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STYLISTICS AND ITS OBJECTIVES Units of language on different levels are studied by traditional branches of linguistics such as phonetics, grammar, lexicology, whose subject-matter and the material under study are more or less clear-cut. It gets more complicated when we talk about the object of research and the material of studies of stylistics. The term itself stylistics - came into existence not too long ago. However, the scope of problems and the object of stylistic study go as far back as ancient schools of rhetoric and poetics. It is in rhetoric that we find most of the notions and terms contemporary stylistics generally employs. The most complete and well developed antique system, that came down to us is the Hellenistic Roman rhetoric system. All expressive means (the object of its research) were divided into 3 large groups: a. Tropes, b. Rhythm (Figures of Speech), and c. Types of Speech. Stylistics, unlike other linguistic subjects, does not study or describe separate linguistic units as such. Roughly speaking, stylistics is a branch of linguistics, which studies the principles, and the effect of choice and usage of different language elements in rendering thought and emotion under different conditions of communication. I.R.Galperin asserts that stlistis, sometimes called l i n g u o s t y l i s t i c s, is a branch of general linguistics that mainly deals with two interdependent objectives: a. the investigation of the special language media which secure the desirable effect of the utterance b. the investigation of certain types of texts which (due to the choice and arrangement of language means) are distinguished by the pragmatic aspect of communication. These two tasks of stylistics are clearly discernible as separate fields of its investigation. The special media are called stylistic devices and expressive means (SDs and EMs); the types of texts are called functional styles (FSs). The first field of investigation, i.e. SDs and EMs, touches upon such general language problems as: a. the aesthetic function of language, b. synonymous ways of rendering one and the same idea, c. emotional colouring in language, d. the interrelation between language and thought, e. the individual manner of an author in making use of language, etc. The second field, i.e. FSs, brings forth the discussion of such issues as: a. oral and written varieties of language, b. the notion of the literary (standard) language, c. the constituents of texts larger than the sentence, d. the classification of the types of texts, e. the generative aspect of literary texts, etc. Stylistics as a branch of linguistics overlaps with such adjacent disciplines as theory of information, theory of communication, literature studies, psychology, sociology, logic and some others. VARIOUS DEFINITIONS OF STYLE IN LANGUAGE Stylistics, as the term implies, deals with styles. The word style is derived from the Latin word stilus (stylus) or Greek stylos which meant a short stick sharp at one end and flat at the other used by the Romans for writing on wax tablets. Later it was associated with the manner of writing. Today it can be applied in any activity which can be performed in more than one way (manner), verbal communication including. Hence style presupposes choice. 1) In linguistics the word style has acquired so many interpretations that it gives ground for ambiguity. 2) Style is frequently regarded as something that belongs exclusively to the plane of expression and not to the plane of content because one and the same idea can be expressed in different ways.

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S. Chatman defines style as a product of individual choices and patterns of choices among linguistic possibilities. 4) Style is often understood as a technique of expression, i.e. the ability to write clearly, correctly and in a manner calculated to interest the reader. Style in this sense deals with the normalized forms of the language.

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The generic term style is often identified with the individual style of an author, or the authorial style. I.R. Galperin believes that the individual style of an author is only one of the applications of the term style. I. In the case it should be applied to the sphere of linguistic and literary science which deals with the peculiarities of a writer's individual manner of using language means to achieve the effect he desires. II. The individual style as a deliberate choice of an author he distinguishes from a habitual idiosyncrasy in the use of language units by any individual or an idiolect. He defines style as a system of interrelated language means which serves a definite aim in communication. 7) Style is frequently treated as the embellishment of language. Language and style as embellishment are regarded as separate bodies when style is imposed on language for artistic effect. 8) Style may also be defined as deviations from the lingual norm (M. Riffaterre, E. Saporta, M. Halliday, E. Enkvist). Thus, what is stylistically conspicuous, stylistically relevant, stylistically coloured is a departure from the norm of the given national language. Here arises the problem of norm. There never has been one single norm for all. On the one hand, the notion of norm implies a recognized or received standard, or so-called pre-established, traditional and conventionally accepted parameters (i.e. characteristics) of what is evaluated (Y. M. Skrebnev).On the other, the requirements of the uncultivated part of the English-speaking population do not coincide with those of the cultivated one: they merely have their own conception of norm. 9) Y. M. Skrebnev, acknowledging the split of a language into sublanguages, believes that style is specificity of sublanguage. STYLISTIC INFORMATION, STYLISTIC NORM, STYLISTIC FUNCTION Stylistic information, or stylistic colouring of a lingual unit, is the knowledge where, in what particular type of communication, the unit is current. The majority of the words are stylistically neutral. Stylistically coloured words (e.g. bookish, solemn, poetic, official, colloquial, rustic, dialectal, vulgar, etc.) have each a kind of label on them, an inscription, a kind of trade-mark showing where the unit was manufactured and where it generally belongs. Stylistically neutral words taken separately only denote without connoting. Stylistically coloured words preserve their label or trade-mark even in isolation. Our verbal experience helps us to identify the appurtenance of words to a certain sphere. Besides occasionally a certain context, a specific distribution may also add some unexpected colouring to a generally neutral word. Such stylistic connotation is called occasional. Stylistic colouring of linguistic units is also the result of their distributional capacities. The term distribution implies the possibilities of combining the given unit with its immediate environment. Thus it brings to the forefront the notion of a stylistic norm that indicates in what collocations and speech variety certain lingual units are proper or improper. In the following examples we shall observe the opposition of three sublanguages (styles): a. The old man is dead (normal literary, practically neutral). (Cf. .) b. The gentleman well advanced in years attained the termination of his terrestrial existence (high-flown, exquisite, pompous). (Cf. .) c. The ole (low colloquial for old) bean he kicked the bucket (low colloquial, derogatory). (Cf. ( ).) Besides, stylistics does not study or describe separate linguistic units as such. It studies their stylistic function, i.e. it is interested in the expressive potential or expressive properties of linguistic units and their interaction in conveying ideas and emotions in a certain context. There should be mentioned the following integral peculiarities of a stylistic function:

