Yu. Screbnev suggests a different criteria for the stylistic stratification of the English vocabulary

Words having a lexico-stylistic paradigm

Words having no lexico-stylistic paradigm

- have only denotative meaning

- no synonyms

- no stylistic function

terms, exotic words

- have connotative meaning

- have neutral synonyms

- have stylistic functions

Stylistically loaded words are not homogenous and split into two large subgroups: 1) literary (high-flown) words and 2) conversational (low-flown) words. High-flown words are poetic diction (i.e. poetic words of different type), archaic words (archaisms), barbarisms and foreign words, bookish (or learned) words. They are used in official, scientific, and poetic discourse, mostly of written type. As V.A.Kukharenko points out, literary (learned, bookish) vocabulary adds to the message a shade of seriousness, gravity, sophistication, and learnedness.

Low-flown words include colloquial words (literary, familiar and low), general slang (or interjargon), special slang (or social and professional jargon), dialectal words, and vulgarisms.

The stylistic classification, of the vocabulary, in his view, must take into account the social prestige of the word.

Paradigmatic lexicology subdivides English vocabulary into stylistic layers. In most works on this problem (cf. books by Galperin, Arnold, Vinogradov) all words of the national language are usually described in terms of neutral, literary and colloquial with further subdivision into poetic, archaic, foreign, jargonisms, slang, etc.

Skrebnev uses different terms for practically the same purposes. His terminology includes correspondingly neutral, positive (elevated) and negative (degraded) layers.

Subdivision inside these categories is much the same with the ex­clusion of such groups as bookish and archaic words and special terms that Galperin, for example, includes into the special literary vocabulary (described as positive in Skrebnev's system) while Skreb­nev claims that they may have both a positive and negative stylistic function depending on the purpose of the utterance and the context. The same consideration concerns the so-called barbarisms or foreign words whose stylistic value (elevated or degraded) depends on the kind of text in which they are used. To illustrate his point Skrebnev gives two examples of barbarisms used by people of different social class and age. Used by an upper-class character from John Galswor­thy the word chic has a tinge of elegance showing the character's knowledge of French. He maintains that Italian words ciao and bambina current among Russian youngsters at one time were also considered stylistically 'higher' than their Russian equivalents. At the same time it's hard to say whether they should all be classified as positive just because they are of foreign origin. Each instance of use should be considered individually.

Stylistic diiferentiation suggested by Skrebnev includes the following stratification

Positive/elevated

poetic;

official;

professional.

Bookish and archaic words occupy a peculiar place among the other positive words due to the fact that they can be found in any other group (poetic, official or professional).

Neutral Negative/degraded

colloquial; neologisms;

jargon; slang;

nonce-words; vulgar words.

Special mention is made of terms. The author maintains that the stylistic function of terms varies in different types of speech. In non-professional spheres, such as literary prose, newspaper texts, everyday speech special terms are associated with socially presti­gious occupations and therefore are marked as elevated. On the other hand the use of non-popular terms, unknown to the average speaker, shows a pretentious manner of speech, lack of taste or tact.

Syntagmatic lexicology studies the «word-and-context» juxtaposition that presents a number of stylistic problems—especially those con­nected with co-occurrence of words of various stylistic colourings.

Each of these cases must be considered individually because each literary text is unique in its choice and combination of words. Such phenomena as various instances of intentional and unintentional lexical mixtures as well as varieties of lexical recurrence fall in with this approach.

Some new more modern stylistic terms appear in this connection— stylistic irradiation, heterostylistic texts, etc. We can observe this sort of stylistic mixture in a passage from O'Henry provided by Skrebnev:

Jeff, says Andy after a long time, quite unseldom I have seen fit to impugn your molars when you have been chewing the rag with me about your conscientious way of doing business... (47, p. 149).

The primary division of the vocabulary, as we already know, is into neutral words and words stylistically coloured. It should be noted here that all the classes of words mentioned above are coloured and cannot be neutral (the very fact that they bear special names — 'bookish', 'colloquial', 'poetic' and so on is evidence of it). And of course all such classes can differ, aesthetically, from the neutral part of the vocabulary in one of two ways: each of them is either more valuable or less valuable than the class of neutral units. There is no other way: not being neutral, they must be either better or worse. To show metaphorically these relations in space, we shall have to place words with positive connotations above the neutral layer, and those with negative connotations, below it:

Positive (elevated)

Neutral

Negative (degraded)

This differentiation has social grounding. 'Elevation' and 'degradation' do not exist by themselves, as self-sufficient characteristics, but as the result of evaluating at least three factors: the subject of speech, the character of the communicative sphere, and the participants of communication. The notions of elevation and degradation are correlative, in the sphere of morals, with the biblical concepts of good and evil; logically, they represent the opposition of the positive to the negative.

