Stylistics is a branch of General Linguistics

1. 
   STYLISTICS: TYPES, TASKS AND APPROACHES.
   

Stylistics is a branch of General Linguistics which covers a wide range of problems dealing with expressive potentialities of language, the notions of style and stylistic devices, functional styles and types of speech, stylistic differentiation of the English vocabulary, the choice of language means for text construction, verbal creativity and variability and many others. According to the object and aim of investigation the following main areas can be outlined in the domain of Stylistics:

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  Stylistics of Resources;
  
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  Text Stylistics;
  
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  Functional Stylistics;
  
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  Stylistics of Individual Style (idiostyle);
  
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  Comparative Stylistics;
  
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  Stylistics of Belles-lettres or Literary (fictional) texts.
  

1. 
   STY LISTICS O F R ESO U R C ES
   

Stylistics of resources is concerned with the study of the stylistic potential of phonetics, lexicon, phraseology, word-formation, morphology and syntax. Accordingly, there appeared such trends as Phonostylistics, Lexical Stylistics, Stylistic Grammar (morphology and syntax), Stylistics of Word-formation, Stylistic Phraseology.

PHONOSTYLISTICS

The terms “literary text”, “belles-lettres text”, “fictional text” are used interchangeably without making any difference to a particular usage of each.
Phonostylistics or sound stylistics studies speech sounds and prosodic means from the point of view of their expressiveness and stylistic potential. The main area of Phonostylistics is expressive and emotive peculiarities of sound variants, phonetic styles, sound symbolism, phonetic stylistic devices, euphony, rhythm, rhyme and prosodic elements (intonation, stress, pause, tone, etc.).
Most interesting is the problem of sound symbolism. Sound symbolism is based on the assumption that sounds due to their acoustic properties awake some ideas, perceptions, feelings, images (Galperin, 1977). An interesting illustration of this phenomenon is the poem by E. Poe “The Raven”. Here is an extract from it:
……………….here I opened wide
the door: -
D arkness there and nothing more.
Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood here wondering.
Doubting, dreaming dreams no mortal ever dared to dream before
(E. Poe)
The accumulation of the sound [d] and back vowels [o:], [a:] creates an ominous atmosphere of uncertainty and expectancy, the feeling of fear, sorrow and depression experienced by the hero of the poem.
There are special phonetic stylistic devices utilized in the literary text - alliteration and onomatopoeia. Alliteration is the repetition of similar sounds in the neighbouring words. One of the main stylistic functions of alliteration is to attract the reader’s attention. Therefore, it is widely used in titles: Pride and Prejudice (J. Austin); The School for Scandal (Sheridan); Sense and Sensi­ bility’ (J. Ausin); in proverbs and sayings: tit for tat; blind as bat; cool as cucumber., and advertisements: No noise is good noise; Detail. Design. Desire (linen).