Language, Speech, and Linguistic Variations
Language
Language is the power that human beings have to communicate through symbols that are shared and that can express thought.
The language is a structured system of verbal and combination rules common to a community of speakers.
Speech
Speech is the actual realization on the part of speakers of a language at a time and a particular communicative situation.
Standard Language
The standard language is the set of rules and practices accepted by speakers of a language as exemplary forms of speech.
Varieties of Language
Diaphasic Variations
People adapt their speech to the communicative situation in which they find themselves.
- The way an individual talks in a given situation and time, being aware of who they are speaking to and the context, is called register.
- In a situation like a job interview or a conference, a formal register is used, with more elaborate and precise language.
- In informal situations, with friends or family, an informal register is used.
Diastratic Variations
Those variations that a language presents based on the social or cultural group to which the speakers belong.
- The way of talking that a social group shares, with common characteristics, is called sociolect.
Biological Factors
- Sex: Men and women do not speak the same; women use less profanity and more euphemisms.
- Age: Younger generations are often more imprecise in their use of vocabulary and tend to use their own lexicon.
Non-biological Factors
- Cultured Level: Greater correction and precision.
- Middle Level: Common among speakers and used in the media.
- Popular Level: Furthest from the norm, with the use of slang, buzzwords, and filler words.
Diatopic Variations
Varieties of a language whose differences are determined by the speakers’ place of origin, called dialects.
- Southern: Andalusian, Canarian, Extremaduran, Murcian
- Northern: Asturian-Leonese, Aragonese
- Bilingual Zones: Castilian with Basque, Galician, Catalan
Word Formation
Acronyms
Acronyms are words formed by a set of initial letters of a complex expression. Example: IPC, UN
Initialisms
Initialisms are words formed by taking one or more letters from other words. Example: Telematics, UFO, Laser
Abbreviations
Abbreviations involve deleting the beginning or end of a word.
- Apocopated – final part removed: Photo
- Aphesis – initial part removed: Chacho, bus
Loanwords
Loanwords are words that come from other languages and are incorporated into one’s own. Example: Tracing, barbarism.
Semantics
Denotation
The set of basic semantic features of a word, its basic meaning.
Connotation
A set of values that appear in speech related to the denotation of a term.
- Socio-connotative Meanings: Traits linked to a word’s meaning based on social and cultural values.
- Stylistic Meanings: A word is associated with the use a certain sociolect makes of it.
- Affective Meanings: Associations that reveal subjective emotions or feelings of the speaker, attached to their own personal experience.
Lexical Family and Semantic Field
- A set of words related by meaning, sharing the same lexeme.
- A set of words related by meaning.
Synonymy
A relationship between two words that have distinct forms but the same or similar meaning. Types: Absolute, Conceptual, Denotative, Referential, False.
Antonymy
An oppositional lexical relationship between two words with opposite meanings. Types: Complementarity, Gradual, Reverse.
Polysemy
Multiple different meanings associated with the same word.
Homonymy
A relationship between two words that have the same form but different meanings. Types: Homophones, Homographs.
Inclusion Relations
Hypernyms, Hyponyms, Cohyponyms