Vocabulary

What seems to be the matter? – Что Вас беспокоит?

I haven’t felt well for a few days – я себя плохо чувствую пару дней.

Have you got a sore throat? – У Вас болит горло?

Let me have a look at you – разрешите осмотреть Вас.

I’ll give you something that will look after diarrhoea and a stomach ache – я Вам пропишу лекарство от диареи и боли в животе.

I’ll write out a prescription – я выпишу Вам рецепт.

seeing me is free – мои консультации бесплатны.

You’ll have to pay for the prescription – Вам придется заплатить за рецепт.

Tasks

1. Read, analyze the dialogue and its stylistic features on all levels as described in Chapter 2.

2. Find texts demonstrative of this style and analyze their distinctive features on all levels as described in Chapter 2.

Chapter 3 Distinctive stylistic linguistics features of familiar colloquial style

1. Compositional features. The familiarity of informal speech results in the neglect by the speaker of any definite stylistic requirements: spontaneous types have a loose structure, relative coherence and uniformity of form and content.

The colloquial sublanguage demonstrates two tendencies: implication and explication.

2. Phonetic features. Lack of time makes the speaker to economize on lingual means: casual and careless pronunciation, using of deviant forms (e.g. gonna instead of going to), reduced and contracted forms (e.g. you’re, I’ve), omission of unaccented elements (you love him?).

3. Lexical features. The speaker wastes lingual units because he has no chance of finding an economical form:

a) extensive use of words of general meaning, specified in meaning by the situation (guy, job, get, do, fix, affair);

b) wide range of formal and informal, neutral and bookish, terms and foreign words;

c) use of socially accepted contracted forms and abbreviations, gap fillers (absolutely, definitely, I mean, kind of, if I may say so), phrasal verbs (I’m fed up), idioms (as deaf as a doorpost);

d) limited vocabulary resources, use of the same word in different meanings it may not possess (‘some’ meaning good: some guy, some game! ‘nice’ meaning impressive, high quality: nice music, nice day);

e) use of slang (the upper storey (head), skirt (girl), killing (astonishing), vulgarisms (You are so darn good-looking) and dialect words (to sy [sai], to py [pai] instead of “to say”, “to pay”);

f) extensive use of intensifiers and gap fillers (well, sure, I mean, you see, awfully, so to speak, I mean, if I may say so).

4. Morphological features:

a) use of evaluative suffixes and phonetic analogy with other nominal words (e.g. baldish, moody, helter-skelter);

b) prevalence of active and finite verb forms.

5. Syntactical features: dialogues are usually of the question-answer type, simple short sentences are the tendency to economize on lingual means ¹.

Sample Answer