50 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.