1. Unprepared speech of everyday communication;

2. The style of public speech.

The styles of the 1^st group are called colloquial styles, of the second group literary bookish styles.

colloquial styles are subdivided into:

• a)   literary colloquial;

• b)   familiar colloquial;

• c)   common colloquial.

bookish styles include:

• a)   scientific;

• b)   documentary;

• c)   publicist or newspaper;

• d)   oratory;

• e)   poetic.

In his turn Y. Skrebnev singles out:

1)   literary or bookish style:

• a) publicist style;

• b) scientific style

• c) the style of official documents.

2) free or colloquial style:

• a) literary colloquial style;

• b) familiar colloquial style.

 

A. Morokhovsky speaks about:

• 1) official business style;

• 2) scientific professional style;

• 3) publicist style;

• 4) literary colloquial style;

• 5) familiar colloquial style. 

Each functional style deals with its own system of genres. The term «genre» is often used as a synonym to the word’s «style» and «register». «genre» is considered as a distinctive type or category of literary composition.

The traditional or «classical» division of genres includes: epos, poetry (lyrics) and drama. In its turn each kind is subdivided. 

Epos (Greek: narration) can be represented by heroic and didactic poems, novels (full length novels and short tales (повести), short stories, essays etc.

 Lyric poetry (lyre: a Greek musical instrument) expresses the thoughts and feelings of the poet. It can be subdivided into odes, elegies, sonnets etc.

Drama (Greek: something performed) belongs both to literature and theater. It has only one way of characterizing personages: direct speech expressed in dialogues and monologues. The most typical kinds of drama are tragedy, comedy, drama proper, farce etc.

One of the genres especially important in the fiction or belles-lettres style is the genre of novel which is «a story long enough to fill a complete book, in which the characters and events are usually imaginary»

On the whole a literary genre is a combination of smaller literary and non-literary genres. It is a closed structure representing relations between various linguistic means. These means can be divided into 3 groups and have the following functions:

1. to form thematic structure of the text (group includes lexical-semantic groups and semantic fields, which develop themes and motifs, e.g., semantic fields «time», «life» in autobiographical prose or «traveling» in traveler`s notes.);

2. to form the structure of narration and model the communicative situation (contains means which mark the plain of the narrator and oppose him to the other personages);

3. to build the composition of the text (is represented by regular repetitions of different words showing the logic of actions, addresses, dates and so on).