Філологічні науки/7 Мова, мовлення, мовленнєва комунікація
Kate O.
Vakulenko
The Donbass State Technical University
ABOUT LEXICOGRAPHIC
REFLECTION OF THE AMERICAN STANDARD OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE
Last decade is characterized by rapid development of a new
direction in linguistics - sociolinguistics which develops on the basis of last
achievements of a linguistic science, and examines the phenomena of language
and a society in interrelation, as the phenomena with signs of the system
organization.
The problem of social stratification
of language occupies one of leading places in modern sociolinguistics.
Heterogeneity of language structure is shown in existence of variety of
crossing subsystems, i.e. horizontal and vertical differentiation. Speaking
about horizontal differentiation (language variation in a spatial projection),
it is necessary to notice, that it underlies language division into territorial
dialects, semi dialects and variants. Studying of language functioning in those
conditions when this or that language is used in two or several countries, i.e.
several independent national informants became one of the major directions in
this field during the researches made by sociolinguists [1: 240].
Studying of the language character
in such conditions made it possible to formulate the concept of the national
variant of language, in particular. The theory of language variants is rather
young theory which is in the making now. The condition of system of separately
taken language when it is used by two or several national-state communities
that is a separate case of variance, is called the national language
inhomogeneity. It is necessary to distinguish the national variants of language
from regional variants, as the local specificity in national variants (the growth
of dialect, areal features) is only one of sources of language development. As
a whole the national variants are characterized by that from the point of view
of the basic stock of elements of the substance and structure they are uniform.
The unity of such national inhomogeneous language, however, does not assume
their obligatory identity as it would not be materialistic and dialect to
consider, that the language serving one nation, society, one national culture and civilization, one science and
literature, can have the same nature, as the language distributing the same
functions between two nations.
Inidentity of language under two or more national informants led linguistics to a recognition of a
variability of such language, that, in turn, revealed the necessity of
definition of this system as national variants of language. Interpretation of
national variants of one language as the systems possessing stability and
prospect, undoubtedly, is considerable achievement of linguistics. On the other
hand, inhomogeneity of national variants of language pushed a number of
linguists to reasoning on existence of independent languages. A vivid example
to that is G.L.Menken's concept considering the American variant of English
literary language as independent, " American language" [3: 165].
National variant of language is the
form of the adaptation of one literary language both to tradition, and to
modern requirements of the nation, that is the national variant is the special
form of language functioning. As it was already marked, one of national
inhomogeneous languages is English language the polyalternativeness of which
has already attracted the attention of
linguists for a long time [2: 97]. It is necessary to notice, that the
important part of the recognition of the sovereignty of a national language
variant is its fixation, that is revelation and codification of the national
norm of language, and first of all by lexicographic reflexion of the condition
of norm of the given language in the conditions of the given society.
Now the
American variant of English language is so steadily developed type of speech
which as observations show, is characterized by specific, peculiar to English
language in the USA features at all levels of language system.
The important part of recognition of the existence of the sovereign national variant of English
language in the USA is codification of national norm of a literary language,
and first of all by lexicographic reflexion, nowadays it is important to
estimate what lexicographic practice of fixing, or reflexions of these specific
features of English language in the USA is.
The contrasts between American and
English standards of English language are often found out and in various spheres of language system.
The
lexical Americanism taken hold not only in all English usage, but also, as
loanword, in a number of other countries, for example in Austria and Japan is
noted: station-wagon is an equivalent
for estate car. The similar phenomenon
is explained, in particular, by using
American technical experience, penetration of American technology and
expansion of product markets of the American motor industry. The Americanism
store met during the analysis though is
used in English variant, but has narrowly limited specific meaning. It is
necessary to refer to lexical Americanisms also a word-combination steamer
headline where it is observed the divergence with an English variant in one of
set phrase components (with general basic word attributive words are different
in word-combinations: an English equivalent is the word-combination banner
headline).
Thus, this
analysis has shown, that the peculiarity of
American English expressed at
various levels of language system, finds its
codified expression as national standard of English language.
Literature
used
1. О.А. Домашнев О
лексикографическом отражении американского стандарта английского литературного
языка - М., 1995. – 320 c.
2.
Швейцер А.Д. Различительные элементы американского и британского
вариантов современного литературного английского языка. - М., 1996. – 216c.
3. Швейцер А.Д. Литературный английский язык
в США и Англии. - М., Высшая школа, 1991. – 247 c.