Words

More than just semantics: Words signal relationships.

Many people with social challenges feel more comfortable reading books than interacting with others; as a result, they may have a fantastic vocabulary, but have not learned to vary their speech based on the situation, and so are not aware of the social signals that they are sending via their word choices.
As discussed in the power & solidarity module, formal language distances you from other people, sending the message that you do not wish to interact on a personal level, while using informal language is an appeal to solidarity. If you have been having trouble connecting with people, we recommend that you try to introduce some more informality into your speech, both in your word choices and in your pronunciations (sounds). This does not mean that you “talk down” to people or assume that they are any less intelligent than you – it is simply a recognizable signal that you are being friendly.
The key to successful interaction (as usual) is monitoring those around you. If you are interacting with friends and/or equals, your level of formality should match (mirror) theirs, and perhaps be proactively less formal, to try to encourage a closer relationship.

If you are interacting with someone who has power over you, and your language use is significantly less formal than theirs, you may seem disrespectful, assuming too much familiarity, challenging their authority. But if they become progressively less formal, you should interpret this as a sign of growing closeness, and reciprocate! (If you do not, you may find that they interpret your continued formality as a sign that you do not wish to be close, and so progressively become more formal again.)
If you are interacting with someone subordinate to you (e.g., your employee or your student), they will likely be quite formal with you at first, to show proper deference, but if you continue to sound very formal in return, they will assume that you do not wish to be friendly. (They might think it’s up to you, the superior, to initiate a more friendly relationship.)

Formal vs. Informal Vocabulary

Just about every major publisher has some kind of “writer’s manual” or “usage manual” that discusses the issue of word choice. Most of them are simply prescriptive, telling you what informal words and phrases to avoid in formal, academic writing. Most take an encyclopedic approach, listing page after page of vocabulary items, and we have not attempted to reduplicate their efforts here. Rather, we seek to try to explain the distinctions, how they are perceived, and the social consequences of those perceptions. NOTE that “informal” is not the same as “slang” or taboo (“bad”) language (for more about both of which, see below).

Most of our everyday, basic, “home-y” words (the ones you expect children to know by about age six) were passed down from generation to generation since before the English language even existed. (That is, they were inherited from the Germanic languages that preceded English, going through various sound and meaning changes along the way.) On the other hand, most of our fancy, “educated” words were borrowed into English from Latin or French.

Of course, most people have never studied the history of the language, and couldn’t tell you which words come from which sources. But the Germanic-based vocabulary just feels more comfortable to most people (since these are the words they first learned, the words associated with the warmth of childhood, mothers, homes, and hearts). Compare Germanic build with Latinate construct, Germanic need with Latinate require, teach vs. educate, dog vs. canine, e.g. We could go on all day. Essentially, English has two separate, redundant sets of vocabulary. Most people use a combination, not all one, not all the other, turning up or down the “formality” dial by using more or less Latinate vocabulary as the situation warrants.

Linguists have shown that speakers using mostly Germanic vocabulary were perceived as significantly “more flexible” and “more likely to help you out of a jam” than speakers who expressed the same ideas using mostly Latinate vocabulary. They concluded that “speakers’ use of a formal style through Latinate words does not appear to endear them to their audience” (Levin, Giles & Garrett, 1994). (Ironically, of course, since they are writing for a professional journal, they use a disproportionate amount of Latinate vocabulary themselves!) Someone who always sounds like a textbook or a professor seems to care more about being correct and sounding intelligent than about connecting with other people. So while juvenile and immature (Latinate), childish and childlike (Germanic) may all have roughly the same semantics (in some contexts, at least), the “conceptual baggage” that they carry (in terms of how the speaker sees themselves and how they see the relationship with the people spoken to) is quite distinct, resulting in different social judgments from listeners.

