Graphical devices

Graphical devices:

punctuation markers

variations of print, including capital letters

stylistic use of spelling

arrangement

Punctuation is important when rendering the modality of an utterance and its emotional charge. I.e., if the author uses full stops where we expect enumeration and therefore commas, he either attaches extra significance to every detail or gives the character some additional time to think things over and formulate his ideas. - Do you feel bad? – Not bad. Absurd. Ridiculous. Pathetic. Stuff like that. (Saroyan, War and Peace)

Multiple dots naturally suggest hesitation and show that the speaker is at a loss or rather embarrassed. (er…)

Dash usually accompanies aposiopesis (If father catches you smoking - ). Sometimes the dash may suggest the textual meaning of a novel, if it occurs in a strong position. (Tomorrow we should run faster, stretch our arms further …. And one fine morning –

So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past) S. Fitzgerald

The D may help to create pauses inside poetic lines.

Июльский ветер мне метет – путь.

И где-то музыка в окне – чуть.

Ах, нынче ветру до зари – дуть

Сквозь стенки тонкие груди – в грудь. (М. Цветаева)

The pauses serve a bit different purpose in the following example from Emily Dickinson.

As freezing Persons recollect the Snow:

First – Chill – then Stupor – then the letting go –

Post scriptum – meaningful absence of punctuation.

God becomes man becomes fish becomes barnacle goose becomes featherbed mountain. (J.Joyce)

2)the use of capital letters give extra emphasis to the capitalized words and it may have a jocular color.

First, Issue the Reward – Winnie-the-Pooh

What sort of Me?

Sometimes whole words are written in capital letters.

Owl was able to spell his own name “WOL”. But somehow went all to pieces over delicate words like MEASLES and BUTTEREDTOAST.

Sometimes the letter-device may suggest that the object is of a great size or produces a great noise.

He heard the Ogre coming: Thump. Thump. THUMP. (Jack and the Beanstalk)

Bold type and Italics are able to suggest extra emphasis. For Christ sake, cut it out.

My father was s-l-a-i-n.

Italics serves for humorous purposes.

On the other hand, there are moments when babies are asleep (Oh yes, there are. There must be)

Deviations from accepting spelling can become an important stylistic device. Distorted spelling may suggest an eye-rhyme.

A young Irish servant in Drogheda

Had a mistress who often annogheda.

Also to suggest an irony (spelling and pronunciation) - зряплата, оболгации.

To show that the speaker is either negligent or in a hurry – Здрасьте, МарьВанна, Чесслово, Honest Injun.

High-flown vocabulary – “Mr.Mayor” says I, “I’m not a regular preordained disciple of S.Q.Lapius.(Эскулап) I never took a course in a medical college…” (O.Henry)

Abbreviations, especially that suggest the titles of the persons – John Smith, Ph.D, M.P. – the style is more formal

It can be put either to ironic or humorous use.

F.O.P (Friend of Piglet’s), R.C (Rabbit’s Companion).

Truly yours, once a decent man, but now – Mark Twain, M.T, B.S, D.T., (Montana Thief, Body Snatcher, Delirium Tremens Twain)

Arrangement in prose – sometimes the logical subdivision of a narrative into paragraphs can be sacrificed for a number or reasons.

to gain suspense (to slow down the narrative) the author breaks the paragraph into several sentences. (She went to the door and waited for a knock.

None came.

She waited a full minute.)

GA imitates the actual event –

If

this is I never

flying

shall really take to it!

Which will be difficult….

Unless one fell…

When it would be….

EASY

In poetry arrangement may be just as important, but not often.

Били копыта.

Пели будто:

Гриб.

Грабь.

Гроб.

Груб….

Sometimes a poem may have a shape which is suggestive of an inner message.

“Easter Wings”

Lecture 8 9.11.2010

Classification of Functional Style

FS is a sublanguage which is used in specific situations with a specific purpose or “system of interrelative language means which serves a definite aim in communication” (Galperin). The classification of FSs causes a lot of controversy. On one hand, practically every scholar recognizes such styles as scientific, or the style of official documents, though sometimes they are called differently. But it is open to doubt whether they exist. Galperin believes in the existence of belletric style, but other scholars say that the style of prose and drama in fiction involves most of the styles.

