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МИНИСТЕРСТВО ОБРАЗОВАНИЯ И НАУКИ РОССИЙСКОЙ ФЕДЕРАЦИИ

Государственное образовательное учреждение высшего профессионального образования

«НАЦИОНАЛЬНЫЙ ИССЛЕДОВАТЕЛЬСКИЙ ТОМСКИЙ ПОЛИТЕХНИЧЕСКИЙ УНИВЕРСИТЕТ»

Н.Ф. Кокшарова

ЛЕКЦИИ ПО СТИЛИСТИКЕ (английский язык)

Рекомендовано в качестве учебного пособия Редакционно-издательским советом Томского политехнического университета

Издательство Томского политехнического университета

2011

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LECTURES

Lecture 1: General Notes on Style and Style Study

1.1.The Concept of Style

1.2.Style Study and its Subdivisions

1.1. The Concept of Style

The terms "style" originated from the Latin stylos, which meant "a stick for writing on wax tablets". Later stylos came to denote metonymically also a manner of writing and speaking, in other words, the manner of using language.

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

First of all, there is 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 who deal with the subject of style agree that the term applies to the following fields of investigation:

·the interrelation between language and thought;

·the aesthetic function of language;

·expressive means in language;

·emotional colouring of language;

·a system of special devices called stylistic devices;

·the splitting of the literary language into separate subsystems (genres, registers, etc.);

·synonymous ways of rendering one and the same idea;

·the individual manner of an author in making use of language. Let's look into the different interpretations of "style" precisely:

1.There is a widely held view that style is the correspondence between thought and expression. Language is said to have two functions: it serves as a means of communication and also as a means of shaping one's thoughts. The first function is called communicative, the second – expressive. There is an assumption that of the two functions of language, the latter finds its proper

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materialization in strings of sentences specially arranged to convey the ideas and also to get the desired response. Indeed, every sentence uttered may be characterized from two sides: whether or not the string of language forms is something well-known and therefore easily understood and to some extent predictable; whether or not the string of language forms is built anew; is an innovation made on the part of the listener to get at the meaning of the utterance and is therefore unpredictable.

Many great minds have made valuable observations on the interrelation between thought and expression. The main trend in most of these observations may be summarized as follows: the linguistic form of the idea expressed always reflects the peculiarities of the thought. And vice versa, the character of the thought will always in a greater or lesser degree manifest itself in the language forms chosen for the expression of the idea.

2.Another commonly accepted connotation of the term style is embellishment of language. This concept is popular and is upheld in some of the scientific papers on literary criticism. Language and style are regarded as separate bodies, language can easily dispense with style, which is likened to the trimming on a dress. Moreover, style as an embellishment of language is viewed as something that hinders understanding. In its extreme, style may dress the thought in such fancy attire that one can hardly get at the idea hidden behind the elaborate design of tricky stylistic devices.

This notion presupposes the use of bare language forms deprived of any stylistic devices, of any expressive means deliberately employed. Perhaps it is due to this notion that the word "style" itself still bears a somewhat derogatory meaning. It is associated with the idea of something pompous, showy, artificial, something that is set against simplicity, truthfulness, the natural. Shakespeare was a determined enemy of all kinds of embellishments of language.

3.A very popular notion among practical linguists, teachers of language, is that style is technique of expression. In this sense style is generally defined as the ability to write clearly, correctly and in a manner calculated to the interest of the reader. Style in this utilitarian sense should be taught, but it belongs to the realm of grammar, and not to stylistics. It sets up a number of rules as to how to speak and write and discards all kinds of deviations as being violations of the norm. The norm itself becomes rigid, self-sustained and to a very great extent inflexible.

4.The term "style" also signifies a literary genre. Thus we speak of classical style or the style of classicism; realistic style; the style of romanti-

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cism and so on.

On the other hand, the term is widely used in literature, being applied to the various kinds of literary work: the fable, the novel, the ballad, the story, etc. Thus we speak of a story being written in the style of the fable or we speak of the characteristic features of the epistolary style or the essay and so on.

5. Finally there is one more important application of the term "style". We speak of the different styles of language. A style of language is a system of interrelated language means which serves a definite aim in communication. The peculiar choice of language means is primarily dependent on the aim of communication. Thus we may distinguish the following styles within the English literary language:

·the bellesletters style;

·the publicist style;

·the newspaper style;

·the scientific prose style;

·the style of official documents and presumably some others.

