Archaic, Obsolescent and Obsolete Words

The word-stock of a language is in an increasing state of change. Words change their meaning and sometimes drop out of the language altogether. New words spring up and replace the old ones.

We shall distinguish three stages in the aging process of words:

1. The beginning of the aging process when the word becomes rarely used. Such words are called obsolescent.

2. The second group of archaic words are those that have already gone completely out of use but are still recognized by the English-speaking community: e. g. methinks (=it seems to me); nay (—no). These words are called obsolete.

3. The third group, which may be called archaic proper, are words which are no longer recognizable in modern English, words that were in use in Old English and which have either dropped out of the language entirely or have changed in their appearance so much that they have become unrecognizable, e. g. troth (=faith); a losel (=a worthless, lazy fellow).

Another class of words here is historical words, denoting historical phenomena which are no more in use (such as "yeoman", "vassal", falconet"). They never disappear from the language. They have no synonyms, whereas archaic words have been replaced by modern synonyms.

Barbarisms and Foreignisms

Barbarisms are words of foreign origin which have not entirely been assimilated into the English language. They bear the appearance of a borrowing and are felt as something alien to the native tongue. Nevertheless most of what were formerly foreign borrowings are now, from a purely stylistic position, not regarded as foreign. Barbarisms are words which have already become facts of the English language. Foreign words though used for certain stylistic purposes, do not belong to the EV. They are not registered in dictionaries, whereas barbarisms are. Terminological borrowings have no synonyms; barbarisms- have.

Vulgarisms are:

1) expletives and swear words which are of an abusive character, like 'damn', 'bloody', 'to hell', 'goddam' and, as some dictionaries state, used now, as general exclamations;

2) obscene words. These are known as four-letter words the use of which is banned in any form of intercourse as being indecent.

 

STYLISTIC STRATIFICATION OF THE ENGLISH VOCABULARY. SPECIAL COLLOQUIAL WORDS.

Standard English vocabulary:

Neutral – Common literary – Common colloquial

Child – infant –kid

Weak – fragile – weedy

1) Neutral words – without stylistic colouring

2) Common literary words – are mainly in written speech or in oral speech of educated people; more formal than common colloquial, not so emotional

3) common colloquial words – labelled as informal/colloquial, emotionally coloured, used in everyday informal speech

Common literary vocabulary:

1) Terms – define official/ technical/scientific notions, monosemantic, unemotional

2) Archaisms, historical words

3) Poetic words

4) Barbarisms and foreign words – Barbarisms- late borrowings, not fully assimilatd

5) Literary coinages – created by means of word-building, have a bookish flavor, often in newspapers (TV-ese, anti-hero)

6) nonce words

Common colloquial vocabulary

1) Slang 

2) Jargonisms

3) Professionalisms

4) Dialectal words

5) Vulgarisms and swear words

6) Colloquial coinages and nonce-words

Slang is language of a highly colloquial type considered as below the level of educated standard speech and consisting either of new words or of current words employed in some special sense. It shows a complete directness which seems to deliberately challenge the norms of society.

Jargon is associated with professional terminology. It is the technical vocabulary of a special activity of group. Aim- secrecy.

Professionalisms, as the term itself signifies, are the words used in a definite trade, profession or calling by people connected by common interests both at work and at home. Professionalisms are correlated to terms. Professionalisms are special words in the non-literary layer of the English vocabulary, whereas terms are a specialized group belonging to the literary layer of words. Professionalisms do not aim at secrecy.

Dialectal words are those which in the process of integration of the English national language remained beyond its literary boundaries, and their use is generally confined to a definite locality. Typical of one region.

Vulgarisms are words the use of which is restricted by the norms of language behaviour. They are heavy with emotive connotations and cause strong emotional responses partially because their use is felt to be a violation of social propriety. That is a minor linguistic offence. The most offensive of them are described as taboo-words.

Are divided into: taboo words and swear words.

Colloquial coinages (nonce-words) are spontaneous and elusive. Nonce-words of a colloquial na­ture are not usually built by means of affixes but are based on certain semantic changes. Created in the course of oral speech.

FUNCTIONAL STYLES OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE. PUBLICIST STYLE; THE PECULIARITIES OF NEWSPAPER STYLE

PUBLICISTIC STYLE

Publicistic style has spoken varieties, in particular, the oratorical substyle. The new spoken varieties (the oratorical substyle) are the radio commentary, the essay and articles.

