English Stylistics. Стилистика английского языка

Besides the standard, literary-colloquial (нормативная литературно-разговорная) speech, there is also a nonstandard (or substandard) style of speech, mostly represented by a special vocabulary. Such is the familiar-colloquial style (a 'lower' variant of colloquial style) used in very free, friendly, informal situations of communication (between close friends, members of one family, etc.). Here we find emotionally coloured words, low-colloquial vocabulary (просторечная лексика) and slang words. This style admits also of the use of rude and vulgar vocabulary, including expletives/obscene words/four-letter words/swearwords (бранная лексика).

See some examples of familiar-colloquial/low-colloquial words (also called 'slang'):

Rot/trash/stuff (= smth. bad); the cat's pyjamas (= just the right/suitable thing); bread-basket (= stomach); grass/pot (= marijuana, narcotic drugs); tipsy / under the influence (affluence) / under the table / has had a drop (= drunk); cute / great! (Am) (= very good); wet blanket (= uninteresting person); hot stuff! (= smth. extremely good); You're damn right! (= quite right); Where are those darned/damned socks? What the hell do you want?

The term slang is used in a very broad and vague sense. Besides denoting low-colloquial (familiar-colloquial) words, it is also used to denote special social jargons/cants, i.e. words typically used by particular social groups to show that the speaker belongs to this group, as different from other people. Originally jargons were used to preserve secrecy within the social group, to make speech incomprehensible to others – such is the thieves' jargon/cant. There is also teenagers' slang/jargon, school slang, army slang, prison slang, etc. See examples of American army slang: to take felt (= to retire from the army, literally – put on a felt hat); fly boy (= pilot); coffin (= unreliable aeroplane); Molotov cocktail (= bottles with explosive materials);