3.2.2. The Connotational aspect

The connotational meaning¹ is the second component of lexical meaning, which reflects the attitude of the speaker towords wqhat he speaks about. Connotation conveys additional information in the process of communication. This component or the connotation includes:

1) Emotive charge is a part of the connotational meaning of a word; e.g. a hovel denotes “a small house or cottage” and besides implies that it is a miserable dwelling place, duty in bad repair and, in general, unpleasant place to live in.

When examing such groups of words as “large”, “big”, “tremendous” and “like”, “love”, “worship” and “girl”, “girlie” we observe the difference in the emotive charge of the words “tremendous”, “worship” and “girlie” is heavier than those of words “large”, “like” and “girl”.

The emotive charge does not depend on the “feeling” of the individual speaker, but is true for all speakers of English. The emotive charge is one of the objective semantic features of word as linguistic units and forms part of the connotational component of meaning

2)Evaluation, which may be positive or negative (clique a small group of people who seem unfriendly to other people) as compared to group (a set of people)

3) Intensity (or expressiveness) adore as compared to love

4) Imagery e.g.To wade –to walk with an effort (through mud, the word gives rise to another meaning which is based on the same image as the first to wade through a book

3.2.3. The pragmatic aspect

The pragmatic aspect of lexical meaning is the part of meaning that conveys information on the situation of communication. Like the conotational aspect, the pragmatic aspect falls into four closely linked together subsections:

1. information on the time and space relationship of the participants.come and go can indicate the location of the speaker who is usually taken as the zero point in the description of the situation of communication.

2. Information on the participants and the given language community. 1.They chucked a stone at copes, and then did a bunk with the loot.2.after casting a stone at the police, they absconded with the money.

The 1^st sentence could be said by two criminals, talking casually about the crime afterwards, the 2^nd sentence might be said by the chief inspector in making his official report.

3) Information on the tenor of discourse. The tenors of discourse reflect how the addresser interacts with the adressee9 the listener or the reader0 tenors arte based on social or family roles of the participants of communication a mother will talk in a different way with her small child and about her children

4) information on the register of communication. The conditions of communication form another important group of factors. The register defines the general type of the situation of communication grading the situations in formality (variations ranging from extreme degrees of formality through norm to extreme non- formality). There are 3 main types of situations of communication: formal, neutral, and informal. Practically every word in the language is register- oriented. e.g. the pragmatic aspect of meaning refers words cordial, fraternal, anticipate, to the formal register, and the words cut it out, to be kidding, hi, stuff are to be used in the informal register.

Lexical meaning

Denotational aspect connotational aspect pragmatic aspect

Emotive charge

expressiveness

imagery

information on the time and space relationship of the participants

Information on the participants and the given language community

Information on the tenor of discourse

information on the register of communication

LECTURУ 6 STYLISTIC CLASSIFICATION OF THE ENGLISH VOCABULARY

Like any linguistic issue the classification of the vocabulary here suggested is for purely stylistic purposes.

The English language as being divided into three main layers: the literary layer, the neutral layer and the collo­quial l а у е r. The literary and the colloquial layers contain a num­ber of subgroups each of which has a property it shares with all the sub­groups within the layer. This common property, which unites the differ­ent groups of words within the layer, may be called its aspect. The as­pect of the literary layer is its markedly bookish character. It is this that makes the layer more or less stable. The aspect of the colloquial layer of words is its lively spoken character. It is this that makes it unstable, fleeting.

The literary vocabulary consists of the following groups of words: 1. common literary; 2. terms and learned words; 3. poetic words; 4. archaic words; 5. barbarisms and foreign words; 6. literary coinages including nonce-words.

The colloquial vocabulary falls into the following groups: 1. com­mon "colloquial words; 2. slang; 3. jargonisms; 4. professional words; 5. dialectal words; 6. vulgar words; 7. colloquial coinages.