Find the word referring to the class of colloquialisms

Colloquial
vocabulary embraces common colloquial vocabulary and special
colloquial vocabulary: slang, jargonisms, professionalisms, dialectal
words, slangy
and vulgar words.

Common
colloquial vocabulary is
part of Standard English word-stock. It borders both on neutral
vocabulary and on special colloquial vocabulary. Colloquialisms are
familiar words and idioms used in informal speech and writing, but
unacceptable in polite conversation or business correspondence.
Compare standard speech sentence «Sir,
you speak clearly and to the point» and
its colloquial equivalent «Friend,
you talk plain and hit the nail right on the head». These
are informal words that are used in everyday conversational speech
both by educated and uneducated people of all age groups, e. g. pal
and chum
are colloquial equivalents of “friend”; bite
and snack
for”
meal”.

Literary
colloquial words are to be distinguished from familiar colloquial and
low colloquial. The borderline between the literary and familiar
colloquial is not always clearly marked. Yet the circle of speakers
using familiar colloquial is more limited. This vocabulary group
closely verges on slang and has something of its flavour, e.g. doc
= doctor, hi
=
how do you do. Low colloquial group is stocked with words of
illiterate English.

There
are some specific ways of forming colloquial words and gram­matical
fusions. The most typical of them are contraction (demo
=
demon­stration,
comp =
comprehensive
school, disco =
discotheque,
pub =
public
house, ad =
advertisement),
amalgamation
of two words in a single one (s’long
—
so
long, c’mon =
come
on, gimme =
give
me, wanna =
want
to, gonna =
going
to, don’t =
do
not, he’s =
he
has/is), affixation
(missy
=
miss,
girlie =
girl,
Scotty =
Scotchman),
compounding,
composing and blending (legman
—
reporter,
hanky-panky =
children’s
tricks, yellow-belly =
coward,
motel =
a
hotel for people who are travelling by car).

The
most productive way of building colloquial words in Russian and
Ukrainian is derivation. Lots of suffixes and prefixes convert
neutral words into conversational: мама
— мамочка,
мамуля,
мамуся,
мамка,
мамаша,
маман,
мамища;
книга
= книжка,
книжица,
книжонка,
книжища.

Many
of colloquial words are extremely emotional and image-bearing. For
example, the interjections oops,
oh, gee, wow, alas are
capable of rendering dozens of contextual subjective modal meanings,
such as gladness, rapture, disappointment, resentment, admiration,
etc. Not less expressive are Russian and Ukrainian colloquial words.
Compare: пустомеля,
скупердяй,
одурелый,
чумной,
орать,
проныра.
Expressive
colloquial words form long chains of synonyms: лицо
= физиономия,
портрет,
морда,
рожа,
харя,
рыло,
будка.

Jargonisms
may
be grouped into two large subdivisions: social jargonisms and
professional jargonisms.

Social
jargonisms are
non-standard words used by people of a certain social group to
conceal the meaning of words and to keep their intercourse secret. It
is a sort of secret code made up either of ordinary words invested
with a special meaning or distorted words, e.g., How
long did they cook you? (=investigate). There
are jargons of criminals, convicts, gamblers, vagabonds (бродяга),
souteneurs, prostitutes, drug addicts and the like. The use of jargon
conveys the suggestion that the speaker and the listener enjoy a
special «fraternity» which is closed for outsiders, because
outsiders do not understand the secret language. Here are some words
from American and Russian drug takers’ jargon: white
stuff =
cocaine
or morphine; candy =
cocaine;
snifter =
a
cocaine addict; boxed, spaced out, bombed, junked up or charged up =
being
affected by drugs; candy man =
drug
seller; cap =
a
capsule with a narcotic; jab-off =
an
injection of a narcotic; pin-shot —
an
injection of a drug made with a safety pin and an eye-dropper instead
of a hypodermic needle; mainliner =
a
drug addict who takes his narcotics by intravenous injection;
ширнуться
= ввести
наркотик
внутривенно;
раскумаритъся
= принять
наркотик
в
период
ломки,
ломка
= постнаркотическое
состояние
у
наркоманов,
которое
характеризуется
физическими
страданиями.
Social
contradictions of our life gave rise to such word combinations as
«отмазать
от
суда«,
«закосить
от
армии«.
Eventually,
some Jargonisms pass into standard speech. This is the case with the
Russian word «беспредел»
which
penetrated into Standard Russian from prison jargon due to its
expressiveness and topicality of meaning.