Another controversial issue is publicistic style. Some scholars prefer the term newspaper style. G believes that not everything printed in the newspaper can be called so. Brief news items – yes. But journalistic articles belong to the written version of the publicistic style, which in its oral version also includes the oratorical style.

Galperin’s classification:

Belles Lettres

Poetry

Emotive Prose

The Drama

Publicistic Style

Oratory and Speeches

The essay

Articles

Newspapers

Brief News Items

Headlines

Advertisements and Announcements

The Editorial

Scientific Prose

Official documents

A list of the generally recognized styles. Composed by Arnold.

Function Style	Informative	Urging (побудительная)	Emotive	Establishing contact	Aesthetic
Oratorical	+	+	+	+	+
Colloquial	+	+	+	+	-
Poetic	+	-	+	-	+
Newspaper style	+	+	+	-	-
Official documents	+	+	-	-	-
Scientific	+	-	-	-	-

Oratorical Style – Oratory includes all kinds of public speeches, parliamentary debate, speeches made at the opening or closing of scientific meetings, jubilees, at weddings, funerals, in church. Although the OS possesses all 5 functions, its chief one is urging one (brain-washing). Its purpose is to inspire the audience, bring round your way of thinking, cause it to behave in a certain way.

O is characterized by elevated vocabulary, when the occasion calls for it. Yet a public speaker may resort to colloquial style or casual colloquial one to show that he is one of the crowd. This style abounds in syntactical figures of speech such as anaphora and epiphora, absolute constructions, antithesis, in order to achieve expressiveness and also to connect the speech as a unified pole in the listener’s mind. Sometimes, a public speaker might make use of the so-called precision information (прецизионная информация) - some dates and figures. But very often public speakers avoid precision in favour of elaborate, flowery expressions. Tropes are also abundant, especially epithets, metaphors, allusions. As a rule, you can find a number a number of repetitions, especially semantic ones, that is paraphrasing, because some of the listeners join in the middle of the speech.

“I am happy to join with you today in what will go down in history as the greatest demonstration for freedom in the history of our nation”.

Colloquial Style – the peculiarities are mostly due to its oral character. They can be summed up: it is marked both by compression and by verbosity (многословие) and redundancy. Abbreviated words (clippings) – шеф (шофер), doc (doctor). The use of elliptical sentences, esp questions. (Gone for a walk? Having problems with it? Tired?). This economy also manifests itself in using broad semantic structure (stuff, business, thing). Redundancy reveals itself in double subject or in pause fillers (well, you see). This style is not homogeneous, has several levels. Within the CS you find standard colloquial with minimal degradation, casual C and maximum degradation corresponds to low colloquial.

Common C – chap, kid, dad, granny, go ahead, panicky, awfully sorry. Парень, девчата, ладно, оплошать, нахвататься.

In casual C we find slang, and in low C we find swearing\vulgarisms.

Medial degradation – slang is controversial issue, because traditionally by S we mean expressive phrases and words which break away from monotony of neutral language and introduce some novelty. Function of S – identity with a group (students’, military, drug addicts’). Yet other scholars such as Skrebnev or Crystall tend to believe that S refers to the vocabulary in general use , whereas group-restricted S had better be called jargon. S is very shorted. It soon dies out.

Jargon is a slang of a special group to mark social identity. Number of mechanisms: chicken-livered=cowardly (met), bread-basket=stomach (met, met), nuke – any nuclear weapon (abbrev), OD=an overdose of drug (acronym), paint-remover=inferior whisky (irony), graze=eat a meat (styl. restriction), paint the town red=celebrate wildly (met.+hyperbole), clear as mud – irony.

Sometimes expressions are based on double metaphor – компьютер завис – завис на два часа.

Cant (арго) – the jargon of the underworld – secrecy

Persuader – dagger (metonymy)

A barker – a pistol (metaphor, metonymy)

A lined wallet – a wallet full of money (met)

Poetic S – doesn’t mean poetry alone. It can well refer to prose either because it has some rhythmic regularity or it resorts to elevated language. Not all poetry conforms to the standards of poetic style. Haiku are not poetic style. PS is characterized by maximally elevated vocabulary and as well as high-flown syntax and even morphology.