1. The object of Stylistics and its key definitions: language, speech, text, sublanguage, register, style.

Stylistics is the study and interpretation of texts from a linguistic perspective. As a discipline it links literary criticism and linguistics, but has no autonomous domain of its own. The preferred object of stylistic studies is literature, but not exclusively "high literature" but also other forms of written texts such as text from the domains of advertising, pop culture, politics or religion.

Stylistics also attempts to establish principles capable of explaining the particular choices made by individuals and social groups in their use of language, such as socialisation, the production and reception of meaning, critical discourse analysis and literary criticism.

Language may refer either to the specifically human capacity for acquiring and using complex systems of communication, or to a specific instance of such a system of complex communication. The word "language" has at least two basic meanings: language as a general concept, and "a language" (a specific linguistic system, e.g. "French"). In French, the language used by Ferdinand de Saussure who first explicitly formulated the distinction, uses the word langage for language as a concept and langue as the specific instance of language.[2]

Speech is the vocalized form of human communication. It is based upon the syntactic combination of lexicals and names that are drawn from very large (usually to about 10,000 different words) vocabularies. Each spoken word is created out of the phonetic combination of a limited set of vowel and consonant speech sound units.

A text, within literary theory, is a coherent set of symbols that transmits some kind of informative message.[citation needed] This set of symbols is considered in terms of the informative message's content, rather than in terms of its physical form or the medium in which it is represented. In the most basic terms established by structuralist criticism, therefore, a "text" is any object that can be "read," whether this object is a work of literature, a street sign, an arrangement of buildings on a city block, or styles of clothing.

Sublanguage is a subvariety of language used in a particular field or by a particular social group and characterized especially by distinctive vocabulary.

A register is a variety of a language used for a particular purpose or in a particular social setting. For example, when speaking in a formal setting an English speaker may be more likely to adhere more closely to prescribed grammar, pronounce words ending in -ing with a velar nasal instead of an alveolar nasal (e.g. "walking", not "walkin'"), choose more formal words (e.g. father vs. dad, child vs. kid, etc.), and refrain from using the word ain't than when speaking in an informal setting.

Style is a set of linguistic variants to which specific social meanings are attributed. In this context, social meanings can include group membership, personal attributes, beliefs, etc. Linguistic variation is at the heart of the concept of linguistic style — without the existence of variation there would be no basis for distinguishing social meanings. Variation can occur syntactically, lexically, and phonologically.

2. Stylistic colouring and stylistic neutrality. Neutrality and norm. Stylistics and other linguistic disciplines. Branches of Stylistics. Paradigmatic and syntagmatic stylistics - stylistics of units and stylistics of sequences.

Speaking of the notion of style and stylistic colouring we cannot avoid the problem of the norm and neutrality and stylistic colouring in contrast to it. Most scholars abroad and in this country giving definitions of style come to the conclusion that style may be defined as deviation from the lingual norm. It means that what is stylistically conspicuous, stylistically relevant or stylistically coloured is a departure from the norm of a given national language. There are authors who object to the use of the word «norm» for various reasons. Thus Y. M. Skrebnev argues that since we acknowledge the existence of a variety of sublanguages within a national language we should also acknowledge that each of them has a norm of its own. Skrebnev claims there are as many norms as there are sublanguages. Each language is subject to its own norm. To reject this would mean admitting abnormality of everything that is not neutral. Only ABC-books and texts for foreigners would be considered «normal». Everything that has style, everything that demonstrates peculiarities of whatever kind would be considered abnormal. Thus we observe an opposition of stylistically coloured specific elements to stylistically neutral non-specific elements. The stylistic colouring is nothing but the knowledge where, in what particular type of communication, the unit in question is current. Stylistically coloured words are limited to specific conditions of communication. If you isolate a stylistically coloured word it will still preserve its label or «trade-mark» and have the flavour of poetic or artistic colouring. You're sure to recognise words like decease, attire, decline (a proposal) as bookish and distinguish die, clothes, refuse as neutral while such units as snuff it, rags (togs), turn down will immediately strike you as colloquial or informal.

Branches of stylistics: - Lexical stylistics – studies functions of direct and figurative meanings, also the way contextual meaning of a word is realized in the text. LS deals with various types of connotations – expressive, evaluative, emotive; neologisms, dialectal words and their behavior in the text. - Grammatical stylistics – is subdivided into morphological and syntactical. MS views stylistic potential of grammatical categories of different parts of speech. SS studies syntactic, expressive means, word order and word combinations, different types of sentences and types of syntactic connections. Also deals with origin of the text, its division on the paragraphs, dialogs, direct and indirect speech, the connection of the sentences, types of sentences. Phonostylistics – phonetical organization of prose and poetic texts. Here are included rhythm, rhythmical structure, rhyme, alliteration, assonance and correlation of the sound form and meaning. Also studies deviation in normative pronunciation. Functional S (s. of decoding) – deals with all subdivisions of the language and its possible use (newspaper, colloquial style). - stylistics of encoding - The shape of the information (message) is coded and the addressee plays the part of decoder of the information contained in message.