CHAPTER I. THE STYLE AND STYLISTICS
1.1. STYLISTICS AS A LINGUISTIC SCIENCE
Stylistics sometimes called linguo-stylistics is a branch of general linguistics. It has now been more or less definitely outlined. It deals mainly with two interdependent tasks:
The investigation of the inventory of special language media which by their ontological features secure the desirable effect of the utterance;
Certain types of texts (discourse) which due to the choice and arrangement of language means are distinguished by the pragmatic aspect of the communication. The two objectives of stylistics are clearly discernible as two separate fields of investigation. The inventory of special language media can be analysed and their ontological features revealed if presented in a system in which the co-relation between the media becomes evident.
The types of texts can be analysed if their linguistic components are presented in their interaction, thus revealing the unbreakable unity and transparency of constructions of a given type. The types of texts that are distinguished by the pragmatic aspect of the communication are called functional styles of language (FS); the special are called stylistic devices (SD) and expressive means (EM). The first field of investigation, i.e. SDs and EMs, necessarily touches upon such general language problems as the aesthetic function of language, synonymous ways of rendering one and the same idea, emotional coloring in language, the interrelation between language and thought, the individual manner of an author in making use of language and a number of other issues.
The second field, i.e. functional styles, cannot avoid discussion of such most general linguistic issues as oral and written varieties of language, the notion of the literary (standard) language, the constituents of texts larger than the sentence, the generative aspect of literary texts, and some others. In dealing with the objectives of stylistics, certain pronouncements of adjacent disciplines such as theory of information, literature, psychology, logic and to some extent stylistics must be touched upon. This is indispensable; for nowadays no science is entirely isolated from other domains of human knowledge; and linguistics, particularly its branch stylistics, cannot avoid references to the above mentioned disciplines because it is confronted with certain overlapping issues. The branching off of stylistics in language science was indirectly the result of a long-established tendency of grammarians to confine their investigations to sentences, clauses and word-combinations which are "well-formed", to use a dubious term, neglecting anything that did not fall under the recognized and received standards, this tendency became particularly strong in what is called descriptive linguistics. The generative grammars, which appeared as a reaction against descriptive linguistics, have confirmed that the task of any grammar is to limit the scope of investigation of language data to sentences which are considered well-formed. Everything that fails to meet this requirement should be excluded form linguistics. But language studies cannot avoid subjecting to observation any language data whatever, so where grammar refuses to tread stylistics steps in. Stylistics has acquired its own status with its own inventory of tools (SDs and EMs), with its own object of investigation and with its own methods of research.
The stylistics of a highly developed language like English or Russian has brought into the science of language a separate body of media, thus widening the range of observation of phenomena in language. The significance of this branch of linguistics can hardly be over-estimated. A number of events in the development of stylistics must be mentioned here as landmarks. The first is the problem of style and stylistics in "Bonpocы языкознания" in 1954, in which many important general and particular problems were broadly analysed and some obscure aspects elucidated. Secondly, a conference on Style in Language was held at Indiana University in the spring of 1958, followed by the publication of the proceedings of this conference (1960) under the editorship of Thomas Sebeok. Like the discussion in "Bonpocы языкознания" this conference revealed the existence of quite divergent points of view held by different students of language and literature. Thirdly, a conference on style and stylistics was held in the Moscow State Pedagogical Institute of Foreign Languages in March 1969. At this conference lines were drawn along which studies in linguo-stylistics might be maintained. An interesting symposium was also held in Italy, the proceedings of which were published symposium was also held in Italy, the proceedings of which were published under the editorship of professor S. Chatman in 1971.
