Tenor (linguistics)
Encyclopedia
- In systemic functional linguistics, the term tenor refers to the participants in a discourseDiscourseDiscourse generally refers to "written or spoken communication". The following are three more specific definitions:...
, their relationships to each other, and their purposes.
- In examining how context affects language use, linguists refer to the context-specific varietyVariety (linguistics)In sociolinguistics a variety, also called a lect, is a specific form of a language or language cluster. This may include languages, dialects, accents, registers, styles or other sociolinguistic variation, as well as the standard variety itself...
of language as a registerRegister (linguistics)In linguistics, a register is a variety of a language used for a particular purpose or in a particular social setting. For example, when speaking in a formal setting an English speaker may be more likely to adhere more closely to prescribed grammar, pronounce words ending in -ing with a velar nasal...
. The three aspects of the context are known as field, tenor and mode. Field refers to the subject matter or content being discussed. Mode refers to the channel (such as writing, or video-conference) of the communication. By understanding these three variables, the kind of language likely to be used in a particular setting can be predicted — and, Michael HallidayMichael HallidayMichael Alexander Kirkwood Halliday is a British linguist who developed an internationally influential model of language, the systemic functional linguistic model. His grammatical descriptions go by the name of systemic functional grammar .-Biography:Halliday was born and raised in England...
suggests, this is exactly what we do, unconsciously, as language users.
- In analysing the parts of a metaphorMetaphorA metaphor is a literary figure of speech that uses an image, story or tangible thing to represent a less tangible thing or some intangible quality or idea; e.g., "Her eyes were glistening jewels." Metaphor may also be used for any rhetorical figures of speech that achieve their effects via...
, "tenor" has another meaning, unrelated to the meaning above. According to I. A. RichardsI. A. RichardsIvor Armstrong Richards was an influential English literary critic and rhetorician....
, the two parts of a metaphor are the tenor and vehicle. The tenor is the subject to which attributes are ascribed. The vehicle is the subject from which the attributes are derived. Thus, they are broadly equivalent to the notions of target and source domains in conceptual metaphorConceptual metaphorIn cognitive linguistics, conceptual metaphor, or cognitive metaphor, refers to the understanding of one idea, or conceptual domain, in terms of another, for example, understanding quantity in terms of directionality . A conceptual domain can be any coherent organization of human experience...
theory.