Гальперин и.Р. Стилистика английского языка: Учебник. М., 1977.

Гинзбург Р.З., Хидекель С.С., Князева Г.Ю. и др. Лексикология английского языка: Учебник для ин-тов и фак. иностр. яз. / Hа англ. яз. М., 1979.

Contemporary Linguistics. An Introduction / W. O’Grady, M. Dobrovolsky, M. Aronoff. New York, 1993.

Crystal d. The Cambridge Encyclopedia of the English Language. Printed in Italy, 1995.

McArthur T. The Oxford Companion to the English Language. Oxford, 1992.

Recommended Dictionaries

Кудрявцев А.Ю., Куропаткин Г.Д. Англо-русский словарь-справочник табуизированной лексики и эвфемизмов. М., 1993.

Hовый англо-русский словарь / В.К.Мюллер, В.Л.Дашевская, В.А.Каплан и др. М., 1994.

Новый Большой англо-русский словарь. В 3-х т. / Ю.Д. Апресян, Э.М. Медникова, А.В. Петрова и др. Под общим рук. Ю.Д. Апресяна. М., 1997.

Ayto J., Simpson J. The Oxford Dictionary of Modern Slang. Oxford; New York, 1996.

Collins Cobuild English Language Dictionary. London, 1995.

The Concise Oxford Dictionary. Bombay, 1987.

The Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary of Current English. A.S.Hornby / Ed. J. Crowther. Oxford, 1995.

The Oxford Russian Dictionary. English-Russian. Oxford, 1995.

Partridge E. A Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English. London, 1979. Vol. 1, 2.

Partridge E. Smaller Slang Dictionary. London; Boston, 1976.

Dictionary of American Slang / Comp. and ed. by H.Wentworth and S. B. Flexner. New York, 1975.

Phythian B.A. A Concise Dictionary of English Slang. London, 1984.

Spears R.A. NTC’s Dictionary of American Slang and Colloquial Expressions. USA, 1993.

Regional varieties of the english language: Lexical differences Topics for Discussion

1. The English language in different parts of the world. The notion of World Standard English (WSE). English as a global language.

2. The main variants of the English language.

3. Lexical differences of regional variants (American variant, Australian variant, Canadian variant, etc.).

4. British dialects (General overview).

5. Varieties of American English (General overview).

Key Terms

Americanism Briticism dialect English mother tongue (EMT) speakers identity intelligibility internationalism lexical differences linguistic distinctiveness melting pot

national language national standard official language regional variation sociolect spelling differences Standard English variant variety World Standard English (WSE) world language

Tasks and Exercises

1. Read the excerpt and dwell on the influence the two varieties (British and American) have had on each other. American and british english

As we move away from the formal written English of the press in the direction of the informal spoken language, the differences between regional varieties dramatically increase. In the case of American and British English, the variation is considerable, but there are no accurate estimates for the number of points of contrast, for two chief reasons.

Recent decades have seen a major increase in the amount of influence the two models have had on each other, especially American on British. The influence of US films and television has led to a considerable pas­sive understanding of much American the English vocabulary in Britain, and some of this has turned into active use (as in the case of mail), especially among younger people. The reverse pattern is less obvious, but British films and TV programmes are seen suffi­ciently often in the USA to mean that a growth in awareness of UK vocabulary should not be dis­counted. What were originally fairly clear patterns of lexical differentiation have been obscured by borrow­ing on a world-wide scale.

The regional dialect surveys of both countries, sev­eral of which have only recently begun to publish their findings, are bringing to light huge amounts of lexical distinctiveness. Few of these forms have any literary background or enough breadth of use to war­rant their inclusion in general dictionaries, but they do form an important part of the regional pattern, and several of them are retained in educated usage at local level as markers of group identity.

Nonetheless, when we take into account local festivals and folklore, abbreviations, localities, institutional differences (e.g. politics, banking, legal systems, armed forces, sports, honours), local fauna and flora, and everyday slang, the stock of regional differences is likely to be extremely large. In a casual collection made by the author in the 1970s, based solely on available dictionaries and literary works, 5,000 differences were found very easily, and it became apparent that the pro­ject was too large for such an informal treatment. A recently published dictionary by David Grote has some 6,500 entries, and deals only with British English for American readers. These totals, it must be appreci­ated, arise because we are dealing not only with differ­ent words (lexemes), but also different senses of words. UK chips (= US (French) fries) is not the same as US chips (= UK crisps) — though American influence has brought both (French) fries and (potato) chips to Britain.

(From: D.Crystal. The Cambridge Encyclopedia of the English Language. 1995. Р. 306.)