Eric
Partridge, an authority on the subject, identifies a number of
reasons for the creation and use of jargon. In his opinion, people
resort to jargon to be different, startling, or original; to display
one’s membership of a group; to be secretive or to exclude others; to
enrich the stock of language; to establish a friendly rapport with
others; to be irreverent or humorous.

Professionalisms
are
term-like words. They are used and understood by members of a certain
trade or profession. Their function is to rationalize professional
communication and make it economical. This is achieved due to a broad
semantic structure of professional terms, which makes them economical
substitutes for lengthy Standard English vocabulary equivalents.
Compare: scalpel
—
a
small sharp knife used by a doctor for doing an operation; round
pliers — a metal tool with round ends that looks like a strong pair
of scissors, used for holding small objects or for bending and
cutting wire; зачистить
населенный
пункт
(военный
арго);
отработать
подозреваемого
(милицейский
арго),
прозвонить
линию
(арго
телефонистов).
The
foreman in a garage does not need to write on a mechanic’s worksheet:
«Please
regulate the device which provides a constant supply of petrol to the
inlet manifold of the engine». He
writes: «Adjust
the carburetor». Soldiers
say: put
in a bag = to
be killed; picture
show =
battle; sewing
machine = machine
gun.

Dialecticisms
are
words used by people of a certain community living in a certain
territory. They are peculiar to some district and have no normalized
form. In US Southern dialect one might say: «Cousin,
у‘all
talk mighty fine» which
means «Sir,
you speak English well». In
ethnic-immigrant dialects the same sentence will sound as «Paisano,
you speek good the English» or
«Landsman,
your English is plenty all right already».
Many former dialectal words have entered the stratum of commonly used
colloquial words, e.g., lass
= girl
(Scottish), lad
= a young man; car,
trolley, tram –
began as dialect words. The Irish English gave, e.g., blarney
“flattery”, bog
“a
spongy, usually peaty ground of marsh”, whiskey.

The
contribution of the Scottish variant is very considerable. Some of
the most frequently used Scotticisms are: bairn
“child”, billy
“chum”, bonny
“handsome”, brogue
“a
stout shoe”, glamour
“charm”, laddie,
lassie, kilt, raid, slogan, tartan, wee
etc.

Writers
never write their books in dialect exclusively — the reader would not
understand such books. They only insert dialectal words, expressions,
grammar forms with a definite stylistic purpose: either to
characterize a personage through his speech or to create a local
colouring.

Slang
is
non-standard vocabulary understood and used by the whole nation.

According
to the Oxford English dictionary slang is “the language of a highly
colloquial style, considered as below the level of standard educated
speech and consisting either of new or of current words employed in
some special sense”.

People
use slang to be picturesque, arresting, striking above all, different
from others, to avoid the tedium of outmoded hackneyed “common”
words, to sound “modern” and “up-to-date”, e.g., mug
= face, blinkers
=
eyes, dogs
= feet, to
leg
= to walk. The
main feature of slang is its brightly expressed emotional, evaluative
and expressive character, e.g.,

to
go crazy or become silly
(neut.) – to
go bananas
(slang)

dollar
(neut.)
– fish
(slang)

to
have a chat with close friends
(neut.) – to
chew the fat
(slang)

to
know nothing about smth.
(neut.) – not
to know beans about
(slang)

Slang
can be classified into general and special. General slang consists of
words which are not specific for any social or professional group.
Special slang is divided into:

—
teenager slang, e.g., kiddo
= чувак,
buzzard
= кореш,
dumdum
= тормоз,
goof-off
= сачёк,
lame-brain
= сдвинутый;

