3. The key notions of stylistics of the English language

Speaking about the basic notions or terms of stylistics, it is necessary to mention 

• the norm, 

• the stylistic function, 

• the functional style, 

• the text, 

• expressive means and stylistic devices 

• Varieties of language.

The problem of the norm and stylistic coloring is one of the most vital problems of stylistics. In some linguists` opinion, style should be considered as a deviation from the norm. Each writer or speaker can have their own peculiarities of speech or use special devices in texts, but there always should be a recognized or received standard.Thus, the norms of the spoken and written language differ from each other. Some authors are opposed to the use of the term «norm».

• M. Halliday and some other foreign scholars state that there is no norm 

• A. Darbyshire also says that there is no such thing as the norm, that norm is a linguistic abstraction, an idea which exists only in linguists` minds 

• I. Galperin suggests speaking about the norm as an invariant which should embrace all variants with their most typical properties. Each style of language then will have its own invariant and variants 

Another question that arises in this connection is «What should be supposed a deviation from the norm»?

• I. Galperin says that a deviation cannot be regular. Regular deviations automatically become variants of the norm

• Y. Skrebnev states that there are as many norms as sublanguages. What is normal for a Cockney or a farmer somewhere in the heart of the country is not normal for a university lecturer 

• T. Znamenskaya says that what is traditionally called the norm should be called neutrality and the elements which are not neutral should be treated as stylistically coloured. In its turn stylistic coloring is «nothing but the knowledge where, in what particular type of communication, the unit in question is current» 

I. Galperin gives the final definition of the norm: the norm is the invariant of the phonemic, morphological, lexical and syntactical patterns circulating in language in action at a given period of time 

Stylistics studies the stylistic function   of linguistic units and is interested in their expressive potential. The lexical meaning of a word is subdivided into denotative and connotative meanings. Connotative meaning is connected with extra-linguistic circumstances (the situation of communication and the participants of communication). 

There are four components of the connotative meaning: 

• emotive (express feelings and emotions)

• evaluative (shows the speaker's attitude to the object of speech)

• expressive (increases or decreases the expressiveness of the message)

• stylistic (is realized if a word belongs to a certain functional style or a specific layer of the vocabulary)

The problem of the functional style consists in the difficulty of defining the phenomenon itself. The notion of the functional style is closely connected with the notions «genre», «text» «register» etc. 

I. Galperin gives a traditional definition of the functional style:

«A functional style is a system of interrelated language means, which serves a definite aim in communication» 

According to I. Galperin, the actual situation of communication has evolved into two varieties of language-the spoken and the written.

• The spoken variety is used in the presence of an interlocutor. It is realized in the form of a dialogue, then written in the form of a monologue. 

• The written language is more explanatory. The spoken variety can be observed in literary texts, but it is always stylized 

D. Crystal speaks about regional, social and occupational variations, which respectively help to identify the speakers` origin, their social group and profession

Foreign scholars also prefer to speak about registers, which are defined as «differences in language choices that correlate with the subject of discussion, the audience, the genre, the occasion and the purpose or the medium of communication»

There are different terms to denote particular means by which utterances are made more conspicuous and import some additional information. They are called expressive means and stylistic devices, tropes, figures of speech.

The term Tropes (from Greek tropos- phrase with transferred meaning) is an ancient one. Nowadays all the above-mentioned terms are used as synonyms, though sometimes they say that only metaphor and metonymy are real tropes as only their transference of meaning is observed.

•  «Expressive means are those phonetic, morphological, word-building, lexical, phraseological and syntactical forms which exist in language as a system for the purpose of logical or emotional investigation of the utterance» 

• «A stylistic device is a conscious and intentional intensification of some typical semantic or structural property of a language unit» 

• I. Galperin`s definition is «the text is a complete message, represented as a written document, literary formed according to the type of the document, consisting of special unities, linked grammatically, lexically and logically, and possessing a certain modality and communicative intention»

КРАТКО (ВЫВОД)

To sum up, it is possible to say that «Stylistics is a branch of linguistics, which covers the sphere of special features of linguistic system, functional styles, the structure and functioning of texts, author's intention and the impact of the text on the reader»