Stylistic classification of the english vocabulary

С. Publicistic Style

Publicistic style of a language may be divided into the following substyles:

1. 
   Oratorical style;
   
2. 
   The essay;
   
3. 
   Articles.
   

The aim of publicistic style is to exert a deep influ­ence on public opinion, to convince the reader or the listener that the interpretation given by the writer or the speaker is the only correct one and to cause him to accept the point of view expressed in the speech, essays or ar­ticle.

Publicistic style has features in common with the sty­le of scientific prose, on the one hand, and that of emotive prose, on the other. An expanded system of connectives and careful paragraphing makes it similar to scientific prose. Its emotional appeal is generally achieved by the use of words with emotive meaning, the use of imagery and other stylistic devices as in emotive prose; but the sty­listic devices used in publicistic style are not fresh and ge­nuine.

Publicicstic style is also characterized by brevity of expression.

a) Oratorical Style

The oratorical style is the oral subdivision of the pub­licistic style. Persuation is the most obvious purpose of oratory.

Direct contact with the listeners permits the combina­tion of the syntactical, lexical and phonetic peculiarities of both the written and spoken varieties of language.

Oratorical style belongs to the written variety of lan­guage, though it is modified by the oral form of the utter­ance and the use of gestures. Certain typical features of the spoken variety of speech are: direct address to the audience (ladies and gentlemen, honourable member(s), the use of the 2^nd person pronoun "you", etc.), sometimes contractions (I'll, won't, haven't, isn't and others) and the use of colloquial words.

This style is employed in speeches on political and social problems of the day, in oration and addresses on so­lemn occasions as public weddings, funerals and jubilees, in sermons and debates and also in the speeches of counsel and judges in courts of law.

The speaker often resorts to repetition to enable his listeners to follow him and retain the main points of his speech.

The following extract from the speech of the Ameri­can Confederate general is an example of anaphoric repe­tition: "It is high time this people had recovered from the passions of war. It is high time that counsel were taken from statesmen...It is high time the people of the North and the South understood each other and adopted means to inspire confidence to each other".

Repetition can be regarded as the most typical stylis­tic devices of English oratorical style. The speaker resorts to repetition to persuade the audience, to add weight to his opinion. Almost any piece of oratory will have parallel construction, antithesis, suspense, climax, rhetorical ques­tions. Almost all typical syntactical stylistic devices can be found in English oratory. Questions are most frequent because they promote closer contact with the audience.

The change of information breaks the monotony of the intonation patterns and revives the attention of the lis­teners.

The desire of the speaker to convince his audience re­sults in the use of simile and metaphor, but these are tradi­tional ones, as fresh and genuine stylistic devices may di­vert the attention of the listeners away from the main po­ints of the speech.

Epigrams, aphorisms are comparatively rare in ora­tory, they require the concentrated attention of the liste­ner.

Special obligatory forms open the oration: My Lords; Mr. President; Mr. Chairman; Your Worship; Ladies and Gentlemen, etc.

At the end of his speech the speaker usually thanks the audience for their attention by saying: Thank you or Thank you very much.

b) The Essay

The essay is a literary composition on philosophical, social, aesthetic or literary subjects. It never goes deep into the subject, but merely touches upon the surface.

The essay was very popular in the 17^l and 18' centuries. In the 17' century essays were written on topics connected with morals and ethics, while those of the 18' century focused attention on political and philosophical problems.

The 18' century was the great age of essay writing. The essay became a dominant force in English literature of this period.

In the 19' century the essay as a literary term gradu­ally changed into what we now call the journalistic article.

The most characteristic language features of the essay remain 1) brevity of expression; 2) the use of the first per­son singular; 3) a rather expanded use of connectives, which facilitate the process of grasping of ideas; 4) the abundant use of emotive words; 5) the use of similes and sustained metaphors.

The essay in our days is often biographical; persons, facts and events are taken from life.

Epigrams, allusions and aphorisms are common in the essay, for the reader has opportunity to make a careful and detailed study both of the content of the utterance and its form.

c) Article

All the features of publicistic style are to be found in any article. Words of emotive meaning are few in popular scientific articles. The system of connectives is more ex­panded here.

The language of political magazine articles differs little from that of newspaper articles. Bookish words, neo­logisms, traditional word combinations are more frequent here than in newspaper articles. In an article dealing with forthcoming presidential elections in the USA we find such bookish and high-flown words as ambivalent, exhilarated, appalled, etc. Humorous effect is produced by the use of words and phrases as melancholy, graciously, extending his best wishes, etc.

D. Newspaper Style

The English newspaper style may be defined as a system of interrelated lexical, phraseological, grammatical means, aimed at serving the purpose of informing and instructing the reader.

Not all the printed matter found in newspapers comes under the newspaper style. The modern newspaper carries material of an extremely diverse character. On the pages of a newspaper one finds not only news and comment on it, but also stories and poems, crossword puzzles, chess problems, and the like. Since these serve the purpose of entertaining the reader, they cannot be considered speci­mens of newspaper style. Nor can articles in special fields, such as science and technology, art, literature, etc. be classed as belonging to newspaper style.

The most concise form of newspaper information is the headline.

The newspaper also seeks to influence public opinion on political and other matters.

Editorials, leading articles are characterized by a sub­jective handling of facts.

To understand the language peculiarities of English newspaper style it will be sufficient to analyze the fol­lowing basic newspaper features:

1. 
   Brief news items;
   
2. 
   The headline;
   
3. 
   Advertisements and announcements;
   
4. 
   The editorial.
   

a) Brief News Items

The function of a brief news item is to inform the rea­der. It states only facts without giving comments. This is characterized by the absence of any individuality of ex­pression and the almost complete lack of emotional colou­ring.

It goes without saying that the bulk of the vocabulary used in newspaper writing is neutral and common literary. But apart from this, newspaper style has its specific voca­bulary features and is characterized by extensive use of special political and economic terms, non-term political vocabulary, newspaper cliches, abbreviations, neologisms, verbal constructions, attribute noun groups, syntactical complexes, specific word orders.

Speaking about neologisms we may state, that neolo­gisms are very common in newspaper vocabulary. The newspaper is very quick to react to any new development in the life of society, in science and technology. Neolo­gisms make their way into the language of the newspaper very easily. E.g. Sputnik, lunik, etc.

The vocabulary of brief news items is generally devoid of any emotional colouring.

b) The Headline

The headline is the title given to a news item or a newspaper article. The main function of the headline is to inform the reader briefly of what the news is about. Some­times headlines contain elements of appraisal, i.e. they show the reporter's or the paper's attitude to the facts reported. English headlines are short and catching. In most of English and American newspapers sensational head­lines are quite common.

Head lines contain emotionally coloured words and phrases. Furthermore, to attract the reader's attention, he­adline writers often resort to a deliberate breaking-up set expressions, in particular fused set expressions, and defor­mation of special terms.

The basic language peculiarities of headlines lie in their structure. Syntactically headlines are very short sen­tences or phrases.