. It is possible to ‘promote’ a location circumstance into an actor, a strategy that might give more syntactic prominence to the ‘environment’. For example, ‘snakes slithered over the rocks’ could become ‘the rocks are slithering with snakes’.

M

Main event

The event in a news story that is referred to most prominently in the headline and the lead. See also lead.

Material process

A process that is an action or event, and answers the question ‘What happened?’. The thing responsible for causing the action/event is called the actor. The thing that the action or event affects is called the affected.

Medium

(see ergative)
In ergative clauses the participant that is the subject in middle clauses, i.e. when the clause has no object, or the object in effective when the clause has an object, e.g. ‘rice’ in ‘the rice cooked’ or ‘Paul cooked the rice’.

Mental process

A process of perception, cognition or emotion. In grammatical analysis the ‘person’ who experiences these perceptions, thoughts or emotions we can call the experiencer, and these perceptions, thoughts or emotions are called the experience. Experiences in mental process can be coded in the grammar as though they were actors in material processes. For example ‘I noticed the river’ → ‘the river arrested my gaze’, ‘we love the forest’ → ‘the forest touches our hearts’; I refer to this as activation of experiences.

Metaphor

A figure of speech or tool of thought in which one thing is experienced in terms of another. Like irony, a metaphor often states something that the writer does not believe, but depends for its interpretation on similarities between what is stated and the actual state of affairs, not, as with irony, on dissimilarities.

Middle

(see ergative)
Middle clauses are ergative clauses that have no object, by contrast with effective clauses that have an object, e.g. ‘the rice cooked’ is a middle clause, while ‘John cooked the rice’ is an effective clause.

Minor sentences

Stretches of text punctuated as sentences but that are incomplete either because the main finite verb or subject has been missed out, e.g. on a postcard ‘Went to Venice yesterday. Lovely weather, but too crowded’. In dialogue such utterances or ‘sentences’ occur quite naturally, for example in response to questions.

Modal constructions

Verbs, adjectives or adverbs that express obligation/permission, probability, inclination or usuality. Modal verbs are the following auxiliary verbs: may, might, can, could, will, would, shall, should, must, have to, ought to, need. Examples of modal adjectives and adverbs are permitted, allowed, expected, required, possible, possibly, inclined to, determined to, usually, sometimes, always.

Modesty maxim

The aspect of the politeness principle that says that in order to be polite one should be modest – criticise oneself or underplay one’s achievement rather than praise oneself or boast.

Modular texts

(see localised or modular texts)

Monoglossic/monologic texts

Texts in which only one voice is heard, one opinion or point of view is apparent. These contrast with heteroglossic texts, which are many-voiced and dialogic, with diverging opinions and points of view.

Multimodality

Texts are multimodal if they combine more than one mode of communication. For example, TV ads will often combine the visual mode in the film, the language mode in the speech and the musical mode as background or in jingles.

N

Narrative, narrative structure

A genre in which one tells a story as a means of making sense of events and happenings in the world. It can both entertain and inform. The generic structure of narrative, according to Labov, is

(Abstract) ^ (Orientation) ^ Complicating Action ^ Resolution ^ (Coda)
+ (Evaluation)

Narrative process

In visual communication this is a process that represents actions, events and changes, rather like the material processes of grammar. There are two kinds of narrative process: actional (which may be transactional like transitive material process verbs with an affected); or reactional, where the direction of gaze of one participant indicates that they are reacting to another process.

Narrative report of speech act

A means of reporting speech in which none of the original words need occur. ‘“I will resign tomorrow”’ might become in narrative report of speech act ‘Jean Paul indicated his intention of relinquishing employment on 6th May.’

Naturalisation

(see latent ideology)

News story

The major element of the generic structure of news reports. The news story comprises the episode and comments.

News values

Aspects of news content that make it more likely to get into the news. They include reference to elite persons and nations, cultural proximity and meaningfulness to the reader, intensity such as larger numbers of casualties and fatalities cross the threshold for inclusion in the news, unexpectedness and negativity.

