43002 (687257), страница 6
Текст из файла (страница 6)
The word brass in the meaning of 'money in general, cash' is not jargon inasmuch as there is an apparent semantic connection between 'the general name for all alloys of copper with tin or zinc' and cash. The metonymic ties between the two meanings prevent the word from being used as a special code word. The same can be said of the words joker–'something used to play a trick or win one's point or object with' from card-playing; drag–'to rob vehicles'; to soap-box–'to make speeches out-of-doors standing on a soap-box'. These are easily understood by native speakers and therefore fail to meet the most indispensable property of jargon words. They are slang words or perhaps colloquial.
On the other hand, such words as soap and flannel meaning bread and 'cheese' (naval), and some of the words mentioned above are scarcely likely to be understood by the language community. Only those who are in the know understand such words. Therefore they can be classed as Jargonisms,
It will not come amiss to mention here the words of Vandryes, a well-known French linguist, who said that»… jargon distorts words, it does not create them.» Indeed, the creation of really new words is a very rare process, In almost any language you can find only a few entirely new words. It is not accidental therefore that the efforts of some poets to coin completely new words have proved to be an absolute failure, their attempts being utterly rejected by the language community.
In passing, we must remark that both slang and the various jargons of Great Britain differ much more from those of America (the United 112 States and Canada) than the literary language in the two countries does. In fact, the most striking difference is to be observed in the non-literary layer of words and particularly in slang and Jargonisms and professionalisms. (See quotation from Randolph Quirk on p. 44).
«American slang,» remarks G.H. McKnight, «on the whole remains a foreign language to the Englishman. American plays such as «Is zat so» and American novels such as «Babbitt» have had to be provided with glossaries in order to be intelligible in England. John Galsworthy in his recent novel «The Silver Spoon» makes a naturalistic use of colloquial idiom. He exhibits the rich element of native slang in the colloquial speech of England.» 22
Jargonisms, like slang and other groups of the non-literary layer, do not always remain on the outskirts of the literary language. Many words have overcome the resistance of the language lawgivers and purists and entered the standard vocabulary. Thus the words kid, fun, queer, bluff, fib, humbug, formerly slang words or Jargonisms, are now considered common colloquial. They may be said to be dejargonized.
2.5.3 Professionalisms
Professionalisms, as the term itself signifies, are the words used in a definite trade, profession or calling by people connected by common interests both at work and at home. They commonly designate some working process or implement of labor. Professionalisms are correlated to terms. Terms, as has already been indicated, are coined to nominate new concepts that appear in the process of, and as a result of, technical progress and the development of science.
Professional words name anew already-existing concepts, tools or instruments, and have the typical properties of a special code. The main feature of a professionalism is its technicality. Professionalisms are special words in the non-literary layer of the English vocabulary, whereas terms are a specialized group belonging to the literary layer of words. Terms, if they are connected with a field or branch of science or technique well-known to ordinary people, are easily decoded and enter the neutral stratum of the vocabulary. Professionalisms generally remain in circulation within a definite community, as they are linked to a common occupation and common social interests. The semantic structure of the term is usually transparent and is therefore easily understood. The se-mantic structure of professionalism is often dimmed by the image on which the meaning of the professionalism is based, particularly when the features of the object in question reflect the process of the work, metaphorically or metonymically. Like terms, professionalisms do not allow any polisemy, they are monosemantic.
Here are some professionalisms used in different trades: tin-fish (=submarine); block-buster (a bomb especially designed to destroy blocks of big buildings); piper (=a specialist who decorates pastry with the use of a cream-pipe); a midder case (=a midwifery case); outer (=a knockout blow).
Some professionalism, however, like certain terms, become popular and gradually loses their professional flavor. Thus the word crane which Byron used in his «Don Juan»… was a verb meaning 'to stretch out the neck like a crane before a dangerous leap' (in hunting, in order to 'look before you leap'). Now, according to Eric Partridge, it has broadened its meaning and is used in the sense of 'to hesitate at an obstacle, a danger. By 1860 it was no more professionalism used in hunting but had become a colloquial word of the non-literary stratum and finally, since 1390, entered the Standard English vocabulary.
«No good craning at it. Let's go down.» (Galsworthy)
Professionalisms should not be mixed up with jargonisms. Like slang words, professionalisms do not aim at secrecy. They fulfill a socially useful function in communication, facilitating a quick and adequate grasp of the message.
Good examples of professionalisms as used by a man-of-letters can be found in Dreiser's «Financier.» The following passage is an illustration.
