THE MAIN NOTIONS OF STYLISTICS LECTURE 2

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. Each style, however, can be recognized 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.

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 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. The remarkable features are 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 contain special graphical means that are used to attract the readers attention. 5) Belles-lettres style has a unique task to impress the reader aesthetically.

The notion of the literary language It is known that languages are not homogenous. There is a great diversity in the realization of the language. The varieties of the language are conditioned by language communities ranging from small groups to nations. In this respect the notion of the national language is of great importance.

The national language The national language is defined as a historical category that evolves from conditions of economic and political concentration, which characterizes the formation of a nation. National language is the language of the nation, the standard of its form, the language of the nation’s literature.

The literary language The literary language is a variety of the national language. It is also regarded as a historical category. It is the elaborated variety of the national language which imposes and obeys definite morphological, phonetic, syntactical, lexical, phraseological and stylistic norms recognized as standard and therefore applicable in all kinds and types of discourse. It allows some modifications but within the frame work of the system of established norms.

The notion of “Standard English” The notion of “Standard English” is synonymous with the term “literary English”. There should not be any confusion between the terms “literary language” and “language of literature”, though the former is an abstraction, an ideal. This ideal helps to establish more or less strict norms for all aspects of the language no matter how difficult it may be.

The literary language and non-literary language There is no hard division between the notions of the literary language and non-literary language. They are interdependent. The literary language constantly enriches its vocabulary at the expense of non-literary language. It also adopts some of its syntactical peculiarities and gives them the status of norms of the literary language. Thus, selection is the most typical feature of the literary language.

Notions of style The word style is derived from the Latin word “stilus” which meant a short, stick sharp at one end and flat at the other used by the Romans for writing on wax tablets. D.Crystal and D.Davy in their work “Investigating English Style” underline that there are some commonly used notions of style.

Notions of style 1. some or all of the habits of one person (e.g., Shakespeare style); 2. some or all of the language habits shared by a group of people at one time or over a period of time (e.g., the style of the Augustan poets); 3. effectiveness of a mode of expression;

The most popular notion of style A very popular notion of style among teachers of language is that style is the techniques of expression. In this sense style is defined as the ability to write clearly, correctly and in a manner calculated to interest the reader. Style in this sense of expression studies the normalized forms of the language.

The notion of norm The notion of “norm” is connected with the notion of “style”. The norm of usage is established by the language community at every given period in the development of the language. The publication of dictionaries does much to establish the literary language norms. It is impossible to establish any norm once and for all. At the very moment it is established, it begins to fluctuate and at every period the norm is in a state of fluctuation.

The process of establishing the norm There are two conflicting tendencies in the process of establishing the norm: 1. preservation of the already (established) existing norm 2. introduction of new norms not yet firmly established Both of the tendencies are due primarily to social, political and economic events in the history of people speaking the language. These changes bring corresponding changes in manners and speech.

Definition of the notion of “norm” “Norm” is a uniform, exemplary, commonly recognized usage of language elements (words, word combinations, sentences); rules of using speech means at a definite period in the development of the literary language. The specific characteristics of the literary language norm are stated as follows:

Characteristics of the literary language norm relative stability; its spread or expansion; common usage; common obligatoriness; Correspondence to the language system usage, tradition and possibilities.

The role of the norms in the language Norms contribute to preserve the integrity and clearness of the language system. It is obvious that the notion of the “norm” mainly refers to the literary language and always presupposes a recognized or received standard. There is no universally accepted norm of the standard literary language. Linguists state that there are different norms and there exist special kinds of norm which are called stylistic norms.

Differences of the norm It has been acknowledged that the norms of the spoken and written varieties of the language differ. Likewise it is apparent that the norms of emotive prose, scientific prose and of official language are heterogeneous. Even within the belles-lettres style of language one can observe different norms for instance, between poetry and drama.

Invariant and variant The fact that there are different norms for various types and styles of the language does not exclude the possibility and even the necessity of arriving at some abstract notion of norm as invariant, which should cover all variants with their most typical properties. Each style of the language will have its own invariant and variants. The norm, therefore, is regarded as the invariant of the phonemic, morphological, lexical and syntactical patterns circulating in the language at a given period of time. Variants of these patterns may sometimes diverge from the invariant but they never exceed the limits set by the invariant, otherwise it should become unrecognizable.

TOPICS FOR DISCUSSION 1. How do you understand the definition of the national language? 2. Explain the notion of the literary language. 3. What are the two conflicting tendencies in the process of establishing the norm? 4. What are the specific characteristics of the literary language norm? 5. What is the origin of the word “style”? 6. State the main differences between the two varieties of the language: oral (or spoken) variety and written variety