Imaginative Prose

The substyle of imaginative prose has the same common features as have been pointed out for the artistic style in general; but all these features are correlated differently in imaginative prose. The imagery is not so rich as it is in poetry; the percentage of words with contextual meaning is not so high as in poetry; the idiosyncrasy of the author is not so clearly discernible. Apart from metre and rhyme, what most of all distinguishes imaginative prose from the poetic style is the combination of the literary variant of the language, both in words and syntax, with the colloquial variant. It would perhaps be more exact to define this as a combination of the spoken and written varieties of the language.

Imaginative prose allows the use of elements from other styles as well. Thus we find elements of the newspaper style (see, for example, Sinclair Lewis’s “It Can’t Happen Here”); the official style (see, for example, the business letters exchanged between two characters in Galsworthy’s novel “The Man of Property”); the style of scientific prose (see excerpts from Cronin’s “The Citadel” where medical language is used).

Drama

The third subdivision of the artistic style is the language of plays. Unlike poetry, which, except for ballads, in essence excludes direct speech and therefore dialogue, and unlike imaginative prose, which is a combination of monologue (the author’s speech) and dialogue (the speech of the characters), the language of plays is entirely dialogue. The author’s speech is almost entirely excluded, except for the playwright’s remarks and stage directions.

But the language of the characters is in no way the exact reproduction of the norms of colloquial language, although the playwright seeks to reproduce actual conversation as far as the norms of the written language will allow.

The language of plays is always stylized, that, is, it strives to retain the modus of literary English, unless the playwright has a particular aim which requires the use of non-literary forms and expressions.

It may be remarked that there is a tendency in modern imaginative prose where dialogue occupies considerable space. In some of the novels it takes up three or four pages running, thus resembling a play.

Publicist Style

Publicist style falls into three varieties, each having its own distinctive features. Unlike other styles, the publicist style has a spoken variety, namely, the oratorical substyle. The other two substyles are the essay (moral, philosophical, literary) and articles (political, social, economic) in newspapers, journals and magazines. Book reviews in journals, newspapers and magazines and also pamphlets are generally included among essays.

The general aim of publicist style is to convince the reader or the listener that the interpretation given by the writer or the speaker is the only correct one and to cause him to accept the point of view expressed in the speech, essay or article not merely through logical argumentation, but through emotional appeal as well. Due to its characteristic combination of logical argumentation and emotional appeal, publicist style has features common with the style of scientific prose, on the one hand, and that of imaginative prose, on the other. Its coherent and logical syntactical structure, with an expanded system of connectives and its careful paragraphing, makes it similar to scientific prose. Its emotional appeal is generally achieved by the use of words with emotive meaning, the use of imagery and other stylistic devices as in imaginative prose; but the stylistic devices used in publicist style are not fresh or genuine.

The manner of presenting ideas, however, brings this style closer to that of artistic, in this case to imaginative prose, as it is to a certain extent individual. Essays and speeches have greater individuality than newspaper or magazine articles where the individual element is generally toned down and limited by the requirements of the style.

Further, publicist style is characterized by brevity of expression. In some varieties of this style it becomes a leading feature, an important linguistic means. In essays brevity sometimes becomes epigrammatic.

The most general distinguishing features of publicist style and its subdivisions are laid down here. We will outline only the most obvious subdivisions: oratory, essays and articles.

Oratorical substyle

The oratorical substyle of language is the oral subdivision of the publicist style. It has already been pointed out that persuasion is the most obvious purpose of oratory.

Direct contact with the listeners permits a combination of the syntactical, lexical and phonetic peculiarities of both the written and spoken varieties of language. In its leading features, however, oratorical substyle belongs to the written variety of language, though it is modified by the oral form of the utterance and the use of gestures. Certain typical features of the spoken variety of speech present in this substyle are: direct address to the audience (ladies and gentlemen, honourable member(s), the use of the 2nd person pronoun you, etc), sometimes contractions (I’ll, won’t, haven’t, isn’t and others) and the use of colloquial words.

The stylistic devices employed in oratorical substyle are determined by the conditions of communication. If the desire of the speaker is to rouse the audience and to keep it in suspense, he will use various traditional stylistic devices.

Repetition can be regarded as the most typical stylistic device of English oratorical style. Almost any piece of oratory will have parallel constructions, antithesis, suspense, climax, rhetorical questions and questions-in-the-narrative.

The desire of the speaker to convince and to rouse his audience results in the use of simile and metaphor, but these are generally tradition­al ones, as fresh and genuine stylistic devices may divert the attention of the listeners away from the main point of the speech. Besides, unexpected and original images are more difficult to grasp and the process takes time. Allusions in oratorical substyle depend on the content of the speech and the level of the audience.

The Essay

The essay is a literary composition of moderate length on philosophical, social, aesthetic or literary subjects. Personality in the treatment of theme and naturalness of expression are two of the most obvious characteristics of the essay. This literary genre has definite linguistic traits which shape it as a variety of publicist style.

The most characteristic language features of the essay are the following: 1) brevity of expression, 2) the use of the first person singular, which justifies a personal approach to the problems treated, 3) a rather expanded use of connectives, which facilitate the process of grasping the correlation of ideas, 4) the abundant use of emotive words, 5) the use of similes and sustained metaphors as one of media for the cognitive process.

Some essays, depending on the writer’s individuality, are written in a highly emotional manner resembling the style of imaginative prose, others resemble scientific prose.

Articles

Irrespective of the character of the magazine and the divergence of subject matter – whether it is political, literary, popular-scientific or satirical – all the already mentioned features of publicist style are to be found in any article. The character of the magazine as well as the subject chosen affects the choice and use of stylistic devices. Words of emotive meaning, for example, are few, if any, in popular scientific articles. Their exposition is more consistent and the system of connectives more expanded than, say, in a satirical article.

The language of political magazine articles differs little from that of newspaper articles. But such elements of the publicist style as rare and bookish words, neologisms, traditional word combinations and parenthesis are more frequent here than in newspaper articles.

The headline is a dependent form of an article. The specific functional and linguistic traits of the headline provide sufficient ground for isolating and analysing it as a specific “genre” of journalism. The main function of the headline is to inform the reader briefly of what the text that follows is about.