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Functional Style of the English Language

Functional style appeared mainly in the literary standard of a language. In fact the standard literary English language in the course of its development has fallen into several functional styles; each of them has acquired its own peculiarities which are typical of the given functional style. Each functional style can be characterized by a number of distinctive features leading or subordinate, constant or changing, obligatory or optional. Each functional style is subdivided into a number of sub-styles. Each variety has basic features common to all the varieties of the given functional style and peculiar features typical to this variety alone. Each functional style is a relatively stable system at the given stage in the development of the literary language but it changes from one period to another. Therefore functional style is a historical category. Thus, the functional style of emotive prose actually began to function as an independent style in the second half of the 16th century; the newspaper style budded off from the Publicistic style, etc.

The classification of functional styles is a disputable issue. Most of the Russian linguists single out the following functional styles:

I. Galperin I.R.: 1) the Belles-Lettres Style with the sub-styles of

  1. poetry

  2. emotive prose

  3. drama

2) the Publicistic Style

a. oratory

b. essays

c. feature articles (очерки) in newspapers and journals

3) the Newspaper Style

a. brief news items

b. newspaper headlines

c. notices and advertisements

4) the Scientific Prose Style

a. the language style of Humanitarian sciences

b. the “exact” science

c. Popular Science Prose

5) the Official Document Style

a. the style of diplomatic documents

b. legal documents

c. business documents

d. military documents

II. V. L. Naer adds two more styles: 1) the Professional Technical Style; 2) the Religious Style. Thus, he separates 7 Functional Styles.

III. M.D. Kuznets separates: 1) the Literary Refined Style (Bookish):

  1. the Publicistic Style;

  2. the Scientific-technical Style;

  3. the Style of official documents;

2) Free (colloquial) Style:

a. Literary Colloquial Style;

b. Familiar Colloquial Style.

Thus, the author rejects the idea that imaginative literature has a functional style.

The Belles-Lettres Functional Style (the Style of Fiction)

Its purpose is to suggest a possible interpretation of the phenomena of life as the writer himself sees them. This is the cognitive function of the style. When the idea of the book is gradually unfolding the reader feels pleasure. This pleasure is caused not only by admiration of the selected language means but by the fact that he (the reader) can form his own conclusions. This function can be called aesthetical-cognitive.

The Functional style of fiction rests on certain indispensable linguistic features:

a) the use of words in contextual (metaphor, metonymy) and very often in more than one dictionary meanings (zeugma, pun);

b) a vocabulary which will reflect the author’s evaluation of things;

c) a peculiar individual selection of vocabulary and syntax (which mark this style as individual in essence), etc. Individuality is less noticeable in Publicistic style, is hardly noticeable in the style of scientific prose and is lacking in official style. Elements from other styles may be used in emotive prose. Thus, we find elements of the style of scientific prose in the story “The Cholera Bacillus” by H.G. Wells. But these elements of other styles under the influence of emotive prose undergo a kind of transformation.