2.3. Personal variation

Individuality in language is a complex matter, arising from variations in sex, physical condition, personality, background, interests, and experience. Physical condition is important, for example, in the way it can influence a person's voice quality. Personality can play a part in voice quality too, and, if the graphologists are correct, is especially important in relation to handwriting. A particular blend of social and geographical backgrounds, increasingly common in a mobile society, may produce a distinctive accent or dialect. Educational history, occupational experience, and personal skills or tastes (hobbies, leisure pursuits, literary preferences, etc.), will foster the use of habitual words and turns of phrases, or certain kinds of grammatical construction. Also noticeable will be favorite discourse practices - a tendency to develop points in an argument in a certain way. Some people, are evidently, 'good conversationalists', 'good story tellers', "good letter writers', 'good speech makers'. What actually makes them such is the subject of a fascinating and ancient field of enquiry: rhetoric. For the most part, individualistic features are unimportant in the act of communication. When we listen to what people are saying, we do not spend much time paying attention to what about is their language that makes them different. Indeed, differences, once noticed, can get in the way of meaning. A deviant voice quality, a persistent use of a particular idiom, or a tendency to finish off what someone else is saying.

2.4. Stylistic variation

The choice of grammatical structure and vocabulary will vary with the situation in which people are speaking. On a formal occasion someone might say 'the person to whom I wrote', while less formally they might say 'the chap I wrote to'. One phrase is not more correct than the other. When even highly educated people are chatting with friends, their speech is very different from textbook conversations. They begin a sentence, then they change their mind; they hesitate, then start again, differently; they muddle one grammatical structure with another. They omit various words, forget others, if necessary they will invent words just for the occasion. In a relaxed atmosphere they do not feel constrained to speak carefully, to plan what they are going to say.

Part XI text as the object of linguistic analysis in stylistics

Genuine texts vary in communicative aims, in their topics, in length, structure and composition to such extent that it is difficult to give the concept of 'text' a generalizing and precise definition. In the book "Text as an Object of Linguistic Study" Prof. Galperin offers his definition of the 'text' in which he tries to differentiate 'text' as a speech product, that is presented in a written form, from 'discourse' as a piece of oral speech. He writes: 'Text is a piece of speech production represented in a written form that correlates to some literary norms; it is characterized by completeness, wholeness and coherence and consists of specific text units joined by various logical, lexical, grammatical and stylistic means under one title; it has a definite communicative aim as a carefully thought-out-impact on the reader' (Гальперин И. P. Текст как объект лингвистического исследования. - М. 1981. - С. 18)

This definition contains the most general parameters of well-composed texts and states knowledge about text formation as an object of special linguistic interest. Prof. Galperin proposes to study text categories and singles out some ten categories in his book. Categories of discreteness (divisibility), cohesion are referred mainly to basic structural categories and basic semantic categories are informativeness, continuum, prospectively and retrospection, semantic independence of its constituents, modality, integration and completeness.

Well-formed texts undoubtedly follow a certain compositional pattern: there is a heading, the text as such and conclusion. The text itself can be divided into smaller units made up of interdependent sentences, that are grouped into a paragraph, then there may be chapters, parts and books. This kind of pragmatic division which aims at promoting the process of comprehension varies from text to text, as the author always takes into consideration information capacity of human brains.

Any reader perceives a text in his individual manner. It depends upon his approach, his aim, his intellect and his emotional susceptibility. One may either read merely for the sake of the plot or grasp all the subtleties of the text and penetrate deep into the author's intention. To achieve the latter a text must be treated as an integral whole. To comprehend a text as an integral whole, the reader must perceive simultaneously its several layers, as a text is to be regarded as a hierarchy of them in mutual interdependence and interpenetration.

(Шаховский, В. И. Стилистика английского языка / В. И. Шаховский. - М. : ЛКИ, 2008. - С. 132) -

Check your knowledge of Stylistics

TEST

1. Stylistics is a branch of linguistics dealing with

a) vocabulary of the language;

b) morphology;

c) stylistic devices and expressive means of the language and functional styles.

2. Expressive means

a) exist in the language and are fixed in dictionaries;

b) is a conscious use of a language to achieve a stylistic effect;

c) peculiar use of the language means.

3. The common literary, neutral and common colloquial words are grouped under the term

a) non-standard English vocabulary;

b) standard English vocabulary;

c) core vocabulary.

4. The belles-lettres style has varieties:

a) the language of poetry, emotive prose, the language of drama;

b) the newspaper style, emotive prose, the publicistic style;

c) the language used in articles, the language used in essays, the language used in oratory.

5. The newspaper style includes:

a) oratory, essays, articles;

b) brief news items, advertisements and announcements, headlines, the editorial;

c) poetry, emotive prose, the drama.

6. Idiolect is

a) the speech of an individual which is characterized by peculiarities typical of that particular individual;

b) sphere of linguistic and literary science;

c) expressive means of the language.

7. A functional style of the language is

a) a conscious and intentional intensification of some typical structural property of a language unit;

b) a system of interrelated language means which serves a definite aim in communication;

c) expressive means of the language.

8. Syntactical SD are devices based on

a) the binary opposition of lexical meanings regardless of the syntactical organization of the utterance;

b) the binary opposition of syntactical meanings regardless of their semantics;

c) the opposition of meanings of phonological elements.

9. Graphical expressive means include

a) interjections;

b) words belonging to special groups;

c) inversion, the arrangement of the material;

d) punctuation, different types of print.

10. Terms are characterized by a tendency to be

a) monosemantic;

b) emotional;

c) neutral;

d) polysemantic.

11. Stylistic devices based on the interaction between logical and emotive meanings

a) epithet, oxymoron, hyperbole;

b) metaphor, metonymy, epithet;

c) irony, similar, hyperbole.

12. How is called the process when terms pass into the common literary or neutral vocabulary?

a) de-terminization;

b) coinage of new words;

c) creation of a new meaning.

13. What is metaphor?

a) Metaphor is a stylistic device based on the interaction between two logical meanings of the word.

b) It is a clash of two opposite meanings.

c) It is a device reflecting relations between a part and the whole.

14. Archaisms belong to

a) colloquial style;

b) literary style;

c) neutral style.

15. Barbarisms are used mainly to

a) supply the narrated events with the proper local colouring;

b) to insult the addressee;

c) to make speech more emotive;

d) to cause a humorous effect.

16. Literary vocabulary includes

a) archaisms, terms, foreign words, neologisms;

b) slang, vulgarisms, jargonisms, dialectal words;

c) neutral words.

17. Jargonisms function

a) in limited spheres of society;

b) in any context;

c) to create a humorous effect;

d) to insult the addressee.

18. Hyperbole is

a) the clash of two diametrically opposite meanings;

b) a deliberate exaggeration of some quantity, quality, size;

c) logical association between the name itself and the quality.

19. A word or phrase used to replace an unpleasant word or expression by conventionally more acceptable is

a) synonym;

b) euphemism;

c) homonym;

d) similar.

20. When likeness is observed between inanimate objects and human qualities we speak of

a) antonomasia;

b) metaphor;

c) personification;

d) metonymy.

21. Metaphor is the expression of

a) true picture of the world;

b) a writer's individual vision;

c) the contextual meaning.