English Language 3/4 - informal and formal features

[ideaaa]

Hi,
I'm really confused as to which metalanguage terms are considered informal and which are formal. I have two textbooks and neither is giving a straight answer, the obvious terms I'm fine with e.g. colloquialisms and simple sentences are in informal language etc, but many other terms such as parallelism, alliteration, onomatopoeia, rhyme, metaphors, oxymoron and basically the rest of the metalanguage I find really difficult to figure out whether they're formal or informal. I'm worried that I may identify a feature in a SAC that I'm unsure of, such as parallelism or alliteration, and put it under the wrong formality category.
Does anyone have a list of all the metalanguage terms categorised into informal and formal, specifically including terms in phonological, syntactic, morphological and semantic patterning?
Thanks!

[Balfe]

Hi,
I'm really confused as to which metalanguage terms are considered informal and which are formal. I have two textbooks and neither is giving a straight answer, the obvious terms I'm fine with e.g. colloquialisms and simple sentences are in informal language etc, but many other terms such as parallelism, alliteration, onomatopoeia, rhyme, metaphors, oxymoron and basically the rest of the metalanguage I find really difficult to figure out whether they're formal or informal. I'm worried that I may identify a feature in a SAC that I'm unsure of, such as parallelism or alliteration, and put it under the wrong formality category.
Does anyone have a list of all the metalanguage terms categorised into informal and formal, specifically including terms in phonological, syntactic, morphological and semantic patterning?
Thanks!

Hey ideaaa,

I think your struggling to find this because there simply isn’t an answer! These features can be both informal or formal depending on how they appear and what content they cover. For example the metaphor ‘My teacher was a dragon’ is more informal than ‘her tears flowed down her bright red cheeks in rivers’. It simply depends on the connotations you’re given!

Generally, however, these more complex features require planning and this suggests formality (quite pertinent for parallelism and antithesis), but again, context is important.