1. FUNCTIONAL
STYLES

2.  Definition of a functional style
 Informal style
1. colloquial words
2. slang
3. dialect words
 Formal style
1. learned words
2. archaisms and historisms
3. poetic diction
4. professional terminology
 Neutral vocabulary

3. Functional Style
a system of expressive means
peculiar to a specific sphere of
communication

4. Functional Style
sphere of communication –
circumstances attending the
process of speech in each
particular case

5. Informal Style
used in personal two-way every-
day communication
vocabulary may be determined
socially (educational and cultural
background, age group,
occupation) or regionally (dialect)

6. Informal Style
 gesture, tone, voice, situation are as
important as words
 careful choice of words plays a minor role
 vocabulary is much less variegated
 the same pronouns, auxiliaries,
postpositives, the same most frequent and
generic terms are used again and again

7. Informal Style
 the same pronouns, auxiliaries,
postpositives, the same most frequent and
generic terms are used again and again
 they convey a great number of different
meanings
 some words are overused (e.g. thing, do,
get, nice, really, etc.)

8. Informal Style
 characterized by imaginative phraseology
(e.g. a lot of moonshine),
 ready-made formulas of politeness and
tags,
 standard expressions of surprise, gratitude
(e.g. I‘m most grateful), apology, etc.

9. Informal Style
 substantives adjectives (e.g. greens for
’green leaf vegetables’, woolies for
‘woolen clothes’)
 lexical intensifiers, emphatic verbs and
adverbs with lost denotational meaning
(e.g. awfully, lovely, terrific, grand, dead
etc.)

10. Informal Style
 lexical expressions of modality (e.g.
definitely, in a way, I should think so, not
at all, by no means , etc.)

11. Informal Style
 Colloquial words
1. literary colloquial (cultivated speech)
2. familiar colloquial
3. low colloquial (illiterate speech)
 Slang words
 Dialect words

12. Literary Colloquial Speech
 used by educated people in the course of
ordinary conversation or when writing letters to
intimate friends
 e.g. bite, snack – meal
to have a crush on smb – to fall in love with smb
phrasal verbs - to put up, turn up, do away
shortenings – pram, exam, flu

13. Familiar Colloquial Speech
 more emotional, much more free and
careless
 used mostly by young and semi-educated
 characterized by a great number of jocular
or ironical expressions and nonce-words
 e.g. doc – doctor, ta-ta – good-bye

14. Low Colloquial Speech
illiterate unpopular speech
contains more vulgar words
sometimes contains elements of
dialect

15. Slang
 contrasted to standard literary
vocabulary
 mainly used by young and
uneducated
 characterized by the use of
expressive, mostly ironical words
which create fresh names for some
usual things

16. Slang
 most slang word are metaphors and
jocular, often with a coarse, mocking,
cynical colouring, produce shocking effect
e.g. money – beans, bras, dibs, dough,
wads
drunk – boozy, cock-eyed, soaked

17. Slang
 slang words and idioms are short-lived,
soon they ether disappear or lose their
peculiar colouring and become either
colloquial or stylistically neutral
e.g. chap, fun, mob, shabby, hitch-hiker,
once in a blue moon

18. Slang
general slang – specific for any
social or professional group
special slang – peculiar for some
groups: teenager slang, football
slang, sea slang, etc.

19. Argot
 special vocabulary used by a particular
social or age group, the so-called
underworld (the criminal circles)
 its main purpose - to be unintelligible to
the outsiders
 argot words are non-motivated
e.g. shin – knife, book – life sentence

20. Dialect Words
Dialect is a variety of a language
which prevails in a district, with
local peculiarities of vocabulary,
pronunciation and grammar

21. Dialect Words
 dialect words may enter colloquial speech,
slang, then neutral vocabulary and formal
language
e.g. car, tram, trolley

22. Formal Style
English vocabulary that occur in
books and magazines, that we
hear from a lecturer, a public
speaker, a radio announcement,
in formal official talk

23. Formal Style
 used in monologues addressed by
one person to many, often prepared
in advance
 words are used with precision
 the vocabulary is elaborate,
generalized, not limited socially or
geographically

24. Formal Style
 learned words
1. literary words
2. words of scientific prose
3. official words
4. poetic diction
 Archaic and obsolete words
 Professional terminology

25. Formal Style
 literary words – used in descriptive
passages of fiction
 mostly polysyllabic words from Romance
languages
 create complex and solemn associations
e.g. delusion, felicity, cordial, solitude

26. Formal Style
 words of scientific prose
e.g. experimental, divergent, heterogeneous, as
early as, in terms of etc.
 officialese (канцеляризмы) – words of official,
bureaucratic language, peculiar to official
documents, business correspondence
e.g. accommodation (room), donation (gift),
comestibles (food), dispatch (send off)

27. Formal Style
 words of poetic diction are traditionally
used only in poetry
 characterized by a lofty, high-flown,
sometimes archaic colouring
 they are more abstract
e.g. array (clothes), steed (horse), lone
(lonely), naught (nothing), albeit (although)

28. Archaic and Obsolete
Words
Obsolete words are words that
dropped from the language, “no
longer in use, esp. for at least for
a century”

29. Archaic and Obsolete
Words
 Archaic words (archaism) are words
which survive in special contexts, “current
in an earlier time but rare in present
usage”
 associated with poetic diction
e.g. aye (yes), nay (no), morn (morning),
betwixt (between)

30. Historisms
 words denoting objects and phenomena
which are things of the past and no longer
exist
 they are names for social relations,
institutions, objects of material culture of
the past

31. Historisms
 names of ancient transport means, ancient
clothes, weapons, musical instruments, etc.
e.g. landau ландо; четырехколесный экипаж или
автомобиль со съемным верхом,
phaeton фаэтон ( четырехколесная открытая
коляска ),
hansom двухколесный экипаж ( с местом для
кучера сзади )
calash легкая коляска ( имеющая низкие колеса
и складной верх )
berlin старинный дорожный четырехколесный
крытый экипаж

32. Professional Terminology
 specialized vocabularies
 term 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
this particular activity

33. Professional Terminology
 terms should be monosemantic (polysemy
may lead to misunderstanding)
 independent of the context
 have only denotational meaning
 terms should not have synonyms
e.g. paint, tint, dye (краска) - colour

34. Neutral (basic) Vocabulary
opposed to formal and informal
words
used in all kinds of situations,
independent of the sphere of
communication
stylistically neutral (lack
connotations)

35. Neutral (basic) Vocabulary
 constitute the core of the vocabulary,
denote objects and phenomena of
everyday importance
 characterized by high frequency
e.g. to walk, summer, child, green

36. Interrelations between different
strata of vocabulary
Basic
vocabulary
Informal Formal
begin Start, get started commence
Child,
baby
Kid, brat, bearn
(dialect)
Infant, babe
(poetical)

37. Stylistically-neutral and
stylistically-marked words
Stylistically-
neutral
words
Stylistically-marked words
informal formal
Basic
vocabulary