Informal vocabulary is used in ones immediate circle: family, relatives or friends. Informal style is relaxed, free-and-easy, and familiar. The choice of words is determined in each particular case not only by an informal or formal situation, but also by the speakers educational and cultural background, age group, and his occupational and regional characteristics.
Informal words and word-groups are traditionally divided into three types: colloquial, slang and dialect words and word-groups. Among other informal words, colloquialisms are used by everybody, and their sphere of communication is comparatively wide, at least of literary colloquial words. These are informal words that are used in everyday conversational speech both by cultivated and uneducated people of all age groups. Vast use of informal words is one of the prominent features of 20th century English and American literature. In modern fiction informal words are not restricted to conversation in their use, but frequently appear in descriptive passages as well. Examples of literary colloquial words: pal + chum = friend; girl, when used colloquially, denotes a woman of any age; bite + snack = meal; hi, hello = informal greetings, and so long = form of parting; start, go on, finish and be through are also literary colloquialisms; to have a crush on somebody = of to be in love. A considerable number of shortenings are found among words of this type. e. g. pram, exam, fridge, flu, prop, zip, movie. Literary colloquial words are to be distinguished from familiar colloquial and low colloquial. The borderline between the literary and familiar colloquial is not always clearly marked. Yet 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. Slang is very formal usage in vocabulary that is characteristically more metaphorical, playful, elliptical and vivid than ordinary language. In English and some other language speech and writing is characterized by used vulgar, socially tabooed vocabulary and idiomatic expression. Slang is the jargon of a particular classprofession etc. or special vocabulary of thievesvagabonds etc. Slang — abusive language. Slang is represented in most of the dictionaries as a vocabulary and special language.
Many words formally labeled as slang have now become units of Standard English. In most of the dictionaries slang is used as convenient stylistic connotation for a word or phrases that cannot be specified further. Slang should be used for those forms of language which are mispronounced on distorted in some way phonetically, morphologically etc. slang is the most extended and vastly developed group of nonstandard colloquial layer of the vocabulary. Besides separate words it includes also highly figurative phraseology. Slang words exist on the periphery of the lexical system of the given language. Functions: to create speech characteristic of a personage mainly in dialogues; to turn the passage from an unemotional to an emotional picture.
Dialect words. 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. England is a small country, yet it has many dialects which have their own distinctive features. Dialectal peculiarities, especially those of vocabulary, are constantly being incorporated into everyday colloquial speech or slang. Car, trolley, tram began as dialect words.
Formal style is restricted to formal situations. In general, formal words fall into two main groups: words associated with professional communication and a less exclusive group of so-called learned words. These words are mainly associated with the printed page. It is in this vocabulary stratum that poetry and fiction find their main resources. The term learned includes several heterogeneous subdivisions of words. We find here numerous words that are used in scientific prose and can be identified by their dry, matter-of-fact flavour e. g. comprise, compile, experimental, heterogeneous, homogeneous, conclusive, divergent, etc.. To this group also belongs so-called officialese.
Poetic words have a further characteristic a lofty, high-flown, sometimes archaic, colouring.
Obsolete words have already gone out of use but they are still recognized by the English speakers. Archaic proper are words which are no longer recognizable in modern English.
Historisms are words used to be replaced by modern synonyms. These words are moribund, already partly or fully out of circulation, rejected by the living language. Their last refuge is in historical novels whose authors use them to create a particular period atmosphere and, of course, in poetry which is rather conservative in its choice of words. Thou and thy, aye yes and nay no are certainly archaic and long since rejected by common usage, yet poets use them even today. The borderline between obsolete and archaic is vague and uncertain, and in many cases it is difficult to decide to which of the groups this or that word belongs. Professional terminology. Thousands of words belong to special scientific, professional or trade terminological systems and are not used or even understood by people outside the particular speciality. Every field of modern activity has its specialised vocabulary. There is a special medical vocabulary, and similarly special terminologies for psychology, botany, music, linguistics, teaching methods and many others.
Terms. One of the most characteristic features of a term is its direct relevance to the system used in a particular science. Term is directly connected with the concept it denotes. Unlike other words it directs the mind to the essential quality of the thing. Terms are mostly used in special way dealing with the notion of some brunch of science. When a term appears in a not scientific work its function changes. In most cases it acquires a stylistic function and becomes a SD. With the increase of general education many words that were terms have gradually lost their qualities as terms. In stylistics this process is called determinisation. But also there are linguists in whose opinion terms are only those words which have retained their exclusiveness and are not known or recognised outside their specific sphere. There is yet another point of view, according to which any terminological system is supposed to include all the words and word-groups conveying concept peculiar to a particular branch of knowledge, regardless of their exclusiveness.
