COLLOQUIAL SPHERE Colloquial Sphere Yu M Skrebnev

COLLOQUIAL SPHERE

Colloquial Sphere (Yu. M. Skrebnev) Colloquial Styles (I. V. Arnold) Colloquial = slightly lower than neutral Colloquial speech (i. e. with a tinge of familiarity, relaxed without being offensive): the communicant’s feeling at ease, without keeping in their mind their social obligations and conventions (e. g. talking to our friends).

A slack and lazy manner of speaking The speaker’s ability to switch over to another "wavelength" Colloquial speech: free and easy everyday speech of only those who are well educated and can speak 'correct' literary English perfectly well, whenever it is necessary.

The principal and practically the only absolutely relevant feature of the colloquial sphere of speech – absence of any definite stylistic purpose as a result of the informality of the communicative situation.

What colloquial might mean: • • Colloquial speech is just oral speech. Colloquial speech = dialogue. A time limit factor as a characteristic feature (Zeitnot). Lingual intercourse in colloquial speech is immediate. The emotive character of everyday speech (J. Vendryes: ‘affective language’ (langue affective). ‘Consituation’ as a trait of the colloquial sphere. Colloquial speech: based on a limited set of ready made stereotyped formulas.

The colloquial sublanguage → two contrary tendencies. Explication vs Implication (cf. redundancy vs compression (I. V. Arnold)) Explication = 'unrolling', 'displaying', 'extending', 'expanding' (cf. 'petals' or 'leaves' – кн. «развертывание» (лепестков).

Implication – attributing some additional meaning, some supplementary content to a lingual unit of any rank (as compared with the meaning it has in the neutral sphere of language). Implication – the use of a smaller quantity of lingual means than is required by common sense. Explication – is the use of superfluous amount of form, of the lingual means.

e. g. "Coming!" (Implication) "Ah, he's coming, yes, – my brother, I mean, – coming, coming!" (Explication)

Implicative tendency vs explicative on different language levels PHONETICS Implication – the general carelessness and indistinctness of articulation contractions: can't, mustn't, I've, she'll etc. graphons: Ah-de-do ('How do you do'); Whatja know? ('What do you know? '), Wasser-matter? ('What is the matter? ') etc.

Explication – affective speech. Unrestrained emotions: speaking in a loud voice, emphatic articulation of important segments of the utterance (italics and dividing into syllables in writing): e. g. I have done it. Thou-sands of times!

A rich stock of prosodic means – the interrelation of both the tendencies discussed. Monotonous speech may imply anything. Changes in tone (expressive melody), alongside paralinguistic means → additional information (e. g. The curt remark "Yes" in Chaliapin's linguistic adventure).

MORPHOLOGY Scarce morphemic means in English cf. Russian with explicative axiological suffixes: домище – домина – домик – домишко and prefixes: распрекрасный, распронаединственный) Implication of inflections: • * у Петр Ивановича, • * с товарищ Павловым; • * сколько время? English: real good

Confusing forms: – of person (he don't know), – number (we was) – case ("Us financiers must keep early hours" – O. Henry) → examples of rather popular ‘ungrammatical’ than colloquial English

Explication → analytical morphology 1. The use of emphasizing forms in the continuous aspect: e. g. "But I'm thinking he isn't coming after all" "I'm being uneasy". 2. The emphasizing do: e. g. "Oh, do come, will you? " "Send me those samples, do, please. " 3. Multiple negation (qualified by grammarians as inadmissible, i. e. ‘subcolloquial’) E. A. Zemskaya: Intellectuals → a propensity to using obviously illiterate forms as a kind of linguistic joke: e. g. Местов нет и кина не будет.

Subcolloquial grammatical structures of American English (T. G. Skrebneva). – direct doubling: "I'm am" (Labov); – synonymous doubling (double subject): "Lucy she is asleep" (Steinbeck); – multiple negation: "I don't never get no wrong ideas about nobody" (Jones); – double modal verbs: "You may can fool him" (Faulkner), "You shouldn't ought to worry him" (Steinbeck); – double connectors: "Like as if he was a helluva humble guy. . . " (Salinger); – double attributes: "a little tiny bit annoyed. . . " (Parker); – double demonstratives: "Is this here that watch? " (Gow and D'Usseau); – inclusive doubling: widow woman (Bernstein); "… will kill you dead. . . " (Hemingway).

