General notes on style and stylistics

1. 2. 3. 4.

Object and subject of stylistics Expressive means and stylistic devices Functional styles Meaning from a stylistics point of view

1). The object of stylistics is language because stylistics is the branch of linguistics. Stylistics tasks: 1. The study of the inventory of special language media which by their ontological features secure the desirable effect of the utterance 2. The investigation of certain types of texts which due to the choice and arrangements of language means are distinguished by the pragmatic aspects of the communication The types of text may be called functional style of language. Stylistics branch of linguistics. The subject is the study of language styles, their aims, structure, characteristic feature, the effect of the produce and the study of means and stylistic devices. Stylistic information comprises: 1. Emotive element (state of a speaker) 2. Expressive (attitude) 3. Evaluator 4. Stylistic aspect (what words are used) Additional information is called stylistic. The realization of additional information is always connected with the condition and participants of the word of communication. Stylistic information is information about connotation. The problem of the norm Norm should be regarded as the invariant of the phonemic, morphological, lexical and syntactical patterns circulating in language in action at a given period of time. This invariant embraces all variants. But one of the most characteristic of the norm is its flexibility. Language as system may figuratively be depicted as an employer of language in action. All rules and patterns of language which are connected and classified in words, of grammar, phonetic, lexicology, stylistics first appear in language in action and then they are generalized and framed as rules and patterns of language as a system. 2). All stylistic means can be divided into expressive means and stylistic devices The expressive means of a language are those phonetic, morphological, word-building, lexical, phraseological and syntactical forms which exist in language as a system for the purpose of logical or emotional intensification of the utterance. Expressive means exist on every level of the language. The most powerful are phonetic expressive means: Pitch Stress Possession Whispering A sing-song manner And other ways of using the voice are much more effective than any other means in intensifying an utterance emotionally or logically.

Speaking about morphological e/m we must admit the set of means is very poor: The usage of historical present The usage of shall in the 2nd and 3rd person The usage of demonstrative pronoun with an emphatic meaning Some processes of nominalization At the lexical level there are many words with due to their inner expressiveness constitute a special layer. All kinds of set phrases generally possessed the property of expressiveness. At the syntactical level there are many constructions which when set against synonymous neutral ones will reveal a certain degree of logical or emotional emphasis. Stylistic device is conscious intensification of some typical structural or semantic property of a language unit promote to a generalized status and thus becoming a generative modal. S/d always function in text as markers unities. They always carry some kind of additional information either emotional or logical. Any e/m can be promoted its s/d. 3). A functional style of the language is a system of interrelated language means which serves a definite aim in communication. A functional style appears mainly in the literary standard of a language. In the English literary standard we distinguish the following functional styles: 1. Belles-letters 2. Publicistic style 3. Newspaper style 4. Scientific prose style 5. The style of official documents 6. Colloquial style Style is a literary genre. 4). General meaning: 1. Lexical 2. Grammatical 3. Logical Additional meaning which is called stylistic Stylistic Pragmatic Contextual Additional meaning include: Expressive Emotive Evaluative components. The two aspects of meaning that may be given approximate analysis connotative relation denotative The connotative relation is the relation between sins and the interpreting signs. The denotative relation is the relation between signs and objects. Meaning I stylistics is viewed as a category which is able to acquire meanings imposed on the words by context. Types of meaning: 1. Denotational which informs of the subject of communication 2. Connotational which informs about the participants and condition of communication.

Meaning of language unit General Logical Lexical Grammatical Stylistic (pragmatic) Expressive Emotive evaluative

In general linguistics the problem of meaning deals mainly with such aspects of the term as the interrelation between meaning and concept, meaning and sign, meaning and referent. The general tendency is to regard meaning as something fixed at a given period of time. Logical or denotative meaning is the precise meaning of a feature or an idea or phenomenon or an object with the name of which we recognize the whole of the concept. The logical meaning of one word may denote different concepts. It is necessary to distinguish between primary and secondary logical meaning. It is essentially for the stylistics to distinguish between the primary and secondary meaning as some stylistic devices are built on the interplay between them. Pragmatic meaning Stylistics is the domain where meaning assumes paramount importance because it is applied not only to words, word combinations, sentences, but also to the manner of expression into which the matter is cast. In stylistics it is important to discriminate shades of meaning in order to adequately comprehend the idea of a passage or a complete work. Emotive component is connected with the expressive of feelings (pleasure, surprise) Emotive meaning is an intensifying derivative meaning (He looked dreadfully pitiful) The evaluative meaning of phrase or word may be positive negative neutral Stylistic connotation depends on its habitual units in one functional style.