Linguistic colouring

Linguistic colouring is the aggregate of linguistic means that lend a work a specific tinge — national, historical, local, social or professional — reproducing the distinctiveness of the depicted milieu. National colouring is created by the use of ethnographic vocabulary, folk formulas, characteristic imagery; historical colouring by archaisms and historicisms; local colouring by dialectisms; social colouring by jargon and vernacular. Linguistic colouring immerses the reader in the atmosphere of the depicted world, lends the narrative verisimilitude, concreteness and convincingness. The skilful reproduction of colouring is a mark of a writer's mastery, and its preservation is one of the most difficult tasks of literary translation. Linguistic colouring is studied by stylistics and cultural linguistics in the aspect of the interaction of language, culture and the artistic depiction of reality.