Pearl M.K.

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Pearl M.K.

has accordingly been admitted to that degree with all the rights and immunities thereunto appertaining in witness whereof we have caused this diploma to be signed by the President of the University and by the Dean of Teachers College and our corporate seal to be hereto affixed in the City of New York on the third day of June in the year of our Lord one thousand nine hundred and thirty one:

Hoping that the reader will be able to decipher the general sense of the document and enjoy the dignified beauty of its style, we shall now pass on to the opposite pole of our dichotomy: to the unrestrained, loosely controlled manner of using language, and that rather by instinct than intellect.

The term colloquial is widely used by stylists (although I.R. Galperin, as we remember, rejected outright both the term and the notion for having, in his opinion, nothing in common with what he understood by stylistics). ¹ To be sure, it is and it will be a question what 'colloquial proper' is and what should be considered outside this class. Instead of trying to propose a universal, brief and unimpeachable definition, let us discuss at some length what it is — or rather what forms of speech ought to be called colloquial.

By colloquial we mean what is only slightly lower than neutral — such forms of speech in fact as are used by people when they do not mean to be rude, sarcastic or witty, when they do not think of how they should express themselves, only of what they intend to say. To put it another way: our speech usually becomes colloquial (i.e. with a tinge of familiarity, relaxed without being offensive) when we feel at ease, when we do not keep in our minds our social obligations and conventions. Talking with our friends, we do not even notice the forms of the sublanguage we employ, but as soon as a stranger appears, especially our superior, a person we esteem, we usually drop our slack and lazy manner of speaking, we avoid colloquial forms, switching over to another " wavelength", and use preferably neutral and superneutral (literary) forms.

From the chapter on Lexicology of Units, it might be remembered that the colloquial stratum is followed by a lower one comprising jargon, slang, and nonce creations. The last (and lowest) stratum is the vulgar. In lexicology, we discussed unmentionable or merely undesirable words; here, we could put together under the heading 'vulgar' what is called 'popular', 'ungrammatical' speech of uneducated people, local and social dialects, and the vernacular of the underworld.

In what follows, the colloquial sublanguage will be dealt with for the most part; others will be merely outlined.

It must be borne in mind that the term 'colloquial speech' is applied by researchers to careless, unconventional, free-and-easy everyday speech of only those who are well educated and can speak 'correct' literary English perfectly well, whenever it is necessary. Just as in this country, uneducated or semi-educated speakers understand the literary language, but cannot actively use it themselves, making inadmissible mistakes,

mostly in pronunciation, often in grammar and in choice of words. Hence, what they use is not colloquial English, but just incorrect English (for numerous examples with highly competent comment see Martin Eden by Jack London).

The principal and practically the only absolutely relevant feature of the colloquial sphere of speech is absence of any definite stylistic purpose as a result of the informality of the communicative situation. We say it again here: informality overshadows every other characteristic of the colloquial sphere. It is worth trying to prove it.

1. Some say colloquial speech is just oral speech. No, it is not. Lectures,
a TV announcer's speech, or a student's oratorical exertions at the
examination are all very close to bookish forms, differing greatly from
everyday colloquial speech.

2. Instead of 'colloquial speech', the term 'dialogue' is sometimes
employed. But of course the two terms are far from being synonyms. The
dialogue of an Ambassador with a Foreign Secretary or of an attorney
with a defendant are not colloquial (provided the defendant is an educated
person).

3. Certain scholars characterize the colloquial sphere by time-limit
factor: a language user neither prepares beforehand, nor makes any
corrections on reconsideration of what has been said, so his speech is
spontaneous. Lack of time, or, as chess players call it in German, Zeitnot,
makes speech abrupt, badly organized, abounding in repetitions and in
attempts at explaining one's explanations. All that is true, and yet we
must not lose sight of numerous people professionally trained and
naturally gifted, who can answer without preparation quite unexpected
questions after their public speeches or taking the floor to criticize a
colleague. Some speak so well that what they say can be sent to print
without alteration. The same people hardly ever speak like that at home.

4. Others stress that lingual intercourse in colloquial speech is
" immediate". It is obvious, however, to any unbiassed observer that every
act of oral communication has the same characteristic. It is proposed by some
to exclude telephone conversations from the colloquial sphere, and, it must
be admitted, dialogues over the phone lose a few features of colloquial
dialogue face to face (interference, speaking simultaneously without
muffling each other, non-lingual (" paralinguistic") information — facial
expression, gestures, pointing to the things spoken about). As for the
other features, they remain essentially the same, and a talk on the phone,
if informal, can be regarded as colloquial.

