Rhetoric Questions and other cases of syntactic transposition.
Contextual environment of a language unit may change its initial meaning. A typical case of contextual transposition of meaning is rhetoric questions. In fact, rhetoric questions are not questions but affirmative or negative statements put into the interrogative shape.A rhetoric question needs no answer, because the answer to it is quite obvious:
Why should I do it? means I shouldn 't do it.
What could I do in a case like that? means I could do nothing in a case like that. Compare:
Ax, кримська ніч! І хто тебе вигадав?! І навіщо ти така синя?! І навіщо ж ти така прозора?!
Життя цілого не досить, а що є в людині, окрім життя?
Communicative functions.A rhetoric question enhances the expressiveness of speech. Used in oratory style, rhetoric questions aim at catching the attention of the audience, making the sequential sentences sound persuasive andsignificant.
Thereare some more varieties of contextual transposition of meaning:
1. Exclamatory sentences with inversion:
Much he knew about it! = He did not know much about it.
Дуже ти багато розумієшся на мистецтві! Натюрморт від пейз ажу відрізнити не можеш.
2. Negative sentences implying emphatic affirmation:
I'll hang myself if it isn 't Barney Woods who did it! = It is Barney Woods who did it.
3. Syntactic structures of the type "Me a liar?" ( I am not a liar).
4. Syntactic structures with Subjunctive mood forms:
I wish I had not done it = I had done it.
LECTURE 11 . FUNCTIONAL STYLES
General characteristics of functional styles.
2. The group of bookish styles:
The belletristic style.
The newspaper style.
The publicistic style.
The scientific style.
The style of official documents.
3. The group of colloquial styles:
3.1. The literary colloquial style.
3.2. The informal colloquial style.
3.3. The substandard speech style.
1. Functional Styles of the English Language.
“Functional style is a system of linguistic means peculiar of certain sphere of communication” (Ю.М.Скребнев). “Functional style of speech is a special social differentiation of speech, corresponding to a definite sphere of activity, having a special stylistic coloring, determined by the aims and a corresponding sphere of communication” (М.Н.Кожина).
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According to I.R.Galperin: Functional style is a system of interrelated language means serving a definite aim in communication. It is the coordination of the language means and stylistic devices which shapes the distinctive features of each style and not the language means or stylistic devices themselves. Each style, however, can be recognized by one or more leading features which are especially conspicuous. For instance the use of special terminology is a lexical characteristics of the style of scientific prose, and one by which it can easily be recognized.
Functional styles are classified into bookish and colloquial. The group of bookish styles embraces the style of official documents, the style of scientific prose, the newspaper style, the publicistic style and the belletristic style. The croup of colloquial styles includes the literary colloquial style, the informal colloquial style and substandard speech style.
The speaker resorts to a certain functional style due to such extralingual factors: the character of the situation in which communication takes place (official, ceremonial, informal, private or other); the relations between the communicants (formal, official, friendly, hostile, spontaneous); the aim of communication (transference of specific information, emotional attitudes, establishment of business contacts, etc.); oral or written communication.
The belletristic style. This style attracts linguists most of all because the authors of books use the whole gamma of expressive means and stylistic devises while creating their images.
The belletristic style embraces prose, drama and poetry. The language of emotive prose is extremely diverse. Most of the books contain the authors' speech and the speech of protagonists. The authors' speech embodies all stylistic embellishments which the system of language tolerates. The speech of protagonists is just the reflection of people's natural communication which they carry out by means of the colloquial style.
The language of drama is also a stylization of the colloquial style when colloquial speech is not only an instrument for rendering information but an effective tool for the description of personages. The language of a play has the following peculiarities: 1) it is stylized (retains the modus of literary English); 2) it presents the variety of spoken language; 3) it has redundancy of information caused by necessity to amplify the utterance; 4) monologues are never interrupted; 5) characters’ utterances are much longer than in ordinary conversation.
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The most distinctive feature of the language of poetry is its elevation. The imagery of poems and verses is profound, implicit and very touching. It is created by elevated words (highly literary, poetic, barbaric, obsolete or obsolescent), fresh and original tropes, inversions, repetitions and parallel constructions. The pragmatic effect of poetic works may be enhanced by perfected rhymes, metres, rhymes and stanzas.
The newspaper style.
The newspaper style is a system of interrelated lexical, phraseological and grammatical means, basically serving the purposes of informing and instructing the reader.
Newspaper materials may be classified into three groups: brief news reviews, informational articles and advertisements. The vocabulary of the newspaper style consists mostly of neutral common literary words, though it also contains many political, social and economic terms (gross output, per capita production, gross revenue, apartheid, single European currency, political summit, commodity exchange). There are lots of abbreviations (GDP - gross domestic product, EU - European Union, WTO - World Trade Organization, UN - United Nations Organization, NATO -North Atlantic Treaty Organization, AIDS - acquired immune deficiency syndrome, IMF - International Monetary Fund, W. W. W. - World Wide Web). The newspaper vocabularies of the Russian and Ukrainian languages are overloaded with borrowings and international words (інтерв'ю, кореспонденція, інформація, репортаж, ідеалізація, ідеологія, соціал-демократ, монополіст, ініціатор), that is why the abundance of foreign suffixes (-ция, -ация, -изация , - изм , etc.) is a conspicuous morphological feature of the Russian and Ukrainian newspaper style.
