Lexical peculiarities of formal and informal styles

Formal vocabularyis used to cover varieties of English vocabulary that occur in books and magazines, that we hear from a lecturer, a public speaker, a radio announcer or possibly in official talk. These types of communication are characterised as monologues addressed by one person to many, and often prepared in advance.
Informal vocabulary is used in personal two-way everyday communication. It is in the form of dialogue where the speaker has the qualities of voice, gesture, the speaker has an opportunity to know whether he is understood, the listener can always interrupt him and demand additional information. It is used in one’s immediate circle: family, relatives, friends. Informal style is relaxed, free and easy, familiar and unpretentious. 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 backgrounds, age group, his occupation and regional characteristics.

Informal words and word-groups are divided into three types: colloquial, slang and dialect words and word-groups.

Colloquial words
These are informal words that are used in everyday conversational speech both by cultivated and uneducated people of all age groups. Informal words realistically reflect the speech of modern people. The author creates an intimate, warm, informal atmosphere.“Fred Hardy was a bad lot (пользовался дурной славой). 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 and has something of its coarse flavour.E.g. doc (for doctor), ta-ta (for good-bye), to kid smb.(for tease, banter – подшутить), to pick up smb. (for make a qick and easy acquaintance), shut up (for keep silent).Low colloquial (просторечие) is defined as uses characteristic of the speech of persons who may be broadly described as uncultivated. This group is stocked with words of illiterate (неграмотный) English which do not present much interest for our purposes.
Example:put over передавать
Slang
The Oxford English Dictionary defines slang as “language of a highly colloquial style, considered as below the level of standard educated speech, and consisting either of new words or of current words employed in some special sense.” Examples: your tongue has run away with you вы не знаете, что говорите; давать волю своему языку ;dogs(for feet) ноги;
Dialect words
Dialect is a variety of a language which prevails in a district, with local peculiarities of vocabulary, pronunciation and phrase. 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, i.e. words which are not stylistically marked and a few of them even into formal speech and into the literary language. Car, trolley, tram began as dialect words. Some examples of dialects: tha (thee) – the objective case of thou; brass – money; nivver – never; nowt – nothing.

Lexical peculiarities of informal s:

· Col st is characterized by a number of intensifiers that is a rather standard set of words which increase expressiveness; terribly sorry, absolutely fabulous, dead right, Intensifiers are used according to some standards, to the norms of com bin ability: severe winter, thorough knowledge, stone deaf_?dead tired, dead slow driver. Another group of intensifiers are adverbs ever, even, just. E.g. He’s ever such a clever man.

· The use of emotional words. In literary colloquial they are more refined, in fc they are rude, vulgar, obscene. Emotional words are shouldn’t be confused with words naming emotions, though in some context such words can be emotional: I looked a perfect fright yesterday,

· The presence of empty words, time-fillers, hesitators.They don’t convey any special meaning but are used for the sake of rhythm, or not to end the sentence abruptly, or to conceal one’s embarrassment or hesitation.

Formal style(a lecture, a speech in court, an official letter, professional communication)
Learned words
In general, formal words fall into two main groups: words associated with professional communication and a less exclusive group of so-called learned 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, experimental, heterogeneous, homogeneous, conclusive, divergent, etc). To this group also belongs so-called ‘officialese’ (канцеляризмы). These are the words of the official, bureaucratic language. They should be avoided in speech and in print, e.g. assist (for help), endeavour (for try), proceed (for go), approximately (for about), sufficient (for enough), inquire (for ask). ‘literary’ words also have a particular flavour of their own, usually described as ‘refined’. They are mostly polysyllabic words drawn from the Romance language and, though fully adapted to the English phonetic system, some of them continue to sound singularly foreign. Here are some examples: solitude=loneless, lonely place (уединение, одиночество), sentiment=feeling (чувство), fascination=strong attraction (очарование, обаяние). There is one further subdivision of learned words: modes of poetic diction. poetic words have a further characteristic – a lofty, sometimes archaic, colouring: “Alas! (увы)
Archaic and obsolete words
Archaic – are old and no longer used words; obsolete – no longer used because something new was invented. Obsolete words have completely gone out of use.
Thou [θаu] – (ты)- archaic
examples of archaisms are: morn (for morning), eve (for evening), errant (for wandering, e.g. errant knights), etc.
Professional terminology
Term, as traditionally understood, is a word or a word-group which is specifically employed by a particular branch of science, technology, trade or the arts to convey a concept peculiar to his particular activity. court, lawyer, civil law are legal terms