3. Functional Styles: Controversial issues.

The notion of style has to do with how we use the language under specific circumstances for a specific purpose. Linguistic literature gives various definitions of the notion 'style':

Style – socially recognized and functionally conditioned, internally united totality of the ways of using, selecting and combining the means of lingual intercourse in some national language (V.V. Vinogradov).

Style – a system of interrelated language means which serves a definite aim in communication (I. R. Galperin).

Style – specific features of text type (what differentiates a group of homogeneous texts) or of a specific text (an individual text) (Skrebnev).

Functional styles are subsystems of the language and represent varieties of the norm of the national language. Their evolution and development has been determined by the specific factors of communication in various spheres of human activity. Each of them is characterised by its own parameters in vocabulary usage, syntactical expression, phraseology, etc.

The term 'functional style' reflects peculiar functions of the language in this or that type of communicative interaction.

I.R.Galperin distinguishes 5 functional styles:

1. The Belles-Lettres Style:

• poetry

• emotive prose

• the language of the drama

2. Publicist Style:

• oratory and speeches

• the essay

• articles

3. Newspaper Style

• brief news items

• headlines

• advertisements and announcements

• the editorial

4. Scientific Style

5. The Style of Official Documents

• business documents

• legal documents

• the language of diplomacy

• military documents

Prof. Galperin differs from other scholars in his views on functional styles as he includes in his classification only the written language. In his opinion style is the result of creative activity of the writer who consciously and deliberately selects language means that create style. Colloquial speech, according to him, by its nature will not lend itself to careful selection of linguistic features and there is no stylistic intention expressed on the part of the speaker. At the same time his classification contains such varieties of publicist style as oratory and speeches.

There is no unanimity about the belles-lettres style. In fact Galperin's position is not shared by the majority. This notion comes under criticism because it seems rather artificial especially in reference to modern prose.

At the same time many writers give an account of external events, social life and reproduce their characters' direct speech. Sometimes they quote extracts from legal documents, newspapers items, ad­vertisements, slogans, headlines, etc. which do not belong to belles-lettres style in its traditional meaning. So most other clas­sifications do not distinguish the language of fiction as a separate style.

Thus, the Number of functional styles and the problem of The Belles-Lettres Style are the most problematic issues.

Skrebnev’s classification of functional styles: