glossary

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AAVE (African American Vernacular English) See EBONICS.

affix something added to a word, usually to the beginning (PREFIX) or end (SUFFIX), that changes or alters the word’s meaning; for example, with the word lock: locks, locking, locked, unlock, relock, lockable, lockout.

agonistic taking a competitive or oppositional position on a topic, approaching a question or topic as a matter of pros and cons. The term has its origin in Greek, where it referred to an athletic competition.

Aristotelian refers to the ideas of the Greek philosopher and scientist Aristotle (384–322 B.C.E.). Aristotle placed value on knowledge gained from the five senses—that is, empirical knowledge; Aristotle’s ideas are often contrasted with those of fellow Greek philosopher, Plato, who believed that reason and discussion eventually lead to the discovery of important truths. Contrast PLATONIC.

ASL (American Sign Language) the principal sign language used in the United States by Deaf people and their conversation partners; it is a different language from British Sign Language and is also different from SIGNED ENGLISH.

bidialectalism the state of knowing two or more dialects of a single language. For example, people who use STANDARD ENGLISH at work and AAVE, New York English, Texas English, or any other variety with family or friends may be said to be bidialectal.

bilingualism the state of knowing two or more languages, but not necessarily using them with equal proficiency or in equal proportions. People who acquire two (or more) languages in infancy or early childhood may be considered to be native bilinguals; that is, they have two NATIVE LANGUAGES.

BVE (Black Vernacular English) See EBONICS.

codeswitching the use of two or more languages within a single conversa-tion—sometimes within a single sentence. Codeswitching is performed (in speech or in writing) among bilinguals who speak the same languages. Codeswitchers intuitively know where they can, and can’t, switch languages in a sentence in order to continue to make sense; also, there are complex (and usually unspoken) constraints on the social circumstances where codeswitching is and isn’t appropriate. For example, codeswitching is a common practice among English/Spanish bilinguals in California, New York, or Texas; some people refer to this type of codeswitching as SPANGLISH. On the other hand, English/French bilinguals in Quebec, for a number of social reasons, are much less likely to codeswitch.

creole a type of language that is an identifiable blend of two or more languages. Creole languages develop in very specific situations of intense contact between speakers of three or more languages, one of which is politically dominant. All creoles share certain common grammatical features regardless of which languages have combined to form them, and creoles are more complex and elaborated than PIDGINS. Two examples of creole languages are Gullah, spoken in the United States, and Kreyòl, spoken in Haiti.

Deaf/deaf two words that have to do with not hearing. When written with a small d, deaf describes the physiological condition of not having hearing; when capitalized, the word refers to the robust culture developed by Deaf people or to its members. The principal language used in U.S. Deaf culture is ASL (AMERICAN SIGN LANGUAGE), and Deaf people believe that deafness is not pathological and that their lives are not deficient or pitiable.

descriptive grammar a description of a language as it is used by its speak-ers; it describes such elements as the sound inventory and sound pat-terns, how words and sentences are formed, and the types of verbal art and word play that speakers practice. A descriptive grammar is not concerned with what is and isn’t considered correct usage. See also GRAMMAR and PRESCRIPTIVE GRAMMAR.

dialect a variety of a language that is spoken by some of its speakers and understood by most or all of its speakers; for example, the California English used by Buffy the Vampire Slayer or the East Coast English used by the Soprano family may not be spoken by all English speakers, but both dialects are readily understood by virtually all Americans and many other English speakers in other parts of the world. Other dialects of English include EBONICS, Texas English, South Asian (Indian) English, Australian English, and RECEIVED PRONUNCIATION, which is part of Standard English in Britain. Contrast LANGUAGE and REGISTER.

diminutive form of a word (most often a noun) indicating smallness of size and/or affection or endearment. Many languages have systematic ways of creating diminutive forms by adding a suffix or changing the word form in other ways. In English, for example, we may add the suffix -y (or -ie) to names (Bob/Bobby, Tom/Tommy, Barbara/Barbie, Kate/Katie) and other words (duckie, doggie, baggie). However, the use of the diminutive is relatively limited in English. In contrast, diminutives are used quite commonly in many languages, including Spanish and Arabic. In Arabic, for example, the word for dog is kalb; the diminutive form, kulayb, can be used to mean “tiny dog” (not “puppy”) or something that might translate as “dear” or “beloved dog.”

discursive practice refers to patterns of language use and their social functions, especially when the practice provides a meaning that is more than a literal interpretation of the words. For example, in certain circum-stances the comment “gee, it’s a little warm in here, isn’t it?” may not be a simple comment on the room temperature but rather an indirect re-quest that someone open a window or turn on a fan.

