Module 2 Tutorial # 4. Theme: “Social and territorial difference of English vocabulary” (2 hours)

Subtheme # 1: “Formal vocabulary: learned words, professional terminology, fiction and poetry”

Thesis:

English vocabulary as a system with respect to different groups we deal with two main types of English vocabulary:

1. social difference-word-stock and society, terms, professional terminology

2. territorial difference-learned words, dialect, slang and colloquial words.

The social context in which the communication is taking place determines both the mode of dress and the modes of speech. When placed in different situations, people instinctively choose different kinds of words and structures to express their thoughts. What word to use in certain situation depends on its stylistic characteristics or, in other words on the functional style it represents. The term functional style is generally accepted in modern linguistics. Professor I.V.Arnold defines it as “a system of expressive means peculiar to a specific sphere of communication”. By the sphere of communication we mean the circumstances attending the process of speech in each particular case: professional communication, a lecture, an informal talk, a formal letter, a speech in court, etc. All these circumstances or situations can be roughly classified into two types: formal (a lecture, a speech in court, an official letter, professional communication) and informal (an informal talk, an intimate letter).

Formal style or formal vocabulary is used to cover varieties of English vocabulary that occur in books and magazines, that we hear from a lecture, a public speaker, a radio announcer or possibly in official talk. These types of communication are characterised as monologues addressed by one person to many, and often prepared in advance. Words are used with precision, the vocabulary is elaborate.

Informal style or informal vocabulary is used in personal two-way everyday communication. It is in the form of dialogue where the speaker has the qualities of voice, gesture, the speaker has an opportunity to know whether he is understood, the listener can always interrupt him and demand additional information. The vocabulary may be determined socially or regionally(dialect). Informal vocabulary is used in one’s immediate circle: family, relatives or friends. Informal style is relaxed, free and easy, familiar and unpretentious. The choice of words is determined in each particular case not only by an informal (or formal) situation, but also by the speaker’s educational and cultural background, age group and his occupational and regional characteristics.

Formal words fall into the grouping as: words associated with professional communication (professional terminology) and a less exclusive group so-called learned words.

Learned words are mainly associated with the printed page. Their main resources are poetry and fiction (or also called literary). We said that learned words are mainly used with the printed page, but sometimes any educated English-speaking individual is sure to use many learned words not only in his formal letters and professional communication but also in his everyday speech. Generally speaking, educated people in both modern fiction and real life use learned words quite naturally and their speech is certainly the richer for it. Writers and poets use these words for stylistic purposes with vivid points and colours, not only their humorous effects. Even we may say that learned words are the selection of words which makes the description serious, devoid of cheap sentimentality and yet charged with grave forebodings and tense expectation. What role do learned words play in the language –learning? Should they be taught? The answer is clear without knowing some learned words, it is even impossible to read fiction or listen to lectures delivered in the foreign language or to understand scientific articles. But of course they should be carefully selected and activized to become part of the students’ functional vocabulary. The language a poet who writes poetry, a writer who writes different stories uses is closely bound with his outlook and experience, with his subject-matter and the message he wants to express. That is why it is important to know the learned words and try to use them in speech.

Professional terminology means the set of words which belong to special scientific, professional or trade systems and are not used or even understood by people outside the particular speciality. Every field of modern activity has its specialized vocabulary.

Literature:

1. G.B. Antrushina “English Lexicology”, “Vyssaja skola”, M.1999

2. I.V. Arnold “The English Word”, “Vyssaja skola”, M. 1973, 1989

3. S.I. Ginsburg “A Course in Modern English Lexicology”, “Vyssaja skola”, M. 1979

4. Electronic book of the university:

Электронный учебник по лексикологии английского языка.

Составители: Сыздыкова Г.Н., Булатова С.М. Алматы, 2001

5. Multimedia lectures and seminars compiled by the instructor of English lexicology: senior teacher Asanova G.S

Problematic questions:

- What is to adopt or to make vocabulary as a system?

- Why should vocabulary be studied as a system?

- What is the importance of stylistic structure of the word?

- What features differentiate formal and informal speech?

- Why literary language is important in speech?

- What features differentiate formal and informal speech?

- What role learned words play in the language-learning?

- What are the circumstances or situations attending the process of speech in each particular case?

- What are the characteristic features differentiating formal and informal words?

