Stylistics and Other Linguistic Sciences

Stylistic is a branch of general linguistics. Its other branches are lexicology, grammar, phonetics.

Stylistics and Lexicology

Lexicology studies vocabulary, the origin and development of words, the meaning of words and word-building. Lexico-stylistics studies the interaction of primary and contextual (контекстуальное, вытекающее из контекста) meanings. It studies expressive, evaluative, emotional and etc meanings of words.

E.g. The hall applauded. (metonymy)

1) hall – room (primary meaning)

2) hall – people (contextual meaning)

E.g. She was a sunny sort of creature. Too fond of the bottle. (metonymy, detachment – обособление)

1) bottle – the container (primary meaning)

2) bottle – the wine (contextual meaning)

Let’s analyze one more sentence.

E.g. They took measures to secure a convenient place near the river.

This sentence can be analyzed from the points of view of lexicology and stylistics.

1) Lexicology: all the words of the sentence but for the articles and prepositions are of foreign origin; 2) stylistically the sentence is neutral.

But if in the sentence we come across such words as bouquet, billet-daux we perceive that and analyze the words from the point of view of stylistics.

Stylistics and Grammar

Stylistics is connected with grammar. Grammar is divided into morphology and syntax. There are a morphological stylistics and syntactical stylistics.

E.g. One I-am-sorry-for-you is worth twenty I-told-you-sos…

This sentence sounds funny when the “s” ending is added to the whole of it.

Syntactical stylistics studies the expressive potentialities of the word order of different communicative types of sentences.

E.g. You just come home or I will… (There is something which is employed here; there is certain implication – threat)

Stylistics and Phonetics

Phonetics is concerned with the phonetic structure of a language. It studies speech sounds, their distribution in words, mutual adaptation, stress, syllabus formation, intonation, etc.

Phonostylistics studies how the sound form of speech makes it more expressive. It studies metre, rhyme, rhythm, alliteration, assonance, sound imitation, etc.

Meaning from a Stylistic Point of View

It is more or less recognized that word-meaning is not homogeneous; it is made of various components. These components are usually described as types of meaning. The two main types are the grammatical meaning and the lexical meaning.

Word

the Grammar meaning the Lexical meaning

T he Denotational meaning the Conotational meaning

Emotive charge Nominal

Meaning Stylistic Reference

Grammatical meaning

Let’s consider such words as girls, tables, trees, etc. We notice that these words denote different objects of reality. That is their lexical meanings which are different but the above mentioned words have something in common. This common element is their grammatical meaning of plurality.

Let’s consider such words as go, goes, went, gone, going. We notice that the grammatical meanings of the words are different but they have something in common. This common element is their lexical meaning that is of movement

The lexical meaning is not homogeneous. It is analyzed as including the denotational and connotational components (meanings). One of the basic functions of the word is to denote things, concepts, and different phenomena, thus the word has a denotational meaning which is fixed in the dictionary and makes communication possible. Denotation conveys the primary or the basic information, but apart from it, words may have various additional meanings, collectively known as a connotation or an overtone. These overtones or connotations vary in character. They may express the speaker’s attitude to the things spoken about (emotive component of the meaning), or indicate the social sphere in which the communication takes place (stylistic reference), or indicate a particular object out of the class (nominal meaning).

e.g. smell - fragrance (приятный запах)

reek (вонь)

odour (аромат)

These variants illustrate the principle that words refer not only to things but to the uses of the feelings and the feelings he wishes his audience to share.

Emotive charge

A word contains an element of emotional evaluation as a part of the connotational meaning. Let’s consider the two groups of words

Tremendous - large

Worship - like

Girlie - girl

We see that the emotive charge of the words of the first group is heavier than that of the second. This doesn’t depend on the feelings of the individual speaker but it’s true for all the speakers of English. There are words of purely emotive charge – interjections.

Stylistic reference

Words differ not only in their emotive charge but also in their stylistic reference. Verbal communication takes place in different spheres of human activity such as everyday life, business, science, etc. Each of these spheres has a particular mode of linguistic expression which is generally known as a functional style. Let’s consider the two groups of words

Inquire - ask

Obtain - get

Proceed – go on

Seek - look for

Each of these group represents a different stylistic layer, the first group contains words of a literary layer, the second – stylistically neutral.

Nominal meaning

There are words which while denoting objects indicate a particular object out of the class. In other words they are proper names, such as Smith, Longfellow, Elbrus; they are said to have nominal meanings. The logical meaning which they originated from maybe forgotten.