2. The main categories of stylistics

The notion of style

The term “style” originated from the Greek “stylos” that meant a short stick used for writing on wax tablets. Now the word style is used in so many senses that it has become the breeding ground for ambiguity. The Oxford dictionary registered about thirty meanings of this word. The usage of this word by different sciences – aesthetics, linguistics, philosophy, art, history of culture only favours the development of its polysemy.

Ancient and medieval rhetoric understood style as a perfection of speech, as clarity, propriety, beauty of expression, as a manner of a speaker to use language for a certain purpose. Later on the definition of style was developed by different scholars and writers. Among the most widely employed notions of this term that reigned almost up to the beginning of XX-th century were the following:

• style as a deviation from a recognized norm of the standard language.

This definition of style arose under the influence of formalism – a trend in 1920s European literature. The representatives of this trend maintained the idea that language sometimes imposes intolerable constraints on the freedom of thought. Hence all kinds of innovations were introduced into the language of poetry and prose that in most cases not only disagree from the norms but actually depart from them in principle;

• style as embellishment on language; language can easily dispense with

style because style likened to the trimming on dress only hinders understanding;

• style as technique of expression, the ability to write clearly, correctly

and in a manner calculated to interest the reader. The followers of this particular point of view presumed that style could be taught as standardized form of language;

• style as literary form.

So what is linguistically relevant definition of style? The treatment of style by modern linguistics and literary studies is based on the assumption that style is an integral significance of any expression, its functional and semantic property. Style is a socially recognized and functionally determined unity of methods of choice, usage and arrangement of language means within a certain sphere of national language, the unity of methods which correlates with other similar ways of expression that serve for other purposes and perform other functions in language social practice of a certain nation¹. The very nature of style lies in the creative aspect of human verbal activity because it is hardly ever possible to produce an utterance devoid of any stylistic characteristics. On the one hand style is social and historic category. It is being created by native speakers in accordance with the aim of communication. On the other hand – style is a reflection of an individual verbal experience. Consequently the abstract tern “style” being complex and heterogeneous has been regarded depending on what particular aspect of style is dealt with.

Individual style is a unique combination of language units, expressive means and stylistic devices peculiar to a certain writer which makes that writer’s works or even utterances easily recognizable. The term individual style is applied in that sphere of linguistics and literary studies that deals with the peculiarities of a writer’s individual manner of using language means to achieve a desirable effect.

Each highly developed language is streamed into several functional styles. Functional style is a system of coordinated, interrelated and interconditioned language means intended to fulfill a specific function of communication and aiming at a definite effect. The problem of functional styles classification is the most disputable among the style theoreticians. The rather widely recognized classification (accepted for both English and Ukrainian) singles out the following functional styles:

• official style (офіційно-діловий стиль) – represented in all kinds of official documents;

• scientific style (науковий стиль) – found in articles, monographs and other scientific and academic publications ;

• publicistic style (публіцистичний стиль) – covering such genres as essays, feature article, public speeches, etc;

• newspaper style (газетний стиль) – observed in the majority of information materials printed in newspapers;

• belles-lettres style (художній стиль) – embracing numerous and versatile genres of imaginative writings;

• colloquial style (розмовний стиль) – realized in all kinds of everyday communicative situations.

Each of the enumerated style is exercised in two forms – written and oral: an article and a lecture are examples of the two forms of the scientific style; news broadcast on the radio and TV or newspaper information materials – of the newspaper style; an essay or public speech – of the puiblicistic style.

It is only the first three styles that are invariably recognized in all stylistic treatises. As for the newspaper style, it is often regarded as a part of the publicistic domain and is not always treated individually. But the biggest controversy is flaming around the colloquial style. According to V.A.Kukharenko the latter is a special type – colloquial type of language, a separate language subsystem opposed to the literary type. Literary type of the language is characterized by the intentional approach of the speaker towards the choice of language means suitable for a particular communicative situation and the official, formal, preplanned nature of the latter. The colloquial type of the language, on the contrary, is characterized by the unofficiality, spontaneity, informality of the communicative situation. The colloquial speech is shaped by the immediacy, unpremeditativeness of expression. The both above mentioned tendencies to treat the colloquial speech as an individual language subsystem with its independent set of language units and rules of their connection and to regard it as a separate style coexist in modern linguistics.