- What role learned words play in language learning, if they should be taught?

- Why words of formal speech are used with precision and the vocabulary is elaborate?

Subtheme # 2: “Informal vocabulary: colloquial words, slangs, jargons, dialect words”

Thesis:

Informal words fall into the grouping as: colloquial, slang and dialect words.

Colloquial words are used by everybody and their sphere of used in everyday conversational speech both by cultivated and uneducated people of all age groups. Colloquial words are subdivided into literary colloquial, familiar colloquial and low colloquial. Literary colloquial words are used not only everyday speech but also include the printed page. The borderline of literary colloquial words is not limited. As the examples of literary colloquial words may be

a) a number of shortenings, e.g. pram, exam, fridge, flu, math, movie

b) verb with post-positional adverbs: put up, make up, make out, do away, turn up, turn in

Familiar- colloquial words. The circle of speakers using familiar colloquial is more limited: these words are used mostly by the young and the semi-educated. This vocabulary group closely verges on slang and has smth of its coarse flavour.

Low colloquial words are usually characteristic of the speech of persons who may be broadly described as uncultivated. This group is stocked with words of illiterate English which do not present much interest for our purposes.

The term colloquial is old enough. Dr.Johnson, the great English lexicographer used it. Colloquial English is very emotional. In all the groups of colloquialisms and in familiar colloquial especially, words easily acquire new meanings and new valency.

The Oxford English Dictionary defines slang as “language of a highly colloquial style, considered as below the level of standard educated speech and consisting either new words or of current words employed in some special sense”. Slang, informal, non-standard words and phrases, generally shorter lived than the expressions of ordinary colloquial speech, and typically formed by creative, often witty juxtapositions of words or images. Slang can be contrasted with jargon (technical language of occupational or other groups) and with argot or cant (secret vocabulary of underworld groups), but borderlines separating these categories from slang are greatly blurred, and some writers use the terms cant, argot and jargon in a general way to include all the foregoing meanings. Slang tends to originate in subcultures within a society. Occupational groups (F: loggers, police, medical professionals and computer specialists) are prominent originators of both jargon and slang; other groups creating slang include the armed forces, teenagers, racial minorities, ghetto residents, labor unions, citizens-band radiobroadcasters, sports groups, drug addicts, criminals and even religious denominations. In addition to occupational and professional groups, there are many other types of subcultures that supply slang. These include sexual deviants, narcotic addicts, ghetto groups, institutional populations, agricultural subsocieties, political organizations, the armed forces, Gypsies, and sports groups of many varieties. Some of the most fruitful sources of slang are the subcultures of professional criminals who have migrated to the New World since the 16^th century. In some cases slang may provide a needed name for an object or actionor it may offer an emotional outlet or a satirical or patronizing reference. It may provide euphemisms and it may allow its user to create a shock effect by using a pungent slang expression in an unexpected context. Slang has provided myriad synonyms for parts of the body, for food, for drunkenness. Slang words are expressive, mostly ironical words serving to create fresh names for some things that are frequent topics of discourse. They sound somewhat vulgar, cynical and harsh. This is not surprising, for slang words and idioms are short-lived and very soon either disappear or lose their peculiar colouring and become either colloquial or stylistically neutral lexical units. Most slang words are metaphors. The circle of users of slang is more narrow than that of colloquialisms. It is mainly used by the young and uneducated. Slang’s colourful and humorous quality makes it catching, so a considerable part of slang may become accepted by nearly all the groups of speakers. Slang words are clearly motivated. The lexical meaning of a slang word contains not only the denotational component but also an emotive component (most often it expresses irony) and all the other possible types of connotation – it is expressive, evaluatory and stylistically coloured and is the marked member of a stylistic opposition. Some of these are the employment of metaphor, simile, folk etymology, distortion of sounds in words, generalization, specialization, clipping, the use of acronyms, elevation and degeneration, metonymy, synecdoche, hyperbole, borrowings from foreign languages, and the play of euphemism against taboo.

According to sphere of usage slangs are subdivided into general and special slang.

General slang includes words that are not specific for any social or professional group. Special slang is peculiar for some such group: teenager slang, university slang, football slang.

