Stylistics and style.
Topic 1
General Notions of Stylistics
Stylistics and style.
2. Various definitions of style.
3. Stylistics and its subdivisions.
4. General notes on functional styles.
1. Stylistics is one of the various branches of general linguistics.
This science is comparatively new. According to the Oxford Dictionary it was recorded for the first time only in 1882 meaning ‘the science of literary style, the study of stylistic features’. The name of science originated from the word ‘style’ which has a much longer history. It was derived from the Latin word ‘stylus’ which means a short stick sharp at one end and flat at the other, used by the Romans for writing on wax tablets. Since that it has acquired so many meanings that made it very ambiguous. It is applied to the teaching of how to write a composition, how to reveal the correspondence between thought and its expression, it refers to an individual manner of making use of language, i.e. a manner of writing and speaking, etc.
2. Such wide understanding of style made it one of the thorniest
concepts to be dealt with. It has hundreds of definitions and characterizations, such as ‘the dress of thought’ (S.Wesley), ‘proper words in proper places’ (J.Swift), etc. Linguistic definitions may be grouped in the following way:
1. style as a product of individual choices and patterns of choices among linguistic possibilities (S.Chatman, D.Crystal). This definition treats style as an individual style of an author.
2. style as embellishment of language (M.Murry). From this point of view language and style are separate bodies, style is like trimming on a dress, and users of language can easily do without it. Moreover, style is viewed as something that hinders understanding as the use of stylistic devices may hide the idea.
3. style as a deviation from the norm (E.Sapir, L.V.Scherba)
The notion of the norm mainly refers to the literary language. It is treated as the invariant of the phonemic, morphological, lexical and syntactical patterns in circulation during a given period in the development of the given language. The existence of the norm presupposes deviations from it, as it can be established and perceived only when there are deviations from it.
4. style as the technique of expression (H.Spencer, F.L.Lucas)
The main connotation of this treatment of style is utilitarian. Style is understood as the ability to write and speak clearly, correctly which can be taught, as there are certain rules as to how to speak and write and all deviations from them are regarded as violations of the norm.
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5. style as a literary genre (classical style, realistic style, style of romanticism, etc.) In this application of the term, the arrangement of what are purely literary facts is under observation.
6. individual style. The term is applied to the study of peculiarities of a writer’s individual manner of deliberate use of language means to achieve a certain desirable effect.
7. style as a style of language. I.R.Galperin defines a style of language as a system of interrelated language means, which serves a definite aim of communication. One system of language means is opposed to other systems with their aims. So we may speak about the belles-lettres style as opposed to publicistic or the newspaper styles, etc.
But still all various definitions have something in common. All of them point to some integral significance, that a style is a set of characteristics by which it is possible to distinguish one author from another or members of one subclass from members of other subclasses.
3. Stylistics and its subdivisions
Modern stylistics was elaborated at the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century. Its foundations were laid by the great linguist Ch.Bally. His approach to stylistics was opposite to the widely spread one which viewed it only as the art of writing well. Ch. Bally sought to develop stylistics of the language, not of literary works. Starting from the idea that language expresses thoughts and feelings, he concluded that the way of expression of thoughts and feelings constituted the proper object of stylistics.
About 10 years later Ch.Bally, the work of L.Spitzer appeared. This author concentrated his attention on a correlation between stylistic properties of an artistic text and the psychic of the author, being more interested in the worldview of the writer. L.Spitzer never tried to create the stylistic system of a language, remaining attached to the analysis of literary works.
These two attitudes, originally represented by Ch.Bally and L.Spitzer, gave the ground for developing various trends in stylistic research.
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I.R.Galperin defines stylistics as a branch of general linguistics which deals with the following interdependent tasks: on the one hand, it is the study of the totality of special language means (stylistic devices and expressive means) which are aimed at the desirable effect of the utterance, and, on the other hand, it is the study of certain types of texts (discourse) which due to the choice and arrangement of language means are distinguished by the pragmatic aspect of communication (functional styles).
I.V.Arnold views stylistics as a branch of general linguistics which deals with the principles and effects that the choice and use of lexical, grammatical, phonetical and other language means produce in conveying thoughts and emotions in different situations of communication. Information about the same fact may be given depending on such pragmatic factors as the circumstances in which communication takes place (formal or informal), or the social status of the interlocutors, relations between them and attitudes to what they are speaking about, etc.
Depending on the school of thought, linguists find the following directions within stylistics: stylistics of language and stylistics of speech, or linguo-stylistics and literary stylistics (or literary criticism), stylistics of encoding and stylistics of decoding, etc.
The foundations of linguostylistics, as it has been mentioned above, were laid by Ch.Bally who compared the existing nation-wide norm with specific features of language subsystems, called functional styles and dialects, which are characterized by peculiarities of their vocabulary, phraseology, syntax, and expressive properties of different language means. Stylistics of speech studies separate texts investigating the way they convey the content with the help of the normative means and various deviations from the norm. It deals with the peculiar use of expressive means of a language by a certain author, trend or genre, and the factors artistic expressiveness depends upon. The primary aim of literary stylistics is to explicate the message, to interpret and evaluate literary writings as works of art. So it has become an inseparable part of poetics as a science of creating literary works and the theory of literature.
