2. EXPRESSIVE MEANS AND STYLISTIC DEVICES

The main notions of stylistics are stylistic devices and expressive means.

A Stylistic device is an arrangement of units used to achieve an expressive or an image-creating effect. Stylistic devices serve to describe some event, person, fact, etc. and they are mainly lexical. To the group of stylistic devices belong the following types of a transferred use of the words and word phrases such as metaphor, metonymy, hyperbole, irony, etc.

Expressive means do not create images. They serve to strengthen the emotionality of the speech with the help of special syntactic devices such as inversion, rhetorical question, parallel constructions, etc.

The use of stylistic devices gives an auxiliary meaning, idea, or feeling to the literal or written. At each level of the language, we can distinguish different stylistic devices; they are phonetic, lexical, and syntactic devices.

3. FUNCTIONAL STYLES OF SPEECH

Academician V. Vinogradov described the following styles of speech in respect to their functions.

1)colloquial style which serves the function of communication;

2)official and scientific styles which serve the function of informing;

3)publicist and belles-lettres styles which serve the function of producing emotional effect.

Every style of speech gives us additional information about the conditions and peculiarities of communication. The choice of style depends either on relations between the participants of communication, either on a particular attitude of the speaker to what he says. These two types of stylistic information will be used as the basis for the classification of styles.

From this point of view, functional styles express the first type of information, that is the relations between the interlocutors. In some situations these relations maybe friendly, easy-going. In this case the speaker chooses the so-called informal style of speech (the colloquial style).

Colloquial style is characteristic of direct communication while other styles are characteristic of indirect communication. Direct communication means that the listener is present during the speech. Indirect communication

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means that no listener is present during speech. Indirect communication refers to bookish styles (official, scientific, publicist).

The colloquial style is the style of informal, friendly oral communication. The vocabulary of colloquial style is usually lower than that of the formal or neutral styles and is often emotionally coloured. These phrases are typical to colloquial style. For example: so-so means “not especially good”; No problem! means “this can easily be done”; What’s up? means “what has happened?”, etc.

Colloquial speech is also characterized by the preferable use of simple sentences and the absence of conjunctions between the parts of composite sentences.

When the relations between the speakers are restrained, strictly official, they can choose the so-called formal style, which is generally characteristic of written language. It is used in the genre of official or business documents, scientific or published works. These genres, in their turn, maybe further subdivided into more particular varieties of genres. The official documents, for example, maybe subdivided into instruction, report, application, resolution, etc.

QUESTIONS TO LECTURE #1

1.What is the origin of the word “style”?

2.How do you explain the meaning of the word “style’ for different spheres of application?

3.What is the concept of style in stylistics?

4.What does stylistics as a branch of linguistics deal with?

5.What are the three sub-systems of the language distinguished by Professor Yu. Skrebnev?

7.What are the two characteristics of any linguistic unit?

8.What are the expressive means of the language?

9.What do we call stylistic devices?

10.What are the styles of speech described by Academician V. Vinogradov in respect to their functions?

11.What are the characteristic features of colloquial speech?

12.What are the main features of the formal speech and where is it used?

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EXERCISES TO LECTURE #1

Exercise 1. Give your own examples of neutral, sub-standard and super-standard types of sentences with the same general meaning.

Exercise 2. Match the official style verbs in the left column with their informal meanings from the right column.

Lecture #2

STYLISTIC CLASSIFICATION

OF THE ENGLISH VOCABULARY

1.STYLISTICALLY-NEUTRAL WORDS

2.STYLISTICALLY-COLOURED WORDS:

The words that constitute the vocabulary of the English language appear in speech with a different extent of regularity. Some words occur more frequently because they are indispensable part of speech while other words are used only in some special spheres. As well as the language can be subdivided into three subsystems the vocabulary of the language can be subdivided into three groups accordingly: neutral, sub-neutral and superneutral.

1. STYLISTICALLY-NEUTRAL WORDS

Stylistically-neutral words are also called the basic vocabulary of the language. They can be used in all kinds of situations, both formal, and informal, in speech and in writing. They denote objects and phenomena of everyday importance (e.g. house, milk, dog, cat, to walk, to run, and etc.). Their meanings are broad, general, and bear no additional information.

CONTRACT

a formal agreement between two or more parties or a document that states the terms of such an agreement;

synonyms : agreement, treaty, convention

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