- •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).
8. The publicist style.
The publicist style appeared in the middle of the eighteenth century. According to I. Galperin`s, it has three varieties:
the language style of oratory (is an oral variety, but it combines the peculiarities of both written and colloquial speech, because any public speech requires written preparation. Speeches can be on political, social and religious topics),
the language style of essays (has its peculiarities such as 1) brevity of expression; 2)the use of the first person singular; 3) the use of connectives; 4)the frequent use of emotive words;5) the use of similes and sustained metaphors),
the language style of articles in newspapers and journals.
The general aim of this style is to influence public opinion and to convince the reader or listener that the interpretation given by the speaker or writer is the only correct one. The publicist style has much in common with the style of scientific prose and emotive prose. (Its coherent and logical syntactical structure makes it similar to the former. Its emotional appeal achieved by use of stylistic devices brings it closer to the belles-lettres style).
9. The newspaper style
The newspaper style falls into:
the language style of brief news items,
the language style of headlines,
the language style of announcements and advertisements,
the language style of editorials.
The newspaper style was the last to be recognized as a specific form of writing. In fact, all kinds of newspaper writing are both informative and evaluative. Newspapers also try to influence public opinion on political, social and other matters. So, editorials are always evaluative and have much in common with publicist style.
I. Galperin suggested speaking about the language of articles in newspapers and journals as an element of the publicist style because serious journalistic articles contain rare, bookish and learned words as well as neologisms which are difficult for an average reader.
Both the publicist style and the newspaper style are characterized by brevity of expression, which makes them similar to each other. Today many linguists unite the publicist and the newspaper style into one (the media style) and single out its common typical features.
T. Znamenskaya mentions typical features of the media style according to the language level:
Phonetic features (in public speaking): standard pronunciation, wide use of prosody for conveying shades of meaning, phonetic compression.
Morphological features: frequent use of non-finite verb-forms, use of non-perfect verb-forms, omission of articles, link verbs, auxiliaries, pronouns, especially in headlines.
Syntactical features: frequent use of rhetorical questions and interrogatives, use of impersonal sentences, elliptical constructions and infinitive complexes in headlines, use of prepositional phrases, absence of exclamatory sentences.
Lexical features: use of newspaper clichés and set phrases, terminological variety (terms come from science, sports, politics, technology, etc.), abbreviations and acronyms, proper names of all kinds, abstract nouns, bookish words, violated phraseology.
Compositional features: precision, variety of topics, use of quotations, direct and represented speech, parallel constructions, rhyme, graphical expressive means (in headlines), careful subdivision into paragraphs.