The word style is derived from the Latin word 'stilus' which meant a short stick sharp at one end flat at the other used in so many senses that it has become a breeding ground for ambiguity. The word is applied to the teaching of how to write a composition; it is also used to reveal the correspondence between thought and expression; it frequently denotes an individual manner of making use of language; it sometimes refers to more general, abstract notions thus inevitable becoming vague and obscure, as, for example, "Style is the man himself (Buffeon), "Style is depth" (Darbyshire); "Style is deviations" (Enkvist); "Style is choice", and the like. Style is depth, deviations, choice, context style restricted linguistic variation, and style is the man himself (Buffon). According to Galperin the term 'style' refers to the following spheres:
The aesthetic function of language. It may be seen in works of art- poetry, imaginative prose, fiction, but works of science, technical instruction or business correspondence have no aesthetic value.
Synonymous ways of rendering one and the same idea. The possibility of choice of using different words in similar situations is connected with the question of style as if the form changes, the contents changes too and the style may be different.
Expressive means in language are employed mainly in the following spheres - poetry, fiction, colloquial speech, speeches but not in scientific articles, business letters and others.
Emotional coloring in language. Very many types of texts are highly emotional - declaration of love, funeral oration, poems (verses), but a great number of texts is unemotional or non-emphatic (rules in textbooks).
system of special devices called stylistic devices. The style is formed with the help of characteristic features peculiar to it. Many texts demonstrate various stylistic features:
She wears 'fashion' = what she wears is fashionable or is just the fashion metonymy.
The individual manner of an author in making use the individual style of
speaking, writing must be investigated with the help of common rules and
generalization.
Galperin distinguishes five styles in present-day English: I.Belles Lettres (беллетристика)
Poetry
Emotive prose
The Drama.
Publicistic Style
Oratory and Speeches
The Essay
Articles
Newspapers
brief News Items (короткие новости)
Headlines
Advertisements and Announcements (o6ъявления)
The Editorial ( peдакторская статья)
Scientific Prose
VI. Official Documents
He didn't single out a colloquial style. Its created by the work of the author -the result of creative activity.Arnold classification consists of four styles:
Poetic style
Scientific style
Newspaper style
Colloquial style2
Singling out a poetic and a scientific style seems valid. But Arnold insists on the validity of the 'newspaper style' theory. She says that the specificity of mass media make acknowledgement of newspaper style, as one of functional style. In the handbook by Morokhovsky, Vorobyova, Likhosherst give following classification of style:
official business style
scientific - professional style
publicistic style
literary colloquial style
familiar colloquial style
Kozhina lists type - forming and socially significant spheres of communication as follows:
official
scientific
artistic
publicistic
Of daily intercourse (=colloquial).
Just as in some of the above classification we can doubt the validity of treating separately (and thus opposing) the artistic (belles-lettres) and the publicistic spheres. Not only writers of poetry or fiction, but publicists and orators as well make abundant use of ornament and expressive means of language - tropes and figures first and foremost Problematic aspects:Newspaper style as a part of publicist style. That why it can't be individual. It has no situation of communication. Newspaper style to give information, to influence, to represent social, political idea, means of pursuage. It's important to concentrate. That is why the text of newspaper style should be organized in the certain style. It must contain elements of stylistic colored words and have certain graphic organization. The articles contain questions, the sentence interrogative, elliptical construction and direct speech is included. The use of political words and expressions, clichés, colloquial words, slang, professionalisms, large amount of stylistic devises, various graphical means. The text of NP style is read by people odd different social status.
Belles - Lettres style is so many colored. It includes features of all the styles if it necessary. The author uses professional words of all levels. The basic function - informative and aesthetic.Poetic style in the past many scholars distinguished this style. Nowadays it included in Belles - Lettres style.Style of official Documents here are included the language of business documents, the language of legal documents, diplomacy, military, the function - to achieve the agreement between contrastive parts; has very strict organization. All the words are used in the dictionary meanings, a large number of abbreviation, terms, clichés.Publicistic style in the past it named oratoric style. The aim of the style also influence of public opinion. Brevity of expression, strong logic, strict organization of syntactical structure and a wide system of syntactical connection; the use of colloquial words, neutral, direct address to the audience. Scientific style is the style of reporting and conveying serious scientific idea. It is connected with oral and written forms. Here are included seminars, sc. Articles, discussions, written form - monograph, brochures, all kinds of academic publications. The aim is to prove a hypothesis. The use of large number of terms. Clarity of expression. The use of references, logical connection with the previous one, interdependence the speeches is usually produced in the second person - we.
