Stylistics and its subject

The term stylistics is derived from the word "style". The word style goes back to the Latin "stilos". The Romans called thus a sharp stick used for writing on wax tablets. It was already in Latin that the meaning of the word "stilos" came to denote not only the tool of writing, but also the manner of writing. With the new meaning the word was borrowed into European languages.

Every native speaker knows that there exist different ways of expressing people's attitude towards phenomena of objective reality. There are different variants of expressing similar, though not quite identical ideas. Depending on the aim and the contents of the utterance we distinguish different types of speech, which are called functional styles of speech: the style of fiction, the style of scientific prose, official style, publicistic style. The choice of vocabulary and sentence patterns is determined by the type of speech.

Every work of fiction contains certain thoughts which the author wants to convey to the reader. In order to do this successfully the writer carefully selects linguistic and other means i.e. to make his speech expressive he uses various stylistic expressive means. Among stylistic expressive means we distinguish syntactical and lexical expressive means. Syntactical expressive means are, for example, syntactical parallelism and all kinds of repetition, antithesis, or contrast, gradation or climax, various emphatic constructions, and others. Lexical expressive means are epithet, metaphor, metonymy, irony and many others.

Stylistics is a branch of linguistics dealing with variants, varieties of linguistic expression and, with the sub-systems making up the general system of language. The subject of Stylistics is: Expressive Means and Stylistic Devices (phonetic, lexical, syntactical), Stylistic classification of the English Vocabulary, Functional styles of the English language, social and stylistic variation of the language.

Stylistics is a science, which studies style. The word 'style' has several meanings. We are particularly interested in one: manner of doing something, especially when it is characteristic of an artist or of a period of art, manner of writing and speaking. In the meaning of 'manner of writing and speaking' the word style applies to different things:

1) It denotes the peculiarities of a writer's individual manner of using language means in the expression 'Individual style'. Prof. Galperin defines individual style' as 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'.

2) The word 'style' is widely used to denote literary genre or trend, or kinds of literary works. Thus, we speak of classical style or the style" of classicism, realistic style, the style of romanticism, the style of the novel, tragedy, comedy, etc.

3) The word 'style' also signifies a manner of writing or speaking depending on the Situation, that is, a functional style. Each functional style is characterized by its own features, which make it different from other functional styles. Each functional style has its own choice of vocabulary and sentence patterns. Prof. Galperin defines functional style as a system of interrelated language means, which serves a definite aim in communication.

He distinguishes the following functional styles:

· the belles lettres style /literary studies and writings/ (falls into a) poetry, b) emotive prose and c) drama)

· the publicistic style falls into a) speeches, b) essays, c) articles in journal and newspapers)

· the newspaper style (a) newspaper headlines, b) brief news and c) advertisement)

· the scientific prose style, (the prose style in humanitarian sciences and in exact sciences)

· the style of official document (a) language of commercial documents, diplomatic documents, c) language of legal documents, d) language of legal documents)

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