Index of Terms
acronym 38
A word formed by taking the first letters of a compound word or phrase in which the consonant/vowel sequence allows the whole to be pronounced as a word and not as a sequence of letters. Examples: radar and NATO - not -BBC (which is an initialism).
asynchronous 92
Communication which occurs with delays between turns (e.g. email). Synchronous: communication with turns taken in real time (e.g. Internet chat, video conferencing).
anorak 39
Derogatory term used about computer enthusiasts or de-socialised enthusiasts generally; (see also geek and nerd). Geek and nerd have more a specific sense of computer enthusiast whereas anorak seems to comment on poor social skills. There is an Internet genre of spoof nerd questionnaires and fashion advice sites. All these words have negative connotations as against the more positive expert or radical roles suggested by 'techie' or 'hacker'. A subject for further language investigation.
baud 35
An information flow measurement of one byte per second.
bleaching 56
A situation in which a word loses some of its original force and specificity. 'Bloody' no longer carries the force it did when it was a blasphemous phrase ('By Our Lady') in a predominantly Catholic Christian culture.
blend 54
A word formed by two or three free morphemes combined and shortened to form a new word which incorporates the meanings of the constituents (e.g. Internet, and 'etiquette' to 'netiquette').
Boolean search 102
A more complex type of keyword search that gives the user the choice of looking for a word with, or not with, another word.
booting, bootstrapping 38
The start-up process in which a computer reminds itself of its existence in a sequence of command controls that flash on the screen before it becomes operational. Said to come from a start-up program called bootstrap loader which was popular in the 1980s.
bot 10
A clipping of chatterbot, itself a back-formation blend of chatterbox and the loan word robot: a computer program which simulates human conversation by taking turns in interactive written discourse. Most famously, Weizenbaum's Eliza.
byte 35
The binary code storage required for one character of ASCII. A byte is the computer representation of a letter in zeros and ones.
cheat/jump 77
A word used by games' consoles' users to denote a short-cut to the next more difficult stage of the game, or next 'level'.
clipping 44
A type of shortening in which words are formed by retaining only part (usually the first syllable) of the original word (e.g. laboratory to lab; video cassette to video).
collocation 44
This refers to co-occurrence of words in texts. There may be patterns in collocates that indicate likely style or situation. Computer-assisted text analysis programs such as Wordsmith Tools make it possible to map statistical patterns of collocates.
commodification 3
The turning of information into a packaged, marketable commodity. More precisely, 'the process whereby social domains and institutions, whose concern is not producing commodities in the narrower economic sense of goods for sale, come nevertheless to be organised and conceptualised in terms of commodity production, distribution and consumption' (Fairclough 1992: 219). So students are referred to as clients or ‘generating units of activity'. Associated with the ideas around marketisation.
connotations 17
The connotations of a word are the associations it creates. These may be individual or cultural.conversational maxims 99 Particularly associated with H.R Grice. Idealised principles of cooperation in conversation such as relevance, truthfulness and appropriate levels of detail. Their absence may be revealing about the intentions of the speaker.
cyborg 2
Literally, a part human and part machine hybrid: can be used in a literal sense about a mammal with an electronic implant or more metaphorically about interactions which combine electronic and physiological processes. See Haraway (1991).
deictic 85
Literally ‘pointing words’ such as 'this'(one over here). Deictic expressions usually depend on a shared context for their precise reference to be understood.
digitise 6
Turning information into machine-readable signals of zeros and noughts: turning atoms into bits, to paraphrase Negroponte (1995).
emoticon 6
A blend of emotion and icons: symbols such as smileys used to express emotional attitudes and nuances. Originally keyboard-created and now often taking the form of small graphical images or thumbnails.
function words 102
Words with a grammatical rather than a lexical function such as articles, determiners, and prepositions. Such words occur more frequently in texts than content or lexical words but say less about field and domain. They could be seen as the grammatical mortar that frames and sticks together the lexical bricks.
geek 39
See anorak.
Geocities 93
The name of a mass-appeal website for virtual communities who come together around shared interests and not shared time or space: an IRL simulation of the city.
hacker 11
The Oxford Dictionary of New Words distinguishes between the colloquial meaning of a person who enjoys programming or computers for their own sake and a more specific sense of someone who uses computer expertise to gain unauthorised access to computer networks. A CD-ROM keyword search shows the latter is becoming the predominant meaning in terms of number of hits. Hacker has undergone pejoration with increasing connotations of subversive or criminal activity.
handshake 77
A metaphorical expression to refer to the exchange of computer protocols by fax machines when they connect. Sometimes used verbally or iconically about similar Internet connection.
homophone 90
Two different words (lexemes) which sound the same or similar: there, they're and their are obvious examples.
hypernyms 57
These are overarching categories under which constituent words can be grouped.
hyponym 49
Lettuce and cabbage are co-hyponyms of the hypernym term vegetable.
icon 74
In language study, something iconic is a direct representation of something as opposed to something symbolic which suggests its referent more indirectly. Icon has also come to mean a graphical symbol that can be manipulated to control a computer program.
imperative 18
Another word for a command. In terms of formal grammatical function, sentences can command (imperative), state (declarative), ask (interrogative) or exclaim (exclamatory).
informalisation 24
A style of writing that suggests an easy-going social relationship between writer and reader, based on informal address terms, direct address to the reader with the second-person pronoun, and casual colloquial expressions. (Goodman 1996: 142.)
keyword search 80
A computer search in which the machine searches for matches of a pattern of strings of code or ASCII characters in sequence.
