Work individually. Think of terms (from the theory of genre) that would complete each definition.


1. A linguistic research methodology that draws on large scale electronic text databases. It allows
researchers to conduct systematic searches for linguistic features, patterns, and variations in
spoken and written texts.

____________________ CORPUS LINGUISTICS

2. Language in use and understood as participating in social systems and so having determining
effects on social life.

____________________ DISCOURSE

3. A broad label for the condition in which discourse occurs. It exists not only as a frame within
which a specific genre takes place, but it forms a dynamic, interdependent, mutually constructing
relationship with the genre.

____________________ CONTEXT

4. A typified rhetorical way of recognizing, responding to, acting meaningfully and consequentially
within, and thus participating in the reproduction of, recurring situations.

____________________ GENRE

5. An abstract system of beliefs, values, and ideas that directs goals, expectations, and actions.

____________________ IDEOLOGY

6. The phonological sound or graphic appearance of a sign (e.g., word, image).

____________________ SIGNIFIER

7. The meaning and interpretation of the sign.

____________________ SIGNIFIED

8. The literal meaning of a sign, the dictionary meaning of a word.

____________________ DENOTATION

9. The associations that are connected to a certain sign such as emotional associations.

____________________ CONNOTATION

10. As we use genre we constitute social structures (professional, institutional, organizational)
and simultaneously reproduce these structures. A term coined by Giddens.

____________________ DUALITY OF STRUCTURE

11. These are, for example, spoken/written language, gestures, images, body positions, and others.
They may be part of genre analysis.

____________________ SEMIOTIC MODES

12. A critical thinking skill applied to channels of mass communications which enhances our
enjoyment and appreciation of different genres.

____________________ MEDIA LITERACY