1. Different classification of functional styles Comparative Study of Functional Styles

3.A Comparative analysis of the stylistic features
Stylistics, a combination of style and literature is a discipline which has been approached in different ways by different scholars both in linguistic studies and literary studies; it is a borderline discipline between linguistics and literature thus its definition varies based on the theory adopted.¹⁰ For better understanding, there is the need to explain what style is before defining the term stylistics.
Steps in Text Analysis
Step 1a Introduction: briefly define the text type (the functional style and the genre), the topic, the problems raised, the cultural and historical background of the author and his text.
Step 1v The next part of the analysis deals with the stylistic features of the text.
Step 2a What messages does the system of images convey? Stylistic devices.
Step 2b If it is non-fiction, what is the genre? (a public speech, an advertisement, an academic text, a letter, a feature article, a polemic article etc.)
Step 3a 1) What is the structure of the prosaic text? (narration, description, characters’ speech) 2) What compositional elements can we see there? (exposition, the narrative hook, development of action, climax, disentanglement) 3) What mood or atmosphere is created by the author with the help of stylistic devices and the choice of verbs, nouns and adjectives? 4) What are the attitude and the tone of the text under analysis (positive negative, ironical, lyrical, sad, and joyful) 5) How do the actions and the speech of personages characterize them? 6) What are the relations between characters’ speech and the author’s remarks in drama? Also consider 3), 4), 5). 7) What is the rhyme pattern of a poem? 8) What metre does the poet use? (Trochee, Iambus, Dactyl, Amphybrach, Anapaest); or is it blank / free verse? 9) What is the rhythm of the text? (relevant for both prose and poetry) 10) Consider points 3) and 4). 11) Are there any allusions or cultural realia in the prosaic, dramatic or poetic text?
Step 3b 1) What is the structure of the text? Can you see any specific patterns used? 2) What is the purpose of the text? (to inform, to persuade, to influence, to urge, to warn) 3) What linguo-stylistic means are used by the author to achieve the purpose? 4) What are the attitude of the author and the tone of the text under analysis? 5) What prevails in the text logics or emotions? 6) Are there any allusions or cultural realia in the text? Explain them.
Step 4 What is the author’s message?
Step 4b What is the author’s message?
Once again enumerate the means with the help of which the author conveys the message and achieves the goal of communication with the reader.¹¹ The final step of the text analysis includes your personal impressions and attitudes towards the story, its subject, problems, stylistic features and the message.
Questions for consideration:
1. How do you understand the text interpretation?
2. What types of text interpretation are there in stylistics/
3. What should we pay attention to in the text interpretation?
Interpretation and analyses of the belles-lettres text.
A belles-lettres text is usually complex and consists of several layers. The task of interpreatation is to extract maximum of information, thought and emotions conveyed by the author. The interpretation of a literary text as a rule undergoes two stages. At the second stage we perform a thorough linguistic analysis, examining the main categories of the text, its title, poetic details and stylistic devices.
Informativity is the main category of the text. According to Prof. I.K.Galperin the following types of information are distinguished: a) context-factual; b) context-subtextual or implicit and c) context-conceptual. Content-factual information contains reports about facts, events, processes which took place. In other word’s it’s a plot of the text. Content-subtextual information is not explicit: it is not expressed in the verbal layer of the text. The aim of an interpret is to find the signals of implicit information and with their help analyze the concealed information.
Context-conceptual information conveys to the reader the author’s individual perception of the events, his modality and outlook. Poetic Details are used by the author to represent the whole picture through seemingly insignifacant descriptions. Poetic details carry out different functions in the literary text. According to their functions they are divided into the following types: a) depicting details; b) authenticity details; c) characterological details; d) implicit details. Title has a great importance for revealing for conceptual information, conveyed in the text. According to their form and information titles a classified into: a) a title symbol; b) a title thesis; c) a title quotation; d) a title report; e) a title hint; f) a title narration. Comprising the quintessence of the book’s content, the title represents the nucleus of the conceptual information.¹² The title can be metaphorically depicted as wound up spiral revealing its potentialities in the process of unwinding.
