The linguistic unit of major significance is a word which names, qualifies and evaluates the extra linguistic reality.

An outline.

1. Semantic structure of a word:

A) Denotative and connotative meanings as a factor of style;

B) Contextual meaning and its stylistic function;

C) The theory of opposition; polysemy and synonymy.

2. Stylistic classification of the English vocabulary:

A) Formal layer of the English vocabulary;

B) Informal layer of the English vocabulary.

Stylistic lexicology studies stylistic functions of the lexicon, the interrelations of denotative and connotative meanings of a word and stylistic stratification of the vocabulary.

The linguistic unit of major significance is a word which names, qualifies and evaluates the extra linguistic reality.

A word is a unit of language functioning within the sentence or within a part of it which by its sound or graphical form expresses a concrete or abstract notion or a grammatical notion through one of its meanings and which is capable of enriching its semantic structure by acquiring new meanings and losing old ones. It possesses an enormous potentiality for generating new meanings; (I.R.G.:62, 66)

A word is a speech unit used for the purposes of human communication, materially representing a group of sounds, possessing a meaning, susceptible to grammatical employment and characterised by formal and semantic unity. (Antrushina:10)

“A word is a basic unit of a language, which denotes a concept and expresses emotions and relations”. (Meillet)