Further readings

Вердиева З.Н Семантические поля в современном английском языке. - М.: Высшая

школа, 1986.

Завражнова С И Системное описание лексики. - М.: МГПИ им.В.И.Ленина, 1985. Уфимцева А.А. Опыт изучения лексики как системы.—М.: Изд-во АН СССР, 1962. Crystal, D.A The Structure of the Lexicon // The Cambridge Encyclopedia of the English

Language. - Cambridge, CUP, 1996 (reprinted). Cruse, D.A. Lexical semantics. - Cambridge: CUP, 1991 (reprinted). Lyons, J Structural Semantics. - Oxford: Blackwell, 1963.

Chapters. VARIETIES OF THE ENGLISH LEXICON

"... like other local differences of food, dress, and

customs, dialects are often a nuisance. Yet they lend

picturesque variety to language, and variety is the spice

of life".

— M. Pei. The Study of Language, 1965.

Dialect vs. language. Standard norm. Dialectology. Regional, social and stylistic varieties. Regional variation of the English language. Variants of English. British variant of the English language. American variant of the English language

Language change and variation is an inevitable, regular and continuous process. Besides temporal variations that the English lexicon has undergone throughout the centuries, the results of which were discussed in Chapter 3, there are also regional, social, personal, spoken and written variations, that attract the interest of professional linguists. From the linguistic point of view none of them are better or worse, inferior or superior, each of them serves a certain purpose and performs a certain task, and all of them serve as a material for linguistic investigation.

[Dialect vs. language. Standard norm. Dialectology]

Each person in a certain language community speaks in a different way. The language used by a person is distinct m pronunciation, in preferences for certain words and even grammatical patterns. The language pattern of one's individual speech at a certain period of his life is called an idiolect. The systematic use of common patterns m grammar, vocabulary stock and pronunciation by people of a certain locality or a socially limited group makes up a dialect. Several dialects with a literary norm as their centralizing core may be viewed as one language.

The distinction between language and dialect is not clear cut. Sometimes for historical and political reasons two or more dialects may be referred to as different languages, like Swedish, Danish and Norwegian, for example. Or vice versa, some completely different dialects may be called one language. This situation occurs in China, where speakers of different dialects may be almost unintelligible to each other but they share the same written language tradition based on ideographic characters, and on this written basis they may communicate with each other and believe they speak the same Chinese language.

The most prestigious dialect is usually chosen as the standard, or standard norm of the

language. It differs from other dialects, because it is not regional. Educated people usually use a standard norm although they live in different parts of the country and come from different social strata.

Besides differences in idiolects, accents and dialects, there are essential differences between written and oral forms of a language, and each of these forms has its own standard norm.

So, all languages exist in numerous variations. English is especially varied because of the great number of its speakers, of its use on vast and distant territories, and of a large range of functions it performs.

[Regional, social and stylistic varieties] • ' "

Different branches of linguistics (lexicology, stylistics, sociolinguistics, and developmental theories) study different variations of a language.

Dialectology traditionally studied geographical phonetic, grammar and lexical varieties of a language used on a certain territory, or regional dialects. Its subjects were mostly elderly uneducated people from rural areas who had not moved throughout the country. The major aim of the study was to reconstruct the historical processes of the languages' spread and relations.

The principal method of investigation has always been a questionnaire on some features of domestic, rural or farming life involving the most stable strata of a language. Such questionnaires help to get information about phonological, lexical, morphological, and syntactic features of lexical units. Language atlases are developed on the basis of the data collected.

It is necessary to emphasize that dialects are not purely regional. Different factors, such as social or ethnic contexts, combine and intersect to form dialects.

Recently there has been a shift in dialect studies. They have moved from the country to the city, and dialectologists have been paying more attention to social rather than geographical space. Characteristic forms of social groups' language are usually referred to as sociolects. Sociolects arise within social groups and are determined by such factors as l)geography, 2)sccioeconomic status, 3)ethnicity/race, 4)age, 5)occupation, and 6)gender.

Intriguing, though very controversial, are studies of the relationship between the social class and language.

It is well known that speakers of the highest social class in Great Britain, for example, are supposed to speak Standard English. So-called Standard English is a social dialect used by well-educated English speakers in different localities. It presupposes very little regional, ethnic or gender variation. One of its most obvious characteristics is RP -received, or accepted pronunciation among the best-educated members of the society. Though only about three percent of the English population speaks RP (see /Hughes and

Trudgill 1979:3/), this accent is taught to foreign learners due to its high social prestige. It gives foreigners the best chance of being understood. It is widely used on radio and television and is familiar to all the people. It is also the most thoroughly described British accent.

The lowest social class displays a wide range of local accents and dialects of English.

Good examples of opposition of upper-class (U) and other kinds of English word usage (non-U) were proposed in 1954 by A.S.C. Ross m the article Linguistic class-indicators in present-day English (1954) even though they are not any more characteristic of current English:

U non-U

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