Politeness markers include differences between formal speech and col-
loquial speech, and the use of address forms. In expressing politeness,
the anthropologists Brown and Levinson distinguished between positive
politeness strategies (those which signal the closeness, intimacy, and rapport
between speaker and hearer) and negative politeness strategies (those which
address the social distance between speaker and hearer and minimize the
imposition that a face-threatening action unavoidably effects).politeness formulan
see routine
polysemyn polysemousadj
(of a word) having two or more closely related meanings, e.g. foot in:
He hurt his foot.
She stood at the foot of the stairs.
The foot is the lowest part of the stairs just as the foot is the lowest part of
the human body.
A well known problem in semantics is how to decide whether we are
dealing with a single polysemous word (like foot) or with two or more
homonyms^3.
polysyllabicadj
(of a word) consisting of more than one syllable. For example, in English:
telephone
and in Hawaiian:
humuhumunukunukuapua’a(the name of the Hawaii state fish) are
polysyllabic words.
populationn
(in statistics) any set of items, individuals, etc. that share some common and
observable characteristics and from which asample can be taken. Thus,
one can speak of comparing test scores across a sample of a population of
students.
portfolion
a purposeful collection of work that provides information about someone’s
efforts, progress or achievement in a given area. It is a learning as well as
assessment tool. As applied to language learners, its characteristics are:
athe learner is involved in deciding what to include in the portfolio
bthe learner may revise material in the portfolio after feedback from the
teacher or others
c the learner is required to assess or reflect on the work in the portfolio,
thus becoming aware of personal development
portfolio