Supporters of this opinion may argue that when lecturing or participating in public discussions, a speaker has no immediate personal contact with his listeners — hence the speech is not colloquial. But that is only partially true. He who lectures or often delivers public speeches is

an accomplished improvisator, which circumstance explains the fluency and logical coherence of his performance. Having enough experience and skill, he could do the same with the audience reduced to a single hearer or left alone with a TV cameraman. On the contrary, one who thinks it permissible (or even preferable) to remain one's natural self, and has besides neither skill nor scruples, would talk his colloquial vernacular anywhere, mass meetings included, absence of immediate contact with every participant no obstacle. Skilful orators thus play to the gallery. To sum up: immediate contact is not the decisive factor in colloquializing our speech.

5. Certain scholars emphasize the emotive character of everyday
speech. J. Vendryes, a French linguist of the first half of the century,
named it 'affective language' (langue affective). ² True, emotions find
unrestrained expression in everyday intercourse. But poetry and high
prose also abound in them.

6. An often discussed trait of the colloquial sphere is the outstanding
role of what is called 'consituation', meaning that the situation is common
to each of its participants, owing to which circumstance whatever is
obvious to all need not be mentioned. But here again what is stated does
not refer to colloquial speech only: sign-boards, for instance, are laconic
enough, and their informative force is quite sufficient: 'J.P. Bowler,
Solicitor' stands for " If you ring the bell and the door is opened by the
porter, you will be able to enter the waiting-room of Mr. Bowler's office,
who will probably receive you if he is disengaged at the moment and
possibly consent to take your case."

7. It is often underlined that colloquial speech is based on a limited set
of ready-made stereotyped formulas, on learning which a foreigner will
become nearly as competent as a native speaker. That is certainly an
overstatement. Firstly: every sphere has a set of formulas of its own.
Secondly, a limited set of cliches cannot cover the whole of modern
everyday life: communicants often encounter unfamiliar things and
unexpected situations, to discuss which they have to invent new words
and constructions under the pressure of time. That is why it often comes
to using what is handy at the moment — approximate or even mistaken
denominations, non-existent words or word-forms. As was rightly
remarked by E.A. Zemskaya, the colloquial language (sublanguage)
has very vague limits: along with using ready-made units, speakers
produce new ones, actually non-existent in common use, i.e. such as did
not exist in anyone's mind before the act of communication and will
probably be forgotten after (see above: " Lexicology of Units, Nonce-
words").

Hence, Zemskaya concludes, the colloquial system displays a greater freedom of choice and creation than do literary spheres; the number of

" empty cells" in it is much smaller than in the latter, where cases of prohibition outnumber those of permission in some paradigms.³

On the whole, the colloquial sublanguage demonstrates at least two contrary tendencies, since it caters for the sphere characterized by informality of intercourse. The familiarity of informal speech results in the neglect by the speaker of any definite stylistic requirements. What is actually used in everyday intercourse has no definite linguistic parameters. Beside neutral and specifically colloquial units, specific units of other sublanguages are met with in actual informal communication: no one forbids the speaker to use quotations from poetry or expressions from the sublanguage of 'journalese'. The colloquial sublanguage proper can be sketched out only after we cut off and disregard those chance inclusions, leaving only what is neutral and what is colloquial proper.⁴

Just as in the case of vocabulary (see Chapter on Lexicology of Units), where every non-neutral manifestation was to be regarded as either 'better' ('higher') than neutral, or 'worse' ('lower') than neutral, the primary division of the bulk of specific features (not only with reference to the colloquial sublanguage, but here it manifests itself in a most visual way!) is into 'overstatement' and 'understatement', 'redundance' and 'lack', 'saying too much' or 'saying too little' as compared to what should be done in the neutral sphere. The two tendencies, opposite but dialectically interwoven, are what is called below 'Explication' and 'Implication'.⁵

Note. The word implication is used here in its usual sense, therefore requires no comment. As for explication, it is employed here not in its well-known meaning of 'explanation', 'interpretation', but in the secondary meaning that involves 'unrolling', 'displaying', 'extending', 'expanding', i.e. the meaning in which this word is usually combined with the words 'petals' or 'leaves'. The use of these two notions helps to explain and describe specific features of any kind of sublanguage. Here, it is resorted to only for the classification of colloquial specificity.

Now, what is implication? Implication is 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). In other words, implication is the use of a smaller quantity of lingual means than is required by common sense. This phenomenon is the result of overestimation, exaggeration of informative potentialities of the unit in question: the user believes it expresses (denotes) more than most people think.

Explication, on the contrary, is the use of superfluous amount of form, of the lingual means: a linguistic unit commonly employed in the neutral sphere as quite efficient, as fully adequate to the purpose of communication (i.e. as carrying sufficient information) is undervalued by the user, who then resorts to additional elements of form that would,

as he believes, strengthen the utterance, make it more reliable, and help the recipient (hearer, reader) understand the producer (speaker, writer) without any ambiguity. Here, the informative potential of the given form is undervalued by the speaker.