Frank soon picked up all the technicalities of the situation. A «bull», he learned, was one who bought in anticipation of a higher price to come; and if he was «loaded» up with a «line» of stocks he was said to be «long». He sold to «realize» his profit, or if his margins were exhausted he was «wiped out». A «bear» was one who sold stocks which most frequently he did not have, in anticipation of a lower price at which he could buy and satisfy his previous sales. He was «short» when he had sold what he did not own, and he was «covered» when he bought to satisfy his sales and to realize his profits or to protect himself against further loss in the case prices advanced instead of declining. He was in a «corner» when he found that he could not buy in order to make good the stock he had borrowed for delivery and the return of which had been demanded. He was then obliged to settle practically at a price fixed by those to whom he and other «shorts» had sold.
As is seen, each financial professionalism is explained by the author and the words themselves are in inverted commas to stress their peculiar idiomatic sense and also to indicate that the words do not belong to the Standard English vocabulary in the meanings they are used.
There are certain fields of human activity which enjoy nation-wide interest and popularity. This, for example, is the case in Great Britain where sports and games are concerned. English pugilistic terminology, for example, has gained particularly wide recognition and therefore is frequently used in a transferred meaning, thus adding to the general image-building function of emotive prose. Here is an example of the use of such professionalisms in fiction.
«Father Knickerbocker met them at the ferry giving one a right-hander on the nose and the other an uppercut with his left just to let them know that the fight was on.»
This is from a story by O. Henry called «The Duel» in which the writer depicts two characters who came from the West to conquer New York. The vocabulary of boxing (right-hander, uppercut), as well as other professional terms found in the story, like ring, to counter, to clinch, etc., help to maintain the atmosphere of a fight, which the story requires.
Professionalisms are used in emotive prose to depict the natural speech of a character. The skilful use of a professional word will show not only the vocation of a character, but also his education, breeding, environment and sometimes even his psychology. That is why, perhaps, a literary device known as speech-characterization is so abundantly used in emotive prose. The use of professionalisms forms the most conspicuous element of this literary device.
An interesting article was published in the Canadian Globe and Mail * in which the author shows how a journalist who mocks at the professionalisms in the language of municipal planners, which render their speech almost incomprehensible, himself uses words and expressions unintelligible to the lay reader, Here is the article.
2.5.4 Dialectal words
This group of words» is obviously opposed to the other groups of the non-literary English vocabulary and therefore its stylistic functions can be more or less clearly defined. Dialectal words are those which in the process of integration of the English – national language remained beyond its literary boundaries, and their use is generally confined to a definite locality. We exclude here what are called social dialects or even the still looser application of the term as in expressions like poetical dialect or styles as dialects.
With reference to this group there is a confusion of terms, particularly between the terms dialectal, slang and vernacular. In order to ascertain the true value and the stylistic functions of dialectal words it is necessary to look into their nature. For this purpose a quotation from Cecil Wyld's «A History of Modern Colloquial English» will be to the point.
«The history of a very large part of the vocabulary of the present-day English dialects is still very obscure, and it is doubtful whether much of it is of any antiquity. So far very little attempt has been made to sift the chaff from the grain in that very vast receptacle of the English Dialect Dictionary, and to decide which elements are really genuine 'corruptions' of words which the yokel has heard from educated speakers, or read, misheard, or misread, and ignorantly altered, and adopted, often with a slightly twisted significance. Probably many hundreds of 'dialect' words are of this origin, and have no historical value whatever, except inasmuch as they illustrate a general principle in the modification of speech. Such words are not, as a rule, characteristic of any Regional Dialect, although they may be ascribed to one of these, simply because some collector of dialect forms has happened to hear them in a particular area. They belong rather to the category of 'mistakes' which any ignorant speaker may make, and which such persons do make, again and again, in every part of the country.» We are not concerned here with the historical aspect of dialectal words. For our purpose it will suffice to note that there is a definite similarity of functions in the use of slang, cockney and any other form of non-literary English and that of dialectal words. All these groups when used in emotive prose are meant to characterize the speaker as a person of a certain locality, breeding, education, etc.
There is sometimes a difficulty in distinguishing dialectal words from colloquial words. Some dialectal words have become so familiar in good colloquial or standard colloquial English that they are universally accepted as recognized units of the standard colloquial English. To these words belong lass, meaning 'a girl or a beloved girl' and the corresponding lad, 'a boy or a young man', daft from the Scottish and the northern dialect, meaning 'of unsound mind, silly'; fash, also Scottish, with the meaning of 'trouble, cares'. Still they have not lost their dialectal associations and therefore are used in literary English with the above-mentioned stylistic function of characterization.
Conclusion
There exist the following main layers of the English and the Uzbek vocabulary: literary, neutral and colloquial. Each of these layer has its own feature: the literary layer has a bookish character, the colloquial layer has a 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, barbarisms and neologisms. Within the colloquial vocabulary we distinguish: common colloquial words, vulgar words. The neutral layer penetrates both the literary and colloquial vocabulary and is deprived of any stylistic coloring.
![](https://s.studizba.com/z.php?f=/templates/si/i/noavatar.png&w=100&h=100&t=1"){kind=avatar}