Nominalisation

A grammatical transformation, or grammatical metaphor, which turns a verb or an adjective (or clause) into a noun (noun phrase). It is brought about most obviously by adding a suffix, (e.g. rough → roughness, imply → implication), but less obviously by using a noun that has the same form as a verb, e.g. a catch. Nominalisation allows the omission of both participants in a clause, e.g. actor and affected in material process clauses. Its other effects are to remove time or tense, and to introduce existential presuppositions.

Non-assured readers

(see assured readers)

Non-restrictive premodification

(see restrictive premodification)

Noun

The part of speech typically used for referring to entities with dimensions in space – things, people, places, etc. Structurally, nouns fit into frames like ‘John noticed the...’ . In terms of their form they regularly inflect or change form to mark the plural, e.g. ship/ships, dog/dogs, mouse/mice.

Noun phrase

The phrase of which the noun is the head, the compulsory constituent. Noun phrases can vary in length from one word, e.g. ‘dogs’, to very complex structures with premodification and postmodification, e.g. ‘my neighbour’s scruffy black dog which you see every morning and which persists in burying bones in my garden’.

O

Object

(see subject)

Objective perspective

(see perspective)

Old English

The form of the English language up to around AD 1100, in contrast with Middle English, AD 1100–1500, and Modern English, AD 1500 to the present.

Optionality

The choice of saying ‘yes’ or ‘no’. It is important in making polite requests to put them in question form, and even politer to put them in the form that makes it easy to say ‘no’: e.g. ‘You couldn’t drive me to the station, could you?’

Orientation

An element of narrative structure that gives information about the time, place, persons and situation/activity type they are engaged in when the action takes place. Typically this section will include adverbials of time and place, relational verbs like to be and progressive -ing forms of the verb.

Overwording

When a phenomenon, person or thing is referred to with unnecessary frequency and with a variety of different terms. This often betrays a preoccupation or obsession due to ideological struggle.

P

Parody

A kind of intertextuality used for humorous purposes, in which the content is presented in an inappropriate style. For example, ‘I put it to you that when you should have been washing your hair in anti-dandruff shampoo last night, you were in fact watching TV all evening, is that not so? Do you plead guilty or not guilty of having dandruff?’ This talks about hair-washing and dandruff in the style of legal cross-examination. Parody may involve three elements: the source expression and derived expression (e.g. language of the law) and displacing content (hairdressing, hair-washing).

Passive, passivisation

(see also active)
A tense of the verb that takes the form of had + past participle. It refers to an event that occurred before the past events that you are already describing. For example: ‘When he returned to his flat Paul saw that the dog had chewed the carpet.’ Paul’s returning and seeing is already referred to in the past tense. The dog’s chewing the carpet took place before he returned and saw it, so we use the past perfect had chewed. (Halliday calls this tense the past in past.)

Past tense

The tense typically used to refer to something that happens before it is reported. Many verbs mark the past tense with -ed, though some change their vowel sound see/saw, come/came, take/took.

Periodicity

The patterns of repetition with variation of visual organisation, such as clusters, which allow multiple entry points for the same topic or meaning.

Personification

Using a verb, adjective or noun normally used to describe a human to describe an animal, plant or non-living entity, e.g. ‘the hills danced for joy’, ‘the daffodil encouraged the tulip to bloom’, ‘the bald landscape’.

Perspective

An interpersonal meaning of visual communication. It may be subjective perspective, where the point of view is built-in and determined by the participant in the image and where the gaze of the viewer has an entry point. Subjective perspective combines degrees of involvement and degrees of power. Involvement is conveyed by a 180° angle to the viewer, who is parallel to the horizontal orientation of the participant in the image. Degree of power is conveyed by the downward or upward vertical angle – if the viewer looks down on the participant the viewer is more powerful, and vice versa; if the viewer looks up to the image, the viewer is less powerful and vice versa. Objective perspective, where there is no initial built-in focus for viewer gaze, is realised by a direct frontal angle or perpendicular top-down angle.