Ebonics a name used to refer to a variety of English that is spoken principally by African Americans, although not all African American people use it and it is used by some non-African Americans. Ebonics is known by various labels, including AAVE (African American Vernacular English), BVE (Black Vernacular English), Black English, and African American English. Linguists recognize that Ebonics, like all other varieties of English, is SYSTEMATIC AND RULE-GOVERNED.

English-Only movement organizations and activities with the goal of man-dating that English be declared the only official language of the United States. Some of its supporters want to ensure that English is the official and only language used in government business—court proceedings, tax form instructions, driver examinations, etc. Other supporters would like to eliminate bilingual education and/or the rights of people to use languages other than English in workplaces or public space. The present-day movement is considered to have begun in the early 1980s, al-though English-Only legislation in the United States was enacted in some states and localities as early as the nineteenth century.

fingerspelling the alphabet expressed with positions of the hand and fingers. In ASL(American Sign Language) and other gestural systems of communication used by deaf people, proper names and technical terms or other words that do not have specifc signs may be spelled out using fingerspelling.

first language the first language(s) acquired by a person; also known as NA-TIVE LANGUAGE or MOTHER TONGUE. A person who acquires more than one language from infancy or early childhood may have more than one first language.

foreign language a language (other than the native language) learned or used by a person for limited and/or specific purposes such as business transactions or reading. A foreign language is not learned with the in-tent of using it extensively in daily life. Contrast SECOND LANGUAGE.

gender a term referring to a social category that roughly corresponds to the physiological categories of male and female sex, but the dividing line is not as distinct. Further, as a social category, the distinguishing characteristics of gender are not universal, and they change across time and cultures. Individuals construct their own genders according to their appearance and behavior; it is possible for persons of male sex to present themselves in the world as having feminine gender, and vice versa. Sex and gender are often used interchangeably in informal usage but each has a precise and distinct meaning. Neither sex nor gender is a reliable predictor of a person’s sexuality or sexual orientation. Contrast SEX.

gender-neutral language words or phrases that do not specify male or fe-male gender unless there is a specific reason to do so, for example, service technician (not serviceman) or flight attendant (not stewardess). Instead of every player should bring his bat and glove, we may say, every player should bring a bat and glove.

gendered pronouns pronouns that indicate the gender of the referents; for example she, her, he, his. Examples of non-gendered English pronouns are they, their, you, I. Some languages have fewer gender-marked pro-nouns than English, while other languages have more.

grammar the predictable patterns and systems of sounds (or gestures), sequences or words, and assemblages of meaningful elements of any language. These patterns are also called rules. All languages (and dialects) have grammar, and it is this grammar that linguists study and analyze. See also SYSTEMATIC AND RULE-GOVERNED.

grammatical gender agreement a type of agreement system in languages, like Spanish or German, that have gendered nouns and require certain other words, such as the adjectives, verbs, or pronouns, to have gendered forms that agree with the gender of the noun. In Spanish, for example, silla (chair) is feminine, while sofá (sofa) is masculine; if you had recently bought one of each, you might refer to la nueva silla y el nuevo sofá. Other languages, like Japanese and Hebrew, distinguish the gender of the speaker, so that women and men have different words for I and me.

indigenous language a language of a people native to a particular territory, such as Navajo, Cherokee, or other Native American languages in the United States, Ojibwa or Cree in Canada, and Zapotec or Yucatec Maya in Mexico.

language (in general) a type of communication system that employs sounds and/or gestures to construct meaning. Although many animals also have communication systems—some very elaborate—language is, to the best of our current knowledge, a uniquely human enterprise. Among the characteristics that distinguish language from animal communication systems are transmission from generation to generation (rather than innate knowledge), the ability to convey information about distant places or past and future time, and the ability to lie.

language (vs. dialect) a distinction that is social and/or political rather than based on linguistic criteria. For example, Swedish and Norwegian are quite similar and mutually intelligible, yet they are considered two separate languages by their speakers, principally because they are each identified with a different country. On the other hand, Mandarin and Cantonese are considered by their speakers to be two dialects of a single language, Chinese, despite the fact that they are not mutually intelligible in their spoken forms (although they share a written form). In determining whether two systems are separate languages or dialects of the same language, linguists consider mutual intelligibility to be generally the most reliable test; only the speakers themselves, however, can make the determination.