The three-member system 'elevated — neutral — degraded' illustrates the differentiation of the high medium, and low styles, well-known since ancient times. This is quite acceptable and theoretically irrefutable. At the same time we cannot help seeing its too general character: it makes no provision for any gradation of the elevated or degraded lexical units, yet there must be different degrees in both. Simple logical reasoning as well as actual analysis of words proves this assumption to be correct.

It appears feasible to consider that the number of 'degrees' of elevation or degradation is infinite, or at least indefinite. Theoretically, we may be sure that no two synonyms stand at the same level stylistically: one of them is either higher or lower, or stronger, or weaker, or additional meanings. Taking, for instance, the nouns answer — reply — response — rejoinder — retort — return, we can state that the first word (answer) is undoubtedly neutral, whereas the rest of them more or less elevated; the last (return) is very rare; the last three imply a negative attitude to what has been asked (or proposed) by the interlocutor. Theoretically, we may assume that every synonym is necessarily, inevitably, by the very fact of its co-existence with its correlative, different from the latter stylistically (this idea, by the way, underlies the whole theory of the infinite number of sublanguages). And practically speaking, it is not always possible to give an unbiased opinion upon the merits and demerits of a word (phrase, sentence, etc.).

Taking all this into account, we shall nevertheless try to establish a scheme, dividing both the superneutral (elevated) and subneutral (degraded) parts of the diagram into three gradations: minimal, medial, and maximal. What is proposed here is not exactly a classification of real facts, but rather an ethically- and aesthetically oriented scale, a possibility, a frame, to be filled in with actualities.

Maximal	Elevation
Medial
Minimal
Neutral
Minimal	Degradation
Medial
Maximal

The subdivision of the upper and lower parts of the scheme into three gradations, or degrees, is based on analytical inductive premises. The minimal degree presupposes absence of purpose: the speaker does not deliberately select one word or another to achieve a stylistic effect he has in view – on the contrary, he never notices the word, he is not aware of its being used, he merely takes what comes handy. It is only upon second thought that the user of the word is able to class it. The medial degree implies deliberate selection (a conscious act of choice), realization of the stylistic properties of the word by its user. The maximal degree is what we attribute to highly expressive words possessing either very special (uncommon) aesthetic value (superneutral words) or words inadmissible ethically (subneutral words).

Let us illustrate. Minimally elevated are slightly bookish words used automatically by cultivated speakers. The words prevail, activity, inher­ent are comprehensible, but not used actively by non-educated speakers.

To the medium class (expressively bookish words) the use of which betrays the user's propensity for being expressly elegant and rather high-flown: sagacity (= wisdom, cleverness), somnolent (= sleepy), expunge, expurgate (= strike out or wipe out parts of a text). The reader can easily feel the difference between this group of words and the previous one: the words prevail, activity, and the like are much more widely used than the representatives of the second group — somnolent or expurgate (which may be altogether unknown to people of little culture).

The maximum elevation can be found in words used in poetry and high prose: words: morn, sylvan, ne'er — on the whole are used in the so-called 'poetic diction'.

Again, as previously, we shall have to admit the arbitrary character of this division, the impossibility of strict differentiation of linguistic units.

Stylistic individuality of each word or, in any case, multiplicity of the classes to which it might belong prevents us from making generalizations in stylistic lexicology. Yet just because the stylistic scale demonstrates only the general principle of the aesthetic differentiation of the vocabulary, it is devoid of national concreteness, and is probably acceptable for an elementary simplified description of the vocabulary of any highly developed language possessing an infinite number of sublingual lexicons.

Let us examine, in a very general manner, the correlation of the word-classes singled out by traditional lexicology with our stylistic scale.

Among them we can find classes of quite definite stylistic value. We shall only enumerate them here; a detailed analysis will be given further.

Poetic words constitute the highest level of the scale; every poetic word pertains to the uppermost part of the scheme; it demonstrates the maximum of aesthetic value.

Official words of business and legal correspondence as can be seen in the diagram occupy the middle level of the upper part of our scheme.

Colloquial words demonstrate the minimal degree of stylistic degra­dation: chap (fellow), chunk (lump), sniffy (disdainful), drifter (a person without a steady job).

Jargon words as well as slang and nonce-words (see below) must be placed at the second (medial) level of the lower part of the scale: military jargon - big gun (an important person), a picture show (battle)

Vulgar words occupy the lowest step of the lower part.

Thus it can be stated that the classes enumerated are more or less homogeneous from the stylistic viewpoint.

Much greater difficulties arise as soon as we begin to deal with other classes of words singled out in lexicological descriptions. The classes we enumerate further are heterogeneous stylistically: one is never sure what place in the scale they occupy.

