И. В. Арнольд лексикология современного английского языка Издание

badly as that — but — for all that – – – – (He smiles at them

all.) Gerald, have a drink.

GERALD (smiling): Thanks. I think I could just do with one now.

BIRLING (going to sideboard): So could I.

Mrs BIRLING (smiling): And I must say, Gerald, you’ve argued this very cleverly, and I’m most grateful.

GERALD (going for his drink): Well, you see, while I was out of the house I'd time to cool off and think things out a little.

BIRLING (giving him a drink): Yes, he didn’t keep you on the run as he did the rest of us. I’ll admit now he gave me a bit of a scare at the time. But I'd a special reason for not wanting any public scandal just now. (Has his drink now, and raises his glass.) Well, here’s to us. Come on, Sheila, don’t look like that. All over now.

Among the colloquialisms occurring in this conversation one finds whole formulas, such as there you are, you see, I’m most grateful, here’s to us; set expressions: a lot of moonshine, keep sb on the run, for all that, cases of semi-conversion or typical word-groups like have a drink (and not drink)’, give a scare (and not scare)’, verbs with postpositives: cool off, think things out, come on; particles like just and well. Every type of colloquial style is usually rich in figures of speech. There is no point in enumerating them all, and we shall only note the understatement: a bit of a scare, I could just do with one.

The above list shows that certain lexical patterns are particularly characteristic of colloquialisms. Some may be added to those already mentioned.

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Substantivised adjectives are very frequent in colloquial speech: constitutional ‘a walk’, daily ‘a woman who comes daily to help with household chores’, also greens for ‘green leaf vegetables’, such as spinach, cabbage, etc., and woollies ‘woollen clothes’.

A large number of new formations is supplied by a process combining composition and conversion and having as prototypes verbs with postpositives: carry-on ‘way of behaving’, let-down ‘an unexpected disappointment’, make-up ‘cosmetics’.

One of the most modern developments frequent in colloquial style are the compounds coined by back-formation: the type to baby-sit (from baby-sitter) is often resorted to.

It is common knowledge that colloquial English is very emotional.¹ Emotions find their lexical expression not only in emphatic adverbs and adjectives of the awfully and divine type, or interjections including swear words, but also in a great number of other lexical intensifiers. In the following example the feeling named by the novelist is expressed in direct speech by an understatement: Gazing down with an expression that was loving, gratified and knowledgeable, she said, “Now I call that a bit of all right.” (Snow)

In all the groups of colloquialisms, and in familiar colloquial especially, words easily acquire new meanings and new valency. We have already observed it in the case of the verb do in I could do with one meaning ‘I would like to have (a drink)’ and originally used jokingly. Make do is a colloquialism also characterised by fixed context; it means ‘to continue to use old things instead of buying new ones, to economise’. Other peculiarities of valency of the same verb are observed in such combinations as do a museum, or do for sb, meaning ‘to act as a housekeeper’. Verbs with postpositives are used in preference to their polysyllabic synonyms.

Such intensifiers as absolutely, fabulous/fab, grand, lovely, superb, terrific and the like come readily to the speaker’s lips. Getting hackneyed, they are apt to lose their denotational meaning and keep only their intensifying function. The loss of denotational meaning in intensifiers is also very obvious in various combinations with the word dead, such as dead sure, dead easy, dead right, dead slow, dead straight.

As these adverbs and adjectives become stale other expressive means may be used. Here is an example of heated argument in literary colloquial between the well-bred and educated personages of СР. Snow’s “The Conscience of the Rich":

“If you're seriously proposing to print rumours without even a scrap of evidence, the paper isn’t going to last very long, is it?”

“Why in God’s name not?”

“What’s going to stop a crop of libel actions'?”

“The trouble with you lawyers,” said Seymour, jauntily once more, “is that you never know when a fact is a fact, and you never see an inch beyond your noses. I am prepared to bet any of you, or all three, if you like, an even hundred pounds that no one, no one brings an action against us over this business”.

¹ The subject has been dealt with in the previous chapter but a few additional examples will not come amiss.

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Carefully observing the means of emphasis used in the passage above, one will notice that the words a scrap, an inch, even are used here only as intensifiers lending emphasis to what is being said; they are definitely colloquial. But they have these properties due to the context, and the reader will have no difficulty in finding examples where these words are neither emphatic nor stylistically coloured. The conclusion is that some words acquire these characteristics only under certain very definite conditions, and may be contrasted with words and expressions that are always emotional and always colloquial in all their meanings, whatever the context. On earth or in God’s name, for instance, are colloquial and emotional only after some interrogative word: Why in God’s name ..., Why on earth ..., Where in God’s name ..., Where on earth ..., What in God’s name..., What on earth..., etc. A typical context is seen in the following extract: The man must be mad, sitting-out there on a freezing morning like this. What on earth he thinks he is doing I can’t imagine (Shaffer). On the other hand, there exist oaths, swear words and their euphemistic variations that function as emotional colloquialisms independent of the context. The examples are: by God, Goodness gracious, for Goodness sake, good Lord and many others. They occur very often and are highly differentiated socially. Not only is there a difference in expressions used by schoolboys and elderly ladies, sailors and farmers but even those chosen by students of different universities may show some local colour.

Many lexical expressions of modality may be also referred to colloquialisms, as they do not occur anywhere except informal everyday intercourse. Affirmative and negative answers, for instance, show a wide range of modality shades: definitely, up to a point, in a way, exactly, right-o, by all means, I expect so, I should think so, rather, and on the other hand: I am afraid, not or not at all, not in the least, by no means, etc. E. g.: Mr Salter’s side of the conversation was limited to expressions of assent. When Lord Copper was right he said, “Definitely, Lord Copper”; when he was wrong, “Up to a point.” (Waugh) The emotional words already mentioned are used as strong negatives in familiar or low colloquial: “Have you done what he told you?” “Have I hell!” The answer means ‘Of course I have not and have no intention of doing it’. Or: “So he died of natural causes, did he?” “Natural causes be damned.” The implication is that there is no point in pretending the man died of natural causes, because it is obvious that he was killed. A synonymous expression much used at present is my foot. The second answer could be substituted by Natural causes my foot, without any change in meaning.

Colloquialisms are a persistent feature of the conversation of at least 90% of the population. For a foreign student the first requirement is to be able to differentiate those idioms that belong to literature, and those that are peculiar to spoken language. It is necessary to pay attention to comments given in good dictionaries as to whether a word is colloquial (colloq.), slang (sl.) or vulgar (vulg.).

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To use colloquialisms one must have an adequate fluency in English and a sufficient familiarity with the language, otherwise one may sound ridiculous, especially, perhaps, if one uses a mixture of British and American colloquialisms. The author has witnessed some occasions where a student used American slang words intermingled with idiomatic expressions learned from Ch. Dickens, with a kind of English public school accent; the result was that his speech sounded like nothing on earth.