• universal
  slang, e.g., mug
  = экзамен,
  that’s
  a cockamamie
  = фиговый
  экзамен,
  I’ll
  make a boo-boo
  = я
  провалюсь,
  real
  mug
  = зубрила,
  I
  couldn’t tumble to it
  = я
  не
  врубился
  в
  эту
  тему;

• military
  slang, e.g., expendables
  = солдатня,
  conscript
  =
  дух,
  to
  finagle oneself out of army, to swing the lead
  = закосить
  армию,
  clink
  = губа;

• slang
  of criminals, e.g., cops
  = полицейские,
  narks
  = менты,
  don,
  mob
  = главарь
  банды,
  to
  burn rubber
  = делать
  ноги,
  lagger
  = бывший
  зэк;

• air
  force slang.

• football
  slang

• sea
  slang, etc.

Thus
slang-words are clearly motivated. For example, window-shopping
— “feasting one’s eyes on the goods displayed in the shops,
without buying anything”; belly-robber
– “the head of a military canteen”.

Slang
is sometimes described as the language of sub-cultures or the
language of the streets. It
is mainly used by the young and uneducated. Linguistically,
slang can be viewed as a sub-dialect. It is hardly used in writing —
except
for stylistic effect. People resort to slang because it is more
forceful, vivid and expressive than standard usages. Slangy words are
rough, often scornful (презрительный,
пренебрежительный;
насмешливый),
estimative and humorous. They are completely devoid of intelligence,
moral virtue, hospitality, sentimentality and other human values.
Slang prefers short words, especially monosyllables. Younger
generation is fond of slang, e.g., crazy, foolish = balmy,
batty, dippy, dotty, daffy, goofy, wacky, loony.

Language
as a system of signs reflects any changes in social and cultural life
of the nation. And slangy words as the most movable creative layer of
the lexis of colloquial style reflect, e.g., the appearing of slang
lexis in the culture of jazz, hippy, rock.

Vulgar
or obscene (непристойный,
неприличный;
вульгарный,
грубый)
words
may
be viewed as part of slang. They are always words with a strong
emotive colouring and sound insulting to the ear, e.g., a
smeller = a
nose, pay
dirt = money,
a
rotten party = morally
corrupt. Incorrect grammatical and phonetic forms of illiterate
speech cannot be regarded as vulgarisms.

The
most popular images of slang are food, money, sex and sexual
attraction, people’s appearances and characters. Because it is not
standard, formal or acceptable under all conditions, slang is usually
considered vulgar, impolite, or boorish (грубый,
невежливый,
невоспитанный,
неучтивый).
However, the vast majority of slangy words and expressions are
neither taboo, vulgar, derogatory, nor of­fensive in meaning,
sound, or image. Picturesque metaphor, metonymy, hy­perbole and
irony make slangy words spicy (колкий,
язвительный).
Look how long, diverse and ex­pressive the chain of slangy
synonyms denoting «money»
is:
ackers,
cly, cole, gelt, moo, moolah, mopus, oof, spondulicks, queer, boot,
chuck, hardstujf, lettuce, lolly, boodle, sea-coal, green goods, hay,
shoestring, ante, bread, ducats, dumps, swag, bean, blunt, crap,
dough, haddock, ochre, rubbish, salad, soap, splosh, sugar, chink,
gob, poke, iron, balsam, jack, loot, pile, wad, dust, tin, brass,
fat, rocks, chips, corn, red, sand, bundle, oil, shells.

For
the most part they sound somewhat vulgar, cynical and harsh: beans,
brass, dibs, oof
(money), attic,
brain-pan, nut, hat peg
(head).

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We often hear and use colloquial language in our everyday conversations with our friends and family. Colloquial language is also considered to be a literary technique, so is used by authors. When characters use colloquialisms in their dialogue, they may seem more authentic and relatable to the reader as individuals with unique social and cultural backgrounds.

There are many different types of colloquial language, as it differs based on your geographical location and your dialect. You’ve probably heard of or used some or many of the examples below:

When do we use colloquial language?