The classification presented here is not arbitrary; the work is still in the observational stage. The classification is not proof against criticism, though no one will deny that the five groups of styles exist in the English literary language.

The most frequent definition of "style" is one expressed by Seymour Chatman: "Style is a product of individual choices and patterns of choices among linguistic possibilities."

1.2. Style Study and its Subdivisions

Style Study or Stylistics started to develop in the 19th century. Main works in stylistics were written in the 50-s of the 20th century. Most prominent scholars involved in the style study are Charles Bally, I. Galperin, I. Arnold, D. Crystal and others.

Style Study is a branch of general linguistics which investigates the principles and the effect of the choice and usage of various language means (lexical, grammatical, phonetic) to convey thoughts and emotions in different communication conditions.

I. Galperin defines Style Study is a branch of general linguistics, which deals with the following two interdependent tasks:

a) it studies the totality of special linguistic means (stylistic devices and

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expressive means) which secure the desirable effect of the utterance;

b) it 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).

Thus the subject matter of Style Study is emotional expression of the language, the totality of the expressive means.

The main aims of Stylistics are:

1)to analyze the choice of a definite language means in a row of synonymous forms expressing the thought to convey the information most fully and effectively;

2)to analyze different expressive means in the language hierarchy;

3)to define the stylistic function performed by any linguistic means. There are two aspects –

1.Language stylistics investigates the specific character of language subsystems which obtain particular vocabulary, phraseology and syntax; studies the text characteristic features – expressive, emotional and evaluative.

2.Speech stylistics deals with texts within different sciences and professions, but studies mainly deviations from the norm not typical features.

Depending on the approach and the final aim there can be observed several trends in style study. Common to all of them is the necessity to learn what the language can offer to serve the innumerable communicative tasks and purposes of language users; how various elements of the language participate in storing and transferring information; which of them carries which type of information, etc. The divisions in stylistics are the following:

1.Stylistics of resources is a descriptive stylistics. It studies stylistically coloured language means, expressive abilities and semantic nuances of words, forms and constructions.

2.Comparative stylistics analyses the stylistic resources not inherent in a separate language but at the crossroads of two languages, or two literatures and is obviously linked to the theory of translation.

3.Linguo-stylistics compares National Language Standard or Norm with particular, typical to different spheres of communication subsystems (called functional styles) and dialects and studies language means with relation to their ability to express and evoke different feelings, additional associations and evaluation. The language means may be studied at different levels: vocabulary, grammar and phonetics, thus distinguishing lexical, grammatical and phonetic stylistics

However any kind of stylistic research is based on the level-forming branches that include:

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4. Stylistic lexicology

It studies the semantic structure of the word and the interrelation of the denotative and connotative meaning of the word, as well as the interrelation of the stylistic connotations of the word and the context.

5. Stylistic Phonetics (Phonostylistics)

It is engaged in the study of style-forming phonetic features of the text. It describes the prosodic features of prose and poetry and variants of pronunciation in different types of speech.

6. Stylistic grammar

Here we distinguish

6.1.Stylistic Morphology, which is interested in the stylistic potentials of specific grammatical forms and categories, such as the number of the noun, or the peculiar use of tense forms of the verbs, etc.

6.2.Stylistic Syntax

It deals with the expressive order of words, types of syntactic links, figures of speech, etc.

7.Literary stylistics studies the totality of expressive means characteristic to a work of art, a writer, a literary school or the whole epoch, and studies factors determining artistic expressiveness.

8.Functional stylistics deals in fact with all the subdivisions of the language and all their possible usages, is the most all-embracing, "global" trend in style study

9-10. In terms of information theory the author's stylistics may be named the stylistics of the encoder: the language being viewed as the code to shape the information into the message, and the supplier of the information, respectively, as the encoder. The addressee in this case plays the part of the decoder of the information contained in the message; and the problems connected with adequate reception of the message without any informational losses or deformations, i.e., with adequate decoding, are the concern of decoding stylistics.

11.And, finally, the stylistics, proceeding from the norms of language usage at a given period and teaching these norms to language speakers, especially the ones, dealing with the language professionally (editors, publishers, writers, journalists, teachers, etc.) is called practical stylistics.