2. Explication: " Ah, he's coming, yes, — my brother, I mean, —
coming, coming! "

It should be noted here that spontaneity of colloquial speech, with its lack of time for bothering about the form practically excludes the element of judicious choice and evaluation of lingual units. The terms 'implication' and 'explication' merely characterize the result of analytical comparison of specific (style-forming) units with their analogues in the neutral sphere. Lack of time, as well as a common situation urge the speaker to economize on lingual means. Lack of time results in the opposite tendency as well: the speaker wastes lingual units just because he has no chance of finding an economical form.

In what follows, the reader will find a review of the implicative and explicative features of the colloquial sublanguage in accordance with its level structure; its semantic specificity is shown in conclusion.

Phonetics. The implicative tendency in colloquial phonetics makes itself felt first and foremost in the general carelessness and indistinctness of articulation. The listener, who knows the situation, is aware of what might be said by his interlocutor. This expectancy factor makes indistinct speech comprehensible. (Recall O.B. Sirotinina's remark quoted in the chapter 'Phonetics of Units'.)

Thus, primarily colloquial, although widely used nowadays in writing, are contractions like can't, mustn't, I've, she'll, etc. To show the slur, writers use 'graphons' (see above 'Phonetics of Units'): Ah-de-do ('How do you do'); Whatja know? ('What do you know? '), Wasser-matter? ('What is the matter? ') and the like.

Explication manifests itself in affective speech. Unrestrained emotions find their expression in speaking in a loud voice, in emphatic articulation of important segments of the utterance (italics and dividing into syllables in writing):

A rich stock of prosodic means in colloquial speech demonstrates the interrelation of both the tendencies discussed. Monotonous speech may imply anything. Changes in tone (expressive melody), along with paralinguistic means, serve to express additional information explicitly. The curt remark " Yes" (see above, Chaliapin's linguistic adventure — Chapter on Phonetics) may be uttered so as to express unambiguously

not only affirmation, but countless additional messages, such as: " Well, let it be as you wish, and leave me alone"; " It is true, and I am astonished at your perspicacity"; " Quite so, but what of it? "; " I must admit what you said, and yet this is not the only way of looking at the matter", and so on, and so forth.

Morphology. Purely morphemic specifics are scarce in English (as distinct from Russian, in which — as in Italian — there are many explicative axiological suffixes — домище — домина — домик — домишко — and prefixes — распрекрасный, распронаединственный, as well as implication of inflections: * у Петр Ивановича; * с товарищ Павловым; * сколько время).

Of the few instances of morphemic implication (dropping morphemes) cases like real good (cf. really good) might be mentioned; characteristically, the word pretty, when used adverbially, is a colloquialism (pretty quick, pretty dirty). There is a trend towards confusing forms of person (he don't know), number (we was), and case (" Us financiers must keep early hours" — 0. Henry), but those are examples of rather popular 'ungrammaticaF than colloquial English.

It is hard to say definitely if such examples of implication as / been there; You seen him? are colloquial in the USA by now, or 'ungrammaticaP ('low colloquial') as yet.

Explication is observed in analytical morphology — the use of emphasizing forms in the continuous aspect: " But I'm thinking he isn't coming after all"; " I'm being uneasy". The same tendency is seen where the emphasizing do is employed: " Oh, do come, will you? "; " Send me those samples, do, please."

An excess of formal elements occurs in multiple negation which is qualified by grammarians as inadmissible, i.e. 'subcolloquiaP. It is hard to say, however, what is actually used by educated people in everyday speech. As E. A. Zemskaya aptly remarks, intellectuals often have a propensity to using obviously illiterate forms — as a kind of linguistic joke. (Her Russian example is Местов нет и кина не будет.)

A special investigation of subcolloquial grammatical structures of American English was undertaken by T.G. Skrebneva.⁶ Comparing the varying opinions of lexicographers and grammarians, she paid special attention to cases when the admissibility ('grammaticality', 'standards') of a word produced an equal number of 'pros' and 'cons'. Such forms were then considered unreliable, not to be recommended for use by foreign students of English. Whatever the social (and hence stylistic) informal speech T.G. Skrebneva distinguishes direct doubling: " I'm am" (Labov); " You won't get a good man for what I'll go for" (Hemingway); synonymous doubling — double subject: " Lucy she is asleep" (Steinbeck); multiple negation: " / 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. The bulk of words and word meanings that are marked as colloquial in comprehensive English dictionaries were thoroughly studied by K.M. Ryabova around 1980.⁷ The total of the colloquial words revealed by Ryabova's inspection of dictionaries containing about 150, 000 entries amounts to over 1, 500, i.e. roughly one per cent of the whole. As for the colloquial meanings of polysemantic words, their number is about 2, 300 units, so that the resulting quantity of units concerned is a little under four thousand. Taking into account the fact that colloquial forms of any level are known to and used by practically all native speakers, the sheer numbers of this linguistic object testify to its outstanding importance.

