Microsoft Word stilistika O'UM. doc

 
 

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87 
STYLISTIC CLASSIFICATION OF THE ENGLISH VOCABULARY 
There exist the following main layers of the English vocabulary literary, 
neutral and colloquial. Each of these layers has its own feature: the literary layer has 
a bookish character, the colloquial layer has spoken character and the neutral layer is 
deprived of any coloring and may enter both literary and colloquial layers. These 
three layers have their own classification. 
Within the literary layer we distinguish: common literary words, terms, poetic 
words, archaic words, barbarism and foreign words, neologisms. 
Within the colloquial vocabulary we distinguish: common colloquial words, slang, 
jargon, professional words, dialectical words, vulgar words. 
The neutral layer penetrates both the literary and colloquial vocabulary and is 
deprived of any stylistic coloring. 
Literary layer of the vocabulary. 
Common literary words. Common literary words have a neutral character. 
This statement becomes obvious when we oppose common neutral literary words to 
bookish and colloquial. The distinction is given in the following examples 
Common 
Bookish 
Colloquial 
to begin 
to commence 
bring about, get off 
to eat 
to consume 
to cram 
child 
infant 
kid 
Terms. Terms are words denoting notions of some special field of knowledge, 
ex: linguistic terminology: phoneme, allomorph, allophone, microlinguistics.
Generally terms are used in the language of science but with certain stylistic 
purpose they may be used in the language of emotive prose. For example, Cronin 
employed a lot of medical terms in some of his books. All this is done to make the 
narration bright, vivid and close to life. 
It is well-known fact that terms are monosemantic and have not any contextual 
meaning. In most cases they have only a denotation free meaning. But a term may 
acquire a figurative or emotional colored meaning in case it is taken out of its sphere. 
E.g. atomic music, atomic sword.