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Grammatical peculiarities: complex sentences with a developed system of clauses; verbal constructions; syntactical complexes; attributive noun groups; specific word order.
One of unattractive features of the newspaper style is the overabundance of clichés. A cliché is a hackneyed phrase or expression. The phrase may once have been fresh or striking, but it has become tired through overuse. Clichés usually suggest mental laziness or the lack of original thought.
Syntax of the newspaper style as well as syntax of any other bookish style is a diversity of all structural types of sentences (simple, complex, compound and mixed) with a developed system of clauses connected with each other by all types of syntactic connections. The coating of bookishness is created by multicomponent attributive noun groups, participial, infinitive and gerundial word-combinations and syntactic constructions of secondary predication.
Advertising newspaper materials (ads) may be classified and non-clas sified. Classified ads are arranged topicwise in certain rubrics: "Births", "Deaths", "Marriages", "Sale", "Purchase", "Здоровье", "Меняю", "Сниму", "Услуги", "Знакомства", etc. Non-classified ads integrate all topics. Ads are arranged according to stereotyped rules of economizing on space. Due to this all non-informative speech segments are omitted intentionally, e. g.: Births. On November 1, at St. Bartholomew's Hospital, to Barbara and John Culhane - a son.
Graphically, the newspaper style is notable for the system of headlines. The headlines have formed themselves into a specific genre. They combine three functions: gripping readers' attention, providing information and evaluating the contents of the article. To perform these functions newspaper headlines must be sensational, expressive and informative. Sentences in headlines tend to be short, one-member or elliptical, affirmative, negative, interrogative and exclamatory.
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The publicistic style.
This style falls into the following variants: the oratory style (speeches, lectures and reports), the style of radio and TV programs, the style of essays and journalistic articles. The publicist style has the features common with the style of the scientific prose and that of emotive prose:
1) Coherent and logical syntactical structure, with the expanded system of connectives;
2) Careful paragraphing;
3) Emotional appeal is achieved by the use of words with emotive meaning;
4) The use of imagery and other stylistic devices in emotive prose;
5) It is also characterized by brevity of expression which becomes epigrammatic in essays.
The most essential feature of the oratory style is the direct contact of the speaker with the audience. To establish and maintain this contact, the speaker continuously resorts to various language means of address: ladies and gentlemen, honourable guests, dear colleagues, dear friends, etc. Public speeches, radio and TV commentaries are crammed with syntactic stylistic devisesof repetitions (direct, synonymic, anaphoric, epiphoric, framing, linking), polysyndeton, and parallelisms. These devices aim at making information persuasive. Journalistic articles and essays deal with political, social, economic, moral, ethical, philosophical, cultural, popular-scientific and so on problems. The choice of language means depends on the subject described. Scientific articles and essays contain more neutral words and constructions and less expressive means than articles and essays on humanitarian problems.
The scientific style.
This style serves as an instrument for promoting scientific ideas and exchanging scientific information among people. It is as bookish and formal as the style of official documents, that is why both styles have much in common. The scientific style is characterized by: rigour and precision; logical sequence of utterances; impersonality; quotations, references, footnotes; sentence patterns: postulatory, argumentative, formulative.
To graphical peculiarities of the style of scientific prose belong number- or letter-indexed paragraphing, a developed system of headlines, titles and subtitles, footnotes, pictures, tables, schemes and formulae. A great part of the vocabulary is constituted by special terms of international origin. The sphere of computer technologies alone enlarges the word-stock of different language vocabularies by thousands of new terms, such as "modem", "monitor", "interface", "hard disk", "floppy disk", "scanner", "CD-ro т drive", "driver", "fragmentation", "formatting", "software", "hardware", etc. Most of such terms are borrowed from English into other languages with preservation of their original form and sounding ( модем , монитор , интерфейс , сканнер , драйвер , фрагментация , форматирование ). The rest are translated by way of loan-translation ( жесткий диск , гибкий диск ) and in other ways (software - компьютерные программы , hardware - компоненты ЭВМ ). Adopted foreign terms submit to the grammar rules of the Russian and Ukrainian languages while forming their derivatives and compounds ( модемный , сканирование , переформатирование ). The scientific vocabulary also abounds in set-phrases and clichés which introduce specific flavour of bookishness and scientific character into the text (We proceed from assumption that ... , One can observe that... , As a matter of fact, ... , As is generally accepted, ... ,).
One of the most noticeable morphological features of the scientific prose style is the use of the personal pronoun "we" in the meaning of "I". The scientific "we" is called "the plural of modesty". Syntax does not differ much from that of the style of official documents.
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