True, one could have some doubts as to the admissibility of summarizing words, on the one hand, and meanings, on the other. But there is no logical fallacy in the procedure, since in fact it is words (sequences of speech sounds) in both cases that are counted and put together. Only, a colloquial word may be polysemantic by itself, each meaning of it being a colloquial one, whereas a colloquial meaning of a neutral word is always one sound sequence with one meaning. Properly speaking, in the former case, independent entries are dealt with — such entries as characterize the dictionary volume. In the latter, components, parts of individual entries; their number is incomparably greater than that of the entries proper, i.e. headwords (= 150, 000 in our case).

Another circumstance to be noted with regret is that the material collected and very substantially treated by K.M. Ryabova in her research papers has not been published in dictionary form to this day. Her research did not remain unnoticed though: other researchers follow, developing and modifying some of her ideas.

The implicative tendency of the lexical aspect of colloquial speech manifests itself most clearly in the use of inexact, approximate denominations of objects (processes, qualities). The community of situation, the familiarity with the sphere, stimulus, and subject of speech facilitate the tasks of each communicant: the speaker does not bother about searching for a word that would exactly characterize the thing spoken about; he is content with a very general, approximate denomination, just an indication, but this hint is comprehensible to his interlocutors.

That is the reason why every speech abounds in words of a very general, nearly pronominal, meaning — nouns like thing, business, place, verbs like get, fix and others. A research paper by N.P. Kudryavtseva has

proved, paradoxically as it may seem, that the absolutely neutral nouns constitute the specificity of the colloquial sublanguage just because of their extremely frequent use in everyday speech.⁸ The nouns investigated by N.P. Kudryavtseva are: thing, stuff, matter, affair, business, people, man, place, way. There are other words of the same quasi-pronominal (i.e. very general) character, such as kind, fact, sort, question, point, person, job, body, subject, problem — yet N.P. Kudryavtseva confined herself to the aforementioned group of nine words, using the frequency criterion she established.

As distinct from the sublanguage of science or, especially, that of law, in which ambiguity is inadmissible the colloquial sublanguage has nouns like place at its disposal — nouns that can stand for anything located (Kudryavtseva's examples are: school, house, room, island, hotel — and of course the enumeration could go on indefinitely).

Leaving aside Kudryavtseva's paper, let us take the verb get. Its polysemy was used by Jerome K. Jerome for humorous effect, but a situation of this kind is true to life or linguistically credible. " 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.

Implication can be seen in the wide use of pronouns as well as pro-verbs (replacers of notional verbs). We shall have to turn our attention to Jerome once more. A character in his book, Three Men in a Boat, in answer to the question of an irksome local guide, " You don't live in these parts? " retorts: " No, I don't. You wouldn't if I did."

The use of absolutely specific lexical units, i.e. colloquial words (and colloquial meanings of neutral words) is an act of implication by itself. A speaker is after all aware of the fact that colloquialisms are inadmissible in formal speech (intercourse with people of higher social standing, public speaking, etc.). From the viewpoint of the literary norm, a colloquialism is an altogether non-existent word, or a non-existent meaning of a neutral (or bookish) word: the ability to express a certain meaning is, strictly speaking, ascribed to the word by its user (the latter is not, of course, the first to do this, but we overlook it, as does the judge that never acquits a delinquent who swears to have witnessed other people's similar acts of offence, without ever suspecting them illegal and punishable).

Classes of colloquialisms have been discussed above, in the chapter on paradigmatic lexicology. The act of ascribing the meaning, of actual individual (non-habitual) implying is observed in the use of nonce-words (see the chapter mentioned, p. 70). Several papers on occasional word-building by M.S. Retunskaya in the early 1970s would help the reader to deepen his comprehension of the problem.⁹

The trend towards explication is observed when the use of a colloquialism strengthens the content of the utterance. The speaker gives the

units exaggerating properties of the object preference over restrained denominations. Hyperbolizing took place when instead of the neutral adjective good the colloquial capital was used. The same in replacing the neutral emphasizer very by its colloquial hyperbolizers terribly, awfully, damn, etc. (awfully nice, damn well). If used too often, emphasizers lose their expressive force, thus becoming mere expletives, i.e. excessive parenthetic elements which impart to the whole utterance (and not just the words with which they are immediately connected) a tinge of malevolence, hostility, or disdain:

" 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." (Waterhouse and Hall)

An expletive in cases like that is nearly devoid of emphasizing function; it is hardly even noticed by the boor that utters it. Compare similar meaningless use of emphatic particles: " I was just telling him he was just to come here for just a moment."