KWIC list 50
These are computer-generated lists of characters or words in their immediate contexts. These are generated by such programs as Wordsmith Tools and the BNC SARA interface. They can be used to search for situational uses and textstrings, including letters, words and smileys.
leakage 50
A type of semantic widening in which a word leaks out of its original function to other contexts. So'joyriding'may be used loosely for its metaphorical sense of reckless pleasure-seeking.
lexical words 102
These include those in word classes such as nouns, verbs, adjectives and adverbs. These often reveal patterns of meaning or semantic fields in a text.
marketisation 24
The informalisation of style and the mixing of persuasion and information for marketing purposes. (Goodman 1996:142.)
mining (data mining) 2
A word or phrase used in the business sections of some broadsheets to refer to the detailed computer-assisted examination of computer databases in order to generate commercial, political or legal intelligence. Storecards and Internet choice histories can be used in this way.
multi-modal 9
Mode refers to a channel of communication: a multi-modal text combines different channels of communication such as sight, movement and audio stimuli.
narratee 27
The reader implied by the text: the ideal reader who shares the assumptions and the values the text appears to promote.
nerd 39
See anorak.
netiquette 54
Politeness conventions for using e-communication in general.
Over-lexicalisation 38
This refers to a situation in which there are considerably more words for a referent than are needed for precise communication, possibly implying that the purposes of the words are for social display, competition and performance. It could be argued that such words have a primary interpersonal function (Halliday 1978:166).
paralinguistic 21
A means of conveying meaning outside verbal language. Non-verbal communication is paralinguistic.
phatic communion 98
The type of exchange which is redundant in terms of instrumental meaning but socially significant (Malinowski 1923).
pre-modification/pre-modifiers 29
The positioning of adjectives and other modifiers before that which they describe or modify. These often take the form of single words or lists of single words. As distinct from post-modification which occurs after the noun or verb described and often takes the form of a phrase or clause (e.g. 'The red chicken' as opposed to 'the chicken that was red').
prosodic 18
Auditory features such as stress, volume, pitch and intonation that indicate how words should be interpreted.
pseudo-prosodic features 18
Use of graphological features in CMC such as capitalisation to indicate shouting or nonstandard spellings to indicate how a word should be pronounced ('kewl'for'cool', 'seeing ya' for'seeing you').
referent 38
That which is referred to.
re-lexicalise 38
This refers to the process in which lexical words are re-used for other referents, particularly as practised by marginalised or oppositional social groups who may create elaborate alternative vocabularies. Such words may show patterns of logic, jokes, insider knowledge or metaphorical extension (e.g. crashing cheat = teeth; smelling cheat = nose; belly cheat = apron: Halliday 1978:173).
semantic, semantic widening 48
Related to meaning. Semantic field refers to the patterns of meaning in a text; semantic widening refers to a process in which a word develops a more generalised meaning than it had previously; semantic narrowing refers to its developing a narrowed and more specific sense.
semantic fields 72
A field of meaning. May be a narrow related gradeable field such as temperature (hot -tepid - luke warm - cold) or more loosely connected meanings of a related type such as terms associated with love or romance.
shibboleth 35
A sociolinguistic concept with an Old Testament etymology: a word, the use of which can be used as a marker of group identity. Knowing it means you are part of the group; not knowing leaves you an outsider. See ludges xii, 4-spam/spamming 38 Electronic junk mail, or sending it.
smileys 6
See emoticon.
systemasticity 74
A word used by some computer theorists to refer to deliberate extended iconic metaphors in computer interfaces. If the text saved is a document, then it will be saved in a filing cabinet or may be thrown in a wastepaper bin, by analogy with an IRL office.
taboo 38
A taboo is an aspect of experience which is forbidden in a particular culture. It is said that sex, death and cancer are taboos in the UK. Taboo-breaking means language or behaviour which wilfully crosses these thresholds.
tenor 15
The social relationship implied and enacted by a text or discourse: its underlying politics and assumptions as indicated by formality, politeness, address and clues about implied hierarchy. See Halliday (1978).
text string 8
A letter or sequence of characters that can be searched and manipulated by a computer. All ASCII text can be combined in text strings that relate to computer code. Scanned images such as digitised graphics, audio or video cannot be searched directly in this way although information can be searched by ASCII-based headers such as file or track details.
trolling 93 Impersonating a fictitious identity online in order to enrage other users and provoke them into flaming. See Donath (1999).
Turing Test 33
This test was devised by computer theorist Alan Turing in 1950 to measure artificial intelligence. Also called the 'imitation game', the test is whether a computer could be detected in a typed dialogue between a computer and a person. A person and a machine each have a typed conversation with a questioner, who has to decide which is the human and which is the computer. If they guess wrong half the time, the computer passes Turing's Test.
virtual community 98
Groups of people who maintain contact through computer-mediated communication such as chat rooms or MUDs as opposed to f2f contact.
wildcards 102
A blank used in a keyword search. So joyrid— will produce results for joyride, joyrider and joyriding.