5.6: Key Terms Defined
Speech community: People who share a similar cultural background and language knowledge.
Langue: The internal mental capacity for language.
Parole: The external manifestation of ideas through speech.
Creole: A blended language differentiated from a pidgin language by its more complex grammar and its status as a first language.
Cultural schemata: A system of standards for perceiving, believing, evaluating and acting.
Speech situations: Locations and occasions requiring the use of different styles of language.
Cultural scripts: The “scripts” that guide social behavior and language use in everyday speaking situations.
Language branch: A group of languages which share common linguistic and have evolved from a common ancestor.
Language family: A collection of languages within a family with a common ancestral language.
Proto-language: An historic language from which known languages are believed to have descended by differentiation of the proto-language into the languages that form a language family.
Dialect: Variants of the single language.
Pidgin: A composite language with a simplified grammatical system and a limited vocabulary.
Lingua franca: A language used to make communication possible between people who do not share a native language.
Bilingual: Being able to use two languages with varying degrees of fluency.
Toponymy: The study of place names.
Text: The use and arrangement of specific language forms.
Typological classification: Classification based on the comparison of the formal similarities in pronunciation, grammar and vocabulary which exist among languages.
Official language: A language that is given a special legal status over other languages in a country.
Intergenerational language shift: A linguistic pattern of acculturation found in US immigrant groups in which a group shifts from being non-English monolingual to English monolingual.