Colloquial vocabulary

1. Сommon colloquial words

The vocabulary of colloquial style is usually lower than that of the formal or neutral styles, nevertheless it makes the literary norm. Colloquial words are often emotionally coloured and characterised by connotations (consider the endearing connotations in the words daddy, kid or the evaluating components in trash).

2. Slang forms the biggest word-group of colloquial layer. Slang are popular words used by most speakers in very informal communication, which are highly emotive and expressive and as such, e.g. scamp (a small child), hooker (prostitute), gross (crude, vulgar, disgusting), scum (a worthless person or group of people). Slang occupies an intermediary position among all kinds of informal words (including vulgarisms) and vocabulary of closed social groups such (teenagers, drug-users, sportsmen, thieves jargons and the like).

Slang words lose their originality rather fast and are replaced by newer formations. This tendency to synonymic expansion results in long chains of synonyms of various degrees of expressiveness, denoting one and the same concept. So, the idea of a “pretty girl” is worded by more than one hundred ways in slang, e.g. chic, cookie, tomato, Jane, sugar, bird, cutie, etc.

The substandard status of slang words and phrases, through universal usage, can be raised to the standard colloquial: pal, chum, crony for “friend”; heavies, woolies for “thick panties”; booze for “liquor”; dough for “money”; how’s tricks for “how’s life”; beat it for “go away” and many more are examples of such a transition. The lexicographic problem of modern English is not to discriminate between slang and jargon, or slang and argot, but to register the transition from slang to popular speech.

One and the same object of the real world get different names being used by communicants of different ages. Thus, an older man can say ice-box meaning refrigerator, wireless meaning radio, while a youth would say fridge and boombox respectively.

3. Jargonisms stand close to slang, also being substandard, expressive and emotive, but, unlike slang they are used by limited groups of people, united either socially (here we deal with jargonisms proper) or professionally (in this case we deal with professional jargonisms, or professionalisms). In distinction from slang, jargonisms of both types cover a narrow semantic field (jargons of drug-users, car-dealers, seamen), e.g. dope, to dope up, a doper, dopey; to get high, to give a high, to give a rush; to shoot (up), a shoot up, a shot; to be hooked, a junky (= a junkie, a junker man, a junkhog, a junkhound), to be junked up, junk peddler, junk pusher, junk squad, to be off some junk; to be on drugs; to kick the habit, cold turkey, to go cold turkey; to be on a trip (= blown away, floating, flying, loaded, smashed, strung out, stoned, etc.). So, if an informant calls real prison guards screws, he uses jargon; and if he calls a janitor in the dormitory a screw, it’s slang.

Anglo-American lexicographic tradition does not differentiate between slang and jargonisms regarding these groups as one extensive stratum of words divided into general slang, used by all, or most, speakers, and special slang, limited by the professional or social standing of the speaker. So it seems appropriate to use the indicated terms as synonyms.

Jargonisms proper originated from the thieves jargon which is called argot (or cant). The terms “jargon” and “argot” differ in their degree of openness. Jargon is a property of a permeable social group, e.g. the expressions to blow the whistle, a spook can be understood by many speakers. Argot serves to conceal the actual significance of the utterance from the uninitiated, its major function thus was to be cryptic, secretive. This is why among argotisms there are cases of conscious deformation of the existing words. The so-called back jargon (or back slang) can serve as an example: in their effort to conceal the machinations of dishonest card-playing, gamblers used numerals in their reversed form: ano for “one”, owt for “two”, erth for “three”. In connection with this some scientists mention that modern criminals tend to use rather vulgar words than some esoteric ones, and consequently, argot ceased its existence. Nowadays in most cases the usage of the term “argot” is used with closed verbal communication.

4. Professionalisms are words, connected with the technical side of some profession. So, in oil industry, e.g. for the terminological ‘driller’ (буровик) there exist borer, digger, wrencher, hogger, brake weight; for ‘pipeliner’ (трубопроводчик) – bender, cat, old cat, collar-pecker, hammerman; for ‘geologist-smeller’ – pebble pup, rock hound, witcher, etc. Such words as docudrama, kidvid, prime-time are restricted by professional TV jargon in their functioning. From all the examples at least two points are evident: professionalisms are formed according to the existing word-building patterns or present existing words in new meanings, and, covering the field of special professional knowledge, which is semantically limited, offer a variety of synonymic choices for naming one and the same professional item.

5. Dialectal words are normative and devoid of any stylistic meaning in regional dialects, but used outside of them, carry a strong flavour of the locality where they belong, e.g. Scottish burgh ‘town’, lassie ‘girl’, Yorkshire dialect bairn ‘child’. Some of them have entered the general vocabulary and lost their dialectal status, e.g. lad, pet, squash, plaid.

6. Vulgarisms are coarse words with a strong emotive meaning, mostly derogatory, normally avoided in polite conversation. History of vulgarisms reflects the history of social ethics. So, in Shakespearean times people were much more linguistically frank and disphemistic in their communication than in the age of Enligtenment, or the Victorian era, famous for its prudish and reserved manners. Nowadays words which were labelled vulgar in the 18^th-19^th centuries are considered such no more. In fact, at present we are faced with the reverse of the problem: there are practically no words banned from use by the modern permissive society. Such intensifies as bloody, damned, cursed, hell of, including the four-letter words, formerly deleted from literature and not allowed in conversation, are not only welcomed in both written and oral speech, but, due to constant repetition, have lost much of their emotive impact and substandard quality, e.g.: Hank, that was Vietnam, and we didn’t get our asses kicked – we drew.

7. Colloquial coinages – new words, neologisms¹ coined in colloquial speech: “And marijuana affects different people dif­ferent ways. Some it makes very tough and some it just makes never-no-mind ...”

Note

¹Neologism is a word or set expression, new either in form or meaning (or both in form and meaning). According to these features neologisms fall into:

1) neologisms proper, a new form is accompanied with a new meaning: audiotyping, home shopping, e-book, to telecommute (telework), electronic cottage;

2) transnominations, where a new form combines with a meaning which was earlier rendered by another form (old meaning, new form): sudser «мыльная опера»; big С (мед.) «рак»; Af, houtie «негр»; AmE bubble-headed, airhead, airbrain «легкомысленный, глупый»; burned-out «выжатый, усталый»;;

3) semantic innovations, a new meaning is rendered by a form which has already existed in the language: go-go «динамичный, современный»; banana, especially in the phrase to go bananas «сходить с ума»; flaky «эксцентричный».