Glossary of Terms

Cohesion: A relationship between sentences or parts of a piece of writing that is shown by 

particular words or phrases ‘The glue that holds a piece together’

Coherence: The logical and natural consistency in a piece that brings meaning

Clause: A group of words that includes a verb and a subject and is a sentence or a main part of a sentence.

Ellipsis: The process of leaving a word, or words, out of a sentence when they are not necessary for understanding it.

Verb: A type of word or phrase that shows an action, e.g. “run”.

Noun: A word or a group of words referring to a person thing or place.

Adjective: A word used for describing a noun or pronoun.

Pronoun: A word used instead of a noun for referring to a person thing or place mentioned earlier such as ‘he’, ‘she’, ‘that’ and ‘they’.

Slang: Words or expressions that are very informal and are not considered suitable for more formal situations.

Jargon: Special words and phrases that are only understood by people who do the same kind of work.

Intonation: The sound pattern of phrases and sentences produced by pitch variation in the voice.

Assimilation: The processing changing a consonant into another under the influence of one adjacent to it.

Consonant: A speech sound or letter of the alphabet other than a vowel; a stop, fricative, or continuant.

Semantics: The study of meaning.

Metaphor: A figure of speech in which a word or phrase is applied to an object or action that it does not literally denote in order to imply a resemblance.

Alliteration: The repetition of consonant sounds at the beginning of nearby words. E.g. “Fame and fortune”

Affixes: Morphemes that can be added to a root or stem to form a more complex word (Suffixes follow the root; e.g –ed, -es, -ing and Prefixes preced the root; e,g in-, non-, un-)

Conjunction: Joining words

Connotations: The emotional associations that a word may carry, these arise from experiences.

Deictic Expressions: Pointing words such as here and these.

Domain: A sphere of activity, concern, interest or field.

Euphemism: Avoidance language to provide a verbal escape for speaking confronting taboo.

Acronyms: Words formed from the initials of other words, e.g. QANTAS, SCUBA, ANZAC

Hyperbole: Exaggeration

Pun: A type of word play that uses the different meanings of a word.

Syntax: Study of sentence structure.

Paralinguistics: Features such as gesture and eye contact.

Prosodics: Features such as pitch, intonation, stress, tempo and volume.
Assonance: The repetition of identical or similar stressed vowel sounds for a special effect. 
Collocation: The tendency for some words to combine with each other. 
Implicature: What is suggested in an utterance.
Inference: The act of deriving logical conclusions from knowledge assu