8. Language of Advertisements and Announcements

Advertisements made their way into the British press at an early stage of its development, i.e. in the mid-17th century. So they are almost as old as the newspapers themselves.

The function of advertisements and announcements, like that of brief news, is to inform the reader. There are two basic types of advertisements and announcements in

the modern English newspaper: classified and non-classified (separate).

In classified advertisements and announcements various kinds of information are arranged according to subject-matter into sections, each bearing an appropriate name. In The Times, for example, one finds several hundred advertisements and announcements classified into groups, such as BIRTHS, MARRIAGES, DEATHS, IN MEMORIAM, BUSINESS OFFERS, FARM, PERSONAL, etc. This classified arrangement has resulted in a number of stereotyped patterns regularly employed in newspaper advertising. The example from The Times:

BIRTHS

CULHANE. – On November 21st, 2006 at St. Barthlomew’s Hospital, to

BARBARA and JOHN CULHANE – a son.

The tendency to eliminate from the sentence all elements that can be done without is a pronounced one in advertisement and announcement writing. The elliptic sentence structure has no stylistic function; it is purely technical – to economize space. Though, having become a common practice, this peculiar brevity of expression is a stylistic feature of advertisements and announcements which may take a variety of forms, for example:

TRAINED NURSE with child 2 years seeks post London preferred. – Write

Box C.658, The Times, SW3 1PU.

Here the absence of all articles and some punctuation marks makes the statement

telegram-like. Sentences which are grammatically complete also tend to be short and compact.

The vocabulary of classified advertisements and announcements is on the whole

essentially neutral with occasional sprinkling of emotionally coloured words or phrases used to attract the reader’s attention.

As for the non-classified advertisements and announcements, the variety of language forms is so great that hardly any essential features common to all may be pointed out. The reader’s attention is attracted by every possible means: typographical, graphical and stylistic, both lexical and syntactical. Here there is no call for brevity, as the advertiser may buy as much space as he chooses.

9. Components of the Form of a Piece of Fiction

Style in fiction is realized not only in words and structures, in expressive means and stylistic devices, but also in other components of the artistic form, such as composition, the plot, the type of narration, its time and space reference, implication et al.

Composition is defined as relatively self-dependent constituent parts united and tied by the plot.

The pivot of a work that determines its structural harmony and completeness is the plot – the chain of events which are gradually unfolded in accordance with the author’s conception. A long story or a novel may have several lines of the plot, interwoven, sometimes whimsically entangled. A short story has one line, as a rule.

The following elements are distinguished in the plot: exposition – description of

the milieu, place and time in which the action is to be developing; the knot – the starting point and the subsequent unfolding of the main line of the plot; climax – the highest point in the development of action in a story. It is the culmination preceding the denouement – the finale of the story.

The basis of the plot is always a certain problem which grows up to the level of conflict (collision) and requires resolution. The conflict is actually resolved in the denouement. This is the prescriptive structure of the plot.

The artistic practice, however, abounds in deviations. The narration may begin with the knot itself, the exposition following. The latter may be placed even at the end of the work. Sometimes the denouement (resolution) is not actually expressed, but is implied.

Time and space are aesthetically important components of the artistic structure of the text.

The artistic text, being a product of imagination, gives the author wide opportunities for a free depiction of the time course which is the prerequisite for creating various semantic and stylistic effects. In a literary work the course of real time may be broken, the chronological succession of events not observed, the components of the plot may change their proper places. Acceleration of the course of time is often observed at the end of a novel or story. Slowing down of the time course or even its halt occurs in portrait and landscape descriptions, in digressions of different kinds (lyrical, psychological, philosophic et al.).

The category of fictional time is related to the notions of dynamics and statics of the text. Dynamic sections of the text contain actions – external: movement in space, shifts, creation, transformation or destruction of objects, and internal, developing in the consciousness of a personage: changes in the comprehension of the depicted reality and in the attitude to it. Static sections contain descriptions which are of no small importance since they prepare the basis for the subsequent shaping of characters and for the creation of fictional space which is understood as the description of the place of action.

The fictional space may be extraordinarily broad, embracing the globe, even the outer space, or it may be narrowed to the dimensions of the salon of an aircraft or a bus. But in any case it is related to certain lines of the plot and groups of characters.

Dynamic sections of the text are intended for the unfolding of the plot. Static sections create the corresponding background.