Bookish words. The epithet 'bookish' implies a very wide sphere of communication. Words traditionally referred to as 'bookish' occupy, as a matter of fact, the whole of the upper part of the stylistic scale: some of them are only slightly above the neutral sphere; others belong to the medial sphere; many bookish words are excessively high-flown.

Archaic words, or archaisms are also stylistically heterogeneous. They are usually thought to pertain to the upper strata of the vocabulary. As a general view this opinion is correct, but only with reference to the lexical units which, though obsolete, are not completely out of use. A high-flown archaic word must be popular enough not to become quite a stranger to the modern linguistic perception; besides, its meaning, its denotation must not collide with its highly positive connotation. Thus, the well-known pronominal forms thou, thee, ye or the words like knight, hauberk,main (= ocean), etc. are high-flown archaisms. This is, however, hardly the case with words practically unknown to the public at large: they may produce the opposite stylistic impression, that of degradation (for detailed treatment see below).

Neologisms, or new creations. In most cases, newly coined words are not easily accepted by the linguistic community due to its conservative attitude towards every innovation. Therefore, a neologism seems, to the majority of language users, a stranger, a newcomer, and hence a word of low stylistic value, although the intention of the speaker (writer) may be quite the opposite. Obviously humorous are the so-called nonce-words (see below), i.e. words created by the speaker (writer) to meet the needs of the actual communicative situation. Their place is in the medial grade of the lower part of the scale.

Special terms. This word-class constitutes the actual majority of the lexical units' of every modern language serving the needs of a highly developed science and technology. Suffice it to say that the vocabulary of chemistry is practically boundless (chemistry being only one branch of the immense information accumulated by humanity). It is a common prejudice of linguistics to consider specialist terms at large as allegedly devoid of stylistic colouring. The reader will have guessed that this cur­rent opinion is false. To be sure, such terms do not contain any emotional, subjective connotations, or at least they are supposed not to contain such connotations. At the same time there is no denying the fact of their aesthetic (and, hence, expressive) value as compared with neutral words. A term is always associated by a layman with socially prestigeous spheres; it expresses an idea which otherwise requires a circumlocutional description in a non-professional sphere; hence, it gives the layman a kind of intellectual satisfaction.

Professionalisms. The linguistic status of 'professional' words, i.e. those which replace some official terms of a profession is not quite definite either. On the one hand, they are used by professionals habitually, automatically, without a stylistic purpose: just because their use is an established custom of the profession. In this, they resemble colloqui­alisms. On the other hand, their creation is largely the result of emphatic protest against official technical terms and common literary words. The latter peculiarity of professionalisms makes them resemble jargon words, or jargonisms (see below). The only difference between the two is that professionalisms are unofficial terms in a special field, while jargonisms are only created by and current among the people of a profession, yet their meanings pertain to everyday life, not to the professional sphere. Thus, sewing-machine used by soldiers instead of machine-gun is a professional expression, the name of a military object. On the contrary, the expression big gun that means 'an important person' only employs a popular military term gun, but the phrase itself has nothing in common with military affairs: it expresses a notion of everyday life. As it appeared in military circles and is current there, we refer it to soldiers' jargon.

Barbarisms, or Foreign Words. They should not be confused with 'loan­words ', or borrowed words in English. Words originally borrowed from a foreign language are usually assimilated into the native vocabulary, so as not to differ from its units in appearance or in sound. Their alien past is forgotten; often it is only a philologist that can tell their un-English origin. Such words are called 'denizens', i.e. words naturalized, words that long ago obtained all the rights of citizenship. Here is some jocular advice allegedly given to the students by a purist who fought against borrowed elements in English:

"Avoid using foreign lexical units! Employ terse, brief, easy na­tive monosyllables!"

The learner with even a vague knowledge of historical lexicology (etymology) will undoubtedly have noticed that the adherent of the purity of English has not, himself, used a single native word in his ultra-patriotic admonition: each word, from first to last, was borrowed from French, or Latin and Greek (through French).

Along with denizens (the stylistic value of which, like that of native words, maybe of various kinds), there are borrowed words called 'aliens', i.e. 'strangers': words whose foreign look, or foreign sound, or both, have been preserved, although they are widely used in English. They are mostly late borrowings from French (bouquet, billet-doux, rouge, garage, idee fixe), Italian (dolce-far-niente), or Latin (dixi, alter ego, etc.). The words sputnik, perestroika, glasnost are known and felt to be Russian words, while bouquet or garage, though obviously French in origin, have become part of the English vocabulary.

To characterize various alien borrowings in one single formula is impossible. Much depends on the meaning of the word, on the func­tion it performs in social life, on the language from which it came to English. The stylistic value of a French or Italian borrowing, pertaining to higher spheres of life, to music, theatre, art in general, is stylistically incomparable with that of borrowings from exotic languages, such as those of American Indians (words like squaw, moccasin, opossum).

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