It is only in colloquial speech that virtually the whole set of interjections begins to function. In technology or law, — interjections are unthinkable. In poetry, it is the 'pronominal' ('all-meaning') oh, the archaic lo, hark, and some neutral ones, such as alas, that were once employed.. The interjections gee, gee-whiz, hey, hi would hardly be used when communicating with one's superiors.

Inserting an interjection in an utterance complete by itself is an act of explication; yet the interjection used in isolation from the context (i.e. as an independent utterance), being a syncretic, semantically diffusive unit, manifests implication.

Syntax. The description of syntactical peculiar features of the colloquial sublanguages is given more space here than any other level, since syntax is what actually dominates in forming the specifics of the colloquial. A segment of colloquial text may demonstrate nothing peculiar phonetically, morphologically, or lexically. Without syntactical traits of implication and/or explication, texts do not usually appear genuinely colloquial — while syntactical 'disorder' leaves practically no doubt that it is colloquial. The reader can mentally reproduce the stylistic experiment made once by the author of the present work.

Imagine a text consisting of only neutral and colloquial words, yet arranged as a complex-compound (or a compound-complex) sentence, with many clauses and participial constructions, including the Nominative Absolute. No expert in English is likely to believe a person could speak like that in the family circle or when chatting with friends.

On the contrary, one could compose (or find in books like those by Arthur Hailey, in which professionals — physicians, or financiers, or

airmen, or hotel staff — are depicted) sentences or monologues, consisting solely of neutral words and words of the profession (special terms, most of which are felt — by the layman at least — to be higher than neutral) without a single colloquial word. And if the text follows the rules of colloquial syntax, that is, if it abounds in elliptical and unfinished sentences, and, on the other hand, contains unnecessary repetitions of the same idea (characteristic of emotional overstrain), it will hardly be possible to doubt its colloquial authenticity.

As mentioned just now, spontaneous speech produces both syntactically 'incomplete' constructions and those containing redundancies. We shall take implication first.

1. One manifestation of implication is the use of sentences that may be regarded to contain two members, which, however, are not the grammatical subject and predicate — just the 'theme' and the 'rheme' ('topic' and 'comment'):

" Too many people here." " Not that again! " " All right so far." (Galsworthy)

In the next example, neither subj ect nor predicate proper can be found, but the opposition of the two parts is clearly felt: " At present, perhaps." (Shaw)

The function of independent sentences (isolated utterances) is often performed by attributive phrases:

2. Colloquial syntax demonstrates numerous cases of communicative transposition. Thus a word combination, not comprising a verb in the imperative mood, performs the function of imperative sentence: " Tea. For two. Out here." (Shaw) " Off with you! " (Shaw)

Note. The results of special research on non-imperative hortatory sentences, collected by I.I. Pribytok, made up a book published in Saratov in 1972.¹⁰3. Another variety formed by non-interrogative sentences performing the function of interrogative ones can be divided into two classes: a) the word-order and general pattern are not interrogative; b) they are potential fragments of sentences — one or several parts of a sentence:

4. A very peculiar and extremely complicated class of sentences are those which are interrogative as regards their form, but their communicative aim is not a request to supply some information the inquirer is in need of, but to make an affirmative or negative statement — to send a message usually expressed by a declarative sentence, or (not infrequently) to exhort the interlocutor to perform some action. Sentences of this class are usually called rhetorical questions. As mentioned before (see chapter on syntax of units), the term 'rhetorical' is misleading as regards the actual functions and spheres of use of sham questions of that kind: they are undoubtedly more often used in colloquial speech than in high-flown oration or in poetry. N.N. Lissenkova, who made them the subject-matter of her research work, found some important data concerning non-interrogative functions of what she calls 'pseudo-interrogative' forms.¹¹

First of all, pseudo-interrogation is based on the trope-like nature of transpositions. Cases like " Did I say a word about the money? " (Shaw) implying the opposite (negative) statement (" I did not say...") are connected by their antonymic implication with the transfer by contrast, that is, irony. Pseudo-interrogations " Can you pass the salt? " or " Why don't you sit down? " that imply the consequence of a self-evident answer presenting no reasons for refusal to pass the salt and no justification for not sitting down (" Pass the salt, please"; " Do sit down"). They are obviously metonymic in character (real connection between the question and what it suggests).

