10. The problem of the colloquial style. Its peculiarities

The main function of colloquial style is providing for practical activity of people. It is used in everyday life. Its extra-linguistic features are informality, spontaneous character of speech, interpersonal contact and direct involvement in the process of communication. It is characterized by the use of paralinguistic means of communication (gestures, expression of the face, movements). Basic stylistic features of the style are : familiarity, ellipsis, concrete character of speech, interruption and logical inconsistency of the speech, emotiveness, efficacy. Among secondary stylistic features there are : idiomatic and pattern character of speech, “personal” type of speech presentation. There are oral and written (epistolary) varieties of CS.

There are two forms of colloquial speech: dialogue (simple dialogue and polylogue) and monologue. The basic substyles and genres of CS are : literary conversational style /talks, conversations, interviews /, familiar-conversational style /communication between family members, friends, intimate communication, children's talk /, low colloquial / quarrels, abuse, scandal, squabble, insult /.

The language peculiarities of CS are quite numerous: these are high activity of non-bookish means of the language, the use of language units of concrete meaning at all the levels, non-characteristic use of means with abstract and generalized meaning, weak syntactic connections between the parts of a syntactic structure, active use of means of verbal imagery, means of expressing subjective appraisal, emotional and expressive means at all the levels, patterned speech, specific phraseology , personal forms, nonce-words.

11. The concept of imagery. Tropes.

The verbal image is a pen-picture of a thing, person or idea expressed in a figurative way by words used in their contextual meaning. As Arnold points out the verbal image is a complex phenomenon, it is a double picture generated by linguistic means, it is based on the co-presence of two thoughts of different things active together. According to Arnold the verbal image is based on: the direct thought termed the tenor (T), the figurative thought — the vehicle (V).The tenor is the subject of thought, while the vehicle is the concept of a thing, person or an abstract notion with which the tenor is compared or identified. The structure of a verbal image also includes: the ground of comparison (G) — the similar feature of T and V; the relation (R) between T and V; the type of identification/comparison or, simply, the type of a trope (metaphor or simile). Images can be: general (sometimes embracing the whole book), individual dealing with a certain thing, person, idea. Trope is the figurative use of a word or a phrase that creates imagery. Tropes are used in verbal art to create general or individual images and to attain a higher artistic expressiveness. A trope is based on establishing connections between two notions, two things, being different on the whole, but understood to have some connection, some similarity in the given context. From the viewpoint of a linguist, all tropes are based on the interplay of lexical meaning. It should be remembered that imagery can be created by lexical SD's only. All other stylistic devices (such as phonetic, graphic, morphological and syntactical SD's) do introduce imagery, but can serve as intensifiers; any of them can add logical, emotive, expressive info to the utterance. Tropes include: epithet, metaphor, metonymy, oxymoron, periphrasis, personification, simile, etc.