Speech sounds, discourse and pragmatic meaning
Language study can examine how speech is produced, how texts connect and how utterances function in context. These are related but distinct levels of analysis. Phonetics studies speech sounds and their production or perception; phonology concerns the patterns and contrasts in a language variety. Discourse analysis investigates connected language beyond an isolated sentence, and pragmatics examines meaning in relation to context and communicative purpose.
Sounds and transcription
An IPA symbol represents a sound rather than an English spelling letter. The same letter can represent different sounds, and different spellings can share a sound. Consonant descriptions commonly identify voicing, place and manner of articulation. For example, /ð/ as in a standard pronunciation of breathe is a voiced dental fricative. Vowels can be described by tongue height, front/back position and lip rounding, with length and other distinctions where relevant to the variety. A transcription question should state the accent or convention when variation affects the answer.
Stress and contrast
Word stress concerns prominence within a word; sentence stress helps organize information and contrast. Intonation can contribute to attitude, continuation, certainty or a request, but the interpretation depends on context and variety. Do not assume one contour has one meaning in every conversation. A phoneme is a contrastive unit in a particular sound system; an allophone is a realization of a phoneme that need not change lexical meaning in that system. A minimal pair can demonstrate a relevant contrast.
Cohesion and reference
Anaphoric reference points back to an earlier expression; cataphoric reference points forward. In Although she was tired, Mary continued, the pronoun may point forward to Mary. Identify the actual referent and context before applying a label. Conjunction, lexical relations, substitution and ellipsis can also link a text. Cohesion is not the same as a persuasive, logically developed argument: explicit links can still connect poorly supported ideas.
Acts and contextual meaning
An utterance can perform a request, warning, promise, assertion or another communicative act. Could you close the door? has a question form but can function as a request. Distinguish literal sentence structure from illocutionary purpose and possible effect on the listener. Register and language variety should be described with attention to context, not ranked through stereotypes about speakers. Use actual examples to justify the analysis, and preserve uncertainty where the supplied context permits more than one reasonable interpretation.