The newspaper style

Newspaper style, as it is evident from its name, is found in newspapers. One should not conclude, though, that everything published in a newspaper should be referred to the newspaper style. The paper contains vastly different materials, some of them being publicistic essays, some – feature articles (большие газетные статьи), some - scientific reviews, some – official stock-exchange accounts (счета фондовой биржи), so that a daily (weekly) newspaper also offers a variety of styles.

When we mention “newspaper style”, we mean informative materials, characteristic of newspaper only and not found in other publications. To attract the reader’s attention to the news, special graphical means are used. British and American papers are notorious for the change of type, specific headlines, space ordering. We find here a large proportion of dates and personal names of countries, territories, institutions, individuals. To achieve the effect of objectivity and impartiality in rendering some fact or event, most of newsmen who supply it don’t indicate their names.

The basic communicative function of this style is to inform people about all kinds of events and occurrences which may be of some interest to them. Newspaper materials may be classified into 3 groups:

1. Brief news reviews: its function is to inform the reader. It states only facts without giving comments. The vocabulary used is neutral and common literary. Specific features are:

a) special political and economic terms;

b) non-term political vocabulary;

c) newspaper clichés;

d) abbreviations;

e) neologisms.

2. Advertisements and announcements. The function of advertisements and announcements is to inform the reader. There are two types of them: classified and non-classified. In classified the information is arranged according to the subject matter: births, marriages, deaths, business offers, personal etc.

3. Headlines. The main function is to inform the reader briefly of what the news is to follow about. Syntactically headlines are very short sentences, interrogative sentences, nominative sentences, elliptical sentences, sentences with articles omitted, headlines including direct speech.

The vocabulary of the newspaper style consists mostly of neutral common literary words, though it also contains many political, social and economic terms (per capita consumption, single European currency, political summit). There are lots of abbreviations – EU (European Union), WTO (World Trade Organization), NATO (Northern Atlantic Treaty Organization). The newspaper vocabulary of the Russian and Ukrainian languages is overloaded with borrowings and international words (інтерв’ю, інформація, ідеологія). One of unattractive features of the newspaper style is the overabundance of hackneyed phrases or expressions, clichés, which suggest mental laziness or the lack of original thought.

The belles-lettres style

The term "Belles - lettres" is generic for 3 substyles:

- poetry;

- emotive prose;

- drama;

The Belles-lettres style has its own specific function which is double -phoned. Besides, informing the reader, it impresses the reader aesthetically.

The function of this style is cognitive-aesthetic. It embraces prose, drama and poetry. The language of emotive prose is extremely diverse. Most of the books contain the author’s speech and the speech of protagonists. The author’s speech embodies all stylistic embellishments which the system of language tolerates.

The means of this functional style are:

- genuine imaginative means and SDs;

- the use of words in its contextual meaning;

- the individual choice of vocabulary which reflects the author's personal evaluation;

- a peculiar individual selection of syntax;

- the introduction of elements of other styles;

Drama - the language of plays mainly consists of dialogues. The author's speech is in the form of stage remarks. Any presentation of a play is an aesthetic procedure. The language of a play has the following peculiarities:

- it is stylized (retains the modus of literary English);

- it presents the variety of spoken language;

- it has redundancy of information caused by necessity to amplify the utterance;

- monologue is never interrupted;

- character's utterances are much longer than in ordinary conversation.

The language of drama is also a stylization of the colloquial speech and is not only an instrument for rendering information but an effective tool for description of ´personages.

Poetry. Peculiarities - rhythm and rhyme. As a SD rhythm is a combination of the ideal metrical scheme and its variations governed by the standard. The most distinguished feature of the language of poetry is its elevation. The ´imagery of poems and verses is profound, implicit and very touching. It is created by elevated words (highly literary, poetic, barbaric, ´obsolete and obsoléscent), fresh and original tropes, inversions, repetitions, parallel constructions, rhyme, etc.

Emotive prose. Emotive prose is a combination of literary variant of the language and colloquial, which is presented by the speech of the characters which is stylized that means it has been made "literature like" and some elements of conversational English were made use of. Emotive prose allows the use of elements of other styles but the author changes them and fulfils a certain function. SDs used: in emotive prose style are represented speech, detached constructions, gap - sentence link.

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Metonymy is the transfer of the meaning on the basis of con­tiguity (nearness/ real likeness) of two objects, on the real association of the object of nomination with the object whose name is transferred.

E.g. She was dressed in silk. The Downing Street is ready to offer a warm welcome.

Metaphor is the transfer of the name of one object or person to another based on likeness, similarity of some features of these two objects.

Dead or disguised metaphors add to the stock of words and are studied in lexicology. By trite metaphor we mean the transferred usage which, though the metaphoric nature of the expression is evident, is so familiar and customary that one does not always notice it, and the expression is repeated as a ready-made one, not created in actual speech.

Metaphors may be created on the similarity of different physical properties, such as, for instance:

1. similarity of shape – crane, bulb, table’s leg;

2. similarity of position – foot of the mountain, head of the procession;

3. similarity of movement – fox-trot, to worm one’s way;

4. zoosemy – a fox, a bear, a monkey, to ape

Trite metaphors give rise to phraseological word groups: to fly into a passion, to jump to conclusion, to fall in love.

Genuine metaphor is fresh and original. They serve as an expressive means in pictorial language. Genuine metaphors are generally created and accepted with a consciousness of their nature as substitutes for their literal equivalents. The wider the gap between the associated objects the more striking and unexpected and expressive is the metaphor. They are studied in stylistics.

His words were coming so fast; they were leap-frogging themselves. (R. Chandler)

A metaphor implies a resemblance between two distinctly different things without using like or as, e.g.: Life is a bowl of cherries.

The wide curving street dozed peacefully in the sun. (R. Chandler)

Epithet – word or word combination used attributively to give not logical but expressive characteristics (both real and imaginary) of a thing or person.

The iron hate in Soul pushed him on again. (M. Wilson)

The difference between a logical attribute and an epithet: the logical attribute is objective and non-evaluative: wooden table, blank sheet of paper.

The epithet gives an emotional assessment and individual evaluation to the object described: a wooden/blank face, iron lady.

Hyperbole is created in case one common quantitative feature characterises an object in a greater degree. It is a deliberate overstatement, exaggeration that is used to intensify one of the features of the object. It is an expression of emotional evaluation of reality by a speaker who is either unrestrained by ethical conventions or knows that exaggeration would be welcome.

E.g. The coffee shop smell was strong enough to build a garage on. (R. Chandler)

His grey face was so long that he could wind it twice round his neck (R. Chandler)