3 a. its chameleon quality - a certain device does not necessarily perform the same function, it may
vary from context to context, e.g. a hyperbole may be used for creating a humorous or dramatic atmosphere. b. its implicit character - is secured by the connotative meanings of words c. its accumulative character a certain mood or feeling is usually rendered by a group of various means. This phenomenon is also termed convergence of devices. d. its irradiating character - few or even one lingual unit with an outstanding stylistic function may attach a peculiar sounding to the whole speech unit. STYLISTICS AND ITS MAJOR TRENDS According to the type of stylistic research they distinguish linguostylistics (founded by a French linguist Ch. Bally) and literary stylistics. They have some meeting points or links which lie in the study of: a. the literary language from the point of view of its variability; b. the individual manner of a writer; c. poetic speech that has its own specific laws. The points of difference proceed from different points of analysis. While linguostylistics studies: a. styles of sublanguages, or functional styles and their specificity, development and current state, b. language units from the point of view of their capacity to render evaluations and evoke emotions, literary stylistics inevitably overlaps with areas of literary studies such as the theories of artistic imagery and literary criticism, literary genres, the art of composition, the writer's outlook, the peculiarities of a certain trend or epoch, etc. Another distinguished trend of stylistics is stylistics of decoding. It can be traced back to the works of L.V. Shcherba, B.A. Larin, M. Riffaterre, R. Jackobson and many other scholars (mainly of the Prague linguistic circle). The role and purpose of this trend was summed up by I.V. Arnold in her book on decoding stylistics: Modern stylistics in not so much interested in the identification of separate devices as in discovering the common mechanism of tropes and their effect. It is common knowledge that each work of verbal art can be viewed from the point of view of its encoder (the author) and decoder (the reader, the recipient). If the literary text is analyzed from the author's (encoding) point of view such background facts as the epoch, the historical situation, the personal political, social and aesthetic views of the author, etc. are considered (the analysis of the extralinguistic context). But if the same text is treated from the readers (decoding) angle the maximum information is excavated from the text itself: its vocabulary, sentence arrangement, composition, etc. and their interaction in rendering the authors message (the analysis of the linguistic context) . The first approach manifests the prevalence of the literary analysis. The second is based almost exclusively on the linguistic analysis. Stylistics of decoding harmoniously combines these two methods of stylistic research and enables the reader to interpret a work with a minimum loss of its purport and message.. Thus, the basic difference between linguostylistics and decoding stylistics is that the latter studies means provided by each level not as isolated devices that demonstrate some stylistic function but as a part of the general system that discloses the overall concept of the author. In other terms, expressive means and stylistic devices are treated here only in their interaction and distribution within the text as the carriers of the authors purpose and signs of his vision of the world. The subdivisions of linguostylistics The subdivision of linguostylistics is based on the level-forming approach: sounds, words, phrases and sentences, paragraphs and texts are studied from the point of view of their expressive capacities, or stylistic function. ere belong: Lexical stylistics (stylistic lexicology). It studies the semantic structure of the word and the interplay of the connotative and denotative meanings of the word, as well as the interrelation of the stylistic connotations of the word and the context. Special attention is also paid to the functioning of different set expressions. What unites it with general (i.e. non-stylistic) lexicology is the study of the stylistic differentiation of the vocabulary.

4 Phonostylistics (stylistic phonetics). General phonetics investigates the whole articulatory-audial system of language. Stylistic phonetics pays attention to the style-forming phonetic features of sublanguages: it describes variants of pronunciation occurring in different types of speech. Special attention is also paid to the expressive potential of phonetic means as well as the prosodic features of prose and poetry. NB! In written texts phonetic means are often substituted by graphical devices (the domain of study of graphical stylistics).
Grammatical stylistics. 1) Morphological stylistics (stylistic morphology) 2) Syntactical stylistics (stylistic syntax) Non-stylistic morphology treats morphemes and their grammatical meanings in general, without regard to the sphere of their application. Morphological stylistics is interested in the expressive potential of grammatical meanings, forms and categories as well as the deviations from a normative word formation that are peculiar to particular sublanguages, explicitly or implicitly comparing them with the neutral ones common to all the sublanguages. Non-stylistic syntax treats word combinations and sentences, analysing their structures and stating what is permissible and what is not in constructing correct utterances in the given language. Syntactical stylistics is one of the oldest branches of stylistic studies that grew out of classical rhetoric. It investigates the expressive potential and the influential power of the deviations from a normative word order, of types of sentence and of syntactical connection. It also shows what particular constructions are met with (or should be employed) in various types of speech, what syntactical structures are specific in the sublanguage in question. Besides, syntactical stylistics very often operates on longer units, from the paragraph upwards. Functional stylistics (the theory of functional styles). Functional stylistics is a branch of linguostylistics that investigates the totality of media typical of varieties of the national language distinguished by the communicative function, sphere of communication and compliance with the norm. Text stylistics is one more branch of stylistic research. There exist various definitions of the term text. It can be understood as a completed product of speech, representing a sequence of words, grammatically connected and semantically coherent, and having a certain communicative goal. Text Stylistics aims at investigating the most effective ways and means of producing texts belonging to different styles, substyles and genres. It also studies the lingual means through which different types of information and presentational manners are conveyed as well as the verbal manifestation of text categories.