Jargonisms

Jargon is a group of words that exist in almost every language. Its aim is to preserve secrecy within a certain social group.

Jargonisms are usually old words with entirely new meanings, which can

be understood only by the people inside the social group (not outside it).

Jargonism are social (not regional) in character, for example: the jargon of thieves and vagabonds (cant), the jargon of jazzmen, the jargon of the army (military slang), etc.

e.g. grease – money

loaf – head

tiger hunter –gambler

lexer - student preparing for a law course.

Jargonisms do not always remain on the outskirts of the literary language. Many of them have entered the Standard Vocabulary:

e.g. kid, fun, queer, bluff, fib, humbug (formerly slang words and jargonisms are now considered common literary).

Professionalisms

Professionalisms are used in a definite trade or profession by people connected by common interests. They are correlated to terms. Whereas terms are coined to name new concepts or phenomena appearing in the process of science and technology development, professionalisms name the already-existing concepts, tools or instruments anew. Their main feature is their technicality. They belong to the special non-literary layer of the vocabulary (unlike terms).

Terms	Professionalisms
Easily decoded, can enter neutral vocabulary	Remain in circulation within a definite professional community
Semantic structure transparent, Easily understood	Semantic structure obscure, based on a metaphor, metonymy
Mono-semantic	Mono-semantic

e.g.: tin-fish - submarine

block buster - a bomb especially designed to destroy blocks of big

buildings

e.g. a piper - a specialist who decorates pastry with the help of a cream-pipe.

Unlike jargonisms, professionalisms do not aim at secrecy. They fulfil a useful function in communication, facilitating the process of grasping information.

Professionalisms are used in emotive prose to depict the natural speech of a character. They show not only the vocation, but also education, breeding, environment and even psychology (speech characterization-device).

Dialectal words

Dialectal words are those, which in the process of creation of the English national language remained beyond its literary boundaries, and their use is generally confined to a definite locality.

There is sometimes a difficulty in distinguishing dialectal words from purely colloquial words.

Some dialectisms have become so familiar in colloquial or standard colloquial English that they are accepted as belonging to (standard) colloquial English:

e.g. lass - girl/beloved girl (from Scottish and northern dialect)

lad - a young man

Still the words have not lost their dialectal associations.

Other examples of dialect words (corruptions of Standard English):

hinny = honey

tittie = sister

cutty = naughty girl /woman

Examples of Southern dialect:

initial “s” sound and “t” sound are voiced:

zee = see, volk = folk, vound =found, zinking = sinking.

Dialectal words can be found in emotive prose (not other functional styles). Their function is to characterize personages through their speech.