5 вопросов к ГЭКУ с ответами

1. Stylistics as a science.

In different communicative situations people use different manners of expressing their thoughts, which in the Russian linguistic tradition are called Styles or functional styles, and in the linguistic tradition abroad are called registers of speech.

Indeed, depending on the situation we adhere either to informal, or to formal manner. The former is observed in every-day non-official communication which is known as colloquial speech, and characterized by unrestrained, easy-going, friendly or intimate nature. It is most often characteristic of oral communication, though we can find it in a literary work in the form of a personage’s speech (dialogues).

The literary communication, on the contrary, has the restrained, official and formal nature and is most often (but not always) materialized in the written form. It is not homogenous and proceeding from its function or purpose, is represented by different functional styles (according to I. Galperin a functional style is a system of co-ordinated, interrelated and inter-conditioned language means intended to fulfil a specific function of communication and aiming at a definite effect)

Thus, stylistics is a branch of linguistics that studies the various sub-systems of the language which are called sublanguages or functional styles and the various expressive means and stylistic devices which are aimed at producing necessary effect of the utterance.

Thus the subject matter of stylistics is description of specific features of sublanguages (Functional styles) on the one hand and the study of nature, structure and functioning of stylistic devises on each language level on the other hand. Therefore, whatever level we take (phonetics, morphology, lexicology and syntax) stylistics describes not what is in common use, but what is specific in this or that respect.

The object of Stylistics is a text, as a coherent sequence of signs (words) irrespective of whether it has been recorded on paper or has just remained in our memory.

2. Stylistics and other linguistic disciplines. The main principles of division of stylistics and the main trends in style study.

The main principles of division of stylistics

There is a division of this diverse science into stylistics of language and stylistics of speech, linguistic stylistics and literary stylistics, the author’s stylistics and, decoding stylistics, etc.

Stylistics of language investigates, on the one hand specific character of language subsystems, called functional styles and characterized by peculiarities of vocabulary, phraseology and syntax, and on the other hand – expressive, emotional and evaluative characteristics of different language means. Stylistics of speech studies not only literary works but any speech products.

According to the type of stylistic research we can distinguish literary stylistics and linguistic stylistics. While linguistic stylistics studies

1. functional styles

2. the expressive means of the language, their character and functions,

Literary stylistics is focused on

1. the composition of a literary work

2. various literary genres

3. the writer’s outlook

Special mention should be made of functional stylistics which is a branch of lingua-stylistics that investigates functional styles, i.e. special sublanguages which serve a definite aim of communication such as, scientific, publicist, official and so on. Functional stylistics, dealing with all the subdivisions of the language is the most all-embracing “global” trend in style study.

Decoding stylistics

A comparatively new branch of stylistics is the decoding stylistics. Each act of speech has the performer, or sender of speech and the recipient. The addresser or the author does the act of encoding: the language is being viewed as the code to shape the information into the message. Here we can deal with the author/s stylistics which can be named the stylistics of the encoder. The addressee in this case plays the part of the decoder of the information contained in the message, and the problems of adequate reception of the message without any informational losses, i.e. with adequate decoding are the concern of decoding stylistics.

Thus depending on the approach and the final aim there can be observed several trends in style study, in spite of their differences all types of stylistics consider the same source material for stylistic analysis – sounds, words, phrases, sentences, paragraphs and texts.

Stylistics and other linguistic disciplines.

When we come to inspect the language, we discover that it represents a hierarchy of levels, from the lowest up to the highest. Each level is described as a level discipline: phonetics, morphology, lexicology and syntax.

Of course, stylistics does not fit in here.

Like other linguistic disciplines stylistics deals with the lexical, grammatical, phonetic and phraseological data of the language. However, there is a distinctive difference between the stylistics and other linguistic disciplines. Stylistic does not study or describe separate linguistic levels like phonemes or words or sentences as such, because it is not a level discipline. Stylistics pertains to all the levels, to every level. It studies their stylistic function which is viewed as expressive potential of these language units in conveying the main idea of the utterance.

As we can see from the above, stylistics is closely linked to phonetics, lexicology and grammar due to the common source of study. Besides, it interacts with such discipline as semasiology, a branch of linguistics which investigates and describes meanings. All linguistic units (with the exception of phonemes) have meanings; moreover, all stylistic effects are based on the interplay between different kinds of meaning on different levels. Suffice it to say, that there are numerous types of linguistic meanings attached to linguistic units, such as grammatical, lexical, logical, denotative, connotative, emotive, evaluative, expressive and stylistic.

Stylistics also has to do with onomasiology, the theory of naming dealing with the choice of words when naming or assessing some object or phenomenon. In stylistic analysis we often have to do with a transfer of nominal meaning in a text (antonomasia, metaphor, metonymy, etc.)

Literary stylistics will inevitably overlap with literary theory (theory of images, literary genres, the art of composition, etc.)