7. Stylistic stratification of the English vocabulary: colloquial vocabulary.

The colloquial vocabulary includes the following groups of words:

1. common colloquial words;

2. slang;

3. jargonisms;

4. professionalisms;

5. dialectal words;

6. vulgar words;

7. colloquial coinages.

Common standard colloquial words

Common colloquial words are always more emotionally colored than literary ones. They are used in informal communication.

Special Colloquial Vocabulary

Slang is a part of the vocabulary consisting of commonly understood and widely used words and expressions of humorous or derogatory character – intentional substitutes for neutral or elevated words and expressions.

It denotes:

Phonetically

Morphologically distorted words

Lexically

Jargonisms are generally old words with entirely new meanings imposed on them, when traditional meaning of the words is unimportant, only the new, improvised meaning is of importance.

Features:Social in character;

• Translation is required.

Professionalisms - words used in a definite trade, profession or calling by people connected by common interests both at work and at home.

Features:No recognizable by everyone;

• Dimmed semantic structure;

• Monosemantic.

Dialectal words are those which in the process of integration of the English national language remained beyond its literary boundaries, and their use is generally confined to a definite locality.

• Scottish dialect (hinny - honey; tittle - sister, being a childish corruption of the word; cutty 'testy or naughty girl or woman’);

• Southern dialect (initial [s] and [f] are voiced, and are written in the direct speech of characters as [z] and V, for example: 'volk’ (folk), 'zee’ (see), 'zinking’ (sinking).

Vulgarisms are:

• 1) expletives and swear words which are of an abusive character, like 'damn', 'bloody', ‘hell', 'goddam' and, as some dictionaries state, used now as general exclamations;

• 2) obscene words. These are known as four-letter words the use of which is banned in any form of intercourse as being indecent.

Colloquial coinage is a new meaning imposed on the word in a given context.

• Spontaneous;

• Imprecise semantic boundaries and unclear meaning;

• Are not fixed in dictionaries;

8. Lexical expressive means and stylistic devices based on interaction of primarily dictionary and contextually imposed meaning (metaphor, metonymy, irony).

The interaction or interplay between the primary dictionary meaning and a meaning which is imposed on the word by a micro-context may be maintained along different lines.

• Identification of two objects

• Interdependence of two objects

• Property of an object in contradictory sense

Metaphor - when two different phenomena (things, events, ideas, actions) are simultaneously brought to mind by the imposition of some or all of the inherent properties of one object on the other which by nature is deprived of these properties.

• Personification – likeness between inanimate and animate objects.

• Sustained (prolonged) metaphor – group of metaphors, each supplying another feature of the described object.

• Types:

• Genuine/fresh/original (emotive prose and poetry)

• Trite /dead/hackneyed/stale: floods of tears, a flight of fancy, a shadow of a smile (newspaper, publicistic, scientific)

Metonymy is based on some kind of association connecting the two concepts which these meanings represent.

• Types:

• Trite –fixed in dictionaries as figurative use (crown, glass or cup, press)

• Genuine – contextual metonymy

Meaning Relation Types

• A concrete thing used instead of an abstract notion: "The camp, the pulpit and the law for rich men's sons are free."

• The container instead of the thing contained

• The relation of proximity, as in: The round game table was boisterous and happy.

• The material instead of the thing made of it, as in:

• The instrument which the doer uses in performing the action instead of the action or the doer himself, as in:

Irony is a stylistic device also based on the simultaneous realization of two logical meanings—dictionary and contextual, but the two meanings stand in opposition to each other.