• On social media, such as Instagram and Twitter.

• In conversations with friends. It is quicker and easier to communicate on an informal basis with those we are close with.

To make characters appear authentic and genuine

Colloquial language is influenced by time, culture, and social settings. Because of this, using colloquialisms in literature can make characters appear more authentic, as readers who are familiar with the character’s background will be able to identify with the language that is used.

In the following example, the narrator in The Black Flamingo (2019) by Dean Atta uses colloquial language in a monologue. How does the colloquial language help readers to connect with the speaker and understand more about his character?

• Atta uses simpler language than a lot of other poetry which requires reading between the lines, which allows readers to align themselves with the protagonist and tap into his character. The repeated use of ‘I come’ is easy to digest as a reader and reiterates the fact he is talking about his origins.

• Atta uses well-known symbols like a suitcase, coconut water, passport, and jet fuel, to illustrate the collage of culture that makes up the speaker’s character. Through these well-known symbols and colloquial language, readers are able to understand more about the speakers’ journey and he appears a more authentic character.

To make characters/speakers appear more relatable

Colloquial language is a technique used to make characters appear more relatable to readers. This is because they use language that a reader may be familiar with.

• Similarly to Atta, Cope does not use flowery language. This makes Cope’s work more accessible for readers. The speaker’s desperation for the person to call her is evident through her instructive tone asking them to ‘pick up the phone before it’s too late’.

• The accessibility of the text (due to its colloquial tone) means that the reader is more likely to be able to relate to the content, in this case, the humorous familiarity of the speaker’s desperation.

In the following passage from Kayo Chingonyi’s poem ‘Andrew’s Corner'(2017), colloquial language is used to describe an urban environment that many readers could relate to.

In this passage:

• Similar to Atta in The Black Flamingo (2019), Chingonyi’s use of colloquial language helps readers to imagine the space by incorporating imagery that readers can easily envision, such as ‘condom wrappers’, ‘kebab meat’, ‘joggers’ and ‘a dead pigeon’.

For example, this conversation between Dan and Malachy in Frank McCourt’s Angela’s Ashes (1996) indicates that the novel is set in Ireland, suggested by the use of Irish colloquialisms, which are highlighted in bold:

• The word ‘fag’ (meaning cigarette) demonstrates the girl trying to sound older than her age by smoking a cigarette and using slang associated with the act, but her use of the word ‘meanie’ exposes her youth as this is a word used typically amongst children.

• The use of the word ‘fag’ for a cigarette is typically used by more working-class individuals.

• The colloquial phrase ‘You’ll get preggers’ trivialises pregnancy, suggesting the girls are too young to understand the real possibility of getting pregnant and the difficulties this would bring into their lives.

• ‘You’ll get preggers’ similarly demonstrates the speaker trying to talk about something ‘grown-up’, like smoking a cigarette, but her choice of slang once again reveals her youth.

To reveal a time period

What is considered colloquial changes over time. Because of this, the time period in which a piece is set can be revealed by using colloquial language that would have been commonly used at the time. Colloquial language can also be used to communicate popular ideologies from a particular point in history to the reader.

• The word ‘ruined’ in Melia’s comment ‘didn’t you know I’d been ruined?’ refers to the loss of her virginity. Her use of this colloquialism exposes the fact that unmarried women who were not virgins were viewed as ‘ruined’ and of less value to society and men.

Why is colloquial language important?

Colloquialism Definition

What is colloquialism? Here’s a quick and simple definition:

Colloquialism is the use of informal words or phrases in writing or speech. Colloquialisms are usually defined in geographical terms, meaning that they are often defined by their use within a dialect, a regionally-defined variant of a larger language. Colloquialisms can include aphorisms, idioms, profanity, or other words.

Some additional key details about colloquialism:

• Colloquialism occurs frequently in everyday speech, and is also used frequently in poetry, prose, and drama.
• Writers often use colloquialism in dialogue or first-person narration, both because it helps make their characters seem more lifelike and because the way a character speaks may be one of their defining qualities.
• The word colloquialism comes from the Latin word colloquium, which means speaking together.

