3. Formal style

( 1) formal style – restricted to formal situations

words associated with learned words

professional communication (printed page)

poetry fiction

(2) “’book-learned’ and ‘bookish’ are now uncomplimentary (нелестный). The corresponding complimentaries are ‘erudite’, ‘learned’, ‘scholarly’. ‘Book-learned’ and ‘bookish’ connote ‘ignorant of life’, however much book-learning one may possess” (E. Partridge).

(3) learned words:

1) scientific – used in scientific prose (dry, matter-of-fact flavour) comprise (включать, заключать в себе, содержать, обобщать, суммировать, составлять),compile (выбирать информацию, собирать материал), experimental (экспериментальный), heterogeneous (разнородный), homogeneous (однородный), conclusive (завершающий, конечный, решающий, подводящий итог, определяющий, основополагающий, убедительный), divergent (расходящийся, отличающийся, отличный, другой);

2) “officialese” – words of the official, bureaucratic languageassist (help), endeavour (try), proceed (go), approximately (about), sufficient (enough), attired (dressed), inquire (ask);“You are authorized to acquire the work in question by purchase through the ordinary trade channels.”(We advise you to buy the book in a shop);

3) “literary” – “refined”, used in descriptive passages of fiction, mostly polysyllabic, drawn from the Romance languages, solitude (одиночество), sentiment (чувство, сентиментальность), fascination (очарование, привлекательность), fastidiousness (привередливость, брезгливость, дотошность, высокомерие, презрительность, отвращение), facetiousness (шутливый; забавный, веселый; курьезный, радостный, оживленный, остроумный), delusion (обман, заблуждение), meditation (раздумье, размышление), felicity (счастье, блаженство, благословение), elusive (неуловимый, труднодостижимый, незаметный, мимолетный), cordial (сердечный; искренний; радушный, задушевный, теплый), illusionary (иллюзорный, обманный)

4) poetic – used in poetry, a lofty, high-flown, sometimes archaic, colouring:

“Alas! (Увы!) they had been friends in youth; But whispering tongues can poison truth

And constancy(стойкость, верность) lives in realms (царство) above; And life is thorny; and youth is vain; And to be wroth (разгневанный) with one we love, Doth (=does) work like madness in the brain...”

(Coleridge)

(4)“You should find no difficulty in obtaining a secretarial post in the city.”Carel said “obtaining a post” and not “getting a job”. It was part of a bureaucratic manner which, Muriel noticed, he kept reserved for her.”

(From The Time of the Angels by I. Murdoch)

(5) 1) When Lady Bracknell in Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest recommends Jack “to make a definite effort to produce at any rate one parent, of either sex, before the season is over”, the statement is funny because the seriousness and precision of the language seems comically out-of-keeping with the informal situation.

The following quotations speak for themselves. (The “learned” elements are italicized.)

2) Gwendolen in the same play declaring her love for Jack says:

“The story of your romantic origin as related to me by mamma, with unpleasing comments, has naturally stirred the deepest fibres of my nature. Your Christian name has an irresistible fascination. The simplicity of your nature makes you exquisitely incomprehensible to me...”

3) Eliza Doolittle in Pygmalion by B. Shaw engaging in traditional English small talk answers the question “Will it rain, do you think?” in the following way:

“The shallow depression in the west of these islands is likely to move slowly in an easterly direction. There are no indications of any great change in the barometrical situation.”

4) Freddie Widgeon, a silly young man in Fate by Wodehouse, trying to defend a woman whom he thinks unduly insulted, says:

“You are aspersing a woman’s name,” he said.

“What?!”

“Don’t attempt to evade the issue,” said Freddie...

“You are aspersing a woman’s name, and — what

makes it worse — you are doing it in a bowler-hat.

Take off that hat,” said Freddie.

(6) “... A bat had noiselessly appropriated the space between, a flittering weaving almost substancelessfragmentof the invading dark. ... A collared dove groaned once in the final light. A pink rose reclining upon the big box hedge glimmered with contained electric luminosity. A blackbird, trying to metamorphose itself into a nightingale, began a long passionate complicated song.”

(From The Sacred and Profane Love Machine by I. Murdoch)

(7) Archaic and Obsolete Words – associated with the printed page, but can never be used in conversational situations, they are moribund, already partly or fully out of circulation, rejected by the living language, used in historical novels and poetry, Thou,thy, aye (yes),nay (no), morn (morning), eve (evening), moon (month), damsel (girl), errant (wandering, e. g. errant knights).

(8) There are several such archaisms in Viola’s speech from Twelfth Night:

“There is a fair behaviour in thee, Captain, And though that nature with a beauteous wall Doth oft close in pollution, yet of thee I will believe thou hast a mind that suits With this thy fair and outward character. I prithee— and I’ll pay thee bounteously — Conceal me what I am, and be my aid For such disguise as haply shall become The form of my intent...”

(Act I, Sc. 2)

(9) formerly archaic kin (for relatives; one’s family) is now current in American usage

(10) obsolete word - “no longer in use, esp. out of use for at least a century”, whereas an archaism is referred to as “current in an earlier time but rare in present usage” (The Random House Dictionary)

(11) historisms - words denoting objects and phenomena which are, things of the past and no longer exist.

(12) Professional Terminology - belong to special scientific, professional or trade terminological systems and are not used or even understood by people outside the particular speciality.

(13) Term, as traditionally understood, is a word or a word-group which is specifically employed by a particular branch of science, technology, trade or the arts to convey a concept peculiar to this particular activity.

e.g.: bilingual, interdental, labialization, palatalization, glottal stop, descending scale are terms of theoretical phonetics

(14) Problems in the field of terminology:

1) whether a term loses its terminological status when it comes into common usage unit (доза лекарственного препарата), theatre (операционная), contact (носитель инфекции)

2) polysemy– there are numerous polysemantic terms: semantics (a) the meaning of a word; b) the branch of lexicology studying meanings), colour (a) цвет; b) краска)

3) synonymy - terms possess synonyms: colour has several synonyms in both its meanings: hue, shade, tint, tinge in the first meaning (цвет) and paint, tint, dye in the second (краска).

(15) Basic Vocabulary - stylistically neutral opposed to formal and informal words, used in all kinds of situations, formal and informal, in verbal and written communication: house, bread, summer, winter, child, mother, green, difficult, to go, to stand

( 16) to walk – to stride (шагать большими шагами),

to stroll (медленно и праздно бродить; скитаться),

to trot (спешить, торопиться, идти рысью),

t o stagger (идти шатаясь)

basic vocabulary word belong to the periphery of the vocabulary

=”to move from place have elaborate (уточняющий) additional

to place on foot” information encoded in their meanings

direct broad meaning

(17) synonyms belonging to different stylistic strata

Basic vocabulary	Informal	Formal
begin	start, get started	commence
continue	go on, get on	proceed
end	finish, be through, be over	terminate
child, baby	kid, brat, beam (dial.)	infant, babe (poet.)

( 18) the stylistic strata of English vocabulary

S tylistically-neutral words Stylistically-marked words

Basic Informal Formal

Colloquial Slang Dialect Learned Archaic Professional

words words words words and obsolete terminology

words

literary familiar low literary scientific poetic

officialese