стилистика / stylistics

The Subject of Stylistics

The term “stylistics” originated from the Greek word “stylos’ which means “a pen”. In the course of time it developed several meanings; each of them can be applied to a specific study of language elements and their use in speech.

It is well known that any idea can be verbalized in several different ways:

e.g. - Help yourself to another piece of cake.

- Would you like some more cake?

• Can I offer you … , etc.

All the above-given examples have the same subject-matter (proposition), but differ in the manner of expression, which depends on the situational conditions of communication.

It is quite evident how important it is for a philologist to know the mechanics of relations between the non-verbal, extra-linguistic, denotational essence of the communicative act and its verbal, linguistic presentation. That is why many linguists, following their eminent French colleague Charles Bally, claim that Stylistics is the study of synonymic language resources.

Representatives of the celebrated Prague [pra:g/preig] school of Linguistics – V. Mathesius, T. Vachek, J. Havranek and others focused their attention on the appropriate choice of language varieties for their adequate functioning. Thus, Functional Stylistics, a very important trend in style study, deals with sets or paradigms of language units of all levels of language hierarchy, serving to accommodate the needs of certain typified communicative situations. These paradigms are known as Functional Styles (FS) of the language.

In this course we shall follow the understanding of a functional style formulated by Professor Galperin as “a system of coordinated, interrelated and interconditioned language means intended to fulfil a specific function in communication and aiming at a definite (stylistic) effect”.

Most scholars agree that a well-developed language (like English or Russian) can be streamed into several functional styles (usually being 5 in number), but disagree about which of them to include into the classification.

A rather widely accepted classification by professor Galperin singles out the following functional styles:

1. Official style, represented in all kinds of official documents and papers;

2. Scientific (prose) style, found in articles, brochures, monographs and other scientific and academic publications;

3. Publicist style, covering such genres as essay, feature article (очерк), most writings of “new journalism”, public speeches, etc.

4. Newspaper style, observed in the majority of materials published in newspapers;

5. Belles-lettres style, embracing numerous and versatile genres of creative writing.

The problem with classification of functional styles has arisen due to the controversy [‘kontrovo:si] (спор, дискуссия, полемика) around, first of all, newspaper style, which is often regarded as part of the publicist style domain and is not always treated individually; and secondly, around belles-lettres style, which possesses unlimited possibilities of creative writing and makes use of language resources of other styles – hence, its contours are not distinct enough to qualify it as a separate functional style.

Still, regardless of its versatility, the belles-lettres style, in each concrete representation, fulfils the aesthetic function. This gives us grounds to recognize its uniqueness and charge it with the status of an autonomous functional style.

Each of the enumerated styles is exercised in two forms – written and oral:

e.g. scientific style - article (written) / lecture (oral)

newspaper style – newspaper information materials (written) / radio, TV broadcast (oral)

publicist style – public speech (oral) / essay (written)

The number and principles of differentiation of functional styles change with time and reflect the state of the language at a given period.

For example, the so-called poetic style, characteristic of the language of the 17-th, 18-th and the biggest part of the 19-th century, has now lost its isolated linguistic position, as it no longer makes use of the specific vocabulary and grammar forms, but verbal forms offered by the language at large. Something similar happened to the oratoric style, since the oral oratoric skill has lost its position in social and political life today – most speeches are first written and contain features of publicist style.

The above-mentioned styles belong to the literary type of the language.

Their functioning is characterized by the intentional choice of language means suitable for a particular situation and the official, formal, preplanned nature of the latter.

The colloquial type of language, on the contrary, is characterized by the inofficiality, spontaneity [,sponto’ni:iti], informality of the communicative situation. Sometimes the colloquial type of speech is labelled “the colloquial style” and is entered into the classification of functional styles, regardless of the situational and linguistic differences between the colloquial and literary communication. Alongside this consideration there exists a strong tendency to treat the colloquial speech as an individual language system with its independent set of language units and rules of connection.

Thus, Functional Stylistics deals with all the subdivisions and all its possible usages, and its most all-embracing “global” trend in style study. Such specified tasks as the scientific style study, or newspaper style study should be considered to be elaborations (further development) of certain fields of functional stylistics.