Colloquialism Pronunciation

Here’s how to pronounce colloquialism: kuh-loh-kwee-uh-liz-um

Dialects and Colloquialisms

Because colloquialisms are informal words that appear uniquely within specific dialects, it’s helpful to understand what dialects are in order to fully understand colloquialisms. The two key points about dialects are that they are:

• A language within a language: A dialect is a variant of a language that is spoken by a specific group of people. It has some unique aspects—such as unique words, accent, and other features—that make it distinct within that larger language.
• Often geographically defined: Dialects are often regional, meaning that people in a one part of the world might speak a language in a way that is different from the way another group of people in another part of the word speak the same language.

Though English speakers around the world can more or less understand each other, a person who grew up in the US will speak an English dialect with a different accent and use slightly different words than a person who grew up in the UK or a person who grew up in India. Further, different dialects can exist within a country as well as between countries. People from Louisiana in the United States often speak differently than, say, people from New York or Wisconsin.While dialects are most often geographically defined, some dialects can also be unique to a group of people who share a social class or ethnic background. For instance, cockney English is a term used to refer to the dialect of English traditionally spoken by working-class Londoners.

The term colloquialism refers specifically to the unique words that are specific to a particular dialect.

Colloquialisms: Unique Words or Common Words with Unique Meanings

Colloquialisms function in one of two main ways:

• Words or phrases that only exist in a specific dialect. Some colloquialisms are completely unique words or phrases that only appear in a particular dialect. For example, people in Philadelphia use the word jawn as a kind of universal pronoun that can replace and refer to any person, place, or thing without directly naming it. The word jawn is not commonly used by any English speakers in any other part of the world (and in fact jawn is also a complete anomaly in terms of grammar).
• Words or phrases that appear in many dialects, but have a unique meaning in certain dialects. Other words function as colloquialisms not because they are unique words that don’t appear in other languages, but because they are common words that have different and unique meanings in different dialects. For example, in the US, English speakers use the word pants as a synonym for trousers. In the UK, however, pants is a synonym for underwear. Similarly, in some parts of the the United States, the word coke is used to refer to any kind of soft drink, while in other parts of the US it only refers to Coca-Cola.

The two types of colloquialism described above can include all sorts of different words or phrases, including unique contractions (ain’t), profanity (bloody, which is a profanity in the UK but not the US), and idioms (It’s raining monkeys, a variant of the idiom it’s raining cats and dogs that’s common in Louisiana). Colloquialisms can also be other types of words as well.

Colloquialism vs. Slang and Jargon

Colloquialism is related to (and easily confused with) slang and jargon.

• Slang refers to informal words and phrases that are used among a small group of people or a specific subculture. For example, in the movie Mean Girls, when the character Gretchen starts using the word «fetch» to mean «cool,» she’s trying to invent new slang within her clique (though she fails miserably in this attempt).
• Jargon refers to technical terms used by people within a specific profession or trade, and which would not make sense to people outside of that industry. For example, in the publishing industry, the word «galley» refers to a nearly-finished draft of a book or magazine that still needs to be proofread.

While there’s no disagreement that colloquialism, slang, and jargon are related terms, there is some debate about how they are related:

• Slang and jargon as types of colloquialism: Some people argue that slang and jargon are actually types of colloquialism, as they are unique words (or common words with unique meanings) used by a specific subset of people.
• Slang and jargon as separate from colloquialism: Other people argue that colloquialisms always have a geographical aspect—that they must be informal words and phrases that are widely understood within a given country or region. According to this point of view, if only people in the Northwestern United states understand a term, it’s a colloquialism; if only teenagers understand a term, it’s slang; if only plumbers understand a term, it’s jargon.

Even people who believe that jargon, slang, and colloquialism are distinct from one another tend to agree that jargon and slang terms can become colloquialisms when their use becomes widespread enough to include a significant number of people in a country or region.

