Stylistics (St.)

Stylos – палочка для записи слов, denoted not only the toll of the writing, but also the manner of writing.

St. – as a branch of linguistics, deals with variants, varieties of linguistic expression and with the subsystems, makes the general system of language. St. investigates the principles and the effect of selecting and using different linguistic means for rendering thoughts and emotions in different of communication situations. St. investigates functional styles.

St. is concerned with such issues as:

- aesthetic function of language

- expressive means in language

- synonymous ways of rendering one and the same idea

- emotional coloring of language

- a system of special devices – stylistic devices

- the splitting of the literary language into separate systems called style

- interrelation between languages and thought

- the individual manner of an author in making use of the language

According to I.V. Arnold, "stylistics is a branch of linguistics, which studies the principles and results of the choice and usage of lexical, grammatical, phonetic and other language means with the aim of transmitting of ideas and emotions in different communication settings." ("Стилистикой называется отрасль лингвистики, исследующая принципы и эффект выбора и использования лексических, грамматических, фонетических и вообще языковых средств для передачи мысли и эмоции в разных условиях общения."

St. of language and St. of speech.

St. of language analyses permanent inherent stylistic properties of language elements. It describes and classifies stylistic coloring of language units. Connotations.

St. of speech studies inherent properties which appear in a context. And it studies the composition of the utterance, the arrangement, selection and distribution of different words and their inherent qualities.

Girl, maiden, chick, baby, young lady.

Branches of St.

- Lexical St. It studies stylistic functions of lexis. It studies dialect words, terms, knowledgisms, slang. And now these words are used in a context.

- Grammatical St. Morphological St. studies possibilities of different grammatical categories (number, case). Syntactical St. investigates expressive possibilities of word order, types of sentences and syntactical lines.

- Phonetic St. Sound organization in poetry and prose.

- Comparative St. Analyses stylistic recourses at the crossroads of two languages of two literatures. And it is connected with the theory of translation.

- Functional St. investigates functional styles.

- Decoding St. combines two methods of stylistic research. Analyses text from the author's and from the reader's point of view. It enables the scholars to interpret a word of art with the minimum loss of its sense and message.

Connection of St. and other branches of linguistics.

Theoretical phonetics.

Theoretical grammar.

Lexicology.

History of literature.

Theory of translation.

St. resources of the Eng. vocabulary.

Three layers:

Upper-layer – literary, colloquial: poetical (seldom used, to create high flown atmosphere), historisms (words to determine some historic phenomena – knight), terms (words, used in a definite science), archaic (are almost out of use), foreign (borrowings), nonce-words.

Middle – neutral.

Lower – familiar, colloquial: vulgarisms (rude words), jargonisms (language of a social group), dialectal (words of a certain locality), slang, professionalisms, nonce-words.

They overlay each other.

Nonce-words: occasional words, which don’t actually exist in the vocabulary. Womanity.