The brief outline of different functional styles will not be complete without reconsidering the concept of text and its constituents. The word “text”, though frequently used since the period of 80-es as a term in linguistics, has not been linguistically ascertained yet. At present linguistic branches that are busy investigating text in different ways are united under common title — text linguistics. It aims at investigating the objective criteria concerning ways and means of constructing texts and text forming factors. The development of text linguistics is bounded by many ties with stylistics. These branches of linguistics have much in common in their aims and methods firstly. The object of their study is not confined to separate words, word-combinations or sentences but to larger-than the-sentence units, which are characterized by interdependence of the elements constituting them, by cohesion of these element, and a definite idea behind the units. Can we call such units texts? Some scholars consider a minimal supra-phrasal unit to be a text. Others maintain that a supra-phrasal unit is the smallest constituent unit of a text. What is a Text then? Genuine texts vary in communicative aims, in their topics, in length, structure and composition to such an extent that it is difficult to give the concept of “text” a generalizing and precise definition. In the book “Text as an Object of Linguistic Study” Prof. I. R. Galperin offers his definition of the “text” in which he tries to differentiate ‘text’ as a speech product, that is presented in a written form, from ‘discourse’ as a piece of oral speech. He writes: “Text is a piece of speech production represented in a written form that correlates to some literary norms; it is characterized by completeness, wholeness and coherence and consists of specific text units (supraphrasal units) joined by various logical, lexical, grammatical and stylistic means under one title (or headline); it has a definite communicative aim as a carefully thought-out impact on the reader”. This definition contains the most general parameters of wellcomposed texts and states knowledge about text formation as an object of special linguistic interest. Prof. Galperin proposes to study text categories and singles out some ten categories in his book.¹³ Categories of discreteness (divisibility), cohesion are referred mainly to basic structural categories and basic semantic categories are informativeness, continuum, prospectivity and retrospection (as anaphoric and cataphoric reference), semantic independence of its constituents (autosemantia), modality, integration and completeness. Well-formed texts undoubtedly follow a certain compositional pattern: there is a heading, the text as such and conclusion. The text itself can be divided into smaller units made up of interdependent sentences, that are grouped into a paragraph, then there may be chapters, parts and books. This kind of pragmatic division which aims at promoting the process of comprehension varies from text to text, as the author always takes into consideration information capacity of human brains (that is how much can be crammed into one piece of the text).
In its most general sense the word “context” means a set of circumstances or facts that surround a particular event, situation, etc. Contextual relationships can be defined in many ways. Each text and each passage partakes of several contexts. Some of them are definable in formal, linguistic matters (intralinguistic contexts), others must be based on extralinguistic considerations (extralinguistic contexts). Contexts, then, must be defined at several conceptual levels, and contextual components can be further classified into various patterns. No wonder that in works on linguistics we come across such terms as “verbal context”, “cultural context”, “pragmatic context”, “stylistic context”, etc. Prof. G. V. Kolshansky points out that at present there are two scientific concepts of context: 1) a narrower concept implying only the linguistic context that exists within the frame of purely linguistic embodiment of the contents of communication and is determined by a definite language code and rules for forming the lexical and grammatical (morphological and syntactical), lexical and stylistic (poetic) contexts; 2) a broader one that includes all the factors accompanying verbal communication, from the definite situation in which the communication is backed up by some cultural and social circumstances that govern the whole semantic and lingual complex of the acts of communication,. Extra- and intralinguistic contexts are the stages that precede or follow a specific linguistic item (as a written or spoken chain of language units), thus removing its polysemy or homonymy and modifying its meaning. According to Prof. N. N. Amosova, (linguistic) context is the combination of a word with its indicator that is syntactically connected with it. For example, in “Don’t trouble trouble until trouble troubles you”, the auxiliary “don’t” is the morphemic indicator to the first trouble pointing out that it is a verb form in the Imperative mood, while the position of the second trouble after a transitive verb indicates that it is an abstract noun in the function of a direct object, etc.