Colloquialism Examples

Colloquialisms in Everyday Speech

• In Minnesota, people may refer to a casserole as a hotdish.
• In the Northeast of the United States, wicked is commonly used as an intensifier similar to very or really. So if it’s really cold, a person from Maine might say, «It’s wicked cold out.»
• In parts of the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic US, people top their ice-cream with jimmies instead of sprinkles.
• Submarine sandwiches, subs, Italian sandwiches, heroes, and hoagies are all different words that appear in different parts of the United States that refer to the same type of sandwich.
• In the American South, people refer to avocados as alligator pears.
• The words pop, soda, and coke are all used to refer to soft drinks in different parts of the United States.
• Americans eat cookies but people in the UK eat biscuits.
• In the Pacific Northwest, a rundown section of a city might be referred to as skid row.

Colloquialism in Literature

Colloquialism in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain

In The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Mark Twain’s narrator and title character, Huck Finn narrates his story using colloquial language that includes idioms and words specific to a regional dialect:

The Widow Douglas, she took me for her son, and allowed she would sivilize me; but it was rough living in the house all the time, considering how dismal regular and decent the widow was in all her ways; and so when I couldn’t stand it no longer, I lit out.

In The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Mark Twain uses colloquialism to give his characters a distinctive voice. Huck misspells civilize as «sivilize,» which reveals his lack of formal education. Huck also uses «allowed» as a colloquialism for said, and he uses adjectives in an unusual and informal way in phrases like «it was rough living» and «dismal regular» (instead of «dismally regular,» perhaps). The double negatives in «I couldn’t stand it no longer» are an example of a regional dialect; in formal English, double negatives cancel each other out, but in casual speech, they can be used to add emphasis. When Huck says, «I lit out,» he uses a colloquialism meaning «I left.» All told, Huck’s way of speaking helps to define his character and make him seem like a «real» person living in Missouri in the pre-Civil War time period in which the story is set.

Colloquialism in The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger

In The Catcher in the Rye, the novel’s teenage narrator Holden Caulfield, says:

When I was all set to go, when I had my bags and all, I stood for a while next to the stairs and took a last look down the goddam corridor. I was sort of crying. I don’t know why. I put my red hunting hat on, and turned the peak around to the back, the way I liked it, and then I yelled at the top of my goddam voice, «Sleep tight, ya morons!» I’ll bet I woke up every bastard on the whole floor. Then I got the hell out.

In this passage, Holden describes how he ran away from his boarding school. Throughout the novel, Holden speaks in a distinctive and casual voice filled with colloquialisms, and in this passage, his colloquialisms convey his anger and desire to rebel against the «phonies» at his school. Holden swears a lot, and one of his favorite curse words throughout the novel is goddam, which is also an informal contraction. Salinger conveys Holden’s emotional distress by telling us that Holden is «sort of crying.» The phrase «Sleep tight, ya morons!» is colloquial in several senses: sleep tight is an idiom, ya is a colloquialism for you, and moron is debatably either a colloquialism or slang. Bastard is arguably yet another colloquialism, since its use here as a catch-all derogatory word is different from the word’s literal meaning of a child born out of wedlock.

Colloquialism in A Visit From the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan

In A Visit From the Goon Squad, washed-up, alcoholic rock star Bosco says:

«I want interviews, features, you name it,» Bosco went on. «Fill up my life with that shit. Let’s document every fucking humiliation. This is reality, right? You don’t look good anymore twenty years later, especially when you’ve had half your guts removed. Time’s a goon, right? Isn’t that the expression?»

In this passage, Bosco unintentionally invents a new expression, «Time’s a goon.» Because this phrase is not a widely used expression, it isn’t actually a colloquialism (though perhaps it might eventually grow into one if other people picked it up). Nonetheless, Bosco’s speech is littered with actual colloquialisms, including profanity and his use of the word «guts» to describe his liver, that establish him as a character of his time and place.

