Linguistic Glossary

AAVE. African American Vernacular English. The variety of English spoken by most African Americans at least part of the time, no matter what their geographic origins, and spoken by few Americans of other ethnicities. AAVE has its own well-documented grammatical rules: it is not simply "poor English."

computational linguistics. The subfield of linguistics that uses computer software to analyze large linguistic corpora.

corpus (plural corpora). A large sample of language in use, often made up of multiple individual transcripts.

dialect. A variety of a language, distinguished by features such as pronunciation, vocabulary, and conversational conventions.

ideolect. The particular way an individual uses language. The idiolect includes vocabulary, sentence structure, and pronunciation, among other aspects of language.

IPA. International Phonetic Alphabet. A set of symbols used by linguists to represent spoken sounds. Because the IPA represents sounds and not meanings, the same word uttered by people speaking the same language but with different accents (say, a New Yorker and a Texan) may be represented differently in IPA.

jargon. The vocabulary specific to a profession or other specialized group of people.

POMIC. Post-investigation manipulation of investigation communication. A ruse letter sent to mislead investigators by, for example, claiming that an anonymous person other than a current suspect committed the crime.

pragmatics. The study of the meaning of words in context. Depending on the context, the sentence "Can you open the trunk?" can be a simple request for information or a demand for action that has the force of law.

regionalism. A word or phrase whose use is generally restricted to people from a particular geographic area. For example, gumband as used in the Pittsburgh area for what most Americans call a rubber band.

register. The way of using a language that varies depending on the function and context of the utterance or document.

semantics. The study of the literal meaning of words and sentences, how meaning is created by the order of words and their interactions.

syntax. The rules of a language for combining words into phrases and sentences.