Possessive clauses

(see relational clauses)

Possessive presupposition

The kind of presupposition that is made when we use ’s to indicate possession, or the pronominal ‘adjectives’ hers/his, their, my, our, your. For instance, ‘I looked under Raymond’s car for your rabbit’ presupposes >> ‘Raymond has a car’ and ‘you have a rabbit’.

Power

A major element in interpersonal relationships, indicating inequality between speakers. The power takes various forms: physical strength; the authority given to a person by an institution; status depending on wealth, education, place of residence; or expertise, the possession of knowledge or skill.

Pragmatics

The branch of linguistics concerned with the production and interpretation of utterances in context. Whereas semantics answers the question ‘how do we know what this sentence means?’, pragmatics answers the question ‘how do we know what X means by uttering/writing this sentence in this time and at this place?’. It studies topics like establishing the referent, the principles governing polite cooperative talk, speech acts, propositional attitude and inference.

Preferred second

The preferred second member of a pair of speech acts. For example, in the speech act pair of invitation followed by acceptance or refusal, acceptance is preferred and refusal is dispreferred. The dispreferred is often accompanied by delays or voiced hesitation and an account or apology, e.g. ‘Mmm, er sorry I can’t make it then because I’ve got to go to a meeting.’

Premodification

(see restrictive premodification)

Present tense

The tense of the verb that refers to habitual actions or present feelings or states, e.g.: ‘I go to college by bus’; ‘I feel sick this morning’; ‘The phone is dead.’ With most verbs the present tense is the basic shortest form of the verb, that is the infinitive without to, e.g. (to) dive. But the third-person singular of the present tense adds an s to this base form, e.g.: he/she/it dives.

Presupposition

An assumption made by a speaker or writer that is not explicitly stated. Strictly speaking the presuppositions of a sentence remain unaffected when it is negated. This makes presuppositions less easy to argue against than their equivalent explicitly stated sentence. For example, ‘Clinton’s dishonesty was frowned upon by the majority of Americans’ negated becomes ‘Clinton’s dishonesty was not frowned on by the majority of Americans’. But the negated sentence still presupposes, without stating it, that Clinton is dishonest.

Procedure

A genre that shows how something can be accomplished through a series or steps of actions to be taken in a certain order. Examples are instructional texts like recipes.

Progressive form of the verb

The form of the verb which has -ing on the end. It indicates that the process referred to by the verb is still in progress, incomplete or unfinished, e.g. ‘I was driving to work when lightning struck my car.’

Progressive texts

(see localised text)

Pronoun

A word that normally substitutes for a noun or noun phrase, e.g. I, you, they, him, myself, some, these, any.First-person pronouns are I/me singular, we/us plural; second-person pronoun is you; third-person pronouns are he/him, she/her, they/them. The general or impersonal pronoun is one. We can either be inclusive, including the reader, or exclusive, excluding the reader.

Propositional attitude

The attitude a writer or speaker has to the proposition that they have expressed, for example desirability in commands, uncertainty in questions and belief in statements. But note that in ironical or metaphorical statements the attitude is less than belief. Mood encodes some kinds of propositional attitude linguistically, but in graphic communication it is very difficult to encode.

R

Range

A participant in a material process clause that, though it is the object of the verb, is not much affected by the process, e.g. I entered the room.

Reaction

An element of the generic structure of news reports, namely, an action taking place in response to the main event.

Reactional process

(see narrative process)

Reading position

(see subject position)

Receiver

(see verbal process)

Recipient

The person or participant in a material process clause who receives the other affected participant, e.g. ‘Pom’ in ‘We gave Pom the cigarettes.’

