9. Shennon’s theory of information

The theory of information makes use of such terms as: information, message, code, communication, channel, to encode, to decode, feedback.

Shannon spoke about the chain of communication:

objective reality > transmitter/encoder > message/text > receiver/ decoder > objective reality (surrounding the addressee).

Shannon's idea was interpreted for the purposes of linguistics in general and stylistic analysis in particular. Literature is a social phenomenon and it controls the reader's perception of reality and his activities in real life. Shannon's chain can look the following way:

social reality (surrounding the writer) > writer (encoder) > literary work > reader (decoder) > social reality (surrounding the reader).

11. Basic notions of stylistics: style, individual style, functional style, norm

Stylistlcs is a branch of linguistics which investigates the entire system of expressive resources available in a particular language.

The main notion of stylistics is that of style. We speak of style in architecture, painting, clothes, behaviour, and work and so on. Thus style in its most general sense is a specific characteristic of human activity arising as a result of choice, within the accepted norms, of a definite mode or manner of conducting this activity.

STYLE (Galperin) - a set of characteristics by which we distinguish one author from another or members of one subclass from members of other subclasses, all of which are members of the same general class. In this respect one more definition of style connected with the individuality of the author can be presented.

Individual style of a writer is a unique combination of language units, EMs and SDs peculiar to a given author, which makes the writer's works or even utterances easily recognizable

So, style denotes the collective characteristics of writing, diction or any artistic expression and the way of presenting things, depending upon the general outlook proper to a person, a literary school, a trend, a period or a genre.

Functional style of a language may be defined as a system of interrelated language means which serves a definite aim in communication. The main idea of the functional approach is the distinction between the language (as a symbolic system) and the speech (as the very process of discourse generation).

Hence, the style of a text is determined mainly by the communication context. Five functional styles are usually singled out, such as official style, scientific style, publicist style, colloquial style, and literary style.

NORM - the invariant of the phonetic, morphological, lexical and syntactical patterns circulating in language-in-action at a given period of time. //prescribed rules of using a language//

Quite a number of scholars consider style to be a deviation from the lingual norm.

Each functional style of a language is marked by a specific use of language means, thus establishing its own norms, which are subordinated to the norm-invariant.