Graphic. Punctuation
Phonetic Stylistic Devices
English Vocabulary
Lexical Stylistic Devices
Syntactical Stylistic Devices
Decoding Stylistics
Biographies
Guidelines
Analysis
Texts
Stylistic Classification of the English Vocabulary
Special colloquial vocabulary
A. Slang
Slang is deviation from the established norm and everything that is below the standard of educated speech in modern English. It is the language of highly colloquial type, consisting of new words or current word in some special sense, the language of a low and vulgar type.Nowadays slang is highly praised as ‘vivid’, ‘more flexible’, ‘more picturesque’, ‘richer in vocabulary’. When slang is used, our life seems fresher and a little more personal.
So, slang reflects the personality, gives us clearly visible characteristics of the speaker.
There are many kinds of slang: Cockney, commercial, military, theatrical, society, school, etc.
B. Jargonisms
Jargon is a set of words whose aim is to preserve secrecy within a social group. Jargonisms are generally old words with entirely new meanings imposed on them, and because of that absolutely incomprehensible to people outside the group.Grease money; loaf-head; a tiger hunter-a gambler; a lexer- a law student
There is the jargon of thieves and vagabonds (cant, argot /a:gýu/ àðãî,-òàéíûé ÿçûê); the jargon of jazz people; the jargon of the army as military slang; the jargon of sportsmen; the jargon of hackers, and many others.
Slang and jargon both differ from ordinary language in their vocabularies, but slang, contrary to jargon needs no translation. Jargonisms do not always remain the possession of a given social group. Some of them migrate into other social strata and sometimes become recognized in the literary language as slang or colloquial words:
Kid, fun, humbug.
C. Professionalisms
Professionalisms are the words used in different trades, professions or within a group of people connected by common interests. They designate some working process, tools or instruments. Professionalisms should not be mixed with jargonisms. Like slang, professionalisms do not aim at secrecy.Professionalisms are used in emotive prose to depict the natural speech of a character, his or her education, breeding, environment and psychology.
The difference between the terms and professionalisms is that terms belong to the literary layer of words and professionalisms belong to the non-literary layer. Professionalisms remain within a definite community, lined to a definite occupation:
A midder case= (a midwifery case-àêóøåðñêèé ÷åìîäàí÷èê)
Tin-fish=submarine
D. Dialectal Words
The function of the dialectal words is to characterize personalities through their speech.E. Vulgar Words/ Vulgarisms
Vulgarisms are:1) expletives and swear words: damn, bloody, to hell, goddam;
2) obscene words (four-letter words).
The function of the expletives is to express strong emotions, mainly annoyance, anger, vexation and the like in the direct speech of the characters.