language preservation efforts undertaken to make sure that a language does not disappear when all of its speakers begin to rely more heavily on another language for their daily lives. This is the situation of many indigenous languages of the United States, whose speakers are using English, even with their children, so that the language is not being transmitted to new generations. See also LANGUAGE REVITALIZATION.

language revitalization efforts undertaken to improve the status of a language in a community where it has traditionally been spoken and to in-crease the number of everyday speakers. Some programs, for example, may involve pairing elderly speakers (who may be the only people in a community who still know the language) with young people who want to learn the language of their grandparents and protect their cultural heritage. See also LANGUAGE PRESERVATION.

language rights/linguistic rights rights of individual speakers as well as of communities of speakers of any given language with regard to that language and/or others spoken in a given place. For example, a guideline published by the United Nations suggests that all children have the right to receive basic education in the language spoken in their communities. Other linguistic rights may include the right to socialize in one’s language(s) of choice and the right to access primary education in the official (or dominant) language(s) of the nation or state.

linguistic determinism the controversial theory that language shapes thought, and more specifically that the language(s) spoken by an individual determines (and/or strongly influences) the content and manner of his or her possible thoughts and knowledge. Linguists continue to de-bate the topic, also known as the SAPIR-WHORF HYPOTHESIS.

linguistics the study and analysis of language and languages. Linguistics is concerned with many questions, such as: what does it mean to “know” a language? how do children acquire their language(s)? how do people ac-quire additional languages? how is language stored and processed in the brain? how do languages change over time? what features, if any, do all languages share? how do the structures of the many languages in the world differ? how are they similar? how do we use language to accomplish the work of maintaining human society? how do we use language to establish our individual and group identities?

metaphor a figurative way of comparing or understanding one thing in terms of something else, usually by saying something “is” something else. To refer, for example, to a wave of immigrants or a sea of faces emphasizes humans as a collective whole rather than as distinct individuals. All metaphors highlight certain features of the comparison and obscure others. For example, the two metaphors dating is a game and dating is a dance may be equally valid, but the first one emphasizes competition and the possibility of winning or losing while the second emphasizes the cooperative nature of the enterprise.

minority language in a given state or nation, a language spoken by a minority of residents or a language with relatively less status than another language, though it may have more actual speakers. A language may be a minority language in one country, such as Spanish or Vietnamese in the United States, and a majority, or dominant, language in others.

morphology the branch of linguistics that examines parts of words and how they can (or can’t) combine to form other words. If you studied morphology, you might invent words like awesomeicity or dudeitude and analyze why your friends would understand those words easily, while other invented words like dis-awesome or dude-hood may have less success.

mother tongue the language(s) learned from infancy in the home. See also FIRST LANGUAGE and NATIVE LANGUAGE.

multilingualism state of knowing more than two languages. The term may be applied to individuals who use more than two languages in their lives (it is normal and customary in many places in the world—parts of Europe, Africa, and South America, for example—for the majority of the population to be multilingual). The term may also be applied to communities where more than two languages are commonly used; U.S. cities with large and diverse immigrant populations, such as New York, Chicago, or San Francisco, may be considered multilingual cities.

national language a language that is associated with a nation and whose residents are generally presumed to be speakers of that language. Its status in a given nation may or may not have been made official. For ex-ample, by legal decree, French is the national language of France; in contrast, English has no official status in the United States although it is by far the dominant language of public and private discourse in the country. A nation may have more than one national language; for example, both French and English are the national languages of Canada. See also OFFICIAL LANGUAGE.

native language the language(s) first learned by an individual. A person who acquires more than one language from infancy or early childhood may have more than one native language. See also FIRST LANGUAGE and MOTHER TONGUE.

non-standard refers to a variety or dialect of a language that differs from the standard variety and may be considered by some people to be inferior to it. Some non-standard varieties of English, for example, are various Southern Englishes (which use y’all) and Chicago English (with its dis, dat, and youse). Contrast STANDARD ENGLISH.

non-verbal communication meaning or intention expressed without the use of spoken or signed words. Non-verbal communication may be overt and deliberate, for example, rolling one’s eyes, winking, nodding, shaking one’s head, or giving a thumbs-up sign; it may also be unintentional, for example, the posture of conversation partners toward one another— facing one another or facing away, leaning toward or away from one another or crossing one’s arms across the chest.

observers’ paradox a phenomenon whereby people who are being observed or studied by others change or modify their words, thoughts, and actions—sometimes very blatantly and sometimes more subtly. Re-searchers work to minimize this effect.

