The Informal Layer of English Vocabulary

Informal vocabulary is used in one's immediate circle: family, relatives or friends. One uses informal words when at home or when feeling at home. Informal language is more common in spoken English than in written English. Informal style is relaxed, free-and-easy, familiar, and unpretentious. But informal talk of well-educated people considerably differs from that of the illiterate or the semi-educated; the choice of words with adults is different from the vocabulary of the teenagers; people living in provinces use certain regional words and expressions. 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. Informal words are traditionally divided into three types: colloquial, slang and dialect words.

Colloquial and Literary Colloquial Words

Colloquial wordsare used by everybody, their sphere of communication is wide. Literary colloquialare informal words that are used in everyday conversational speech both by cultivated and uneducated people of all age groups but mostly older generation. The sphere of communication of literary colloquial words also includes the printed page. Vast use of informal words is one of the prominent features of the 20^th century English and American literature.

Literary colloquial words are to be distinguished from familiar colloquial. The borderline between the literary and colloquial is not always clearly marked. The number of speakers using familiar colloquial is more limited: these words are mostly used by the young and the semieducated. It is more emotional and more free.

Familiar and literary colloquial words have some features in common:

• Only a small number of words are in actual use, these words are highly polysemantic.

• Words of broad meaning are very frequent.

• There are a lot of readymade formula.

• Set expressions are very frequent.

• Many phrasal verbs are informal.

• For these layers are also typical: nouns converted from verbs, converted verbs, substantivized adjectives, words derived by composition or substantivation, intensifiers are very frequent.

Slang

Slang includes expressive, mostly ironical words serving to create fresh names for those objects which are often mentioned in speech. These objects belong to money, class, drugs, drinking, music, modern dance, people. Slang helps to make speech vivid, colourful and interesting. It is mainly used in speech, but it can also be found in the popular press. It can be risky for someone who is not a native speaker to use slang:

• Some slang expressions can cause offence to some sections of the population.

• Slang words date very quickly. Different generations used different slang expressions. The following words were used to say that something was "wonderful" at different periods of time: Pre-war – top-hole; 1940s – wizard; 1960s – fab, groovy; 1970s – ace, cosmic; 1980s – brill, wicked.

Slang can be generaland special. General slang wordsare figurative words and expressions of emotional and evaluative colouring generally understandable and widely spread in colloquial speech. General slang has a range of peculiar features:

• General slang is widely spread and understandable for all social strata of the society.

• General slang has a marked emotional and evaluative character with the predominance of the expressive function over the nominative one.

• General slang is relatively stable.

• General slang is heterogeneous.

• General slang has phonetic, morphological and syntactic peculiarities.

Special slang wordsare words or expressions of this or that class jargon. Some particular types of special slang:

• Cockney - has a rhyming structure, e.g., Trouble and strife, Apples and pears, Cain and Abel, Lean and lurch;

• Back slang - secret language used to communicate with each other with the help of peculiar code unfamiliar to other people, e.g., police – slop, woman –namow, market –tekram, yes – say, took – cool, good – doog;

• Centre/Medial slang. This form of slang appeared later than back slang. The concealing of the form goes not through turning over the most important words, but through splitting these words half by half on a vowel or diphthong and putting its first part before the second. Sometimes the sound [h] is added at the beginning of a new word or suffixes -mer, -fer, -ее, e.g., mug –hugmer, flat –hatfer, language –anguaagela, sweet – eetswe, fool– oolfoo.

Date: 2015-12-24; view: 2352