1. General notes on style and stylistics

General notes on style and stylistics Stylistics - is a branch of linguistics, which studies the principles, effect of choice and usage of different language elements in rendering thought and emotion under different conditions of communication

Style – "socially recognized and functionally conditioned internally united totality of the ways of using, selecting and combining the means of lingual intercourse in some national language". (V.V.Vinogradov)

- "a system of interrelated language means which serves a definite aim in communication". (I.R.Galperin)

· "specific features of text type (what differentiates a group of homogeneous texts) or of a specific text (an individual text) " (Y.M.Skrebnev)

Fields of investigation

1. the aesthetic function of the language (poetry and imaginative prose);

2. expressive means of the language (poetry, fiction, oratory, informal intercourse);

3. synonymous ways of rendering one and the same idea (change of wording = change in meaning. Ex: "the old man is dead" - "The gentleman well advanced in years attained the termination of his terrestrial existence" - "the ole bean he kicked the bucket");

Types of stylistic research and branches of stylistics Literary and linguistic stylistics

Both study the common ground of:

· variability of the literary language;

· the idiolect (individual speech) of the writer;

· specific laws of poetic speech.

Literary and linguistic stylistics

Literary stylistics:

· the composition of the work of art;

· literary genres;

· the writer's outlook

Lingua-stylistics:

· functional styles

· linguistic nature of expressive means

Types of stylistic research and branches of stylistics

· Comparative stylistics - contrastive study of more than one language.

· Decoding stylistics

· Each act of speech = a performer / sender + recipient

· The author does ENCODING (epoch, historical situation, personal, political views).

· The reader DECODES (interpretation).

Types of stylistic research and branches of stylistics

· Functional stylistics (the branch of lingua-stylistics) = deals with functional styles.

· Stylistic lexicology - semantic structure of the word and the interplay of connotativa and denotative meaning of the word in context.

· Stylistic grammar :

Stylistic morphology -stylistic potential of the specific grammatical forms and categories

Stylistic syntax - syntactic links, the order of words and etc.

Stylistics and other linguistic disciplines

· Stylistics and phonetics: Phonetics studies sounds, articulation, rhythmic and intonation. Stylistics concentrates on expressive sound combinations, intonational and rhythmic patterns.

· Stylistics and lexicology: Lexicology describes words, their origin, development, semantic and structural features. Stylistics also deals with words, but only those which are expressive in language or in speech. Stylistics and grammar: Grammar describes regularities of building words, word-combinations, sentences and texts. Stylistics restricts itself to those grammar regularities, which make language units expressive.

· Semasiology - the theory of sign, meaning.

· Psycholinguistics - mechanisms of speech production, process of word choice, structures, intonation

· Rhetorics - correctness, beauty and effectiveness of speech production

· Onomasiology (onomatology) - the theory of naming

2. Expressive means and stylistic devices The expressive means of a language are those phonetic, morphological, word-building, lexical, phraseological and syntactical forms which exist in language-as-a-system for the purpose of logical and / or emotional intensification of the utterance.

The expressive means of a language can be found on all levels:​

• Phonetic (vocal pitch, pauses, staccato pronunciation)​

• Morphological (diminutive suffixes: e.g. girlie, piggy, doggy; author’s nonce words: e.g. He glasnosted his love affair with this movie star)​

• Lexical (intensifiers : awfully, terribly, absolutely)​

• Grammatical (e.g. I do know you! I’m very angry with that dog of yours!)​