Register

This refers to the relationship or correlation between the social situation in which a text is processed and the linguistic features of the text. The aspects of the social situation comprise field (the contents of what activity is going on), tenor (the interpersonal relations between writer and reader) and mode (the role of language in the activity). If the text is an engineering textbook, for example, the field will be engineering and education, which will be reflected in technical vocabulary and definitional sentence structures; the tenor will be reflected in fairly formal vocabulary and impersonal grammar like passives; and because the mode is exposition, there will be explanation of new technical terms in less specialised vocabulary or metaphors.

In this book’s use of the term register, these linguistic features are those at the level of the sentence and below, so that genre includes register, and genre may be described as register + generic structure.

Relational process

A process that describes states of affairs, static situations. It relates two things, or a thing and a property, the token and the value, e.g.: ‘John (token) is a teacher (value)’; ‘John (token) is in the dining room (value).’ Common relational process verbs are to be and to have. Relational clauses may be attributive, where the token is a carrier and the value is an attribute (e.g. John is silly, Paul is a hairdresser) or identifying, where the token is an identified and the value an identifier (Jeremy Corbyn is the Prime Minister) or possessive, where the token is a possessor and the value is a possession (e.g. Amelia has a piano). Tokens in relational processes can be grammatically encoded as actors in material processes. For example, ‘Five trees are in the valley’ → ‘Five trees stand in the valley’, giving rise to what I call the activation of tokens.

Resolution

An element of the generic structure of narrative provided by the last of the narrative clauses. It brings the sequence of actions and events to a relatively neat end, by, for example, solving a problem.

Resource integration principle

The way in which various multimodal resources are combined to create and reinforce meanings. For example, in promotional material the verbal, visual and spatial may be integrated to highlight meanings that would not otherwise be so obvious.

Restrictive premodification

When a premodifier, for example an adjective before a noun, is used to define a subset of the things referred to by the noun, for instance black in ‘black cars’. Adjectives can also be used with a non-restrictive meaning, indicating that all of the referents of the noun share the quality referred to by the adjective, e.g. ‘The warm waters of the Gulf Stream’. This restrictive/non-restrictive ambiguity can be exploited for purposes of stereotyping.

Rheme

(see theme)

Rhetorical question

A sentence in interrogative mood that looks like a question but is in fact an indirect way of making a statement, e.g. ‘Who left the window open?’ could convey ‘Someone left the window open.’

Rhythm

A regular pattern of stressed (louder) and unstressed (softer) syllables.

S

Schema

The mental organisation of stereotypical knowledge about objects, sequences of behaviour and discourse patterns. We generally rely heavily on schematic knowledge in making inferences when interpreting discourse.

Semantics

(see pragmatics)

Shifter

A word that changes its meaning according to who utters it, when and where. For example I, here and now. Also known as a deictic term.

Social distance

The relationship between a visual text and the viewer, involving degrees of closeness. Close shots, medium shots and long shots respectively convey an increasingly distant relationship.

Source expression

(see parody)

Stack

A kind of paragraph structure common in argument or exposition that comprises lists of arguments or facts. These are often used to justify the thesis or argument stated in the topic sentence which precedes them.

Step

A kind of paragraph/text structure associated with procedural genres. Each sentence or clause of the paragraph describes one step in a process and is presented in the order in which it occurs.

Stereotyping

Assuming on the basis of some members of a class having a characteristic that other members have that characteristic.

Subject

Subjects and objects are major elements in a clause and are noun phrases. In the active voice in statements (declarative mood) subjects precede the verb and objects follow the verb. In ‘John hit the ball’, ‘John’ is the subject and ‘the ball’, the other noun phrase, is the object. The subject, not the object, determines whether the verb has the plural or singular form:

• Ducks love the pond = plural subject + plural verb + singular object
• The duck loves the ponds = singular subject + singular verb + plural object

Several pronouns in English have different forms according to whether they are the subject or object. For example, he (subject), him (object); she (subject), her (object); they (subject), them (object); I (subject), me (object); we (subject), us (object).

Subject positions

The relative roles, positions and identities created for reader and writer through texts/discourse. These positions are culturally determined through subjection to societal institutions such as the educational system, religious organisations, the family and the media. The subject position of a reader is the reading position. This is more likely to be consciously learnt/taught; for example, we might learn to read literature or a religious text according to certain conventions of interpretation.