official language a language whose status in a country has been officially recognized, that is, granted status by law. Countries with official languages have a variety of policies, but the existence of an official language usually means that all government business, from legislative acts to birth registrations, will be produced in that language; education may be another area conducted exclusively in the official language. See also NATIONAL LANGUAGE.

ontology the nature or essence of something, or the study and exploration of a thing’s nature or essence.

orthography the system of correct spelling for a given language.

phatic communication exchanges of conversation intended to maintain a pleasant connection among participants rather than to convey information; comments about the weather between two people at a bus stop or on an elevator or the greeting rituals we perform (“Hi, how are you?”; “Hey, what’s up?”; “Du-uu-ude”) are examples of phatic communication.

phonetic refers to the production and/or comprehension of the sounds of a language. The science of phonetics studies the physics and physiology of how sounds are produced by speakers and perceived by listeners in the various languages of the world.

phonology the science of describing and analyzing the patterns of sound combinations of a language. Every language has its own unique pat-terns. For example, Spanish and English both have the sounds /s/ as in sand, /p/ as in pan, and /l/ as in land. English can put all three sounds together in a single syllable, for example, in the words splice or splash, but Spanish cannot combine the three sounds. On the other hand, Polish and English both have the sounds d as in dine and v as in vine; English can-not combine them in that order in a single syllable, but Polish can, as in the word dva (two).

pidgin a type of language that arises in situations of intense contact for specific purposes between groups of speakers of two languages, for example, as a consequence of trade or slavery. A pidgin usually has the vocabulary of one language and the grammatical structure of the other. A pidgin cannot be a native language for anyone because it has very limited expressive power. Pidgins are usually short-lived; they either outlast their usefulness and disappear or expand their communicative potential and become CREOLE languages.

Platonic refers to the ideas of Greek philosopher and writer Plato (c. 428- c. 348 B.C.E.). Plato sought knowledge and truth by means of reason and discussion among open-minded people, that is, by the use of dialectics. His methods are often contrasted with those of ARISTOTLE, who, as an empiricist, relied more on direct observation and information gained from the five senses.

prefix something added to the beginning of a word that changes or alters the word’s meaning; for example, with the word heated: unheated, reheated, preheated, and overheated. See also AFFIX and SUFFIX.

prescriptive grammar the set of rules devised and maintained by one or more authoritative bodies for the correct usage of a language. Prescriptive grammar attempts to instruct people in how they should talk and/or write. Some languages such as French or Spanish have official academies that make and change rules of correct usage; the rules of English are maintained ad hoc by usage manuals, dictionaries, and, to a lesser extent, newspapers and magazines—and, ultimately, by the language’s users.

pro-drop language a language in which the subject of a sentence does not need to be explicitly expressed because other elements, such as verb endings, provide the necessary information. English is not a pro-drop language, since it requires every sentence to have a subject; for example, I eat, you eat, we eat, they eat. Spanish, on the other hand, is a pro-drop language; the same sentences— como, comes, comemos, comen—do not require pronouns because the verb comer (to eat) has a distinct form for each possible subject.

productive describes a grammatical structure, such as a word PREFIX or SUF-FIX, that can easily combine to form new words or phrases. For example, the negative prefix un-is highly productive; not only can many new words be formed with it, but other speakers of English will be able to understand the word without further explanation. You could tell a friend that your blind date last night was “very unwonderful,” and although the word is not in the dictionary and may never have been heard before, your friend would understand it immediately.

Received Pronunciation (RP) pronunciation standards of British English that are associated with prestige and the highest levels of social status. It is also known as “Queen’s English” or “BBC English.” Until the 1970s, RP was the required pronunciation for all BBC announcers and newscasters. It remains the accent of Standard English in Britain.

register a variety of a language that is appropriate to specific situations or addressees. For example, the simple question “where did you go last night?” would elicit very different responses depending on whether you were answering your roommate, your mother, or a police officer. Registers can usually be placed on a continuum of formality; all natural languages have multiple registers, and all adult speakers of a language consciously or unconsciously select the register most appropriate to the situation. Contrast DIALECT.

rhetorical question a question that is not intended to be answered directly. Writers and speakers may use a rhetorical question to frame an argument they are about to make or to call attention to something. Rhetorical questions are often used sarcastically or ironically; for example, when a parent asks, “Just what do you think you’re doing?” a literal answer is usually not what is being requested.