H.W.Fowler defines a dialect as “a variety of a language which prevails in a district, with local peculiarities of vocabulary, pronunciation and phrase”. So dialects are regional forms of English. Dialects have no normalized literary form. The study of dialects has been made on the basis of information obtained with the help of special techniques: interviews, questionnaires, recording by phonograph and tape recorder. This collection show the territorial distribution of certain key words and pronunciations which vary from region to region. Dialects are chiefly preserved in rural communities, in the speech of elderly people. Dialects are said to undergo rapid changes under the pressure of standard English taught at schools and the speech habits cultivated by radio, television and cinema. Dialects are varieties of a language used as a means of oral communication in small localities, they are set off from other varieties by some distinctive features of pronunciation, grammar and vocabulary. F: variants of the English language, British and American, the differences between the English language as spoken in Britain, the USA, Australia and Canada, New Zealand. Dialect words can be differentiate by 1) lexical differences – using different words for the same objects or sometimes equivalents of the words, connected with semantic structure or variant of words or typical characteristics of the word in certain local place, specific to the British or American or Canadian variant of their meanings, lexical units showing the spheres of life, some words which have become common property of the English-speaking community. 2) derivational variants of words, having the same root and identical in lexical meaning though differing in derivational affixes.

British English, American E, Australian E are variants of the same language, because they serve all spheres of verbal communication. Their structural peculiarities, especially morphology, syntax and word-formation as well as their word-stock and phonetic system are essentially the same. The so-called local dialects in the British Isles and in the USA are used only by the rural population and only for the purposes of oral communication. In both variants local distinctions are more marked in pronunciation, less conspicuous in vocabulary and insignificant in grammar.

The existing cases of difference between the two variants are conveniently classified into:

1. cases where there are no equivalents in BE: drive-in – a cinema where you can see the film without getting out of your car or a shop where motorists buy things staying in the car.

2. Cases where different words are used for the same denotation. F: can, candy, mailbox, movies, truck in the USA, and tin, sweets, pillar-box, pictures, lorry in England.

3. Cases where the semantic structure of a partially equivalent word is different. The word pavement means in the first place “covering of the street or the floor and the like made of asphalt, stones or some other material”. The derived meaning is in England “the footway at the side of the road”. The Americans use the noun sidewalk for this, while pavement with them means “the roadway”.

4. Cases where otherwise equivalent words are different in distribution. The verb ride in standard English is mostly combined with nouns as a horse, a bicycle, more seldom they say to ride on a bus. In AE combinations like a ride on the train, to ride in a boat are quite usual.

5. It sometimes happens that the same word is used in AE with some difference in emotional and stylistic colouring.

6. There may be a marked difference in frequency characteristics. F: time-table in AE rarely, yielded its place to schedule.

Literature:

1. G.B. Antrushina “English Lexicology”, “Vyssaja skola”, M.1999

2. I.V. Arnold “The English Word”, “Vyssaja skola”, M. 1973, 1989

3. S.I. Ginsburg “A Course in Modern English Lexicology”, “Vyssaja skola”, M. 1979

4. Electronic book of the university:

Электронный учебник по лексикологии английского языка.

Составители: Сыздыкова Г.Н., Булатова С.М. Алматы, 2001

5. Multimedia lectures and seminars compiled by the instructor of English lexicology: senior teacher Asanova G.S

Problematic questions:

- Why the vocabulary may be determined socially or regionally?

- Why style of informal speech is relaxed, free and easy, unpretentious?

- Why is it important to know the learned words and try to use them in speech?

- What differentiates slang, jargon and argot words?

Subtheme # 3: “Territorial difference of English vocabulary: American, New Zealandian, Australian, Canadian variants of English”

Thesis:

Standard English –the official language of Great Britain taught at schools and universities, used by the press, the radio and the television and spoken by educated people may be defined as that form of English which is current and literary, substantially uniform and recognized as acceptable wherever English is spoken or understood. Its vocabulary is contrasted to dialect words. Local dialects are varieties of the English language peculiar to some districts and having no normalized literary form. Regional varieties possessing a literary form are called variants. In Great Britain there are two variants, Scottish and Irish English and five main groups of dialects: Northern, Midland, Eastern, Western and Southern.

One of the best known Southern dialects is Cockney, the regional dialect of London. Cockney is lively and witty and its vocabulary imaginative and colourful. Dialects are now chiefly preserved in rural communities, in the speech of elderly people. Their boundaries have become less stable than they used to be; the distinctive features are tending to disappear with the shifting of population due to the migration of working-class families in search of employment and the growing influence of urban life over the countryside. The dialect vocabulary is remarkable for its conservatism: many words that have become obsolete in standard English are still kept in dialects.