As shown by Lissenkova, the actual communicative function becomes unambiguous only after the reactive utterance of the interlocutor is known. Thus what is planned as a mere pseudo-question by a speaker turns into a genuine question owing to the unexpected reaction of another, as in the following exchange of remarks:

Another curious peculiarity of certain pseudo-interrogations is the complexity of their implication: the sentence cannot be turned into a declarative by an elementary transformation of the negative predicate into the affirmative or vice versa. The rather widely used, practically stereotyped pseudo-question " Where do you think you are? " implies a stern reproach " This is not a place to make noise" or a slightly tempered version of " Behave yourself! ".

There are other syntactic implications not dealt with in the paper discussed. Thus, used both in Russian and English (as well as in other languages) are clauses of unreal comparison without a principal clause to precede or to follow (" As if I ever stop thinking about her! "; «Как будто я этого хотел!»).

Universal ways of expressing negation (or disapproval of the very idea of something) are:

Ironical juxtaposition of words or phrases denoting objects and/or characteristics thought incompatible:

" George — a collector! " (Galsworthy) " I jealous! "; " That fellow repent! " (Jespersen)

No less widespread is the deprecative repetition of the interlocutor's utterance (or of a part), to imply that the very idea is rejected as impossible, improbable, wrong, etc.:

" I've explained why I did that." " Explained! Explained! " (Dreiser; " Young Pearson is very good looking."

" Good looking — good looking — a girl doesn't want a barber's block." (Christie)

Isolated (independent) utterances may consist of one word, sometimes even a form-word, e.g. a conjunction:

The most obvious (and the best known) form of implication is ellipsis (absence of parts of the sentence or of auxiliary elements). Absence of subject:

" He's there, about seventy yards ahead! " " See you? " (Galsworthy) Omitted: " Did he..." " Billy...? " " Yes? "

" Oh, there you are. Looking for you." (Aldington) Omitted: " I have been..."

A predicate may be left out only if it is restorable from the context. Absence of both principal parts of the sentence is met with in utterances consisting of potential adverbial modifiers or potential objects. On absence of auxiliary words (prepositions, articles) see above, Syntax of Units.

Utterances (questions, answers, statements, etc.) in a dialogue are treated by its participants as their common property, i.e. as connected with one another both semantically and grammatically. Thus, a sentence

is formed by one speaker, but the other adds a word (a phrase, a clause), changing the sense of the whole:

Often the second interlocutor gives a one-word characteristic of the first speaker's utterance:

Our next problem to be discussed is explication in colloquial syntax. The brevity of the outline is likely to be deceptive as to the part explication performs in the specifics of the colloquial: the data collected by Y.P. Zotov gave him grounds to claim that explication predominates over implication in colloquial English reflected in modern realistic literature.

Both time-limit and stylistic " irresponsibility" of people talking informally make very frequent such cases when the speaker begins an utterance without having a clear-cut communicative intention, that is to say, without knowing exactly how to proceed and how to finish up. The utterance is often replenished, restructured and supplied with details after it is finished. The result looks like a complete and extended syntactical whole, divided into fragments. What we observe is excessive number of quasi-independent communicative units — several fragmentary utterances in place of one well-balanced. In the example that follows, one complete sentence has been composed, piece by piece, in three steps. This practice is often referred to as 'parcelling'. It may be accompanied by all kinds of positional changes. So, a phrase in apposition to a pronoun in the first half of the sentence may appear at the very end of it, preceded by a pause (period):

" I think she's divorcing him, but it takes time. Fine little creature." (Galsworthy)

No less often the speaker first identifies the isolated image that appears in his mind, and the first segment of the utterance makes the addressee acquainted with the subject-matter of the statement that follows:

" That bloody engagement ring. That's where the money's gone." (Waterhouse and Hall)

The psychological antipode of parcelling is what might be called 'deciphering'. In the former, the contents of the message is clear to the speaker from the start, and the main part of the information to be

transmitted (initial segment) is followed by one or several less signifi
cant segments. In the latter, on the contrary, form precedes content. The
speaker's first utterance follows a subject-predicate pattern, using
pronouns and pro-verbs, after which the pattern is filled in with notional
words; the preliminary 'pronominal' signal, the skeleton of the sentence
is fleshed out with notional, meaningful units: /

Structurally quite different, but engendered by a similar state of mind are constructions in which the 'theme' ('topic') follows the 'rheme' ('comment') which the speaker hastens to announce first:

Compare also communicatively relevant types of inversion (mostly typical of popular speech):

" And a nice cup of tea you shall have at once, my dear; that I'm certain of." (Christie)

Explication is further observed in colloquial monologues whenever a speaker reveals a propensity for asking questions and immediately answering them:

" Who's ignoring it? Nobody's ignoring it! " (Salinger) " And who keeps taking my invoices out of that vase? Somebody bloody does." (Waterhouse and Hall)

The most obvious manifestations of explication are excessive words. Here belong, first of all, the various kinds of repetition — emphatic recurrence of sentences, phrases, and words.