In this case we have dealt with grammatical context. In the word groups knit stockings out of wood and knit bricks together the words bricks and stockings are contextual indicators pointing out that knit is used in these groups in its two different meanings: 1) make (an article of clothing, etc) by looping wool, silk, etc., yarn on long needles and 2) unite firmly or closely. In this case the lexical context withdrraws polysemy and homonymy. Thus in we are faced with a host of difficulties the context indicates that the word host means “a great number” but not “a person who entertains guests”. This is definitely a case of intralinguistic context. The concept of stylistic context was dealt in the theories of M. Riffaterre and I. V Arnold. In our opinion, the term “poetic context” is more suitable for this concept since it is applicable exclusively to poetic (creative) texts. Besides, poetic context is more in keeping with the poetic function of language. The extralinguistic context is everything non-linguistic which exists at the time of using the linguistic features for encoding a message and which affects their choice.¹⁴ This type of context is a complex aggregate involving many factors, among them, the encoder’s emotional state, his attitude to the subject of the message and to the decoder, the encoder-decoder relationship in terms of sex, age, familiarity, education, social status, common stock of experience; the theme and aim of discourse (a scientific problem, systematic communication of facts in a message, canvassing for a candidate, commenting on a football match, appealing against a sentence, etc.); the social situation (setting) of discourse, including the communication channel (trunk call, parliamentary debates, barbecue party, antiwar demonstration, diplomatic reception, informal meeting, court proceeding, etc). In linguistic literature, along with “extralinguistic context”, another word “consituation”, is used, which seems to be a better term, first, because “it prompts the connection of linguistic means with the situation that is relevant for their semantization” and secondly, because it enables us to avoid the unnecessary ambiguity of the term “context”.
Thus, we shall use the term “context” to denote the correlation between textual segments with one another and the term “consituation” to denote the correlation of the message with the accompanying social-psychological situation. Text as an Integral Whole: Unity in Diversity Any reader perceives a text in his individual manner. It depends upon his approach, his aim, his intellect and his emotional susceptibility. One may either read merely for the sake of the plot or grasp all the subtleties of the text and penetrate deep into the author’s intention. To achieve the latter a text must be treated as an integral whole. In this connection B. Larin writes that all the hidden meanings of the text are revealed only in case the organic links among all the elements of the text are discerned.
To comprehend a text as an integral whole, the reader must perceive simultaneously its several layers, as a text is to be regarded as a hierarchy of them in mutual interdependence and interpenetration. In order to proceed with the analysis some specifications concerning the term “text” seem relevant. Definitions of the term are frequently evasive or simply omitted. A comprehensive interpretation of the text is offered by Yu. Lotman as «xudojestvennыy tekst kak sistema otnosheniy, sostavlyayuщix ego materialnыx edinits». Thus the text is materialized through relations among elements and structural analysis implies disclosing the relationship between these elements. The elements of the text can simultaneously be components of several contextual structures and in them Yu. Lotman sees the most distinctive feature of an artistic text. Words and sentences constitute the basic elements of the text, consequently a text embraces all those structural relations that have been realized by linguistic means. This way of conceptualization of the text as a multileveled character phenomenon should be accepted as the basis for text interpretation.¹⁵
Thus the text is treated as a polyphonic structure of several layers that lends itself to various interpretations. However, only actualization of all the layers will lead to a full perception of the text in its integrity. Besides, the text is regarded as a structure characterized by modality, expressiveness of the author’s attitude towards the described contents. The layers that are closely knit and present in any text may be classified in the following way: firstly, the mutual relationship between the author and the reader; secondly, the interrelation between the text and subtext; thirdly, the the subtleties of the text and penetrate deep into the author’s intention. To achieve the latter a text must be treated as an integral whole. In this connection B. Larin rites that all the hidden meanings of the text are revealed only in case the organic links among all the elements of the text are discerned. To comprehend a text as an integral whole, the reader must perceive simultaneously its several layers, as a text is to be regarded as a hierarchy of them in mutual interdependence and interpenetration. In order to proceed with the analysis some specifications concerning the term “text” seem relevant. Definitions of the term are frequently evasive or simply omitted. A comprehensive interpretation of the text is offered by Yu. Lotman as «xudojestvennыy tekst kak sistema otnosheniy, sostavlyayuщix ego materialnыx edinits». Thus the text is materialized through relations among elements and structural analysis implies disclosing the relationship between these elements. The elements of the text can simultaneously be components of several contextual structures and in them Yu. Lotman sees the most distinctive feature of an artistic text. Words and sentences constitute the basic elements of the text, consequently a text embraces all those structural relations that have been realized by linguistic means. This way of conceptualization of the text as a multileveled character phenomenon should be accepted as the basis for text interpretation. Thus the text is treated as a polyphonic structure of several layers that lends itself to various interpretations. However, only actualization of all the layers will lead to a full perception of the text in its integrity. Besides, the text is regarded as a structure characterized by modality, expressiveness of the author’s attitude towards the described contents.
