Vocabulary

I’d like to make a reservation – я бы хотел забронировать номер

It’s for two nights – на двое суток

And do you want a single or a double room? – Какой номер Вы бы хотели: одноместный или двухместный номер?

We look forward to seeing you on the thirteenth – с нетерпением ждем Вас 13 числа.

Stylistic Analysis of the dialogue

“Making a reservation”

Compositional features. This dialogue belongs to a literary colloquial style. The client calls to the hotel and talks to a receptionist about making a reservation for two nights.

Paying attention to lexical features, we would like to mention extensive use of intensifies and gap fillers (certainly, OK, Yes, fine, sure, Uh huh). It is the explication. The speaker gives the units exaggerating properties of the object preference over restrained denominations.

Socially accepted phrases (Can you tell me how much it is, We look forward to seeing you, could I have phone number. As for like to make a reservation, please) are the clichés used in the literary colloquial style.

Morphological features. We can find regular morphological features: present tenses (When is it for? Do you want a single or a double room?)

Syntactical features. Simple sentences (We look forward to seeing you on the thirteenth) with a number of participial and infinitive constructions are used to exaggerate lingual units.

We see the main stylistic linguistics features of literary colloquial style: explication (use of intensifies and gap fillers) and socially accepted clichés.

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