Colloquialism in Othello by William Shakespeare

In Othello, the villainous Iago tells Brabantio, Desdemona’s father:

‘Zounds, sir, you are one of those that will not
serve God, if the devil bid you

‘Zounds sounds like a nonsense word to English speakers today, but it was a common colloquialism in Early Modern English, the dialect spoken in England during Shakespeare’s lifetime. ‘Zounds is an informal contraction of the phrase Christ’s Wounds, and in Elizabethan England, it was considered a mild swear word. Here, Iago uses ‘zounds to express a sense of frustration with Brabantio.

Colloquialism in «The Day Lady Died» by Frank O’Hara

Frank O’Hara’s poetry is laced with slang and pop cultural references that may have been obscure to others even at the time he was writing, in the 1950s—but just because some of the words in this famous poem may be unclear to modern readers doesn’t mean they’re colloquialisms. «Quandariness,» for example, is a word made up by the poet—not an example of colloquialism. The word «malted,» however, is a colloquialism—an adjective used in the place of a noun, and a quick way to refer to a «malted milkshake.» It was used only in the United States when O’Hara wrote the poem (and is barely in use any longer).

I walk up the muggy street beginning to sun
and have a hamburger and a malted and buy
an ugly NEW WORLD WRITING to see what the poets
in Ghana are doing these days
I go on to the bank
and Miss Stillwagon (first name Linda I once heard)
doesn’t even look up my balance for once in her life
and in the GOLDEN GRIFFIN I get a little Verlaine
for Patsy with drawings by Bonnard although I do
think of Hesiod, trans. Richmond Lattimore or
Brendan Behan’s new play or Le Balcon or Les Nègres
of Genet, but I don’t, I stick with Verlaine
after practically going to sleep with quandariness

Why Do Writers Use Colloquialism?

Because real people constantly use colloquialism in their every day speech, writers use colloquialism to create realistic voices for their characters, both in dialogue and first-person narration. Colloquialism can be an excellent tool for characterization because a person’s use of colloquialisms and the dialect they speak can help denote the region or country they come from, their socio-economic or ethnic background, and even the period of time in which they live (the first scene of the play Pygmalion actually shows a scholar identify people’s background from how they speak). In The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Mark Twain uses colloquialism to show that his narrator and main character, Huck Finn, comes from a specific region of the South (from Missouri, along the Missouri River) and lacks a formal education. Huck’s colloquialisms are frank and vividly descriptive, which also gives a dynamic energy to his voice. To Twain’s contemporaries, Huck would have sounded like a person from their own time; and to modern readers, Huck’s colloquialisms help situate him in the nineteenth-century.

Writers also use colloquialism naturally—and even without expressly meaning to—for the simple reason that writers are living people who live in specific regions with specific dialects and so they often speak and think in colloquialisms. A writer’s way of thinking and talking in casual conversation may drift unconsciously into their own writing—or they may be purposefully attempting to capture their way of speaking on the page. Bloggers and magazine writers, for example, often aim to write in a conversational tone that will make their articles engaging, humorous, unique, and easy to read.

Colloquialism is a central component of day-to-day speech, and so it is an essential tool for writers who want their voice to sound natural, or who want their characters’ voices to sound natural.

Other Helpful Colloquialism Resources

• The Wikipedia entry on colloquialism: A short but solid entry, with some coverage of the difference between colloquialism, jargon, and slang.
• Colloquial woodlice: English-speakers around the world have at least twenty different colloquialisms to describe woodlice, a common insect. Check out this list of names for the creepy-crawlies on the website Mental Floss.
• New colloquialisms: For a list of words recently added to the Oxford English Dictionary, check out this web site. Many of these words are now widely understood as colloquialisms, but were once considered to be slang.
• A colloquial test: This quiz from the New York Times uses colloquialisms distinct to regional dialects in different parts of the US to predict where you grew up.

A colloquialism is a word or phrase that is common in everyday, unconstrained conversation rather than in formal speech, academic writing, or paralinguistics.^[1] Dictionaries often display colloquial words and phrases with the abbreviation colloq. as an identifier. Colloquialisms are sometimes referred to collectively as «youknowhatitis language».^[2]

Examples

Some examples of informal colloquialisms can include words (such as «y’all» or «gonna» or «wanna»), phrases (such as «old as the hills» and «raining cats and dogs» «graveyard dead»), or sometimes even an entire aphorism («There’s more than one way to skin a cat»).