VOCABULARY K. M. Ryabova: 150, 000 entries → 1, 500 colloquial words (about 1%) + colloquial meanings of polysemantic words – about 2, 300 units ↓ less than 4, 000 words

The implicative tendency – the use of inexact, approximate denominations of objects (processes, qualities). The speaker does not bother about searching for a word that would exactly characterize thing spoken about; (s)he is content with a very general, approximate denomination comprehensible to his interlocutors →

The words of quasi pronominal (=very general) character: e. g. thing, stuff, matter, affair, business, people, man, place, way, kind, fact, sort, question, point, person, job, body, subject, problem Place: - island - school - hotel - hospital - prison etc.

Get and its polysemy: "What shall I get you, sir? " a waiter in a ship's restaurant asks a passenger who is sea sick. "Get me out of this, " is the answer (Jerome K. Jerome).

Implication → pro verbs: "You don't live in these parts? " "No, I don't. You wouldn't if I did. " (from Three Men in a Boat by Jerome K. Jerome)

Explication hyperbolizers: capital (=good); terribly, awfully, damn (= very) → expletives (i. e. excessive parenthetic elements): e. g. "And you stop that bloody game. You're bloody helpless. And you can start getting bloody well dressed before you come down in the morning. " Expletives devoid of emphasizing function: e. g. "I was just telling him he was just to come here for just a moment. "

inter jections: gee (ам. вот это да! Здорово!) , gee-whiz (сл. потрясающий, изумительный), hey (эй! Ну!), Used in context interjections manifest explication; used separately – implication.

SYNTAX Without syntactical traits of implication and/or explication, texts do not usually appear genuinely colloquial. Spontaneous speech produces both syntactically ‘incomplete’ constructions and those containing redundancies.

Implication: 1. incomplete sentences (one member sentences, elliptical sentence): e. g. "Too many people here. " "Not that again!" "All right so far. " (Galsworthy) "At present, perhaps. " (Shaw) "Brilliant young man. " "No point in delay. " 2. communicative transposition: e. g. "Tea. For two. Out here. " (Shaw) (a request)

1. non interrogative sentences performing the function of interrogative ones: a) the word order and general pattern are not interrogative; e. g. "You are going, Dinny? " "Fleur – knows? " (Galsworthy) b) they are potential fragments of sentences – one or several parts of a sentence: e. g. "Your night out? " (Galsworthy) "Sugar, Dr. Trench? " (Shaw)

4. interrogative sentences as regards their form, but their commu nicative aim is not a request to supply some information the inquirer is in need of, but to make an affirmative or negative statement – pseudo interrogation (N. N. Lissenkova) with its trope like character: e. g. "Did I say a word about the money? " (Shaw) "Can you pass the salt? " "Why don't you sit down? "

5. parcelling: quasi independent communicative units, several fragmentary utterances in place of one well balanced: e. g. "I think she's divorcing him, but it takes time. Fine little creature. " (Galsworthy) "That bloody engagement ring. That's where the money's gone. "

Parcelling vs deciphering: e. g. "So he did it after all, I mean Dick got that compensation. " (Mc. Bain) "Awfully jolly letters, she wrote!" "Very wise man, his father. " (Christie) Topic comment division

Explication asking questions and immediately answering them: e. g. "Who's ignoring it? Nobody's ignoring it!" (Salinger) various kinds of repetition (emphatic re currence of sentences, phrases, and words): e. g. "True, true. Quite true. Harry. " (Shaw)

Of little informative force (although stylistically significant) are: a) interjections signalizing (or emphasizing) the interrogative aim of the utterance: e. g. "We go together, huh? " "Benediction on murder, um? " (Galsworthy) b) expletives: e. g. "What the hell is wrong with you? " (Brown) c) parenthetic elements with the general meaning of certainty; e. g. "Yes, really, I've seen it, sure. " d) the so called 'appended statements'. e. g. "I know what the like of you are, I do. " (Shaw)

SEMANTICS In the colloquial sphere, there is no striving after ornamentality that imparts a special intellectual and aesthetic value to speech. The most important feature of the colloquial sphere is neglect of formal requirements, inattention to matters of style (except perhaps more or less conscious hunting after overstatements – unrestrained, exaggerated expression of ordinary feelings, both pleasant and otherwise).

Tropes and figures appear as the result of a creative act. They constitute the semantic specificity of fiction; in everyday speech they are rare, heard in the speech of people with a propensity for witticisms (N. N. Zemskaya et al. ).

Colloquial tropes: – metonymy: to give sb a boot = to kick sb morning-after headache = hangover – meiosis: a pretty penny, quite a few times, not half (so) bad, tolerably well etc. – hyperbole (overstatement): thousands of times; Thanks a million.

Metaphor: zoosemic (zoomorphic): e. g. brute, beast, swine, dog, bitch, sonofabitch, henpecked fishy ('suspicious') to ferret out ('to find out') etc.