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Lecture 2: Functional Styles

2.1.Functional Styles of the English Language

2.2.The classifications of functional styles

2.3.Literary Styles

2.3.1.The Style of Official Documents

2.3.2.The Scientific Prose Style

2.3.4.The Publicist Style

2.3.5.The Newspaper Functional Styles

2.3.6.The Belles-lettres Style

2.4.Colloquial styles

2.4.1.Literary Colloquial Style

2.4.2.Familiar Colloquial Style

2.1. Functional Styles of the English Language

Functional stylistics, which has become and remains an international, very important trend in style study, deals with sets, "paradigms" of language units of all levels of language hierarchy serving to accommodate the needs of certain typified communicative situations. This theory of style study involves consideration of such notions as NORM and FUNCTION in their relation to

STYLE.

There are a great many classifications of language varieties that are called sublanguages, sub-styles, registers and functional styles that use various criteria for their definition and categorization. The term generally accepted by most Russian scholars is functional styles.

According to I. R. Galperin functional style is defined as "a system of coordinated, interrelated and interconditioned language means intended to fulfill a specific function of communication and aiming at a definite effect." It is the coordination of the language means and stylistic devices which shapes the distinctive features of each style and not the language means or stylistic devices themselves. Each style, however, can be recognized by one or more leading features which are especially conspicuous.

Language means which we choose for communication depend on several factors, the most important among them being the situation of the communication act. Indeed, depending on the situation (which includes the purpose of the communication and its participants) we adhere either to informal, or to formal manner. The former is observed in everyday non-official communication which is known as colloquial speech. Colloquial speech occupies a prominent place in our lives, and is viewed by some linguists as a system of language means so strongly differing from those presented in the formal (lit-

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erary) communication that it can be classified as an independent entity with its own peculiar units and rules of their structuring. (See the works of O. Lapteva, O. Sirotinina, L. Zemskaya.)

The literary communication, most often (but not always) materialized in the written form, is not homogeneous, and proceeding from its function (purpose) we speak of different functional styles. As the whole of the language itself, functional styles are also changeable. Their quantity and quality change in the course of their development.

2.2. The classifications of functional styles

The problem of functional styles classification is also very complicated. It is due to several reasons:

1)functional styles intertwine,

2)functional styles are historically inconstant,

3)functional styles are connected with genres.

A functional style may comprise several genres, e.g. the belles-lettres is manifested in a novel, short story, poem, etc.

Styles are not isolated, but what should be kept in mind is that they have there own peculiarities.

The two main subdivisions of functional styles recognized by the majority of linguists are

1)literary (bookish) styles, characterized by preliminary reflection and analysis, deliberate selection of language means,

2)colloquial (free) styles characterized by spontaneity and dialogues.

I. R. Galperin distinguishes 5 functional styles:

1)scientific,

2)official,

3)publicist,

4)newspaper,

5)belles-lettres.

In his view on functional styles he differs from many other scholars be-

cause he includes in his classification only the written variety of the language. In his opinion style is the result of creative activity of the writer who consciously and deliberately selects language means that create style.

I.R. Galperin excludes conversational style from the inventory of functional styles. Colloquial speech, according to him, by its very nature will not lend itself to careful selection of linguistic features and there is no stylistic intention expressed on the part of the speaker. At the same time his classification contains such varieties of publicist style as oratory and speeches. What

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he actually means is probably not so much the spoken variety of the language but spontaneous colloquial speech. This viewpoint nevertheless gives grounds for debate, since individual oral speech shows the speaker's educational, social and professional background.

Yuri Skrebnev distinguishes the following styles and their varieties:

It is obvious from the classification that poetry and imaginative prose are not included as they are not homogeneous in their structure. Prof. Skrebnev uses the term sublanguages in the meaning that is usually attributed to functional styles. The major difference in his use of this term is that he considers innumerable situational communicative products as sublanguages, including each speaker's idiolect. Each act of speech is a sublanguage. Thus, it is quite difficult to define the notion of the functional style. At the same time he recognizes the major opposition of 'formal' and 'informal' sphere of language use.

Irina Arnold singles out such a notion as a "neutral style", which does not have any distinctive features. Its function is to provide a standard background for the other styles, which are divided into 2 groups, describing many social and extralinguistic factors that influence the choice of specific language for a definite communicative purpose.

The publicist style, distinguished by Arnold, fell under the criticism of Skrebnev who argues that the diversity of genres in newspapers is evident. Political observers, essays on economics, law, moral, art, various stories and advertisements may be met on the pages of the newspapers. Thus, we can not speak of such FS at all, to the mind of Skrebnev. At that, Arnold means that the newspaper material is specific of the newspaper only and it has forming features including a special choice of words, abundance of international words, newspaper clichés, nonce-words, etc. Many scholars consider the language of the press as a separate style.

The status of some of these styles seems refutable. There is no unanim-

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