9. Words of non-literary stylistic layer

Informal words belong to non-literary stylistic layer.

Words of non-literary layer:

1. Colloquialisms. They are divided into:

1. literary colloquial (they denote the vocabulary of educated people in the course of ordinary conversation or when writing letters to intimate friends);

2. familiar colloquial (they are more emotional and colorful than literary colloquial);

3. low colloquial (this term is used for illiterate popular speech).

2. Slang. They are expressive, mainly ironic words serving to create fresh names for some things. They are not facts of Standard English. For example, the word loaf is a slang name for a head.

3. Vulgarisms. They are divided into vulgarisms proper and trite vulgarisms. Vulgarisms proper are very rude words used to insult or humiliate. Trite vulgarisms have lost their shocking power and moved closer to colloquial words.

4. Jargonisms. They are subdivided into professional and social. Professional jargonisms are used within groups joined by professional interests (tinned fish is jargonism for submarine). Social jargonisms are used within social or age groups (for example, in criminal circles book is a life sentence).

5. Dialectical words. They are words and expressions used by common people in certain regions of a country, suggestive of the origin and educational and cultural standard of the speaker.

10. The notion of stylistic devices and expressive means Grammatical Expressive Means and Stylistic Devices

Grammatical categories are studies by morphology, and though they are abstract, they play an essential role in the construction of the logical sense of utterance. Grammatical units and relations between them turn out to be important for the creation of the expressive means and emotive connotations. It is difficult to distinguish between what is purely grammatical, i. e. marked as corresponding to the established norms, and what is stylistic, i. e. showing some kind of deviation from these norms. This difference becomes evident when we analyze grammatical units – morphological (morpheme and word) and syntactical (phrase and sentence).

The basic morphological unit is a morpheme. So we shall focus on examining the ways of highlighting a morpheme, so that the latter, apart from its denotational meaning, becomes bearer of additional information (logical, emotive and expressive).

One important way of promoting a morpheme is its repetition. Both root and affixational morphemes can be emphasized through repetition. Especially vividly it is observed in the repetition of affixational morphemes which normally carry the main weight of the structural and not of the denotational significance. When repeated, they come into the focus of attention and stress either their logical meaning (e.g. that of contrast, negation, absence of quality as in prefixes a-, anti-, mis-; or of smallness as in suffixes -ling and -ette); their emotive and evaluative meaning, as in suffixes forming degrees of comparison; or else they add to the rhythmical effect and text unity.

The second, even more effective way of using a morpheme for the creation of additional information is extension of its normative valence which results in the formation of new words. They are not neologisms in the true sense for they are created for special communicative situations only, and are not used beyond these occasions. This is why they are called occasional words and are characterized by freshness, originality, lucidity of their inner form and morphemic structure.

Very often occasional words are the result of morphemic repetition: I am an undersecretary in an under-bureau. The stress on the insignificance of the occupation of I. Shaw’s heroine brings forth both the repetition of the prefix under- and the appearance, due to it, of the occasional word under-bureau.

In case of repetition a morpheme gains much independence and bears major responsibility for the creation of additional information and stylistic effect. In case of occasional coinages an individual morpheme is only instrumental in bringing forth the impact of their combination, i.e. of new individual lexical unit.

As it is known, every grammatical form is an exponent of the grammatical meaning. In language every sign has two plains: the plain of content and the plain of expression.

Every grammatical category consists of an opposition of form classes – the weak (unmarked) and the strong (marked). The strong member always has a marker, which is the suffixational morpheme. Every unit of language except the phoneme is a linguistic sign.

The difference between the traditional plain of content and the situational plain of content on level of morphology is called transposition. Sometimes its synonym is used: grammatical metaphor (sands of Sahara, waters of the Atlantic Ocean). The deviation from the norms (or fluxion of the grammatical norm) brings about the expressive and emotive connotation. In other words, ordinary grammatical valence is broken, which makes it possible for the speakers to express their emotions and attitude to the utterance they use.