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.