" The Sheriff has been asking for you, Lieutenant. Asking and asking and asking." (Gow and D'Usseau)

Of little informative force (although stylistically significant) are a) interjections signalizing (or emphasizing) the interrogative aim of the utterance; b) expletives; c) parenthetic elements with the general meaning of certainty; d) the so-called 'appended statements'.

A. " We go together, huh? " (Innes)
" Benediction on murder, urn? " (Galsworthy)
" Masterly stroke of policy that, my dear sir, eh? " (Shaw)

Semantics. Speech activity in everyday intercourse is not an aim in itself (as in writing poetry or imaginative prose), but only a means of coordinating and regulating the requirements of life. In the colloquial sphere, there is no striving after ornamentality that imparts a special intellectual and aesthetic value to speech. Deviations from this general rule, i.e. a play on words or fresh tropes, actually met with in non-official situations turns the lingual behaviour into a momentary creative act, thus excluding it from what is called 'colloquial'. 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).

True, it happens that quite new, unheard of, vivid, paradoxically profound, often strikingly humorous expressions come to the speaker's mind like a flash of lightning, but those impromptu creations turn the remarks in which they occur into something radically different from colloquial utterances. Though the situation is purely 'colloquial' (informal conversation), the happy masterpiece forms no part of the colloquial sublanguage. It is as alien, as accidental in normal colloquial practice, as, for instance, Latin, French, or Italian words and expressions, which are not infrequently employed by educated English speakers and which, nonetheless, no one would think of classing with English linguistic units. 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 (see Zemskaya et al.).

What seems, however, to be genuine colloquial speech (everyday informal speech, unpretentious in every respect), is certainly not completely devoid of transfer of names and of semantic figures of cooccurrence, either (see chapter on semasiology of sequences). Of course, stylistics is not concerned with 'etymological' metonymies (field-hands) or metaphors (hands of a clock). Specifically colloquial tropes must answer these two demands:

1) in contradistinction to cases like hand of a watch, foot of a hill, neck
of a bottle, the transfer must still be felt, i.e. must have some impressive
(image-creating) force;

2) opposed to individual creations by writers (or by the above-men
tioned extraordinary wits), the trope or figure should not be a new-coined
one; it is to be familiar, its colloquial nature should also be known (the

foreign learner of English will find the corresponding stylistic labels in dictionaries, which can discuss only what is already current).

To metonymies of this kind the colloquial meaning of the word boot may be referred. Certainly not the primary meaning of a kind of footgear (which is neutral), but those of 'a kick' and 'to kick'. See also the metonymic sense of the word face: not 'front of head from forehead to chin', but 'impudence'; a head: not 'anterior part of body of animal, upper part of man's body', but 'hangover', 'morning-after headache'.

Besides, stylistics is interested in the colloquial peculiarities of occasional, temporary denominations. It should be taken into account that transfer of names in colloquial speech mostly takes place not to create an image affecting the recipient, but merely to fill in lacunas of the idiolexicon — " empty places" in the individual vocabulary of the speaker.

It is clear, however, that types of onomatological phenomena are manifold and their psychological motivation is too varied to be treated here collectively.

The quantitative tropes — meiosis and hyperbole — do not fill in any empty cells, do not rescue the speaker from lexical insufficiency. Meiosis is intentionally resorted to for quantitative implication. Using expressions like a pretty penny, quite a few times, not half (so) bad, tolerably well, the speaker is sure of his listener's ability to figure out what is really meant.

Hyperbole (overstatement), logically and psychologically opposed to meiosis (understatement), illustrates the essence of explication in the most straightforward way. Notwithstanding the proverbial reticence of the English, the number of hyperbolical set expressions (and their frequency) is incomparably greater than that of meiosis. The English, like ourselves, or like Americans, operate with thousands and millions (thousands of times; Thanks a million), use as intensifiers words like death, killing, lots, heaps, worlds. The intensifiers have mostly very little to do with extraordinary emotions: they are rather the colloquial norm. The English colloquial phraseology abounds in absurd hyperbole: in less than no time; as fine as a frog's hair split. See, however, Russian masterpieces like карманная чахотка (literally: 'pocket TBC, i.e. poverty, lack of money) or без году неделя 'it will make a week since — in a year's time' — scornful reproach of immodest inexperience: 'An engineer, indeed! Will have been a week in a year!).

Among the figures of quality, metonymy is the predominant form of occasional coinage in colloquial speech. Due to 'linguistic laziness' the speaker does not always name the subject of speech, but something connected with it — mostly something more concrete, easily observable or lying on the surface of his consciousness.

