VARIETIES OF ENGLISH – ENGLISHES
Stylistically Marked Vocabulary
STYLISTICALLY MARKED WORDS
- stylistic colouring
- particular style of speech/level of
formality
Formal:
perspiration, amicable, climb
STYLISTICALLY NEUTRAL WORDS
- used independently of the
sphere of communication
Neutral:
sweat, friendly, ascend
Stylistically coloured (marked) words
• suitable on certain definite occasions
• on the borders of the range:
FORMAL – NEUTRAL – INFORMAL
• formal (technical, official, literary)
• neutral
• informal (colloquialisms, slang, words with local colouring)
FORMAL VOCABULARY
• official situations, talks, documents, literary works, lectures, scientific
works, etc.
• not socially or geographically limited
• polysyllabic
• Romance, Latin, Greek origin
• conservative
• words that do not belong to present-day English vocabulary
• archaic connectives and double conjunctions,
e.g. efficacious = effective, donation = gift; furthermore, whereby, …
COLLOQUIALISMS
• everyday speech
• informal conversations, correspondence to friends
• emotional,
• jocularly coloured
• figurative meaning
• particular fields of human activity, e.g. business oral communication (cf.
official correspondence – highly formal vocabulary)
• e.g. blind alley job = job that has no future, get cracking = work fast longwinded
= using more words than necessary to say something
• SLANG = a set of new, very informal words used in private conversation
language; used by specific social/age group; expressive, witty, ironical,
impolite, unpredictable formation; helps make speech vivid, colourful,
interesting; can easily by used inappropriately; can combine with local
colouring (American vs. British slang, e.g. to sack (BE) vs. to fire sb. (AmE);
American slang – rich, many nations
Newspaper English
• the vocabulary of newspapers
• journalese - an informal, pejorative term
- a style of writing and word choice found in newspapers
and magazines
• Principles of newspaper English:
1 economical
2 condensed
3 attractive language
• one goal → to attract the reader‘s attention in the smallest space possible
Newspaper headlines
• as few words as possible, i.e. grammar words often left out
e.g. Turkish Minister Quits in Car Crash Scandal
• a simple form of the verb
e.g. Pepsi To Test New Colours
• infinitive instead of future when sth. is going to happen
e.g. USD 20 Million to Be Invested in Office Centre
• shorter, dramatic words
• emotional adjectives, e.g. sensational, breath-taking, impressive
• abbreviations
• punning, i.e. playing with words, humorous use of words
• clichés, e.g. Projects get a green light
• slogans, e.g. from TV shows, movies, lyrics
• anagrams, i.e. rearranging letters to spell sth. else
e.g. from the names of famous people James‘ Romance (James Cameron, the director of
the Titanic)
• new words with vague etymology
e.g. venditation – the act of setting force ostentatiously (probably from vendetta)
Regional Varieties of English
• Standard English (Received Pronunciation, The Queen‘s English)
official language, current and literary, acceptable
• local dialects – no normalised literary form
variants – literary forms of regional varieties
- in GB 2 main variants,
i.e. Scottish English (loch = lake, lassie = girl),
Irish English (are ya away? = Are you leaving?, fillum = movie)
- five main groups of dialects, i.e. Northern, Midland, Eastern,
Western, Southern
• Dialects – preserved in rural communities,
- speech of elderly people (obsolete words)
- tendency to disappear (migration, media, urban life)
Local dialects
• Cockney: regional dialect of London
lively, witty, imaginative, colourful
rhyming slang – some words are substituted by other words
rhyming with them, e.g. boots = daisy roots,
hat = tit for tat, head = crust of bread, legs = bacon and eggs
• Estuary English: London, along the Thames Estuary
(a water passage where the tide meets a river current)
not as posh as RP, not as ordinary as Cockney
• Yorkshire County: the largest in the UK, Yorkshire dialect,
e.g. brass = money, scran = food
• Other dialects: e.g. Brummie (Birmingham), Scouse (Liverpool), Geordie (Newcastle), …
The United States of America
• Standard American
• not a dialect
• a regional variety (literary normalised form – Standard American)
• not a separate language (does not possess phonetic system nor vocabulary)
• Modified norms of those accepted in GB
• Differences: pronunciation, vocabulary, spelling and grammar
• Lexical point of view:
Americanisms
= word or phrase peculiar to the English language as spoken in the USA
e.g. apartment – flat, faucet – tap, baby carriage – pram, cab – taxi, cookie
biscuit, diaper – nappy, drugstore – chemist‘s, elevator – lift, line – queue,
mail – post, movies – pictures, one-way ticket – single ticket, store – shop, …
Local American English dialects
• distinguished according to geographical parts of the USA:
the Southern, the Northern, the Midwest, the West
• plus dialects specific to a particular area of the country, e.g.
Tangier Island, Virginia (High Tider), South Carolina and Georgia (Gullah),
Boonville, California (Boontling), Louisiana (Cajun English)
• Ethnic groups – own dialects, e.g.
African-American English (Black English/Ebonics), Hispanic Vernacular English
(Chicago English, Chicano)
Other Countries
• Irish English/Hiberno English, Hibernia = Ireland in Latin
(jacks – a bathroom/toilet)
• Canadian English (shack = a hut)
• Australian English (smoko < smoking = tea/cofee break)
• New Zealand English (Aoteaora = New Zealand in Maori)
• Indian English/Indglish
Time Aspect in English Vocabulary
• constant change
• new notions – new words
• NEOLOGISM
- a word (or its equivalent) formed according to the productive patterns or
borrowed from another language and felt by the speakers as something new
- formation according to the rules of word formation, e.g.
prefixation (rehouse – move a family to a new house), compounding (aqualung),
conversion (a comeback), backformation (to window-shop)
- other examples, e.g. euphemisms (unprivileged = poor), nonce words (words
coined for one occasion, e.g. He was whiskeyfied.)
Obsolete and Archaic words
OBSOLETE words
- dropped out from the language, e.g. eve (the evening/day before)
- linguistic factor (the old word acquires a new stylistic property)
- extralinguistic factor (the denotatum is outdated and no more used, the word is not
used as well)
HISTORISMS
- for social relations, institutions, objects of material culture of the past (e.g. names of
ancient weapons, boats, carriages, e.g. caravel, galleon, …)
ARCHAISM
- a word which is no longer in general use, but it is not absolutely obsolete, e.g. shan‘t =
shall not, instead of won‘t, I daresay = it is possible that
- may sound more official, authoritative, magical,
- used in law terminology
Interesting facts
AMERICAN ENGLISH
• computers
• communication technologies
• Netcronym – internet acronym (F2F = face to face)
SMILEYS/emoticons
• mixture of oral, written and drama genres on Internet
• different punctuation marks to express body language, emotions,
appearance, smiles an shrugs – everything that is invisible on a screen