Stylistics

Meaning of Linguistic Units

The word denotes a particular thing as well as a concept of a thing; thus the word has a denotative meaning.

Denotation is the literal or “dictionary” meaning of a word.

Connotation embraces all the emotions and associations that a word or phrase may arouse. So connotation may be negative or positive. Connotation may express the speaker’s attitude to the thing mentioned about – this is the emotive component of meaning. Connotation may also indicate the social sphere in which the communication takes place – this is a stylistic reference

An emotive component of meaning may find its linguistic expression in the form of suffixes (e.g. –y/-ie, -let, etc.). Or the component may have no specific linguistic form and be contained in the concept the given word denotes (e.g. nasty, lovely, terrible, etc.). There are some words of purely emotive meaning – interjections (e.g. oh, alas, etc.).

Stylistic reference. Verbal communication takes place in different spheres of human activity: everyday life, art, business etc. Each sphere has a peculiar mode of linguistic expression (a functional style). Words that are mostly used in one functional style are said to have a stylistic reference. The words are classified as either neutral or stylistically marked. Stylistically marked words are in turn divided into numerous groups. The main division is literary stylistic layer / non-literary stylistic layer.

Literary Stylistic Layer

Within the literary stylistic layer we can distinguish several groups. The following groups of bookish words are of particular interest:

1. Terms subdivided into popular terms known to be public at large (e.g. pneumonia, antenna, etc.) and specific terms used exclusively within a profession (e.g. aperture, phoneme, etc.);

2. Poeticisms used in poetry, church practice and the like. Many of them are archaic or obsolete, e.g. thou (you), gore (blood), nay (no), childe (a son of a nobleman);

3. Foreign words and barbarisms. Barbarisms are considered to be a part of the vocabulary of the given language, its peripheral layer; they are usually registered in dictionaries. Sometimes they trend to migrate from periphery to the core of the word-stock (e.g. versus, data, etc.). Foreign words are as a rule not found in dictionaries of the given language (e.g. perestroyka, dacha, etc.).

Non-literary Stylistic Layer

1. Colloquialisms are words that occupy an intermediate position between literary and non-literary stylistic layers because they are used in conversational type of everyday speech (e.g. shut up, granny, awfully sorry, etc.);

2. Slangisms are words that have originated in everyday speech and exist on the periphery of the lexical system (e.g. cop, john, etc.);

3. Jargonisms are words used within certain social or professional groups, e.g. bulls (persons who buy shares at the stock-exchange), bears (persons who sell shares at the stock-exchange), etc.);

4. Vulgarisms are rude words or expressions used mostly in the speech of uncultured or uneducated people, sometimes to insult intendedly (e.g. misus (wife), bastard, etc.);

5. Dialectisms, regionalisms are words and expressions used by inhabitants in certain regions of the country (e.g. hame (home), winder (window), baccy (tobacco), etc.).

Expressive Means and Figures of Speech

A figure of speech (some of which are also called tropes) is a word or a group of words used to give particular emphasis to an idea or sentiment. The special emphasis is typically accomplished by the user’s deliberate deviation from the strict literal sense of a word or from the more commonly used word order or sentence construction. From ancient times, such figurative locutions have been extensively employed by writers and orators to strengthen and embellish their styles of speech and composition.