71.

The term “stylistics” originated from the Greek “stylos”, which means “a pen”. In the course of time it developed several meanings. Each one applied to a specific study of language elements and their use in speech. Nowadays theoreticians define stylistics as a branch of linguistics that deals with expressive resources and functional styles of a language.

The subject of stylistics has so far not been definitely outlined. This is due to a number of reasons.

First of all there is a confusion between the terms style and stylistics. The first concept is so broad that it is hardly possible to regard it as a term. We speak of style in architecture, literature, behaviour, linguistics, dress and other fields of human activity

Even in linguistics the word style is used so widely that it needs interpretation. The majority of linguists, as it was mentioned above, who deal with the subject of style agree that the term applies to the following fields of investigation.:

1) the aesthetic function of language;

2) expressive means in language;

3) synonymous ways of rendering one and the same idea;

4) emotional colouring of language;

5) a system of special devices called stylistic devices;

6) the splitting of the literary language into separate subsystems called stylistic devices;

7) the interrelation between language and thought;

8) the individual manner of an author in making use of language.

The subject of stylistics can be outlined as the study of the nature, functions and structure of stylistic devices, on the one hand, and, on the other, the study of each style of language as classified above, i, e, its aim, its structure, its characteristic features and the effect it produces, as well as its interrelation with other styles of language.

According to Galperin Stylistics deals with the following two interdependent tasks:

a) studies the totality of special linguistic means (stylistic devices and expressive means) which secure the desirable effect of the utterance;

b) studies certain types of texts "discourse" which due to the choice and arrangement of the language are distinguished by the pragmatic aspect of communication (functional styles).

Stylistics has much to do with other linguistic disciplines.

Stylistics is not equal to linguistic sciences, such as phonetics, linguistics disciplines – lexicology, morphology, syntax because they are level disciplines as they treat only one linguistic level and stylistics investigates the questions on all the levels and different aspects of the texts in general. The smallest unit of language is the phoneme. Several phonemes combined make a unit of a higher level – morpheme (morphemic level). One or more morphemes make a word, a lexeme (lexical level). One or more than one words make an utterance, a sentence (sentence level).

Words combinations are treated either on the lexical or syntactical level: Winter… Never! Each level consists of units of lower level. Stylistics must be subdivided into separate, independent branches – stylistic phonetics, stylistic morphology, stylistic lexicology, and stylistic syntax. Whatever level we take, stylistics describes not what is in common use, but what is specific in this or that respect, what differentiates one sublanguage from others. Thus, stylistics is connected with phonetics:

Phonetics studies sounds, articulation, rhythmics and intonation. Stylistics concentrates on expressive sound combinations, intonational and rhythmic patterns.

General (non-stylistic) phonetics investigates the whole articulatory - audial system of language. Stylistic phonetics describes variants of pronunciation occurring in different types of speech. Special attention is also paid to prosodic features of prose and poetry.

The connection with morphology also goes without saying:

General (non-stylistic) morphology treats morphemes and grammatical meanings expressed by them in language in general, without regard to their stylistic value. Stylistic morphology is interested in grammatical forms and grammatical meanings that are peculiar to particular sublanguages, explicitly or implicitly comparing them with the neutral ones common to all the sublanguages.

Stylistics is also connected with lexicology:

Lexicology describes words, their origin, development, semantic and structural features. Stylistics also deals with words, but only those which are expressive in language or in speech.

Lexicology deals with stylistic classification (differentiation) of the vocabulary that forms a part of stylistics (stylistics lexicology). In stylistic lexicology each unit is studied separately, instead of as a whole text.

Stylistics is connected with grammar:

Grammar describes regularities of building words, word-combinations, sentences and texts. Stylistics restricts itself to those grammar regularities, which make language units expressive.

General syntax treats word combinations and sentences, analyzing their structures and stating what is permissible and what is inadmissible in constructing correct utterances in the given language. Stylistic syntax shows what particular constructions are met with in various types of speech, what syntactical structures are style forming (specific). This connection gave birth to such indisciplinary sciences as stylistic semasiology (the science of stylistic devices and tropes), stylistic lexicology (the science of expressive layers of vocabulary, such as vulgarisms, jargonisms, archaisms, neologisms etc.), stylistic phonetics (the science of expressive sound organization patterns), stylistics syntax (the science of expressive morphological and syntactical units).

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We distinguish 4 types of stylistics:

• Linguo-stylistics is a science of functional styles and expressive potential of a language.

• Communicative (decoding) stylistics describes expressive peculiarities of certain messages (texts). Stylistics of decoding can be presented in the following way:

sender - message - receiver writer - book - reader

• Coding stylistics (literary stylistics) deals with individual styles of authors; it interprets and evaluates literary writings as the works of art.

• Contrastive stylistics investigates stylistic systems of two or more languages in comparison.

74.

The official style

The style aims at establishing, developing and controlling business relations between individuals and organizations. Being devoid of expressiveness, it is fully impersonal, rational and pragmatic.

