Stylistic classification of the english vocabulary

FUNCTIONAL STYLES OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE

A. Introductory Remarks

Each style of literary language makes use of a group of language means the interrelation of which is peculiar to the given style. Each style can be recognized by one or more leading features. For instance the use or special terminology is a lexical characteristic of the style of scientific prose.

A style of language can be defined as a system of co­ordinated, interrelated and interconditioned language means intended to fulfil a specific function of communi­cation and aiming at a definite effect.

Each style is a relatively stable system at the given stage in the development of the literary language, but it changes, and sometimes considerably, from one period to another. Therefore the style of a language is a historical category. Thus the style of emotive prose actually began to function as an independent style after the second half of the 16' century; the newspaper style budded off from the publicistic style; the oratorical style has undergone consi­derable changes.

The development of each style is predetermined by the changes in the norms of Standard English.

It is also greatly influenced by changing social condi­tions, the progress of science and the development of cul­tural life in the country. For instance, the emotive ele­ments of language were abundantly used in scientific pro­se in the I • • - _{lined by the fact that}

deep, prolonged research. With the development of science and the accumulation of scientific data, emotive elements gave way to convincing arguments and "stub­born" facts.

The English literary language has evolved a number of styles easily distinguishable one from another.

Thus a functional style is a system of interrelated lan­guage means which serves a definite aim in communi­cation. It can be regarded as the product of a certain conc­rete task, set by the sender of the message.

Functional style appears mainly in the literary lan­guage. The peculiar choice of language means within each functional style is predetermined by certain aims of com­munication.

In English literary language we distinguish the fol­lowing major functional styles:

1. 
   The belles-lettres style.
   
2. 
   Publicistic style.
   
3. 
   Newspaper style
   
4. 
   Scientific prose style.
   
5. 
   The style of official documents.
   

Each functional style may be characterized by a num­ber of distinctive features and each functional style may be subdivided into a number of substyles.


В. The Belles-Lettres Style

The belles-lettres style is a generic term for three sub- styles:

1. 
   The language of poetry;
   
2. 
   Emotive prose, or the language of fiction;
   
3. 
   The language of the drama.
   

Each of these substyles has certain common features, typical of the general belles-lettres style. Each of them also enjoys some individuality.

The purpose of the belles-lettres style, unlike scienti­fic, is not to prove but only to suggest a possible interpre­tation of the phenomens of life by forcing the reader to see the viewpoint of the writer.

The belles-lettres style has certain linguistic features which are:

1. 
   Genuine, not trite, imagery, achieved by linguistic devices.
   
2. 
   The use of words in contextual and very often in more than one dictionary meanings.
   
3. 
   A vocabulary which will reflect to a greater or les­ser degree the authors personal evaluation of things or phenomena.
   
4. 
   A peculiar individual selection of vocabulary and syntax.
   
5. 
   The introduction of the typical features of a collo­quial language to a full degree (in plays) or a lesser one (in emotive prose) or a slight degree (in poems).
   

a) Language of Poetry

The first substyle is verse. Both the syntactical and semantic aspects of the poetic substyle may be defined as compact. The most important feature of the poetic sub- style is imagery, which gives rich additional information. This information is created by specific use of words and expressions. This information is to be conveyed through images. Images are mostly built on metaphors, metony­mies, similes and epithets etc. So the language of poetic style is rich in stylistic devices: repetition, grammar constructions, phonetic stylistic devices, etc.

Rhythm and rhyme are immediately distinguishable properties of the poetic substyle. The various composi­tional forms of rhythm and rhyme are generally studied under the terms versification or prosody.

English verse, like all verse, emanated from song.

b) Emotive Prose.

In emotive prose imagery is not so rich as in poetry. The percentage of words with contextual meaning is not so high as in poetry. There is a combination of spoken and written varieties of the language, as there are always two forms of communication - monologue (the writers spe­ech) and dialogue (the speech of the characters). The language of the writer conforms to the literary norms of the given period in the development of the English literary language. The language of the hero of a novel or a story is chosen in order to characterize the man himself.

Emotive prose allows the use of elements from all the other styles as well. Thus we find elements of the newspaper style, the official style, the style of scientific prose, but they all are subjected to the purposes of the belles-lettres style. Under the influence or emotive prose they undergo a kind of transformation. It is rich in repre­sented speech too.

Emotive prose as a separate form of fiction came into being rather late in the history of the English literary lan­guage. It began its existence in the second half of the 15^th century. With the coming of 16' century English emotive prose progressed rapidly. A great influence on the further development of the characteristic features of the belles- lettres style was made by Shakespeare, although he never wrote prose.

The seventeenth century saw a considerable de­velopment in emotive prose and in prose as a whole. The influence of the Bible on English emotive prose is particu­larly striking in this period.

Eighteenth century emotive prose when compa­red to that of the seventeenth is in its most essential, lea­ding features. The history of the English literature of this period is characterized with such prominent men-of-letters as Defoe, Swift, Fielding etc. This period is regarded as the century which formed the emotive prose as a branch of belles-lettres style.

In nineteenth century the general tendency in English literature to depict the life of English society cal­led forth changes in the language. Standard English begins to absorb elements of the English vocabulary which were banned in earlier periods from the language of emotive prose, that is jargonisms, professional words, slang, dialectal words and vulgarisms, though the latter were used euphemistically - damn was printed d-; bloody - b- etc. Illiterate speech finds its expression in emotive prose by distorting the spelling of words, by using Cockney and dialectal words; there appears a clear difference between the speech of the writer and that of his characters. Language means typical of other styles of literary language are drawn into the system of expressive means and stylistic devices of this substyle.

The present-day emotive prose is characterized by the breaking-up of traditional syntactical designs of the preceding periods. Not only detatched construction, but also unexpected ways of combining sentences, especially the gap-sentence link and other modern syntactical patterns, are freely introduced into present-day emotive prose. Its advance is very rapid.

c) Language of the Drama

The language of plays is entirely dialogue. The author's speech is almost excluded except for the play- right's remarks and directions.

But the language of characters is not the exact repro­duction of the norms of colloquial language. Any variety of the belles-lettres style will use the norms of the literary language of the given period. Nevertheless there will be departures from the established literary norms. But these departures will never go beyond the boundaries of the norms, lest the aesthetic aspect of the work should be lost. It shows that the language of plays is always stylized.

The stylization of colloquial language is one of the features of plays which at different stages in the history of English drama showed itself in different ways.

In the 16' century the stylization of a colloquial language was maintained due to several facts: plays were written in haste for the companies of actors eagerly wai­ting for them, and they were written for a wide audience, most the common people. Plays were staged in public squares on a raised platform.

The colloquial language of the 16' century therefore enjoyed freedom and this found its expression in the dialogue of plays. The general trends in the developing literary language were reflected in the wide use of biblical and mythological allusions, evocative Renaissance tradi­tions, abundant use of compound epithets.

The influence of Renaissance traditions can be seen in a rich injection of oaths, curses, swear-words and other vulgarisms into the language of the English drama of this period.

The 16' century plays are mostly written in verse. The plays of this period therefore were justly called dra­matic poetry.

The revival of drama began in the second half of the 18^l century. But the ultimatse shaping of the play as an independent form of literary work with its own laws of functioning, with its own characteristic language features was actually completed only at the end of the 19 century.