The Scottish Tongue and the Irish English have a special linguistic status as compared with dialects because of the literature composed in them.

The variety of English spoken in the USA has received the name of American English. British and American English are two main variants of English. Besides them there are – Canadian, Australian, Indian, New Zealand and other variants. They have some peculiarities in pronunciation, grammar and vocabulary, but they are easily used for communication between people living in these countries. An Americanism may be defined as a word or a set expression peculiar to the English language as spoken in the USA. The American variant of the English language differs from British English in pronunciation, some minor features of grammar, but chiefly in vocabulary.

H.W.Fowler defines a dialect as “a variety of a language which prevails in a district, with local peculiarities of vocabulary, pronunciation and phrase”. So dialects are regional forms of English. Dialects have no normalized literary form. The study of dialects has been made on the basis of information obtained with the help of special techniques: interviews, questionnaires, recording by phonograph and tape recorder. This collection show the territorial distribution of certain key words and pronunciations which vary from region to region. Dialects are chiefly preserved in rural communities, in the speech of elderly people. Dialects are said to undergo rapid changes under the pressure of standard English taught at schools and the speech habits cultivated by radio, television and cinema. Dialects are varieties of a language used as a means of oral communication in small localities, they are set off from other varieties by some distinctive features of pronunciation, grammar and vocabulary. F: variants of the English language, British and American, the differences between the English language as spoken in Britain, the USA, Australia and Canada, New Zealand. Dialect words can be differentiate by 1) lexical differences – using different words for the same objects or sometimes equivalents of the words, connected with semantic structure or variant of words or typical characteristics of the word in certain local place, specific to the British or American or Canadian variant of their meanings, lexical units showing the spheres of life, some words which have become common property of the English-speaking community. 2) derivational variants of words, having the same root and identical in lexical meaning though differing in derivational affixes.

British English, American E, Australian E are variants of the same language, because they serve all spheres of verbal communication. Their structural peculiarities, especially morphology, syntax and word-formation as well as their word-stock and phonetic system are essentially the same. The so-called local dialects in the British Isles and in the USA are used only by the rural population and only for the purposes of oral communication. In both variants local distinctions are more marked in pronunciation, less conspicuous in vocabulary and insignificant in grammar.

The existing cases of difference between the two variants are conveniently classified into:

1) cases where there are no equivalents in BE: drive-in – a cinema where you can see the film without getting out of your car or a shop where motorists buy things staying in the car.

2) cases where different words are used for the same denotation. F: can, candy, mailbox, movies, truck in the USA, and tin, sweets, pillar-box, pictures, lorry in England.

3. Cases where the semantic structure of a partially equivalent word is different. The word pavement means in the first place “covering of the street or the floor and the like made of asphalt, stones or some other material”. The derived meaning is in England “the footway at the side of the road”. The Americans use the noun sidewalk for this, while pavement with them means “the roadway”.

4. Cases where otherwise equivalent words are different in distribution. The verb ride in standard English is mostly combined with nouns as a horse, a bicycle, more seldom they say to ride on a bus. In AE combinations like a ride on the train, to ride in a boat are quite usual.

5. It sometimes happens that the same word is used in AE with some difference in emotional and stylistic colouring.

6. There may be a marked difference in frequency characteristics. F: time-table in AE rarely, yielded its place to schedule.

Literature:

1. G.B. Antrushina “English Lexicology”, “Vyssaja skola”, M.1999

2. I.V. Arnold “The English Word”, “Vyssaja skola”, M. 1973, 1989

3. S.I. Ginsburg “A Course in Modern English Lexicology”, “Vyssaja skola”, M. 1979

4. Electronic book of the university:

Электронный учебник по лексикологии английского языка.

Составители: Сыздыкова Г.Н., Булатова С.М. Алматы, 2001

5. Multimedia lectures and seminars compiled by the instructor of English lexicology: senior teacher Asanova G.S

Problematic questions:

- Will you state out the cases of difference between BE and AE?

- What is American English?

- What are the lexical and grammatical differences between BE, AE?

- What is the difference between territorial and regional variety of English language?