A special place is occupied by the study of creative writing (the belles-lettres style). Here we deal with the stylistic use of language resources, i.e. with such a handling of language elements that enables them to carry not only basic, logical, but also additional information.

The attention of functional stylistics is focused on the message in its correlation with the communicative situation.

The message is an indispensable (necessary) element in the exchange of information between two participants of the communicative act – the addresser (the supplier of the information /speaker /writer) and the addressee (the receiver of the information /listener /reader).

Problems concerning the choice of the most appropriate language means and their organization into a message (from the addresser’s viewpoint) are the subject of individual style study, which puts emphasis on the study of an individual author’s style, looking for correlations between the creative concepts of the author and the language of his works.

In terms of information theory the author’s stylistics can be named stylistics of the encoder: the language is the code shaping information into a message; the author is the encoder. The addressee in this case plays the part of the decoder of the message; and problems of adequate reception of the message without any losses and deformations are the concern of decoding stylistics.

And finally, the study of language norms at a given period and teaching these norms to language speakers (esp. editors, publishers, writers, journalists, teachers, etc.) is called practical stylistics.

Thus, depending on the approach and aim, but common to all trends in style study, is the necessity to learn what language can offer to serve the innumerable communicative tasks of language users, how language elements participate in storing and transferring information, which of them carries which type of information, etc. The best way to find answers to these and similar questions is to follow the structural hierarchy of language levels, suggested by E. Benveniste, whose scheme of analysis proceeds from the level of the phoneme – through the levels of the morpheme and the word – to that of the sentence.

The resources of each language level become evident in speech; the attention of the learners is drawn to the behaviour of each language element in functioning, to its aptitude to convey various kinds of information.

The ability of a verbal element to obtain extra significance, to say more in a definite context is called foregrounding (выдвижение - Prague school term – the act resembles moving into the front line).

Stylistic analysis involves subtle procedures of finding the foregrounded element and indicating the chemistry of its contextual changes, brought about by the intentional operations of the addresser, i.e. effected (произведенные) by the conscious stylistic use of the language elements. Stylistic analysis not only broadens theoretical horizons of a language learner,but also teaches the skill of competent reading and proprieties (правильность, уместность) of situational language usage.

Difficulties of stylistic analysis:

• Linguistic intuition of native speakers does not work for foreign learners

• Inadequate language command of the learner (gaps in grasping basic information)

• Understanding of each component does not necessarily lead to understanding the message as a whole.

Functional Stylistics

Language System, Functional Styles and Individual Speech

Linguo-stylistics founded by Charles Bally compares the national standard language to specific systems i.e. functional styles and dialects. It studies language elements from the point of view of their ability to evoke and express emotions, associations and evaluation.

Any work of fiction, and other texts are examples of individual speech (style). To describe any text and compare its characteristic features with those of another text we distinguish between the system of the language in general and the norm. (The norm does not represent only the neutral literary standard, but functional styles and dialects as well).

The system of a language comprises many language elements, which are materialized in speech. The system of the language consisting of phonetic, lexical and grammatical elements, predetermines the possibilities of their use; whereas the norm is what is used in the process of communication in a certain language community and situation.

The literary standard can be called the norm only in this narrow sense of the word. The norm is what the bearers of the language use for purposes of communication and the accuracy of it is relative. The existence of the norm presupposes the existence of such correlations (oppositions) as:

• Structure (system) :: norm :: individual speech

• Neutral style :: colloquial style :: literary style

• National standard :: dialect

• Literary standard :: familiar/ low colloquial speech

Thus, the norm includes elements of different language levels realized in speech. They (levels/ elements) are traditional, but not necessarily correct. (As besides the literary norm of the language, there are other norms like dialect, colloquial speech, etc.)

British linguists use the term ”style” in reference to belles lettres style (fiction) only. For other spheres of communication they use the term “register”, which includes the conditions of the communicative act, the form of communication (written/ oral) and the role structure of communication. For example, we distinguish the register of an academic lecture, a sermon, legal documents. (See: Chart). The chart “Levels of Language” puts different kinds of writing along a scale ranging from stiffly formal at one extreme (on top), for example, the language of legal documents and insurance policies, to highly colloquial at the other, such as - slang and casual [‘koezuol] conversation.

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