Subjective perspective

(see perspective)

Summary

The element of the generic structure of news reports consisting of the headline and the lead (first paragraph).

Symbolic process

(see conceptual process)

Sympathy maxim

One of the maxims of the politeness principle. It states that one should at least take an interest in the readers’ problems or successes, and ideally claim your feelings match theirs. Examples of sympathising would be condolences and congratulations.

Synthetic personalisation

Treating a mass audience as though they are individuals being directly addressed. It is very common in advertising and the media, and facilitated by the singular/plural ambiguity of you, e.g. ‘Thank you for visiting our store. See you soon’ above the exit to a supermarket.

T

Tact maxim

One aspect of Leech’s politeness principle which says that to be polite when making requests one should build in indirectness and optionality; for example, using statements or questions rather than commands.

Text

The physical form that the writing (speaking) takes on the page (in the air) and the meanings that this physical form encodes. We use it in contradistinction to the term discourse. Decoding of text depends upon semantics and answers the question ‘What does the text mean?’

Text population

The people and characters mentioned in a text.

Textual meaning

The meanings involved in the organisation of a text, for example the distribution of information within a clause and paragraph, or the overall generic structure.

Thematic development

The pattern of themes over a whole paragraph or passage.

Theme

The informational starting point in the clause. In English it corresponds to the first of the basic elements of the clause – subject, object, verb or adverbial. The remainder of the clause constitutes the rheme. For example

Theme	Rheme
The florist shop	stocks wonderful hollyhocks

It is normal to put old or given information in the theme and new information towards the end of the rheme.

Time

In (online) news reports the date (and hour/minutes) when a news report was posted (or updated).

Token

(see relational process)

Topic sentence

The sentence in a paragraph that encapsulates the main idea. In ‘stack’ paragraphs it generally appears at the beginning (and/or end).

Transitivity

The resources of the grammar devoted to ideational meaning, that is, the representation of the physical and mental worlds and what goes on in them.

U

Upgrading

The choice of a less common word when an ordinary one will do, in order to sensationalise or exaggerate the nature of the activity.

V

Value

(see relational process)

Vector

The imaginary line in an image that shows the path of movement or direction of gaze. The gaze is the vector formed by the glance of the participant(s) towards the viewer. Gaze that is directed to the viewer makes a visual demand, while gaze directed elsewhere makes a visual offer.

Verb

A word-class or part of speech which refers to a process – of doing, being, experiencing, or saying (see material, relational, mental and verbal process). Verbs can be inflected, that is change their form or ending to show tense. For example:

• She works hard (present tense).
• She worked hard (past tense).

Verbs can be either main verbs or auxiliary verbs. For example, in the sentences

• I may decide to go to the match
• He did tell me to come at three

‘decide’ and ‘tell’ are the main verbs, and ‘may’ and ‘did’ are auxiliary verbs. Auxiliary verbs cannot usually stand on their own; for example, ‘I open the fridge’ and ‘I can open the fridge’ but not ‘I can the fridge’. One type of auxiliary verb is a modal verb (see modal constructions).

Verbal process

A process of saying or writing (or other symbolic expression). In verbal process clauses the participant doing the saying or writing is the sayer. The person addressed is the receiver. What is actually said is the verbiage.

Verbal reaction

One element of the generic structure of news reports which refers to a spoken response to the main event.

Verbiage

(see verbal process)

Visual contact

The connection established between the image and the viewer by looking at how images directly or indirectly address their viewers. Visual contact is realised through the resource of the gaze.

Visual demand

(see vector)

Visual informativeness

The extent to which a writer uses devices like graphics, pictures, colour, white space, bullets, asterisks and highlighting to make a text more visually arresting than homogeneous print. Visually informative texts tend to be more localised and to cater to non-assured readers.

Visual offer

(see vector)