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To understand any text better we need to concentrate our attention on interaction of the choice of images, words, and morphological forms, syntactical structures. Such analysis can help the readers penetrate deep into the content and understand the author’s view and his mood. So the task of the reader is to interpret this system, i.e. to decode it. These ideas taken by the American linguist M.Riffaterre from the theory of information created the ground for development of stylistics of encoding (stylistics of a writer) as opposed to stylistics of decoding (stylistics of a reader).
Shannon, a creator of the theory of information, suggested a scheme for transmitting information. In his opinion every act of communication consists of six parts: 1) encoding of the message,
2) its transmission, 3) its realization as a signal through (4) a channel, 5) its reception, 6) its decoding. So a writer or a speaker reconstructs reality in his images and puts them in such a structure that they acquire the ability to influence a reader through a certain form (novels, stories, verses). A reader should restore the whole picture while decoding the text. The scheme can be presented in a shorter way:
Sender / encoder --- message --- receiver / decoder
(speaker or writer) --- (work of literature) --- (reader)
I.V. Arnold among the directions of stylistic research differentiates lexical, grammatical, phonetic stylistics according to the corresponding language levels.
Lexical stylistics is concerned with stylistic functions of vocabulary and studies interrelations of direct and derived, or transferred, meanings, components of contextual meanings of words, their expressive, evaluative potential and reference to a particular style. It can also deal with the expressive qualities of some word – building patterns or models of word – composition.
Grammatical stylistics can be split into morphological and syntactic. Morphological stylistics investigates stylistic potential of different grammatical categories proper to a certain part of speech: category of number of nouns, oppositions in the system of pronouns, relations between artistic and grammatical tenses, etc. Syntactic stylistics reveals the expressive properties of word order, types of sentences, types of syntactic connections. Here also belongs the study of a structure and characteristics of a paragraph and other units bigger than a sentence. Great attention is paid to different ways of conveying narration and presenting speech of characters (dialogues, indirect speech, a flow of consciousness) and other problems common to stylistics and the theory of text.
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Phonetic stylistics, or phonostylistics, covers all phenomena of sound organization of poetry and prose (rhythm, rhyme, alliteration, onomatopoeia, etc.) which are connected with the problem of meaning of a sound form. It also investigates a non-standard pronunciation of characters: whether it is used to create a comic, humorous, satirical effect or to point to social differences or to give local colouring.
4. General notes on functional styles
Classification of functional styles is one of the most disputable questions of linguostylistics. Theoretically the number of styles may be equal to the number of the spheres of communication, but it is difficult to single out the spheres themselves. I.R. A Galperin states that the functional styles is a phenomenon belonging to the language code, to language as a system. He offers a two-level hierarchy of styles and substyles. He defines a functional style of language as a system of interrelated language means that serves a definite aim of communication. A functional style should be understood as the product of a concrete task set by the sender of the message. Different functional styles appear mainly in the literary standard of a language. They can be considered the product of the development of the written variety of a language and the following major functional styles may be distinguished:
1. the Belles – Lettres Style with the substyles of a) poetry, b)emotive prose, c) drama;
2. the Publicistic style comprising the language of a) oratory, b)essays,
c) feature articles in newspapers and journals;
3. the Newspaper Style embracing the language style of a)brief news items and communiqués, b)newspaper headings, c)notices and advertisements;
4. the Scientific Prose Style with three divisions: the language style of:
a) humanitarian sciences, b)’exact’ sciences, c) popular scientific prose;
5. the Style of Official Documents divided into four varieties:
a) diplomatic documents, b)business documents, c)legal documents, and d)military documents.
Most linguists of the country agreed to the functional styles’
belonging to language and recognised the existence of the scientific style, the publicistic style, the style of official documents, the style of creative literature as they are primarily associated with written language. They also showed other approaches to classifying the styles. V.L. Naer adds two more styles to the mentioned above - the professional- technical style and the style of religion and names them macrostyles. The set of macrostyles forms a megastyle, for example, the scientific prose style, the style of official documents form the megastyle of professional and business communication, the newspaper style, the publicistic style and the religious style make the megastyle of mass communication. The belles-lettres style is treated as a megastyle of aesthetic communication.
M.D. Kuznetz and Y.M. Screbnev differentiate between the literary refined or bookish and the free or colloquial styles. According to their classification the literary refined style embraces the publicistic style, the scientific-technical style, the style of official documents. The free style includes the literary colloquial style and the familiar colloquial style. The belles-lettres style is not included into this classification.
I.V.Arnold introduces her own system of classification of styles. She uses
a concept of the neutral style as opposed to two groups of stylistically marked styles, colloquial and bookish. The colloquial style separates into literary colloquial, familiar colloquial, and low colloquial. The bookish style includes scientific style, style of official documents, publicistic or newspaper style, oratorical and lofty-poetical styles. She points out that the existence of the belles-lettres functional style is disputable and she is inclined to deny its existence. In her opinion, it does not mean that creative literature is styleless, but the term “style” should be used in its aesthetic not functional sense, and the stylistics that studies the style of creative literature should be given a special name, such as ‘the theory of creative literature’ to distinguish it from functional stylistics.
So the comparison of the existing classifications of functional styles reveals the differences of opinions concerning mainly two styles - the colloquial functional style and the belles-lettres functional style.
Topic 2
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