1. The object and aim of stylistics. The notion of style. Approaches to style. The notions of foregrounding and convergence.

1. Aim: It may study various trends in literature and its peculiar characteristics.

2. To teach students of the language to write effective essays, etc.

3. Can study a set of expressive means that a language possesses.

4. To examine various functional styles that is types of discourse which require typical patterns of choices which are of different functions and specific target audience.

5. S can also study the peculiarities of a writer that make him or her unique and recognizable.

6. The peculiarities of a specific work of fiction, because sometimes the writer's vision may remain practically the same or it may alter, the system of expressive means can be almost unrecognizable.

Style in a broad perspective is a manner of doing something, a manner of performing a specific kind of activity. Etymologically style goes to the Greek stylos (Latin – stylus, a kind of stick with which they used to write on wax tables). Style is the manner of writing, but it also extends to speaking.

Style is using proper words in roper places (J. Swift)

Style is the product of the individual choices and patterns of choices among linguistic possibilities (S. Chatman). By patterns he means vocabulary and syntax typical of an oral or written text (discourse) produced with a special purpose in this or that typical communicative situation.

Objects of analysis: linguostylistics (studies the func. styles & the whole system of expressive means typical of certain lan-ge) & textual stylistics, including literary (literary trends, the styles of individual works). In Russ. a great expressive role is played by suffixes: белый, белесый, беленький. In Engl.: an elephant of a man; epithets – a who-do-you-think-you-are look. The study of sets of synonyms & antonyms. Linguostylistics studies the rhetorical & specific stylistic devices, which are shared by most lan-ges (at least European), such as epithets, irony, rhetorical questions, etc.

Approaches to stylistic analysis: stylistics of encoding the author’s message (means stylistics of effective speaking/writing. This approach can also be used in literary analysis. E.g. if u know enough about the writer as a personality, acquainted with his typical style u can predict how the author will develop his thought – serious, ironic, high-flown, matter of fact. U anticipate the development. – analyzing passage by passage while reading) & stylistics of decoding (always proceedes from the text itself. This process id strictly linear, gradual. U read the title & try to guess what it’s about. But the title may be misleading. U start from the 1^st sentence.). The two can go hand in hand. After we’ve read the story we analyze it in retrospect.

The longer a piece of fiction is, the more textual elements are likely to be used merely to convey factual information. A very short text (haiku or an epigram) nearly every word or perhaps every functional detail carries. They have meaning beyond the language meaning.

When a textual element conveys nothing but facts we perceive it automatically that is we take it for granted.

Sometimes a textual element leaps to the eye. This happens when it violates predictability. And such elements are foregrounded (выдвижение \ актуализация).

A textual element can become for-grounded when the author invents a new word or a double meaning of the same word (pun) or repetition or metaphor.

As to factual details, they may also become for-grounded, but very often it happens in retrospect.

Convergence (= amplification) – схождение. – coming together at one point. It means that two or more expressive means help each other within a rather limited context to produce the desired effect.

+ПРИМЕРЫ convergence and foregrounding

encoding/decoding???