The layers that are closely knit and present in any text may be classified in the following way: firstly, the mutual relationship between the author and the reader; secondly, the interrelation between the text and subtext; thirdly, the potencies that are revealed through the basic structural elements of the text, i. e. words in the text. Some scholars hold the view that a text as a whole is perceived through the process of analysis followed by synthesis which yields full comprehension of a text. Such an approach is suggested by A. Bushmin. More convincing seems the approach by M. Girshman who advances the thesis that integrity is both — the starting point and the result. He claims that creation and perception alike are not a development from part to whole, but that they both present a continuous process where each detail embodies the whole.
Consequently not only the work as a whole, but each detail as well reveals the complex idea of the artistic structure. Likewise M. Girshman sees the relation “the author — the reader” not as consecutive. He considers the structure of the work of art as a simultaneous realization of the author’s and the reader’s artistic nature. The author always bears in mind the reader, while the reader may fuse with the work to such an extent that he feels being the co-author. This reveals one of the layers in the hierarchy of the text, namely, the author and the reader in their mutual attitude. The other layer of the text is seen in the interrelation between text and subtext. Subtext is to be conceived as the other plane of the text, giving a more perfect comprehension of a piece of fiction. Subtext is closely related to the rhythmical organization of the text and these two may be considered as the basic structural elements whose all-embracing interpretation yields the perception of the text. Eveiy text consists of words and the word stands at the point of intersection of many aspects. The text is perceived through the word and by its analysis the third layer of the text is revealed. According to M. Kharchenko the relatedness of the word to other structural elements will reveal the integrity of the text.¹⁶
The word is a definite complex. M. Bakhtin puts forth the treatment of the word proceeding from a two-part principle. In a literary text every word has two voices: one expresses the essence of the objectively materialized reality, the other reveals the attitude to it, the author’s attitude including. Thus the word turns into a complex embodying the thought and the emotion of the whole. A similar attitude to the word is proposed by I. Galperin when he speaks about the latent capacities of the word (or potential) to enlarge the semantic scope of the sentence. The three levels in the text are mutually interconnected and the analysis of one will inevitably lead to another. The interpretation of the text at all layers will disclose their certain hierarchy, represent the author’s manner of writing, the flavor of the epoch, the genre tradition, and all of them are to be traced in any work of art. In order to achieve the general target of stylistic interpretation of the text (or to reveal the integrity of the text), I. Arnold offers the method of stylistic decoding.
Decoding implies the understanding of the text based on the analysis of its structure and the interconnection of the structural-semantic elements. The understanding of the text is managed by definite codes, where each code embraces several levels (phonetic, lexical, grammatical, stylistic, graphical). A part of the codes coincides with the commonly accepted language layers in linguistics and therefore stylistic decoding is linguistically grouped. Consequently the text is considered as an integrity of stylistic means in their interrelation with common linguistic principles.¹⁷ Disclosing of convergence is the means to achieve a perfect perception of the text. Such a viewpoint is contradictory to the structural poetics proposed by Yu. Lotman. For Yu. Lotman the text is only one component of a work of art, though an indispensable one, through which the artistic intention of the author is realized. The text is to carry a specific aesthetic function to which everything else is subordinated. Such a clearly literaiy approach is claimed by I. Arnold, M. Girshman is formal on the grounds that not only the aesthetic function, but other functions as well are to be considered in the process of text analysis.