- •The problem of style and stylistics
- •I. Galperin thinks that stylistics deals with two independent tasks:
- •2. Types of stylistic research and branches of stylistics
- •3. The key notions of stylistics of the English language
- •Varieties of language.
- •4. The general problems of the functional style study
- •Unprepared speech of everyday communication;
- •The style of public speech.
- •5. The history of the functional style study
- •6. The language of fiction (the belles-lettres style)
- •7. The language of poetry, emotive prose, drama.
- •8. The publicist style.
- •9. The newspaper style
- •10. The style of scientific prose
- •11. The composition of a scientific text.
- •In addition to what has been mentioned we should distinguish the following typical features of the style at the language levels:
- •12. The style of popular scientific prose.
- •13. The style of official documents has four varieties:
- •14. The principles of classification of the vocabulary of a language.
- •15. Neutral, common literary and common colloquial vocabulary.
- •16. Special literary vocabulary
- •17. Special colloquial vocabulary
- •Vulgarisms
- •18. The idea of expressive means and stylistic devices
- •20. Lexical and lexical-syntactic expressive means and stylistic devices (allegory, metaphor, personification, zeugma).
- •22. Lexical and lexical-syntactic expressive means and stylistic devices (epithet, oxymoron, simile).
- •24. Lexical and lexical-syntactic expressive means and stylistic devices (cliches, proverbs and sayings, quotation, allusion).
- •26. Syntactic expressive means and stylistic devices (repetition (all kinds), enumeration, climax, anticlimax).
- •27. Syntactic expressive means and stylistic devices (suspense, antithesis, asyndeton, polysyndeton, gap-sentence link).
- •28. Syntactic expressive means and stylistic devices (ellipsis, aposiopesis, question-in-the narrative, represented speech).
- •29. Transposition ( the noun, the article)
- •30. Transposition (the pronoun, the adjective).
11. The composition of a scientific text.
The most typical example of a scientific text is a scientific article. It has a definite structure which is strictly observed:
Introduction (contains practically all the means typical of the whole text. It in itself should contain information about the present situation of the problem. It should explain what has been and has not been done in this sphere. In this part the following words can be used and phenomena disclosed: theory, experiment, treatment, investigation, study, work, task, method, technique, way, pattern, manner, feature, problem, advances, tendency, effect, interest, aim, point. ),
Methods and Procedures,
Results,
Discussion,
Summary,
Conclusions.
References are an inalienable part of a scientific article. They are often introduced after such time signals as: recently, recent, lately, of late and show what research has been carried in the field. In more complicated texts concretization can be led with help of synonyms.
In natural sciences some general statements can be expressed with the help of words e.g., many things can be explained by simple enumeration of facts or phenomena.
On the whole scientific texts are characterized by predictability of their structure and language means used there.
In addition to what has been mentioned we should distinguish the following typical features of the style at the language levels:
Morphological features: terminological word building, restricted use of finite verb forms, use of the author`s «we» «I», frequent use of impersonal constructions and the passive voice.
Syntactical features: syntactical precision to ensure the logical sequence of argumentation, direct word order, lengthy complex sentences with several subordinate clauses, extensive use of non-finite verb-forms and constructions with them, adverbial forms and prepositional phrases, use of prepositional attributive groups instead of descriptive of-phrases, avoidance of ellipsis, prevalence of nominal constructions over verbal ones.
Lexical features: extensive use of bookish words, academic terminology and phraseology, neologisms, proper names, absence or rare use of stylistic devices.
Compositional features: dependence on the genre, logical and consistent narration, frequent use of references and quotations, use of digressions to prove the point, definite structural arrangement, special set of connectives.
12. The style of popular scientific prose.
The style of popular scientific prose is traditionally considered as a variant of the style of scientific prose. At the same time it has many peculiarities.
Thus, on the whole its task is to popularize science and to make some purely scientific facts more understandable for wider circles.
Not all scientific themes can be represented in a popular manner that is why the number of themes this style deals with is restricted.
Such texts normally introduce ready results, not the process of research, so many logical proofs and explanations are omitted.
At last, the writer uses fewer specific terms to make the reader interested in what they read.
Colloquial words and phrases are often found in these texts. (E.g. Lizards make up the only group of backboned animals in which some have large strong legs and others have no legs at all. Hardest of all to believe is the existence of well-legged species whose closest relatives are legless or nearly so. Imagine that if you can!)
Another typical feature of the style of popular scientific prose is the use of images, expressive means and stylistic devices (Metaphors, metonymies, epithets are widely found in such texts.).
Both colloquialisms and expressive means are often used to show the writer's attitude to what they are speaking about. The evaluative aspect practically always can be observed in popular scientific prose texts.
One of the most typical patterns of the organization of the text in scientific prose is syntactic parallelism.
There are borderline genres which combine features of different styles, both humanitarian and belonging to natural science. They cannot be characterized as belonging to this or that definite style. Their language means are interesting to study. Here belong literary essays, writers` journals, documentary novels, popular fiction, literary criticism. The latter is not studied yet at all.