Stylistic classification of the english vocabulary

A. General Considerations

It is well known that the study of the sentence and its types and especially the study of the relations between different parts of the sentence has had a long history. Modern grammars have taken under observation the pecu­liarities of the relations between the members of the sentence, but the study of units of speech larger than the sentence is still being neglected by many linguists.

Stylistics takes as the object of its analysis the expressive means and stylistic devices of the language which are based on some significant structural point in an utterance, whether it consists of one sentence or a string of sentences.

The peculiarities of the structural design of senten­ces certainly have some emotional colouring and that's why they are considered stylistic and emotionally colou­red. In order to understand the nature of the emotional charge of such syntactical structures, we must be aware of the norm of syntactical usage. By the norm of syntactical usage we mean the rules of the language according to which the word combinations, sentences, superphrasal units, paragraphs and texts constructed.

In present English syntax the notion of the norm is fixed but any change in the position of the elements of the sentence may be looked upon as a variant of the received norm, if this change does not distort the meaning of the sentence.

It is well known that the English affirmative sen­tence is viewed as neutral because traditionally it has the regular word order: subject + predicate + object. Any change in the traditionally accepted pattern of the English sentence produces certain changes of the meaning. For example, a sudden change in the word order will add some information if compared with the same neutral sentence. E.g.:

To her and to no one else was due the glory.

(J.K. Jerome):

The glory was due to her and to no one else.

The beginning and the end of the sentence are the most important parts of utterance. At the beginning of the sentence the full force of the stress is clearly felt. At the end of the sentence there is always a pause, after which a new sentence begins. The authors use this peculiarity of syntax and place the most important ideas either at the end or at the beginning of the sentence.

When we speak about syntax we must always remember about intonation. The role of intonation beco­mes greater if the syntactical relations are weak.

The emotional charge of syntax originates from the oral type of speech. The basis may be different in each case. Sometimes the speaker may be in an agitated state of mind. In such cases he repeats or omits certain parts of the utterances (repetition, ellipsis), he may change the word order of the sentence without changing the essential mea­ning of the sentence (inversion). The speaker may enume­rate some details, reasons, causes in order to make his narration more convincible (enumeration and gradation). The narration becomes bright and emotional if we oppose some facts or events (antithesis). Different types of questions are integral parts of communication (questions- in-the narrative).

Another source of expressiveness of syntax is associated with different means of connectives (asynde­ton, polysyndeton). Finally, we may note a different use of structural meanings (rhetorical questions and litotes).

We distinguish three groups of syntactical stylistic devices. The first - stylistic devices established by the peculiarities of oral type of speech. The second group of stylistic devices is characterized by the use of different connectives. The third group or syntactical stylistic devices is based of the interrelation of structural meaning.