Through the centuries the examples of written language were the material for theoretical analysis, for illustrations and for the evidence for linguistic analysis. The written examples of religious character or works of prominent writers, philosophers, politicians we may say of people who are well educated having ability to speak in public. We must state that the fixation of speech on paper was a prominent step in the history of humanity, the accumulation of scientific, literal, religious or other information. With the appearance of written speech colloquial speech didn’t disappear, its role was still important, its role in communication of people – very meaningful; it wasn’t substituted and exchanged into written speech and also is addition to it. Though the nature of colloquial speech, its spontaneous, unrepeatable character made its study very difficult.

    So, the 20^th century became the beginning of understanding the necessity to study colloquial speech.

    The complex analysis which formed into separate lingual discipline, which got a name the theory of colloquial speech. The main tasks of the theory of colloquial speech:

1. the detailing of the theory of general linguistics with the help of received data as a result of oral speech investigation;

2. pointing out and describing characteristic features of oral speech;

3. catalogization and typologization of colloquial models with the following interlingual comparison.

    The theory of oral speech realizes other applied aims, main of which are: lexicographical; didactical. The basic features of colloquial speech which makes oral speech different from other forms of language are:

1) The oral character of speech. The given feature has very important meaning. First, not every example of oral speech is a conversational speech: there exist forms of oral communication which cannot characterize as conversational (educational lecture or scientific lecture, a speech (report) at official report). Second, the segments of oral speech can be presented in written form too (fiction, having dialogues as fixed conversation in written form).

2) Dialogues as the basic form of speech. First, not only dialogue speech can have conversational character, but also monologue speech. In fiction we can find examples of long monologues of main characters. Second, not every dialogue can be characterized as the incarnation of colloquial speech – the talk between the boss and the worker on business topic, the conversation between a teacher and a pupil, inquiry in court and so on, as they aren’t built as conversational speech.

3) Everyday speech. Such speech can be characterized as mostly conversational. On such topics one can speak using full, extended, “correct” constructions of written speech. Additional complexity of applying this criterion is in the ambiguity of the sphere of everyday thematics. For example, to what sphere the dialogues about work of computers belong to as they presuppose the usage of appropriate terminology and detailed description of complicated technological processes.

4) Phonetic reduction. This feature consists in unclear pronunciation which comes from the immediate character of communication between interlocutors, and the existence of a certain degree of proximity between them.

5) Using the clichés in speech. The pressure of special conversational clichés characterize the studied type of speech, though we should note that clichés are used in news, academic prose, official speech and so on.

6) Situational character of speech. Under this feature we understand the connection between the act of oral speech and the situation of communication, its appropriateness for the situation of communication. This feature of colloquial speech explains its elliptical character. The interlocutors exchange the replica, often having the object of speech before themselves, having ability to point at it with gesture, to substitute a long extended description by mimics.

7) Emotional character of speech (affectiveness). Colloquial speech formed by dialogues, everyday by theme and situational by the conditions of communication is usually emotional which is exposed at prosodic, lexical and syntactical levels (signs of punctuation, syntactical parallelism, lexical repetition)

8) The spontaneous character of speech. This feature is closely connected with the previous. Its essence is unprepared not thought over, not checked form of the utterance, and the reason for this is the deficiency of time and the result – “non-perfect” character of speech act. During communication each person makes the other construct the utterance on the spot under a certain limit of time using not the set of linguistic variants which are the best.

9) Complementary character to non-conversational activity. This feature denotes that colloquial speech, as a rule, accompanies some non-conversational activity and is performed with it.

10) Not official/informal character of speech. This feature is considered by many linguists as the leading feature of characterization of colloquial speech.

    This enumeration of features doesn’t give formal definition of colloquial speech but together they quite clearly define its sphere.