Language and speech

It is necessary to discuss the issue the importance of which has to be kept clearly in mind throughout the study of stylistics, that is the dichotomy of language and s p e e с h or, to phrase the issue differently, language- as -a-s у stem and language-in-action. It deserves at least a cursory discussion here not only because the issue has received a good deal of attention in recent publi­cations on linguistic matters, but also because, as will be seen later, many stylistic devices stand out against the background of the distinc­tive features of these two above-mentioned notions. The simplicity of the issue is to some extent deceptive. On the surface it seems that language-in-action takes the signs of language-as-a-system and arranges them to convey the intended message. But the fact is that the signs of the latter undergo such transformations in the former that sometimes they assume a new quality imposing new signification on the signs of the language code. There is compelling evidence in favour of the theory which demands that the two notions should be regarded in their unity, allowing, however, that each of them be subjected to isolated obser­vation.

Language-as-a-system may figuratively be depicted as an exploiter of language-in-action. All rules and patterns of language which are col­lected and classified in works on grammar, phonetics, lexicology and stylistics first appear in language-in-action, then they are genera­lized and framed as rules and patterns of language-as-a-system.

It is important here to call attention to the process of formation of scientific notions. Whenever we notice a phenomenon that can be singled out from a mass of language facts we give it a name, thus abstracting the properties of the phenomenon. The phenomena then being collected and classified are hallowed into the ranks of the units of language-as-a-system. It must be pointed out that most observations of the nature and functioning of language units have been made on material presented by the written variety of language. It is due to the fixation of speech in writing that scholars of language began to disintegrate the continuous flow of speech and subject the functioning of its components to analysis.

So it is with stylistic devices. Being born in speech they have grad­ually become recognized as certain patterned structures: phonetic, morphological, lexical, phraseological and syntactical, and duly taken away from their mother, Speech, and made independent members of the family, Language.

The same concerns the issue of functional styles of language. Once they have been recognized as independent, more or less closed subsys­tems of the standard literary language, they should be regarded not as styles of speech but as styles of language, inasmuch as they can be pat­terned as to the kinds of interrelation between the component parts in each of the styles. Moreover, these functional styles have been subjected to various classifications, which fact shows that the phenomena now belong to the domain of language-as-a-system.

However, it must constantly be born in mind that the units which belong to this domain are abstract in their nature. Functional styles are merely models deprived of material substance, schemes which can be materialized in language forms. When materialized in language forms they 'become practical realizations of abstract schemes and signify the variants of the corresponding invariants of the models.

This relatively new science, stylistics, will be profitable to those who have a sound linguistic background. The expressive means of Eng­lish and the stylistic devices used in the literary language can only be understood (and made use of) when a thorough knowledge of the language-as-a-system, i.e. of the phonetic, grammatical and lexical data of the given language, has been attained.