Stylistics of Language and Speech.
The Concept of Style in Linguistics.
The word style is derived from the Latin word 'stylus' which meant a short stick sharp at one end and flat at the other used by the Romans for writing on wax tablets.
Now the word ‘style’ is used in so many senses that it has become a ground for ambiguity. The word is applied to the teaching of how to write a composition; it is also used to reveal the correspondence between thought and expression; it frequently denotes an individual manner of making use of language, etc.
The academician V. V. Vinogradov (Виктор Владимирович Виноградов) defined style as “socially recognized and functionally conditioned internally united totality of the ways of using, selecting and combining the means of lingual intercourse in the sphere of one national language or another ‹…›”. Prof. I. R. Galperin (Илья Романович Гальперин) offered his definition of style as “a system of interrelated language means which serves a definite aim in communication.”
According to Prof. Y. M. Skrebnev (Юрий Максимович Скребнев), “style is what differentiates a group of homogeneous texts (an individual text) from all other groups (other texts) ‹…› Style can be roughly defined as the peculiarity, the set of specific features of a text type or of a specific text.”
All these definitions point out the systematic and functionally determined character of the notion of style.
The Object of Stylistics.
Units of language on different levels are studied by traditional branches of linguistics such as phonetics that deals with speech sounds and intonation; lexicology that treats words, their meaning and vocabulary structure, grammar that analyses forms of words and their function in a sentence which is studied by syntax. These areas of linguistic study are rather clearly defined and have a long-term tradition of regarding language phenomena from a level-oriented point of view. Thus the subject matter and the material under study of these linguistic disciplines are more or less clear.
It gets more complicated when we talk about stylistics. Some scholars claim that this is a comparatively new branch of linguistics, which has only a few decades of intense linguistic interest behind it. The term stylistics really came into existence not too long ago. In fact the scope of problems and the object of stylistic study go as far back as ancient schools of rhetoric and poetics.
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The problem that makes the definition of stylistics a curious one deals both with the object and the material of studies. When we speak of the stylistic value of a text we cannot proceed from the level-biased approach that is so logically described through the hierarchical system of sounds, words and clauses. Not only may each of these linguistic units be charged with a certain stylistic meaning but the interaction of these elements, as well as the structure and composition of the whole text are stylistically pertinent.
Stylistics as a branch of general linguistics deals mainly with two interdependent tasks: a) the investigation of the inventory of special language media which by their characteristic features secure the desirable effect of the utterance and b) certain types of texts (discourse) which due to the choice and arrangement of language means are distinguished by the pragmatic aspect of the communication. The two objectives of stylistics are clearly discernible as two separate fields of investigation. The inventory of special language media can be analyzed and their characteristic features revealed if presented in a system in which the co-relation between the media becomes evident.
The types of texts can be analyzed if their linguistic components are presented in their interaction, thus revealing the unbreakable unity and transparency of constructions of a given type. The types of texts that are distinguished by the pragmatic aspect of the communication are called functional styles of language (FS); the special media of language which secure the desirable effect of the utterance are called stylistic devices (SD) and expressive means (EM).
Stylistics of Language and Speech.
One of the fundamental concepts of linguistics is the dichotomy (division into to parts) of “language and speech” (langue – parole) introduced by F. de Saussure. According to it language is a system of elementary and complex signs: phonemes, morphemes, words, word combinations, utterances and combinations of utterances. Language as such a system exists in human minds only and linguistic forms or units can be systematised into paradigms.
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So language is a mentally organised system of linguistic units. An individual speaker never uses it. When we use these units we mix them in acts of speech. As distinct from language speech is not a purely mental phenomenon, not a system but a process of combining these linguistic elements into linear linguistic units that are called syntagmatic.
The result of this process is the linear or syntagmatic combination of vowels and consonants into words, words into word-combinations and sentences and combination of sentences into texts. The word “syntagmatic” is a purely linguistic term meaning a coherent sequence of words (written, uttered or just remembered).
Stylistics is a branch of linguistics that deals with texts, not with the system of signs or process of speech production as such. But within these texts elements stylistically relevant are studied both syntagmatically and paradigmatically (loosely classifying all stylistic means paradigmatically into tropes and syntagmatically into figures of speech).
Eventually this brings us to the notions of stylistics of language and stylistics of speech. Their difference lies in the material studied.
The stylistics of language analyses permanent or inherent (‘врожденный’)stylistic properties of language elements while the stylistics of speech studies stylistic properties, which appear in a context, and they are called adherent (‘примыкающий’).
So stylistics of language describes and classifies the inherent stylistic colouring of language units. Stylistics of speech studies the composition of the utterance – the arrangement, selection and distribution of different words, and their adherent qualities.
Branches of Stylistics.
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