Style and Stylistics
Style can be roughly defined as the peculiarity, the set of specific features of a text type or a certain text. Style is just what differentiates a group of homogeneous texts from all other texts. Style can be also defined as the specificity of the sublanguage. Style contains only one class, distinctive features which differentiate one sublanguage from another. Sublanguage contains 3 classes of linguistic units.
There are
as many sublanguages in the national language as the scholar thinks
fit to obtain his objectives. (infinite number of styles and
sublanguages). Гальперин
distinguished 5 styles: newspaper style, scientific, of official
documents, belles-letters st, publicistic
.
Арнольд
4 styles: poetic, scientific, newspaper, colloquial. As mane styles
as many sublanguages.
First of all it should be mentioned that stylistics is not a level discipline, because it pertains to all the levels, to every level. St-s must be divided into separate, quite independent branches, treating one level each. So we have: stylistic phonetics, st-c morphology, st-c lexicology, st-c syntax.
The ultimate aim of st-cs is description of specific spheres of sublanguages. Therefore whatever level we take, st-cs describes what is specific in this or that respect, what differentiates one sublanguages from others.
St-c phonetics pays attention only to style-forming phonetics features of sublanguages; it describes variants of pronunciation occurring in different types of speech. Special attention is paid to prosodic features of poetry and prose.
St-c morphology is interested in grammatical forms and grammatical meanings that are peculiar to particular sublanguages , explicitly or implicitly comparing them with the nuatral ones.
St-c lexicology. Deals with stylistic classification (differentiation) of the vocabulary .
St-c syntax. Shows what particular constructions are met with in various types of speech , what syntactical structures are style-forming in the sublanguages.
The differentiation between syntagmatic st-cs and paradigmatic.
Paradigmatics denotes the totality of units of which language (or sublanguage ) has at its disposal.
Syntagmatics implies a certain number of sequences of units, of chains of units following one another. Here each unit enters into combinations with its neighbors.
2. Language, sublanguages, styles.
Language is a system of mental associations of elementary and complex signs (speech sounds, morphemes, words and so on…) with our mental picture of objective reality. It exists in individual minds, but serves the purpose of social intercourse through speech. It performs 2 dialectically interwoven functions: communicative and cognitive. The former appears to be the primary function. Language as a system of associations exists in human minds but it manifests itself in acts of speech. Speech is not a system, it is a momentary, fleeting psycho-psychological action, a process of sending acoustic signals, perceptible to anyone within hearing. Language comprises not only elementary units but complex syntactic patterns, including paragraphs and structures of whole texts.
The national lang is not a homogenous whole, as many of its constituents are not used in every sphere of communication, but belong to more or less strictly delimited special spheres, to specific types of speech. It follows therefore that the system of lang reveals a motley picture of interesting subsystems, moreover, we can assume the existence of variegated special languages (so-called sublanguages) within the general system of a national lang.
A few words about stylistic colouring. The st-c colouring is nothing but the knowledge in what particular type of communication the word is used. St. coloured units have each something like a label, sm inscription, a kind of trademark showing where the unit belongs and in what circumstances the unit proper or improper- the st-c connotation.
Neutrality and norm. скребнев: norm- pre-established and conventionally accepted characteristics of what can be evaluated. The deviation from the literary norm. There are as many norms as there are sublanguages in the national lang.Every sublang has its norm. there are no strict boderlines between sublanguages and within them, the boderlines are vague – “zones of tolerance”.