Do you at least get the reward of sounding more intelligent and competent when you use formal vocabulary? Nath (2007) found that people who use “a lot” of formal terms are perceived as more competent (although she wasn’t using the Latinate/Germanic distinction to determine formality, relying instead on speaker judgments), but Levin and his colleagues did not find the same effect. This odd result actually makes sense, because the Levin script turned up the formality dial as far as it would go – using Latinate vocabulary everywhere they could. It seems perfectly logical that the negative social effect of being perceived as pompous or pretentious would counteract the demonstration of competence: if you overdo the fancy vocabulary, people may think you’re insecure about your intelligence (because you seem to be trying to impress), and so may actually doubt your competence!

Some Specific Words to Watch Out For

Just do yourself a favor, and take whom out of your speech altogether. It’s fine to use it in formal writing, but use of this archaic object form of the pronoun in conversation marks you as a stickler for correctness, the member of a very small and inflexible minority — and if you’re looking to improve your social connectedness, that can’t help. (Of course, this means that instead of saying things like “the man to whom I gave the book,” you’ll have to instead say “the man (who) I gave the book to,” ending the clause with the preposition, but that’s okay!)

Slang

“Bad” (Taboo) Language

Exercises

Scholarly SourcesClick to show

  • Holtgraves, Thomas. (1999) Social Psychology and Language: Words, Utterances, and Conversations. In Susan T. Fiske, Daniel T. Gilbert, & Gardner Lindzey (Eds.), Handbook of Social Psychology, vol. 1. John Wiley & Sons.
  • Jay, Timothy. (1992). Cursing in America: A psycholinguistic study of dirty language in the courts, in the movies, in the schoolyards and on the streets. John Benjamins.
  • Judd, Elliot & Wolfson, Nessa. (1983). Sociolinguistics and Language Acquisition. Newbury House.
  • Levin, Harry, Howard Giles & Peter Garrett. (1994). The effects of lexical formality and accent on trait attributions. Language & Communication 14(3): 265-274.;
  • McConnell-Ginet, Sally. (2008). Words in the world: How and why meanings can matter. Language 84 (3): 497-527.
  • McCumber, Vanessa. (2010). -s: The latest slang suffix, for reals. Working Papers of the Linguistics Circle 20(1): 124-130. http://journals.uvic.ca/index.php/WPLC/article/download/5676/2202
  • Nath, Leda E. (2007). Expectation states: Are formal words a status cue for competence? Current Research in Social Psychology 13(5): 50-63.
  • Roter, Debra & Judith A. Hall. (2006). Doctors Talking with Patients/Patients Talking with Doctors: Improving Communication in Medical Visits. 2nd Ed.  Praeger.
  • Yaeger-Dror, Malcah. (1997). Contraction of negatives as evidence of variance in register-specific interactive rules. Language Variation and Change 9: 1-36.

  • Allan, Keith & Kate Burridge. (2006). Forbidden Words: Taboo and the Censoring of Language. Cambridge University Press.
  • Andersson, Lars & Peter Trudgill. (1990). Bad language. T J Press Ltd.
  • Eble, Connie. (1996). Slang and sociability: In-group language among college students. University of North Carolina Press.
  • “Examples of Euphemisms.” (1996-2013). Your Dictionary.  LovetoKnow Corp. http://examples.yourdictionary.com/examples/examples-of-euphemism.html
  • Urban Dictionary.  (1999-2013). http://www.urbandictionary.com/

NOTE: the following are intended for ESL students, but if your speech tends to be overly formal, these might help you to adopt more casual usages.

  • Hargraves, Orin & Anthony Jenkins (2008). Slang rules!: A Practical Guide for English Learners. Merriam-Webster.
  • Hart, Carl W. (2009). The Ultimate Phrasal Verb Book. 2nd Ed.  Barron’s.
  • Spears, Richard A. (2001). Slang and Euphemism. 3rd revised ed. Signet.
  • Spears, Richard A., Betty R. Birner, Steven J. Kleinedler, & Luc Nisset. (2010) McGraw-Hill’s Conversational American English: The Illustrated Guide to Everyday Expressions of American English. McGraw-Hill.