1. Stylistics as a branch of general linguistics. The subject, object and tasks of stylistics

As for stylistics, it is rather complicated to find out its subject. Stylistics has been studied as a branch of linguistics for only a few decades. The term stylistics has come into existence not so long ago. However, the problems of stylistics go back to ancient rhetoric and poetics.

First of all, stylistics deals with style. Scholars have different approaches to the definition of style. Victor Vinogradov (Виктор Владимирович Виноградов; 31 декабря 1894 (12 января 1895), Зарайск — 4 октября 1969, Москва) defines style as socially recognized and functionally conditioned internally united totality of the way of using, selecting and combining the means of lingual intercourse in the sphere of one language or another.

Another definition offered by Ilya Galperin (Илья Романович Гальперин; 1905, Симферополь — 1984) in one of his textbooks describes style as a system of interrelated language means which serve a definite aim of communication.

Another definition was suggested by Yuri Skrebnev (Юрий Максимович Скребнев; 8 июля 1922, Ишим, Тюменская область – 1993). In his book he states that style is what (different language means) differentiates a group of homogenous texts from all other groups of texts.

Thus, style is the subject-matter of stylistics, and it may be defined as a set of specific features which differentiate one text type from another.

Stylistics studies the principals, the effect of choice and usage of different language elements in rendering thoughts and emotions under different conditions of communication.

According to Galperin, stylistics deals with a lot of issues (fields of investigation, objects). He emphasizes that one of them can’t be singled out. They are:

1. The esthetic function of language. By this we mean an inherent part of works of art (for example, poetry). But the esthetic function of language leaves out works of science, diplomatic and commercial correspondence, technical instructions and many other types of text.

2. Expressive means of language. They are employed in spheres of speech aimed to express. There are also fiction, oratory and, to some extent, newspaper style.

3. Stylistic devices. They can be found in any style, forming a combination of features peculiar to it.

Stylistic devices are abstract patterns, but expressive means are concrete facts that exist in the language. Stylistic devices exist only in speech. The result can be seen in a text.

4. Synonymous ways of rendering one and the same idea. They exist due to the possibility of choice, the possibility of using different words in analogous situations in which styles are formed.

5. Splitting of the literary language into different systems - functional styles. The term functional style is traditional for the Russian language. In English literature they are called registers. A functional style is a variety of language which is singled out on the basis of a definite aim of communication.

6. The individual manner of an author in making use of a language.

So, we can say that each of the characteristics contains just some information on style and stylistics. But none of them taken in isolation is totally acceptable. Thus, the object of stylistics is multidimensional. It includes all of the characteristics mentioned above. The aim of stylistics is to study and investigate the object in its totality.

2. Branches of stylistics

Literary stylistics and lingvo-stylistcs are separate branches, although they are considered together, because they have the common object of research, i. e. the literary language from the point of view of its variability. Another common object is the idiolect of the writer. Idiolect is the individual manner of speaking and writing. But, of course, in some ways they are different. Lingvo-stylistics studies functional styles (both synchronically and diachronically) and the systematic character and functions of stylistic devices and expressive means. Literary stylistics studies the composition of works of art, different literary genres and the writer’s message.

Comparative stylistics studies the stylistic resources at the crossroads of languages or literatures. It’s closely connected with the theory of translation.

Decoding stylistics is a new branch of linguistics, traces of which can be found in the works of Lev Scherba (Лев Владимирович Щерба; 20 февраля (3 марта) 1880, Игумен, Минская губерния — 26 декабря 1944, Москва) and Roman Jakobson (Роман Осипович Якобсон; 28 сентября (10 октября) 1896, Москва — 18 июля 1982, Кембридж, Массачусетс, США). Irina Arnold (Ирина Владимировна Арнольд; 7 августа 1908, Санкт-Петербург — 22 мая 2010, Санкт-Петербург) made a great input into this theory. It is connected with the information theory.

The author’s stylistics may be named the stylistics of encoder. The language is viewed as a code to shape the information into a message, and the supplier is the writer. The reader (addressee) is the decoder of information contained in the message. Analyzing the text from the encoder’s point of view, we should consider epoch, historical situation, the personal, political, social and esthetic views of the encoder. When treating the text from the decoder’s point of view, we shall have to get maximum information from the text itself.

So, decoding stylistics deals with the problems connected with the adequate reception of the message without any informational losses or deformations.

Functional stylistics focuses its attention on a certain functional style or on the comparison of some of them.

Stylistic phonetics, or phonostylistcs, studies style-forming phonetic features of the text. For example, reduction is common of the colloquial speech. Stylistic lexicology studies the semantic structure of the word and the interrelation of the connotative and denotative meanings of the word and interrelation of the stylistic connotations of the word and the context.

Stylistic grammar is divided into morphology and syntax. Stylistic morphology studies stylistic potentials of specific grammatical forms and categories. If we take the category of aspect, for example, we can see that the usage of the continuous aspect instead of the simple one makes the sentence stylistically colored (You constantly forget your keys – You’re constantly forgetting your keys). Stylistic syntax deals with the expressive order of words, types of syntactic links and figures of speech (syntactical stylistic devices).

Stylistic semasiology studies the semantics of language units in different sublanguages.

Stylistic onomasiology, or the meaning theory, studies the choice of words, phrases and sentences used to characterize a certain object in the text.

Thus, we may see that stylistics is closely connected with other linguistic disciplines due to the common study source