General Notes on Stylistics Stylistics as a branch of General Linguistics

The object of Stylistics Stylistics was recognized as a branch of General Linguistics in the 1950s. Linguistics is defined as a academic discipline that studies language scientifically, and stylistics, as a part of this discipline, studies certain aspects of language variation. Stylistics is a branch of linguistics that studies various functional styles and expressive means and devices of the language. According to linguists, Stylistics studies the principles and the effect of choice and usage of different language elements in rendering thought and emotion under different conditions of communication.

The object of Stylistics Stylistics deals with: the aesthetic function of the language; expressive means of the language; synonymous ways of rendering one and the same idea; emotional colouring in the language; a system of devices called stylistic devices; the splitting of the literary language into separate systems called style; the interrelation between language and thought; the individual manner of an author in making use of the language.

Branches of Stylistics According to the type of stylistic research scientists distinguish several branches of stylistics. Literary stylistics and lingua – stylistics are considered to be the most important of them. Both literary stylistics and lingua-stylistics study the following aspects: the literary language from the point of view of variability; the idiolect (individual speech) of a writer; poetic speech that has its own peculiarities.

Differences between literary stylistics and lingua – stylistics Lingua-stylistics studies functional styles and the linguistic nature of the expressive means of the language, their systematic character and their functions. Literary stylistics is focused on the composition of the work of art, various literary genres and the author’s views and outlook.

Comparative Stylistics The main focus of comparative stylistics is the contrastive and /or comparative study of stylistic characteristics of more than one language (e.g. English and German, English and French, English and Kazakh). It aims at analyzing the key concepts of stylistics taking into the consideration the corresponding information from two or more languages, attempting to explain the existing differences and similarities in style between languages. It is connected with the theory of translation contributing to a better and in – deep knowledge and understanding of specific stylistic characteristics of languages.

Decoding Stylistics It considers the aesthetic value of the text based on the interaction of specific textual elements, stylistic devices and compositional structure in delivering the author’s message. This branch of stylistics helps the reader in understanding of a literary work by explaining (decoding) the information that may be encoded by the writer and hidden from immediate view. When the text is analyzed from the decoding point of view (the reader’s angle), it is necessary to take the maximum information from the text itself (its vocabulary, composition, sentence arrangement, etc.)

Decoding Stylistics If we analyze the text from the encoding point of view (the writer’s angle) we should pay attention to the epoch, the historical situation, and personal, political, social and aesthetic views of the author. The first approach is connected mostly with the linguistic analysis, the second approach deals with the literary analysis. Decoding stylistics is an attempt to harmoniously combine the two methods of stylistic analysis and enable the linguists to interpret a work of art with a minimum loss of its purport and message.

Functional Stylistics It investigates functional styles, i.e. special sublanguages or varieties of the national language. In the English literary standard linguists distinguish the following major functional styles: belles-lettres style, publicist style, newspaper style, scientific style, official style. Each functional style may be characterized by a number of distinctive features, leading or subordinate, constant or changing, obligatory or optional.

Functional styles Functional Style is a system of interrelated language means serving a definite aim in communication. 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 recoquized by one or more leading features which are especially conspicuous. For instance the use of special terminology is a lexical characteristics of the style of scientific prose, and one by which it can easily be recognized. A style of language can be fined as a system of coordinated, interrelated and inter-coordinated language means intended to fullfill a specific function of communication and aiming at a defined effect. Style of language is a historical category.

Functional styles The English literary system has evolved a number of styles easily distinguishable one from another. They are not homogeneous and fall into several variants of having some central point of resemblance or better to say. All integrated by the invariant — i.e. the abstract ideal system. They are: 1) Official (documents and papers); 2) Scientific (brochures, articles, other scientific publications); 3) Publicistic (essay, public speech); 4) Newspaper style (mass media); 5) Belles-lettres style (genre of creative writing);

Functional styles Each of mentioned here styles can be expressed in two forms: written and oral. Stylistics is a sides that examines the complex of stylistically marked elements of any language level. 1) scientific style is employed in professional communication to convey some information. It’s most conspicuous feature is the abundance of terms denoting objects, phenomena and processes characteristics of some particular field of science and technique. Also precision clarity logical cohesion. 2) Official style is the most conservative one. It uses syntactical constructions and archaic words. Emotiveness is banned out of this style. 3) Publicistic style is famous for its explicit pragmatic function of persuasion directed at influencing the reader in accordance with the argumentation of the author. 4) Newspaper style — special graphical means are used to attract the readers attention. 5) Belles-lettres style — the richest register of communication besides its own language means, other styles can be used besides informative and persuasive functions, belles-lettres style has a unique task to impress the reader are aesthetically.

Stylistics and other linguistic disciplines Stylistics is closely connected with such disciplines as phonetics, lexicology and grammar due to the common source of study. Stylistics interrelates with semasiology, which is a branch of linguistics, that studies the meaning of words. The meaning is connected not only with the level of the word but also it correlates with morphemes, phrases and texts.

TOPICS FOR DISCUSSION 1. The object of stylistics 2. The interdependent tasks stylistics deals with 3. The main branches of stylistics 4. Literary stylistics and lingua-stylistics 5. The decoding and encoding approaches to the text analysis. 6. The interrelationship of stylistics with other branches of linguistics.