Colloquialisms are often used primarily within a limited geographical area, known by linguists to spread through normal conversational interaction of a language, although more often now through informal online interaction. A common example given is the regional term used by people when describing a carbonated soft drink. In the Upper Midwestern United States, in common with Canada, it is commonly called «pop,» while in other areas, notably the Northeastern and extreme Western United States, it is referred to as «soda» or «mix». In New England it is occasionally called «tonic.» In some areas of Scotland it is referred to as «ginger», and confusion over whether this term referred to all carbonated soft drinks or just ginger beer was apparent in the case of Donoghue v Stevenson. (See: Names for soft drinks for more regional examples of colloquial names given to soft drinks.)

Another example of colloquialism is the two different terms for rectangular maple doughnuts. They are called Long Johns in most of the United States, but in the Pacific Northwest (such as Oregon and Washington), they are referred to as Maple bars.

Words that have a formal meaning might also have a colloquial meaning. «Kid» can mean «young goat» in formal usage and «child» in colloquial usage.

Auxiliary languages are sometimes assumed to be lacking in colloquialisms, but this varies from one language to another. In Interlingua, the same standards of eligibility apply to colloquialisms as to other terms. Thus, any widely international colloquialism may be used in Interlingua. Expressions such as en las manos de… ‘in the hands of…’, Que pasa? ‘What’s going on?’, are common.

Distinction between colloquialism and slang

Some linguists make a distinction between colloquialisms and slangisms (slang words). According to linguist Ghil’ad Zuckermann, «slang refers to informal (and often transient) lexical items used by a specific social group, for instance teenagers, soldiers, prisoners, or surfers. Slang is not considered the same as colloquial (speech), which is informal, relaxed speech used on occasion by any speaker; this might include contractions such as you’re, as well as colloquialisms. A colloquialism is a lexical item used in informal speech; whilst the broadest sense of the term ‘colloquialism’ might include slangism, its narrow sense does not. Slangisms are often used in colloquial speech but not all colloquialisms are slangisms. One method of distinguishing between a slangism and a colloquialism is to ask whether most native speakers know the word (and use it); if they do, it is a colloquialism. However, the problem is that this is not a discrete, quantized system but a continuum. Although the majority of slangisms are ephemeral and often supplanted by new ones, some gain non-slang colloquial status (e.g. English silly – cf. German selig ‘blessed’, Middle High German sælde ‘bliss, luck’ and Zelda, a Middle Eastern female first name) and even formal status (e.g. English mob).»^[3]

Distinction between colloquialism and jargon

Jargon is terminology which is especially defined in relationship to a specific activity, profession, or group. The term covers the language used by people who work in a particular area or who have a common interest. Much like slang,^[4] it can develop as a kind of short-hand, to express ideas that are frequently discussed between members of a group, though it can also be developed deliberately using chosen terms. A standard term may be given a more precise or unique usage among practitioners of a field. In many cases this causes a barrier to communication with those not familiar with the language of the field.

Distinction between colloquialism and dialect

The term dialect is used in two distinct ways, even by linguists. One usage refers to a variety of a language that is characteristic of a particular group of the language’s speakers.^[5] The term is applied most often to regional speech patterns, but a dialect may also be defined by other factors, such as social class.^[6] A dialect that is associated with a particular social class can be termed a sociolect; a regional dialect may be termed a regiolect or topolect. The other usage refers to a language socially subordinate to a regional or national standard language, often historically cognate to the standard, but not a variety of it or in any other sense derived from it. A dialect is distinguished by its vocabulary, grammar, and pronunciation (phonology, including prosody).

References

External links

• Slangasaurus A Slang Dictionary
• Colloquial Spanish Dictionary of Colloquial Spanish.
• Urban Thesaurus An Urban Thesaurus