Sapir-Whorf hypothesis the theory, named for early-twentieth-century linguists Edward Sapir and Benjamin Lee Whorf, that the specific language(s) we speak shape our perceptions of our own lives and of the world. Sapir wrote, “The language habits of our community predispose certain choices of interpretation.” For example, the colors of the visible spectrum are a seamless blend; the division of red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, and violet is completely arbitrary and not universal. See also LINGUISTIC DETERMINISM.

second language a language learned in late childhood or adulthood for the purpose of regular use in daily life; for example, in the case of many immigrants to the United States or other countries, or people who, for personal or professional reasons, communicate frequently with speakers of another language. Contrast FOREIGN LANGUAGE.

semantic domain categories of meaning into which words may be grouped; for example, names of flowers; verbs that describe ways of eating (devour, slurp, chomp, lick, bite, chew); shapes of human bodies (stocky, slender, roly-poly, rotund, curvaceous, angular, willowy). Some semantic domains may have specific usage limitations. For example, in American and British English, verbs that express opinion or states of mind are seldom used in the -ing form; it would sound peculiar to say “I am liking that car,” “she is wanting more ice cream,” or “your parents are believing in you.”

semantics a linguistics subfield that deals with meaning. A semantics exercise, for example, may ask you to list words such as mouse, window, boot, freeze, surf, or crash and explain how their meanings as computer-related terms are similar to and different from their more general meanings.

sex a term that refers to physiology and genetics by dividing people categorically into either male or female based on physical characteristics. Sex and gender are often used interchangeably in informal usage, but each has a precise and distinct meaning. Neither sex nor gender is a re-liable predictor of a person’s sexuality or sexual orientation. Contrast GENDER.

sexist language language usage that takes maleness as the default human characteristic and specifies femaleness only in references that are specifically or exclusively female. The statement “Someone left his keys on the table” is an example of sexist language (unless the speaker knows for certain that the keys could not have been left by a woman). Words such as mailmen or mankind are sexist when used to refer to all mail carriers or all humans (slightly more than half of whom are female).

Signed English a system of manual communication that uses English words and English word order but is expressed manually rather than spoken. Signed English is different from ASL (American Sign Language), which uses different word order and different ways to refer to persons and time. Signed English, a system of manual communication rather than a natural language, lacks the subtleties that are possible in both spoken English and ASL. Therefore, it is more cumbersome and less precise than ASL but may be more easily learned by English-speakers and people who become deaf after childhood. CONTRAST FINGERSPELLING.

slang generally short-lived and faddish words or expressions that enter a language as creative innovations, often made by young people. Slang expressions frequently deal with taboo subjects such as sex and bodily functions and are often metaphorical euphemisms (toss your cookies [vomit]; woody [erection]), humorous insults (bee-atch); affectionate terms of address or reference (dog; my peeps); code words for illegal, prohibited, or restricted activities (living the down low); expressions of praise (crunk; off the hook; phat). Slang expressions are frequently in-group markers and therefore may have narrow distribution among regional and/or social groups; a large number of U.S. slang terms have their ori-gin in African American communities.

sociolinguistics the branch of linguistics that considers social aspects of language use patterns and the ways that language is used to construct and maintain social structures. Some of the topics studied by sociolinguists include language and identity, language and gender, dialectical variation (Where do people say soda? pop? Coke? soft drink?), language change and language contact, bilingualism, and many others.

Spanglish a term used to describe a style of speech in which speakers CODESWITCH between Spanish and English. Although some people consider Spanglish a corrupt form of language, its speakers often value it as a stylistic choice that displays proficiency in both languages and/or demonstrates speakers’ pride in their bicultural identities. Most linguists would argue that Spanglish is not a new language because there are no novel grammatical rules or forms not already found in English or Spanish. Instead, it is a complex way of combining the linguistic resources speakers have. Speakers in many bilingual communities have names for the practice of combining their two languages: in addition to Spanglish, we find such labels as Konglish (Korean and English), Singlish (Chinese in Singapore and English), Hinglish (Hindi and English).

speechreading the practice of comprehending speech by careful observation of the speaker’s mouth, lips, and tongue. Many Deaf people are adept at speechreading, which is immensely difficult to learn and can never be completely accurate because many speech sounds look alike, for example, the consonants in the words pack, back, and bag. Lip-reading is a less-preferred term for speechreading.

