KEY TERMS!
COLLOQUIAL LANGUAGE

Look at this introduction to a film review for 'Spy Kids 2':

'"Huge New Adventure - Slightly Bigger Spies" claims the tagline for writer-director Robert Rodriguez's sequel to last year's "Spy Kids". And for once, the publicity department isn't telling porkies.'

You should be able to recognise that to give this writing a lively style - one that the writer hopes will attract and entertain the audience - it uses what is called a 'mixed register' (see below) of formal standard English and what is called colloquial English. Colloquial English is the kind of language we use when we are chatting to friends. Most writers these days seem to feel that a chatty style is better than a formal style. And yet, not quite. For writers also know that they need to appear authoritative. To achieve the double aim of authority and chattiness, they combine with great care colloquial language (in the above, the word 'porkies') with formal educated language (in the above, 'tagline', 'sequel').

Here are two more examples from reviews of 'Nancy Drew' and 'I Am Legend'. See if you can find the 'colloquial language' and notice what its effect is:

"Not that it's easy to care. Far more interesting is Nancy's new friend Corky (Josh Flitter) - her gal pals are dropped as soon as she leaves home town River Heights."

 "I Am Legend sees Smith deliver a surprisingly moving performance as he wanders empty New York streets going slowly ga-ga."

For more help on the idea of register, click here.