Characteristics Of English Colloquialism

It is now widely considered that speech is the primary medium, and writing the secondary. But the linguistic studies, esp., the traditional linguistic studies is always reminding us of the ignorance of the study of speech, thus leaves this territory a worthwhile one, because speech is both more frequently used and different than the written English. This thesis is an attempt to investigate the characteristics of English colloquialism.The first chapter is a performance survey of colloquial English. Owing to the lack of planning, speakers employ some strategies to carry on a conversation: hesitation, repeats, repairs, anacoluthon, and grammatical incompletion. With the help of these strategies, speakers gain enough time to figure out what next to say.The second chapter is a functional survey of colloquial English. One of the most noticeable things about conversation is that certain classes of utterances conventionally come in pairs that are called adjacency pairs. Conversation often occurs between people with shared context, which simply makes elaboration and specification unnecessary. Conversation, therefore, is in a direct way. Conversation is also used to express speakers' emotion. Moreover, language usually betrays its speakers' education and social status. People from different places or social tiers and with different levels of educationuse different styles of language, which is called vernacular use of language.The third chapter is a survey of colloquial grammar. The most obvious characteristics of colloquial grammar is informality and non-standard. Informality is concerned with forms, and non-standard with the influence of language.The fourth chapter is a survey of colloquial diction. In everyday conversation, colloquial vocabulary is best favored, and formal vocabulary makes the conversation sound pretentious and jocular. The native English speakers have a preference for everyday words, which is limited in number and boundless in meaning.