30- 36

“Functional style is a system of linguistic means peculiar of certain sphere of communication”. (Ю.М.Скребнев)

According to I.R.Galperin: Functional Style is a system of interrelated language means serving a definite aim in communication.

Table 12

Functional Styles (Y.M.Screbnev)

Formal           Informal

Publicist

Scientific

Familiar colloquial

Literary colloquial

Official

Oratory

low colloquial

Newspaper

Table 13

I.V. Arnold

Styles Functions	Commu-nicative	Volun- tative	Emotive	Phatic	Aesthetic
Oratory Colloquial Poetic Publicist and newspaper Official Scientific	+ + + + + +	+ + - + + -	+ + + + - -	+ + - - - -	+ - + - - -

Stylistic functions:

1. Communicative – i.e. communicating some primary information

The former method allows direct interpretation.

2. Voluntative (conative) – expressing one’s intention, urging people to some kind of action. Ex.: “Inform us of your intentions!”

3. Phatic – attracting smb’s attention to make the situation natural “I say, you know that …”

4. Aesthetic – appealing to people’s heart, deriving the effect of beauty and emotional response. “Tired with all these, for restful death I cry!”

Functional Styles (I.R.G.)

Table 14

Style of Official Documents

Scientific

Newspaper

Publicist

Belles

Letters

 

Lg. of Poetry

Lg. of Drama

Lg. of Emotive Prose

Classification of Functional Styles of the English Language

(I.R.Galperin)

1. The Belles-Lettres Functional Style.

a) Poetry; b) Emotive prose; c) Drama;

2. Publicistic Functional Style,

a) oratory; b) essays; c) articles in newspapers and magazines;

3. The Newspaper Functional Style.

a) Brief news items; b) Advertisements and announcements; c) Headlines;

4. The Scientific Prose Style.

a) Exact sciences; b) Humanitarian sciences; c) Popular- science prose;

5. The Official Documents Functional Style.

a) Diplomatic documents; b) Business letters; c) Military documents; d) Legal documents;

Informal functional styles:

1. Literary Colloquial;

2. Familiar Colloquial;

3. Low Colloquial.

Characteristic features:

1. Economy of expression;

2. Redundancy of language means;

3. Dialogical unity:

o Question – answer unity; “When do you begin? – Tomorrow.”

o Anadiplosis unity; “So you would naturally say … - And mean?”

o Repetition unity; “There’s so much talk of suicide,” he said. – James’ jaw dropped. - “Suicide! What should he do that for?”

o Parallelism unity; “Well, Mr. Desert, do you find reality in politics?” – “Do you find reality in anything?”

Lexical characteristic features:

1. Shortened words, contracted forms of auxiliaries, ellipsis;

2. Intensifiers (awfully, terribly, terrifically)

3. Emotionally colored words; Dear, sweet, old Charlie, duckie. Wasn’t she beautiful! Dear me! Well! Why! There!

4. Time – fillers (as a matter of fact, in fact, well!, to tell you the truth)

5. Words of the most general character (thing, lot …)

6. Occasional words, neologisms. “To think that I should have lived to be good-morninged by Belladonna Took’s son!” (A.T.)

7. Slang, jargon. “Oh, but wasn’t T.D. stewed! Say, he was simply ossified! What did Gladys say to him?”