Standard English the variety of English that is taught in schools, used in formal writing, and often heard on radio and television. It is considered by many to be the correct and proper English. Standard English is not the same in all of the countries where English is spoken. In the United States, for example, the words labor, color, and center are correctly spelled as written here, while in Canada, New Zealand, Great Britain, and other parts of the English-speaking world—in fact, nearly all of it— the same words are correctly spelled labour, colour, and centre. See also NON-STANDARD and RECEIVED PRONUNCIATION.

standardized language a language with widely accepted rules of correct us-age. English, Spanish, French, and Japanese are examples of languages with highly elaborated rules, and each of these languages has dialects that do not conform to the “standard.” See also STANDARD ENGLISH, NON-STANDARD, and RECEIVED PRONUNCIATION.

suffix something added to the end of a word that changes the word’s meaning or adds extra information; for example, with the word play, the suffix -er indicates a person who plays, while played puts the action in the past, and plays confirms that the subject of the verb is third person singular. See also AFFIX and PREFIX.

syntax the order of words and phrases in an utterance; also, the study and analysis of the ways in which words and phrases can and cannot appropriately combine in a given language. For example, someone interested in English syntax might want to analyze why it is appropriate to say, “I didn’t see you put the keys on the table,” but not “I didn’t see you put the keys where.” Computer programmers also use the term syntax to de-scribe the order of elements in a program or operation.

systematic and rule-governed a condition of every human language and dialect, regardless of whether it has a written form or explicit usage manuals. All languages and dialects are systematic because their speakers, in order to construct well-formed utterances, follow specific, recognized patterns and orders of sounds and words; linguists refer to these pat-terns as “rules.” Utterances that disregard the rules may be perceived as inadequate or misunderstood entirely; for example, if a Texan said, “I might could help you on Saturday,” another Texan would understand perfectly. However, the similar statement “I could might help you on Saturday” would violate the syntactic rules of the dialect—might must pre-cede could—and would sound strange to the Texan in reverse order.

terministic screen label used by philosopher and rhetorician Kenneth Burke to remind us that all terms, that is, words, encourage us to see certain parts of reality while ignoring other parts of it. (As he put it, words simultaneously reflect and deflect reality.) Burke also notes that once one has chosen a set of terms, arguments in many ways work themselves out. A corporation’s use of “downsizing” makes the process appear to be the “logical” thing to do given our society’s emphasis on cost cutting and efficiency and our prejudice against unnecessarily large bureaucracies. At the same time, it completely diverts attention from the plight of workers who have lost their jobs.

transgendered a person born of one sex who identifies socially as a member of the other sex. Transgendered people may be heterosexual, lesbian, or gay. The majority of transgendered individuals are male-to-female.

transliteration a form of translation from one language to another that gives a literal, word-by-word translation rather than a translation in units of equivalent meaning. For example, the Spanish sentence Esta tarea es pan comido would be transliterated as “This homework is eaten bread,” which makes no sense because “pan comido” is an idiom. A translation that retains the meaning would be “This homework is a piece of cake,” which uses the equivalent English idiom for a task that is very easy. Transliteration can also refer to the interpretation of a written word from one writing system to another, for example, rendering Arabic words into English or other European languages that use the roman alphabet.

typography the art and technology of mechanically producing writing. Al-most all commercial typography is now done with computers. Typo-graphic designers may manipulate such elements as font, size, line and character spacing, as well as effects such as bold, italics, or CAPITALIZATION in order to create a desired effect and enhance the message of the text.

usage refers to two very different phenomena. First, it can refer to the way speakers use a language in their lives. There are different kinds of us-age, for example, everyday, informal usage; academic usage; formal us-age, etc. In everyday usage, for example, we may say or hear statements such as, “someone left their key on the table,” or “awesome, dude,” while the same meanings in more formal usage may be given as, “someone left his or her key on the table,” or “that is quite excellent, my friend.” More narrowly, “usage” refers to what many people consider “good grammar”: using lay and lie correctly, not saying ain’t, avoiding double negatives. In this latter sense, usage represents the linguistic equivalent of good manners.

vernacular a language of everyday use of a people or a nation, as opposed to an official or formal language. The vernacular language of a particular place may be a variety or dialect of an official language or it may be an-other language altogether.

voiced/voiceless one of the features that linguists use for describing the sounds of a language. In English, for example, all vowels are voiced, and consonants can be either voiced or voiceless. Voiced sounds are produced with vibration in the vocal cords. Place your fingers lightly on the front of your throat and say Sue and zoo. Can you feel that your throat vibrates more on zoo? Say chum and joke. Which word begins with a voiced sound? Which one ends with a voiced sound?