This style is distinguished by specific rules of making inscriptions (надпись), using capital letters and abbreviations.

It is characterized by domination of bookish, borrowed, archaic and obsoléscent (выходящий из употребления) words, professional terms and clichés such as “interest free” (беспроцентный), “status quo” (существующее положение), «повестка дня», «квартиросъемщик».

The use of long and super-long sentences of all structural types is characteristic of the official style.

Addréssing documents and official letters, signing them, expressing the reasons and considerations leading to the subject of the document are strictly regulated both lexically and syntactically. All emotiveness and subjective modality are completely banned out of this style.

1) Language of business letters;

2) Language of legal documents;

3) Language of diplomacy;

4) Language of military documents; The aim:

1. to reach agreement between two contracting parties;

2. to state the conditions binding two parties in an understanding. Each of substyles of official documents makes use of special terms. Legal documents: military documents, diplomatic documents. The documents use set expressions inherited from early Victorian period. This vocabulary is conservative. Legal documents contain a large proportion of formal and archaic words used in their dictionary meaning. In diplomatic and legal documents many words have Latin and French origin. There are a lot of abbreviations and conventional symbols.

The most noticeable feature of grammar is the compositional pattern. Every document has its own stereotyped form. The form itself is informative and tells you with what kind of letter we deal with.

Business letters contain: heading, addressing, salutation, the opening, the body, the closing, complimentary clause, the signature. Syntactical features of business letters are - the predominance of extended simple and complex sentences, wide use of participial constructions, homogeneous members.

Morphological peculiarities are passive constructions, they make the letters impersonal. There is a tendency to avoid pronoun reference. Its typical feature is to frame equally important factors and to divide them by members in order to avoid ambiguity of the wrong interpretation.

The scientific style

The style of scientific prose has 3 subdivisions:

1) the style of humanitarian sciences;

2) the style of "exact" sciences;

3) the style of popular scientific prose.

Its function is to work out and ground theoretically objective knowledge about reality

The aim of communication is to create new concepts, disclose the international laws of existence.

The peculiarities are: objectiveness; logical coherence, impersonality, unemotional character, exactness.

This style serves as an instrument for promoting scientific ideas and exchanging scientific information among people. It resembles official style. Scientific style has a developed system of headlines, titles and subtitles, footnotes, pictures, tables, schemes, formulae [´fo:mjuli:](-as) and number- or letter-indexed ´paragraphing. A great part of the vocabulary consists of special terms denoting objects, phenomena and processes characteristic of some particular field of science and technique, but the use of terms and words used to express a specialized concept in a given branch of science. Terms are not necessarily. They may be borrowed from ordinary language but are given a new meaning.

The scientific prose style consists mostly of ordinary words which tend to be used in their primary logical meaning. Emotiveness depends on the subject of investigation but mostly scientific prose style is unemotional.

It is also known for its precision, clarity and logical cohesion [kou´hijen] (связь) which is responsible for the repeated use of such clichés as: “Proceeding from…”, “As it was said above …”, “In connection with…” and other lexico-syntactical forms emphasizing the logical connection and interdependence of consecutive parts of discourse.

The logical presentation and cohesion of thought manifests itself in a developed feature of scientific syntax is the use of established patterns.

- postulatory;

- formulative;

- argumentative;

The impersonal and objective character of scientific prose style is revealed in the frequent use of passive constructions, impersonal sentences. Personal sentences are more frequently used in exact sciences. In humanities we may come across constructions but few.

The parallel arrangement of sentences contributes to emphasizing certain points in the utterance.

Some features of the style in the text are:

- use of quotations and references;

- use of foot-notes helps to preserve the logical coherence of ideas.

Humanities in comparison with "exact" sciences employ more emotionally colored words, fewer passive constructions.

Scientific popular style has the following peculiarities: emotive words, elements of colloquial style

The publicistic style

The Publicistic Style treats certain political, social, economic, cultural problems. The aim of this style is to form public opinion, to convince the reader or the listener.

This style falls into the following variants:

• the ´oratory style (speeches, lectures, reports);

• the style of radio and TV programs;

• the style of essays and journalistic articles.

Oratory. It makes use of a great number of expressive means to arouse and keep the public's interest: repetition, gradation, antithesis, rhetorical questions, emotive words, elements of colloquial speech.

Radio and TV commentary is less impersonal and more expressive and emotional.

The essay is very subjective and the most colloquial of the all substyles of the publicistic style. It makes use of expressive means and tropes.

The journalistic articles are impersonal.

The most essential feature of the ´oratory style is the direct contact of the speaker with the audience. To establish and maintain this contact, the speaker continuously resorts to various language means of address: “Ladies and gentlemen”, “Honorable guests”, “Dear friends”.

Publicistic style is famous for its explicit pragmatic function of persuasion directed at influencing the reader or listener and shaping his views in accordance with the argumentation of the author. Correspondingly, we find publicistic style a blend of the rigorous logical reasoning, reflecting the objective state of things, and a strong subjectivity, reflecting the author’s personal feelings and emotions towards the discussed subject.