Informal style

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 style is relaxed, free-and-easy, familiar and unpretentious. But it should be pointed out that the 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 teenagers; people living in the provinces use cer­tain regional words and expressions. Consequently, 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 and word-groups are traditionally divided into three types: colloquial, slang and dialect words.

Colloquial words (colloquialisms) are used by everybody and there sphere of communication is wide. These are informal words that are used in everyday conversational speech both by cultivated and uneducated people of all age groups. The sphere of communication of literary colloquial words also includes the printed page, which shows that the term "colloquial" is somewhat inaccurate.

Vast use of informal words is one of the prominent features of 20th c. English and American literature. It is quite natural that informal words appear in dialogues in which they realistically reflect the speech of modern people:

"You're at sort of technical college?" she said to Leo, not looking at him ....

"Yes. I hate it though. I'm not good enough at maths. There's a chap there just down from Cambridge who puts us through it. I can't keep up. Were you good at maths?"

"Not bad. But 1 imagine school maths are different."

"Well, yes they arc I can't cope with this stuff at all, it's the whole way of thinking that's beyond me...I think I'm going to chuck it and take a job."

However, in modern fiction informal words are not restricted to conversation in their use, but frequently appear in descriptive passages as well. In this way the author creates an intimate, warm, informal atmosphere, meeting his leader, as it were, on the level of a friendly talk.

Here are some more examples of literary colloquial words. Pal and chum are colloquial equivalents of friend; girl, when used colloquially, denotes a woman of any age; bite and snack stand for meal, hello is an in­formal greeting, and so long a form of parting; start, go on, finish and be through are also literary colloquialisms; to have a crush on somebody is a colloquial equivalent of to be in love. A bit (of) and a lot (of) also belong to this group.

A considerable number of shortenings are found among words of this type. R g. pram, exam, fridge, flu, prop, zip, movie.

Verbs with post-positional adverbs are also numerous among colloquialisms: put up, put over, make up, make out, do away, turn up, turn in, etc.

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 semiedu-cated. This vocabulary group closely verges on slang and has something of its coarse flavour.

E. g. doc (for doctor), hi, (for how do you do), ta-ta (for good-bye), goings-on (for behavior, usually with a negative connotation), to kid smb. (fortease, banter), to pickup smb. (for make a quick and easy acquaintance), goon with you (for let me alone), shut up (for keep silent), beat it (for go away).

Low colloquial is defined by G, P. Krapp as uses "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.

Slang

Much has been written on the subject of slang that is contradictory and at the same time very interesting.

The Oxford English Dictionary defines slang as ''language of a highly colloquial style, below the level of standard educated speech, and consisting either of new words of current words employed in some special sense."

Then why do people use slang?

For a number of reasons. To be picturesque.

To demonstrate one's spiritual independence and daring. To sound "modern" and "up-to-date".

It doesn't mean that all these aims arc achieved by using slang. Nor are they put in so many wolds by those using slang on the conscious level. But these are the main reasons for using slang as explained by modern psy­chologists and linguists.

The circle of users of slang is more narrow than that of colloquialisms. It is mainly used by the young and uneducated. Yet, slang's colourful and humorous quality makes it catching, so that a considerable part of slang may become accepted by nearly all the groups of speakers.

All that has been said about slang should make it clear that it should not be included in the students' functional vocabulary. Nor should students be encouraged to use slang in their speech in class.

Dialect Words

Dialects are regional forms of English. Standard English is defined by the Random House Dictionary as

the English language as it is written and spoken by literate people in both formal and informal usage and that is universally current while incorporating regional differences.

Dialectal peculiarities, especially those of vocabulary, are constantly being incorporated into everyday colloquial speech or slang. From these levels they can be transferred into the common stock, and into the literary language. Car, trolley, tram began as dialect words.

A snobbish attitude to dialect on the part of certain educationalists and scholars has been deplored by a number of prominent linguists.