Analysis Breakdown

Lexis

Register

• Formality
• Informal – Monosyllabic, colloquial, elision, fronted cons, simple lexis, non-standard grammar
• Formal – Polysyllabic, Standard English

Emotive Lexis – Connotations, positive & negative – pejoratives

Semantic field - & field specific lexis

Figurative imagery

• Metaphors – Comparing one thing to another – E.g. ‘man of steel’
• Hyperbole – over-exaggeration – E.g. ‘I’ve walked a 1000 miles’
• Simile – comparison with ‘like’ or ‘as’ – E.g. ‘eyes like diamonds’
• Personification – giving human characteristics – E.g. ‘the sea waved’
• Oxymoron – contradiction in terms – E.g. ‘Bitter sweet’ – ‘cold sweat’

Repetition – helps cohesion – including tripling and anaphora

Humour – Puns, taboo

Reported Speech – quote from 3^rd party

Coinage – creation of new words

Listing – helps speed text along

Archaism –

• Archaic inflections – ‘Whilest’
• Interchangeable letters – (I and Y) – (U and V) – (long F and S)
• Archaic syntax – word order – ‘Repent and thou shall be saved’
• Archaic Lexis – ‘Bacchanalia’ – ‘tempest’
• Latinate – after renaissance 14^th to 17^th Centuries
• French – After 1066 and Norman Invasion
• Neologisms- borrowings, compounding, blending, acronym, initialism
• Semantic change – amelioration, pejoration, broadening, narrowing
• Non standard spelling – reminiscent of speech before GVS of 15^th to 17^th centuries
• Non-consistent spelling –words spelled differently within same text – idiosyncratic
• Irregular capitalisation – showing lack of education before 1870 Education act made compulsory

Grammar

Word classes

• Nouns, adjectives, pronouns, verbs, adverbs
• Intensifiers – give extra emphasis to words
• Sentence types – simple, compound and complex
• Sentence functions – interrogative, declarative, exclamatory, imperative
• Parenthesis – giving extra information

Phonology

• Alliteration – speeds up and gives extra emphasis – ‘crunchy cornflakes’
• Harsh consonants – give extra emphasis – ‘Dark’ , ‘Dirty’
• Rhythm – gives cohesion and flow to text
• Rhyme – makes memorable
• Assonance – internal rhyme – ‘Fakes mates’
• Sibilance – Alliteration with S sound – ‘the Snakes slithered’

Spontaneous speech

• Ellipsis – words omitted from utterance – ‘going out?’
• Phatic expression – unnecessary lexis used for politeness– ‘how are you?’
• Diexis – context dependant utterance – ‘tonight’
• Clipping – abbreviation – ‘goin’
• Discourse marker – shows about to begin speaking – ‘so’, ‘Right’, ‘OK’
• False starts, elision, pause, fillers, unintentional repetition, Question tags