Stylistic Reference.

Words differ not only in their emotive charge but also in their stylistic reference. Verbal communication takes place in different spheres of human activity, such as everyday life, business, science, etc. Each of these spheres has a peculiar mode of linguistic expression which is generally known as a functional style.

Words that are preferably used in one functional style are said to have a stylistic reference conditioned by the respective sphere.

Consider, for example, the following groups of words

1) inquire obtain proceed pursue seek

2) ask get go run after look for

Each of these two groups represents a different stylistic layer: the first group contains words of a literary-bookish layer, the second – stylistically neutral.

The main dichotomy is between stylistically neutral versus stylistically marked words. The main opposition lies between words of literary stylistic layer (words of Standard English) and those of non-literary stylistic layer (words of sub-Standard English).

In actual practice, however, it is very difficult, if not impossible, to discriminate between emotive, evaluative, expressive and functional-stylistic components of connotation. The emotive units are meant to be expressive as well, and vice versa. The units that connote evalution, i.e. speaker’s positive or negative attitude, his approval or disapproval, are simultaneously emotive and tend to be expressive, e.g. “rascal” and “ducky” are emotive and evaluative; at the same we find, non-emotive, intellectual evaluation “good”, “bad” and at the same time, there are hundreds of expressive words which cannot be treated as emotive (take, e.g. the so-called expressive verbs which not only denote some action or process but also create their image as in “to gulp” = to swallow in big lumps, in a hurry; “to sprint” = to run fast.

It is true that this or that component of connotation may come to the fore in the context. In semantic actualization of a word the context plays a dual role: on the hand, it cuts off al meanings irrelevant for the given communicative situation. On the other, it foregrounds one of the meaningful options of a word, focusing the communicators’ attention on one of the denotational or connotational components of its semantic structure.

Lecture 3

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