Wide use of metonymy in colloquial Russian has been shown by E. A. Zemskaya et al. The English usage seems to be still more liable to metonymic word-building: what is it but metonymy that underlies every case of conversion (paper — to paper, pocket — to pocket, table — to table, etc.)?

Along with hackneyed examples of metonymy (such as " We want none of your lip! "; " He never laid eyes on her before") there often occur individual metonymic manifestations, the connection between the traditional meaning and the intended situational sense not always apparent, though easily guessable, as in the instance:

The fact of implication is doubtless. It is less easy to say which of the two tendencies prevails in metonymic periphrases. The question " Where is that man I'm going to marry? " illustrates explication owing to the imposing number of words standing for the much more economical proper name of the bridegroom; at the same time it is implicative, since the sentence does not name the man directly, requiring some guesswork on the part of the recipient. Practically the same could be stated about the following two examples, quite characteristic of colloquial intercourse when speakers do not exert themselves to recall or to select the word they need:

" I had an operation recently on my wuddayacallit — my clavicord" (the speaker ought to have said my clavicle). " He's behaving like a perfect I don't know what."

As for metaphor, its prevalent use in colloquial speech involves stereotyped, ready-made words and expressions, often of a zoosemic or phytosemic nature, ¹² used as anthroponyms or characterizing a person's behaviour, appearance, etc.: brute, beast, swine, dog, bitch, sonofabitch, henpecked (terrorized or governed by one's wife), to ferret out ('to find out'), fishy ('suspicious'), etc.

Usually, any metaphor serving to strengthen a characteristic by visualizing it, manifests explication. But whenever the novelty of an object makes the speaker search for a provisional name for it, and the name is created on a metaphorical basis, the tendency toward implication finds its embodiment. It is always implication that caters for the newly arisen needs of the (sub)language, compensating for the deficiency of the vocabulary by the ability to find analogies.

Psychological reasons for the widespread use of irony in colloquial speech are varied, as are the ways it is expressed. Often it is only familiarity with the speaker's system of views that enables one to see irony

in what seems to have been said in earnest. True, there exist special set expressions that can never be understood literally:

Syntagmatic figures (sequences) are less often met with in colloquial texts than in imaginative writing. The reason is obvious: colloquial sentences are seldom long and practically never elaborately structured (otherwise they are not colloquial!). The few exceptions to this common rule are similes (mostly ready-made ones), synonymous clarifiers, elementary varieties of gradation, and antithesis. The reason why complicated devices are so scarce is the time-shortage factor, and also lack of concern for the aesthetic aspect of lingual behaviour.

² Vendryes G. Le langage. Introduction linguistique a l'histoire. — P., 1932.

³Земская ЕЛ., Китайгородская М.В., Ширяев Е.Н. Русская разговорная речь. —М.,

⁴See also: Скребнев Ю.М. Введение в коллоквиалистику. — Саратов: Изд. СГУ, 1985.

⁶ Скребнева ТТ. Субколлоквиальные синтаксические структуры современного анг-

лийского языка (американский вариант): Автореф. дисс... канд. филол. наук. — Пятигорск, 1987.

⁷ Рябова К.М. Коллоквиальная лексика современного английского языка: Автореф.

⁸ Кудрявцева Н.П. Широкозначная субстантивная лексика в английской разговорной

речи: Автореф. дисс... канд. филол. наук. — Одесса, 1988.

⁹ Ретунская М.С. Английское окказиональное словообразование (на материале имен

существительных и прилагательных): Автореф. дисс... канд. филол. наук. — Горький, 1974.

¹⁰ Прибыток ИМ. Структурные и коммуникативные типы безымперативных предло-

жений в современном английском языке. — Саратов, 1971.

¹¹ Лисенкова Н.Н. Псевдовопросительные высказывания в английской разговорной

речи: Автореф. дисс... канд. филол. наук. — Одесса, 1989.

¹² Клушин НА. Коллоквиальные словозначения зоо- и фитоморфного характера //

Теория и практика лингвистического описания разговорной речи. — Горький, 1990.

*Absolutely specific units: Style-forming units: those characteristic of sublanguage under consideration, but not met with in sublanguages characteristic of other types of speech 13, 16

Adage: Proverb (see): current metaphorical saying of instructive content; usually anonymous

Amplification: Convergence: strengthening achieved by several stylistic means combined 34

Antiphrasis: set phrase literally expressing approval, but used only to blame 119

* The work on Word Index and Glossary was completed by Cand. of philology E.S. Gritsenko (Nizhny Novgorod Institute of Foreign Languages).

A. 62; 2) A. proper 62 Archaization 62 Articulatory-audial: characterizing