Belles-lettres style. The main function is an aesthetic impact on the reader. It is subdivided into:
1. The language of poetry (verse)
2. Emotive prose (fiction)
3. Drama
The linguistic characteristics of the belles-lettres styles are the following:
1.
genuine, not trite imagery;
2.
the use of words in contextual meaning;
3.
The use of expressive means of the language and stylistic devices.
Each substyle of the belles-lettres style is also characterised by its typical
features. Thus, the language of poetry is characterized by rhyme and rhythm.
The distinguishing feature of emotive prose is the combination of literary
language with colloquial one, because there are always two forms of communication -
monologue (the writer's speech) and dialogue (the speech of the characters).
The language of drama is entirely dialogue. The author's speech is almost entirely
excluded except for the playwright's remarks and stage directives.
Publicistic style. The general aim of publicistic style as a separate style is to make a constant and
deep influence on a public opinion, so that to convince the reader or the listener that
interpretation given by the author is the only correct one and to cause him to accept the
expressed point of view. It also falls into four varieties: 1.
Essays (moral, philosophical,
literary); 2.
Articles (political, social, economic) in newspapers, journals, magazines. 3.
Oratorical substyle , which is a spoken variety of the publicistic style. 4. The
development of radio and television has brought into being a new spoken variety the
radio and TV commentary .
The publicistic style has features in common with the scientific style and emotive
prose. The features similar to scientific prose are coherent and logical syntactical
structure, an expended system of connectives, careful paragraphing. Features in
common with emotive prose are the use of words with emotive meaning, the use of
imagery and stylistic devices. But the stylistic devices used in publicistic style are not
fresh or genuine, they are trite.