The general aim of publicistic style is:

· to exert a constant and deep influence on public opinion,

· to convince the reader or the listener that the interpretation given by the writer or the speaker is the only correct one

· and to cause him to accept the point of view expressed in the speech, essays or article.

Due to its characteristic combination of logical argumentation and emotional appeal, publicistic style has features in common with the style of scientific prose, on the one hand, and that of emotive prose, on the other. Its emotional appeal is generally achieved by the use of words with emotive meaning; but the stylistic devices are not fresh or genuine.

Peculiarities of the publicistic style:

• coherent and logical syntactical structure

• expanded system of connectives (hence, forward, inasmuch, thenceforth)

• careful paragraphing

• the use of words with the emotive meaning

• stylistic devices are not fresh or genuine

• brevity of expression.

Oratory and speeches

The oratorical style is the oral subdivision of the publicistic style of language:

• speeches on political and social problems

• orations on solemn public occasions (public weddings, funerals, jubilees)

• radio and TV commentaries

• political speeches (parliamentary debates/ speeches at rallies, congresses, meetings, election campaigns)

• speeches in courts of law.

Typical features:

1. Oratorical style belongs to the written variety of language, though it is modified by the oral form of the utterance and the use of gestures.

2. Direct address to the audience by special formulas:

• Ladies and Gentlemen!;

• My Lords!;

• Mr. Chairman!;

At the end of his speech the speaker usually thanks the audience for their attention by saying:

• Thank you/ Thank you very much!

3. Calling upon the audience:

• Let us then, with courage and confidence, pursue our own federal and republican principles

4. The use of the 1st person pronoun «we»;

5. The use of contractions «I’ll», «won’t», «haven’t», «isn’t» and others:

• We’re talking about healing our nation. We’re not talking about politics.

6. Asking question to reach the closer contact:

• Sometimes it is said that man cannot be trusted with the government of himself. Can he, then, be trusted with the government of others? Or have we found angels in the forms of kings to govern him? (Th. Jefferson)

Typical stylistic devices:

• Repetition – the most typical st. device in this style

• Parallel constructions

• Antithesis

• Suspense

• Climax

• Rhetorical questions

• Questions-in-the-narrative

• The change of intonation

As the audience rely on memory, the speaker often resorts to repetitions to enable his listeners to follow him and retain the main points of his speech.

The essay

The essay is a literary composition of moderate length on philosophical, social, aesthetic or literary subjects. It never goes deep into the subject, but merely touches upon the surface. Personality in the treatment of theme and naturalness of expression are 2 of the most obvious characteristics of the essay. An essay is rather a series of personal and witty comments than a finished argument or a conclusive examination of any matter. This literary genre has definite linguistic traits which shape the essay as a variety of publicistic style.

Features:

• brevity of expression

• the use of the 1st person singular, which justifies a personal approach to the problems treated

• a rather expanded use of connectives, which facilitate the process of grasping the correlation of ideas

• the abundant use of emotive words

• the use of similes and sustained metaphors as one of the media for the cognitive process

Journalistic articles

Irrespective of the character of the magazine and the divergence of subject matter – whether it is political, literary, popular-scientific or satirical, all the features of publistic style are to be found in any article.

The language of political magazine articles differs little from that of newspapers articles as described in the chapter on newspaper style. But such elements of publ. style as rare and bookish words, neologisms(which sometimes require explanation in the text), traditional word-combinations and parenthesis are more frequent here than in newspaper articles.

Literary reviews stand closer to essay both by their content and by their linguistic form. More abstract words of logical meaning are used in them, they more often resort to emotional language and less frequently to traditional set expressions.

The newspaper style:

Basic constituents of a newspaper (headline, editorial (редакционная колонка), brief news items, ads/announcements)

Common structural types of headlines:

-full of declarative sentences

- interrogative sentence

- elliptical sentence

- word combination

Stylistic features of brief news items (It states facts without giving explicit comments, and whatever evaluation there is in news paragraphs is for the most part implicit and as a rule unemotional)

-unemotional matter –of- the- fact expression

different means of comparession of information

a) omission of articles

b) abbreviations

-wide-spread and easily grasped language means

-dates, time expressions, personal and geographical names

Also in political news items:

-special political and economic terms

-non-term political vocabulary (unity, people, international, peace)

- graphical means of attracting attention