Lecture #8

FUNCTIONAL STYLES OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE

1.STYLE OF OFFICIAL DOCUMENTS

2.SCIENTIFIC PROSE STYLE

3.PUBLICISTIC STYLE

A.Oratory and Speeches

B.The Essay

C.Articles

4.NEWSPAPER STYLE

A.Headlines

B.Advertisements and Announcements

5.BELLES-LETTER STYLE (FICTION)

A.Poetry

B.Emotive Prose

C.The Drama

Every idea can be expressed in different words. Everything depends on the situation. Depending on the situation, the English language developed different functional styles of the bookish language. A functional style is a system of expressive means and vocabulary serving a definite aim of communication. The target for a translator is not only to interpret the main ideas of the text in a different language, but also to keep the style of the text.

1. STYLE OF OFFICIAL DOCUMENTS

The main function of this style is communicative, and it lies in expressing various possible relations between countries, governments, states, parties, and also companies of the state and its citizens.

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There are various official documents like official statements, pacts, treaties, business and commercial correspondence, military orders, instructions, and etc.

The main features of the style of this type of documents are:

1)All words are used in their direct (logical) meaning. The language of documents abounds in cliches, terms and set phrases. They prove to be stable and permanent, some of them are archaic.

2)There are many abbreviations, shortenings and symbols.

3)Each official document is characterized by its compositional patterns. A form of an official document is usually suggestive of its contents. Business letters usually begin with the name, address of the sender, the date, the name and the address of the addressee. Treaties, pacts, statutes, charters are documents of a considerably large size, but they may consist of 2 or 3 sentences with many subordinate clauses, infinitival, gerundial, and participial constructions.

Official documents archaic words:

on behalf of, hereinafter referred to as, in accordance with, in all respects, yours faithfully dreams

abbreviations:

et al., Ltd., CIF, MP

2. SCIENTIFIC PROSE STYLE

The aim of a scientific work is to prove a hypothesis and to describe scientific laws and new phenomena.

The main features of this style are:

1)the obligatory use of terms belonging to a branch of science, all other words are used in their direct meaning to avoid any ambiguity;

2)a complete absence of dialectical and colloquial words;

3)the selective use of pronouns. The first person plural (we) is preferred to the first person singular (I), the second person is hardly ever used at all (you);

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4)a logical sequence of clauses, complex sentences and a developed system of connectives (thus, hence, however, therefore, whereas);

5)passive constructions and impersonal sentences are more favoured than the active constructions (it should be pointed out, it should be assumed).

An abstract is usually required for research publications in scientific journals. An abstract is a condensed version of a longer piece of writing that highlights the major points covered, concisely describes the content and scope of the writing, and reviews the writing's contents in abbreviated form.

As a rule, the main objectives to be reached in an abstract are as follows:

1)tell readers what information the report, article, or paper contains;

2)include the purpose, and methods of the report, article, or paper;

3)provide results, conclusions, or recommendations;

4)be short – from a paragraph to a page or two, depending upon the length of the original work being abstracted; usually informative abstracts are 10% or less of the length of the original piece;

5)allow readers to decide whether they want to read the report, article, or paper.

The first one or two sentences of an abstract should provide a context for the specific study being presented.

A good approach is to briefly describe the larger scientific issues or questions that are motivating scientists to conduct his or her research.

Following a one or two sentence introduction, one should clearly and explicitly state the purpose of the study.

This can be done in a variety of ways, e.g., “The purpose of the study was…” , “This study attempted to answer the following questions… to test the hypothesis…”, “This study focused on the…”, “To better understand the mechanism of…” or “The aim of this study was to…”.

Following the statement of purpose, the general methodological approach should be described (if possible in one or two sentences).

In other words what major techniques did you use to find the results.

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Do not explain the how but rather the what. Major results should also be summarized in one or two sentences.

The abstract should conclude with at final sentence or two in which the significance or ramifications of the findings are briefly stated.

These final sentences should connect the findings with one or more of the larger ideas stated in the opening two sentences.

3. PUBLICISTIC STYLE

Publicistic style exists in two forms: written and oral.

Essays and articles appear in written form; speeches, oratories appear in oral form.

The aim of the publicistic style is to influence the public opinion, to convince readers and listeners of something and make them accept the point of view expressed in the speech, article or essay. This can be reached both by logical argumentation and emotional appeal.

This style is used in public speeches and printed publicist works, which are addressed to a broad audience and devoted to important social and political events, public problems of cultural or moral character. Such communication requires clarity in the presentation of ideas, its aim is to convince the readers/listeners of the truth of the ideas expressed, and at the same time to produce an emotional impact (impression) on the audience. Thus the main features of this style are clear logical argumentation and emotional appeal to the audience. In this way the publicist style has features in common not only with the style of official or scientific works, but also with some elements of emotionally coloured colloquial style, on the other hand. Indeed, in this case the author has no need to make his speech impersonal – on the contrary, he tries to approximate his text to lively communication, as though he were talking to people in direct contact.

Accordingly, the publicist style is characterized by the use of logically connected syntactic structures in their full form, i.e. complete extended sentences connected by conjunctions clearly showing the relations expressed, but at the same time, an emotional impact is achieved by the use of emotionally coloured vocabulary, just as in belles-lettres style and in colloquial style.

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A. Oratory and Speeches

Their aim is to inform and convince the audience to evoke a desired reaction on its part and to stimulate it to some activity. The main features are:

1)the direct address to the audience (ladies & gentlemen, honorable members);

2)the use of contracted forms (I’ll, you’ve, he’s, don’t);

3)the use of the 2d person pronoun “you”;

4)intonations, pronunciation & gestures are of great importance;

5)the vocabulary comprises a great number of formal bookish words and terms;

6)the excessive use of emotionally coloured language, stylistic devices which are mainly trite, not genuine (metaphors, similes, periphrasis, rhetorical questions, repetitions).

B. The Essay

It is a short prose composition on philosophical, aesthetic or literary subject. It is rather a number of comments, without any definite conclusions.

This genre in English literature dates from the 16th century, and its name is taken from the short “Essays” by the French writer Montaigne, which contained his thoughts on various subjects. Nowadays an essay is usually a kind of feature article in a magazine or newspaper. It is characterized by clarity and brevity of expression, by the use of the first person singular, by expanded use of connecting words (to express clearly all the logical relations in the development of thought), and abundant use of emotionally coloured words, of metaphors and other figures of speech.

The style of the essay depends on the author’s individuality. The main features are:

1)moderate length;

2)the use of the 1st person of pronouns;

3)the use of lexical stylistic devices;

4)literary vocabulary;

5)logical argumentation;

6)the use of logical language of scientific fiction together with the emotional language of fiction.

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