All these ideas directly or indirectly bear on issues in stylistics. Some of them become very useful by revealing the springs which make our utterances emphatic, effective and goal-directed. It will therefore not come amiss to quote certain interesting observations regarding style made by different writers from different angles. Some of these observations are dressed up as epigrams or sententious maxims like the ones quoted above. Here are some more of them."Style is a quality of language which communicates precisely emotions or thought, or a system of emotions or thoughts, peculiar to the author." (J. Middleton Murry)"... a true idiosyncrasy of style is the result of an author's success in compelling language to conform to his mode of experience." (J.Middleton Murry) "Style is a contextually restricted linguistic variation." (Enkvist) "Style is a selection of non-distinctive features of language." (L.Bloomfield) "Style is simply synonymous with or expression hence a superfluous term." (Benedetto Croce)
"Style is essentially a citational process, a body of formulae, a memory, a cultural and not an expressive inheritance." (Roland Barthes)Some linguists consider that the word "style" and the subject of linguistic stylistics is confined to the study of the effects of the message, i.e. its impact on the reader. Thus Michael Riffaterre writes that "Stylistics will be a linguistics of the effects of the message, of the output of the act of communication, of its attention-compelling function".2 This point of view has clearly been reached under the influence of recent developments in the general theory of information. Language, being one of the means of communication or, to be exact, the most important means of communication, is regarded in the above quotation from a pragmatic point of view. Stylistics in that case is regarded as a language science which deals with the results of the act of communication.
The same idea is expressed by G. Vandryes, one of the prominent linguists of today, who states that "The belles-lettres style is always a reaction against the common language; to some extent it is a jargon, a literary jargon, which may have varieties."11 What we here call individual style, therefore, is a unique combination of language units, expressive means and stylistic devices peculiar to a given writer, which makes that writer's works or even utterances easily recognizable.
We shall begin with the following statement made by Academician L. V. Scherba:
"Very often when speaking of norms people forget about stylistic norms which are no less, if not more, important than all others.12" This pronouncement clearly indicates that there is no universally accepted norm of the standard literary language that there are different norms and that exist special kinds of norms, which are called stylistic norms. Indeed, it has long been acknowledged that the norms of the spoken and the written varieties of language differ in more than one respect. Likewise it is perfectly apparent that the norms of emotive prose and those of official language are heterogeneous. Even within what is called the belles-lettres style of language we can observe different norms between, for instance, poetry and drama.The norm, therefore, should be regarded as the invariant of the phonemic, morphological, lexical and syntactical patterns circulating in language-ni-action at a given period of time.So, finally, we can arrive at the conclusion that the norm presupposes the oneness of the multifarious. There is a conscious attitude to what is well-formed against what is ill-formed. Well-formedness may be represented in a great number of concrete sentences allowing a considerable range of acceptability. The term 'style' is widely used in literature to signify literary genre. Thus, we speak of classical style or the style of classicism, realistic style, the style of romanticism and so on. The use of the word 'style' has sometimes been carried to unreasonable lengths, thus blurring the terminological aspect of the word. It is applied to various kinds of literary works: the fable, novel, ballad, story, etc. The term is also used to denote the way the plot is dealt with, the arrangement of the parts of literary composition to form the whole, the place and the role of the author in describing and depicting events.It is suggested in this work that the term 'style' be used to refer to purely linguistic facts, thus avoiding the possible ambiguity in its application. After all the origin of the word 'style' is a justification for the suggestion. However, we are fully aware of the fact that such a proposition will be regarded as an encroachment on the rights of literature to have its own terms in spite of the fact they are the same as terms in linguistics.3
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