Tag Archives: term of art

Term of Art: Diacritic, Diacritical Mark

Posted on June 13, 2021 | Leave a comment

“Diacritic, Diacritical Mark (noun): A distinguishing mark given to a character or letter to indicated stress or pronunciation, such as a superscribed accent; phonetic sign. Adjective: diacritic, diacritical.

‘The ‘etymons,’ as he called them were the root terms for Pass and Fail, but inflected with prefixes, infixes, suffixes, and diacritical marks to such an extent, and so variously from fragment to fragment, that conflicting interpretations, in his opinion, could be said to figure the intellectual biography of studentdom, as has been amply demonstrated in a wealth of what he called Geistesgeschichten…. John Barth, Giles Goat-Boy.'”

Excerpted from: Grambs, David. The Random House Dictionary for Writers and Readers. New York: Random House, 1990.

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Terms of Art: Anglophile, Anglophobe, Anglophone

Posted on June 11, 2021 | Leave a comment

“Anglophile: 1. Admiring or loving England and the English and/or the English language: the anglophile party in Scotland. 2. Someone with such an attitude: unrepentant Anglophiles. The term may or may not include Britain as a whole, and non-English Britons may experience Anglophilia.

Anglophobe: 1. Also Anglophobic. Fearing or hating England and the English and/or the English language: Anglophobe reaction. 2. Someone with such an attitude: an inveterate Anglophobe. The term may or may not include Britain as a whole, and non-English Britons may experience Anglophobia.

Anglophone: [Often used without an initial capital]. 1. A speaker of English: (Africa) locally born anglophone whites; (Quebec) certified anglophones, permitted by law to send their children to English-medium schools. 2. Of speakers of English: an anglophone school. The term occurs mainly where French is also used. It contrasts with francophone (French-speaking), allophone (speaking a language other than French or English), arabophone (speaking Arabic), hispanophone (speaking Spanish), lusophone (speaking Portugese), etc.”

Excerpted from: McArthur, Tom. The Oxford Concise Companion to the English Language. New York: Oxford University Press, 2005

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Term of Art: Mapping

Posted on June 7, 2021 | Leave a comment

“mapping:  In educational terms, a strategy for displaying related ideas in a visual format. Mapping may refer to flow charts, diagrams, or using color coding to draw connections and help recall information. One important example of mapping is ‘mind-mapping’ (also called clustering), which is used in the process of writing to generate and organize ideas and information that can eventually be translated into a linear outline.

A mind map might consist of a core topic at the center of the page, with major subtopics spreading outward from it, and relevant details attached to each subtopic. Such an approach may be especially helpful for individuals who have difficulty with sequencing information but are strong in the area or visual-spatial reasoning.

Likewise a graphic organizer for representing information may help a student who has trouble with reading comprehension because of problems organizing and identifying key information and relationships between concepts and supporting evidence.”

Excerpted from: Turkington, Carol, and Joseph R. Harris, PhD. The Encyclopedia of Learning Disabilities. New York: Facts on File, 2006.

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Term of Art: Scripted Program

Posted on June 1, 2021 | Leave a comment

“scripted program: Any educational program the describes in close detail how to teach the material. Scripted programs may raise the level of teaching if they are akin to a good recipe; however, they are unlikely to succed if the attempt to impose routines and methods that teachers find patronizing and disrespectful.”

Excerpted from: Ravitch, Diane. EdSpeak: A Glossary of Education Terms, Phrases, Buzzwords, and Jargon. Alexandria, VA: ASCD, 2007.

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Term of Art: Calque

Posted on April 30, 2021 | Leave a comment

“Calque [kalk] (noun): An imitative borrowing in language, or a word modeled on an aspect of range of meaning of a particular word in another language, e.g. the English measurement ‘foot’ from the Latin ‘pes.’ Also LOAN-TRANSLATION

‘The chapter is full of loanwords, calques, neologisms, as well as curious learning; it we are a as far away from the down-to-earthy broodings of Blok as it is possible to imagine.’” Anthony Burgess, Joysprick

Excerpted from: Grambs, David. The Random House Dictionary for Writers and Readers. New York: Random House, 1990.

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Term of Art: Learning Modalities

Posted on April 27, 2021 | Leave a comment

“learning modalities: The way in which information is received and expressed, such as visual, tactile, auditory, or kinesthetic. Generally, individuals have strengths in a certain modality and learn better when information is presented through that channel. For example, an individual who whose strongest learning modality is visual will have difficulty learning information given by lecture alone, with no visual aids such as notes on the board.

Research shows that since people have different learning strengths, it is better to design lessons what use more than one modality, such as a combination of visual and auditory. This allows all learners, including those with learning disabilities, to access information using their strongest learning ability.”

Excerpted from: Turkington, Carol, and Joseph R. Harris, PhD. The Encyclopedia of Learning Disabilities. New York: Facts on File, 2006.

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Term of Art: Agreement

Posted on April 19, 2021 | Leave a comment

“Agreement: Syntactic relation between words and phrases which are compatible, in a given construction, by virtue of inflections carried by at least one of them. E.g. these and carrots are compatible in the construction of these carrots, because both are inflected as a plural. Likewise, in the Italian sentence Maria e Luisa sono arrivate ‘Mary and Louise have arrived,’ sono (lit. ‘be-3pl’) agrees in respect of plural number with arrivate (‘arrived-FEM.PL’) and both, or sono arrivate as a whole, agree with a subject, Maria e Luisa, which refers to more than one woman.

Also called concord. Distinctions are drawn between grammatical agreement and notional agreement; also between agreement and some similar relations of compatibility, such as the government of cases by prepositions. But this last distinction is often at best imprecise.”

Excerpted from: Matthews, P.H., ed. The Oxford Concise Dictionary of Linguistics. New York: Oxford University Press, 2014.

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Term of Art: Abstract

Posted on April 14, 2021 | Leave a comment

“Abstract, (noun) A text summarizing the matter or principal points of a book, article, record, or speech, especially of an official or technical document; abbreviated or concentrated version; condensation. Noun: abstractor; Verb: abstract.”

Excerpted from: Grambs, David. The Random House Dictionary for Writers and Readers. New York: Random House, 1990.

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Term of Art: Apposition

Posted on April 9, 2021 | Leave a comment

“Apposition: A syntactic relation in which an element is juxtaposed to another element of the same kind. Especially between noun phrases that do not have distinct referents: e.g. Lucienne is in apposition to my wife in Do you know my wife Lucienne? Thence of other cases where elements are seen as parallel but do not have distinct roles in a larger construction: e.g. Smith is said to be apposed to Captain in Do you know Captain Smith?”

Excerpted from: Matthews, P.H., ed. The Oxford Concise Dictionary of Linguistics. New York: Oxford University Press, 2014.

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Term of Art: Auxiliary

Posted on April 4, 2021 | Leave a comment

“Auxiliary (Aux): A verb belonging to a small class which syntactically accompanies other verbs: distinguished as such from a lexical verb, of full verb. E.g. could and have are auxiliaries, accompanying a form of write, in He could have written it. The first belongs to a class of modal verbs that can stand alone, as in a sentence I could, only if a following verb is ‘understood.’ The second is an auxiliary related to the past participle (written); distinguished accordingly from have as a lexical verb, e.g. in I have the answer.

Auxiliaries usually mark modality, tense, or aspect: e.g. the construction of have with a past participle marks the perfect. Hence the same term has been applied to other grammatical words that mark such categories, whether or not they are verbs.”

Excerpted from: Matthews, P.H., ed. The Oxford Concise Dictionary of Linguistics. New York: Oxford University Press, 2014.

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