Lecture 7. Stylistically differentiated vocabulary.

The content of the lecture: The forthcoming lecture is devoted to a linguistic unit of major significance - the word, which names, qualifies and evaluates the micro- and macrocosm of the sur­rounding world. The most essential feature of a word is that it expresses the concept of a thing, process, phenomenon, na­ming (denoting) them.

In accordance with the pattern of a meaning structure the potential semantics of a word is determined by the paradigmatic set of the components known as a denotative meaning, a significative meaning and an implicative meaning but in the text or speech situation the words may acquire some stylistic colour what is connected with the pragmatic tasks of the communicants so as with their belonging to some social or professional community. If the words known as dialects do not bear any stylistic connotation , the other ones, including slangisms and jargonisms, may receive some particular explication as a result of a new nominative act.

In semantic actualization of a word the context plays a dual role: on the one hand, it cuts off all the meanings irrelevant for a given communicative situation. On the other hand, it foregrounds one of the meaningful options of a word, focusing the communicators' attention on one of the denotational or connonational components of its semantic structure.

The significance of the context is comparatively small in the field of stylistic connotations, because the word is labeled stylistically before it enters some context, i.e. in the dictionary: recollect the well-known contractions - vulg., arch,, sl, etc., which make an indispensable part of a dictionary entry. So there is sense to start the survey of connotational meanings with the stylistic differentiation of the vocabulary.

The key terms of the lecture: stylistically charged words; stylistically neutral words; basic vocabulary; neologism; slangy word; archaic word; vulgar word; foreign words or barbarisms; dialect; dialect word; historisms; exotisms; stereotype of speech behaviour; formal/informal speech; colloquial English (high/familiar/low); cant; jargon.

The objectives and tasks of the lecture:

After completing your work over the material of this lecture you are to be able to speak on the following problems:

1. Basic vocabulary;

2. Formal/informal language;

3. Stylistically charged vocabulary and its properties;

4. Stylistically neutral vocabulary and its properties;

5. Colloquial speech: the types;

6. High colloquial;

7. Familiar colloquial;

8. Low colloquial;

9. Slang and slang words;

10. The place of cant in English language;

11. Dialect and dialect words’

The material of the lecture:

§ 1.In highly-developed language the same idea may be differently expressed in different situations. Part of the words, and not the least one the speaker uses, is independent of the sphere of communication. These words are equally fit to be used in a lecture, a poem, when speaking to a child. They are stylistically neutral and constitute the core of the vocabulary. They are highly frequent and cover a great portion of lexical units. They make a basic vocabulary but it does not mean that in the meaning and structure these units remain unchangeable. In communication, at some stage of their development, they may begin to fulfill some new function, making a language more vivid and expressive.

Every educated person has at least two ways of speaking his mother tongue. One of them is that he employs in his family, among his familiar friends and on ordinary occasions. Another is that which he uses in discoursing on more complicated subjects and in addressing persons with whom he is less intimately acquainted. That is why the broadest binary division of vocabulary as a voluminous paradigm into two groups – formal and informal – is of specific interest. Stereotypes of speech behaviour play an important role in a choice of a speech standard which directly depends of a speaker – poet, journalist, close friend, politician, administrator, mother, son, etc. Depending on different factors such as knowledge of audience and character of relationship in which a speaker stands to them (role status) he uses the word from a certain type of a paradigm – stylistically charged or stylistically neutral.