Distinctive linguistic features of the major functional styles of English. Literary Style.
Stylistics
Stylistic differentiation of the English vocabulary. Literary stratum of words.
1. The first subdivision of literary words to come under discussion is archaisms. Their main types illustrated by the given examples are:
- archaisms proper, i.e., antiquated or obsolete words replaced by new ones (e.g., anon – at once, haply – perhaps, befall – happen, etc.);
- historical words, i.e., words denoting such concepts and phenomena; that have gone out of use in modern times (i.e., knight, spear, lance, etc.);
- poetic words, i.e., archaic words with, the fixed sphere of usage in poetry and elevated prose and with the function of imbuing the work of art with a lofty poetic coloring (e.g., woe – sorrow, hapless – unlucky, staunch – firm, harken – hear, etc.);
- morphological (or partial) archaisms, i.e., archaic forms of otherwise non-archaic words (e.g., speacketh, cometh, wrought, brethren, etc.).
The main stylistic function of archaisms, besides the indicated poetic function, is to re-creat the atmosphere of antiquity. Not seldom though archaisms occurring in otherwise inappropriate surroundings are intentionally used by the writer to cause humorous effect.
2. The second subdivision of literary words is presented by barbarisms and foreign words which are used mainly to supply the narrated events with the proper local coloring and to convey the idea of the foreign origin or cultural and educational status of the personage.
3. The third group is made of terms. As it is well known their main stylistic function is to create the true-to-life atmosphere of the narration, but terms can also be used with a parodying function, thus creating humorous effect.
4. Neologisms comprising the fourth item offered for the students’ investigation are represented only by the group of stylistically colored individual neologisms (or nonce-words, or occasional words), which are created on the basis of the existing word-building patterns but have validity only in and for the given context. Usually they are heavily stylistically loaded, their major stylistic functions being the creation either of the effect of laconism, terseness and implication or that of witty humor or satire.
Stylistic differentiation of the English vocabulary. Colloquial stratum of words.
1. Slang is the most extended and vastly developed subgroup of non-standard colloquial layer of the vocabulary. Besides separate words it includes also highly figurative phraseology. Occurring mainly in dialogue, slang serves to create speech characteristics of personages.
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2. Among vulgarisms, the second subdivision to identify and analyse, we should differentiate those, which, through long usage, have lost their abusive character and became mere signals of ruffled emotions, and those which preserved their initial characteristics and server to insult and humiliate the addressee of the remark or to convey the speaker’s highly negative evaluation of the object in question. The first have lost much (or all) of their shoking power, became hackneyed and moved close to standard colloquial words (cf Russ, ‘чертовски’, or Engl, ‘devil’) while the latter, which may be called vulgarisms proper comprise the mam bulk of this vocabulary group.
3. Both subgroups of jargonisms are functioning in limited spheres of society. The difference lies in “the character and causes of limitation:
- professional jargonisms, or professionalisms, circulate within communities joined by professional interests and are emotive synonyms to terms”;
- social jargonisms are to be found within groups characterized by social integrity, they are emotive synonyms to neutral words of the general word-stock and purposefully conceal or disguise the meaning of the expressed concept.
4. Dialectal words, as it is well known, are introduced into the speech of personages to indicate their origin. The number of dialectal words and their frequency also indicate the educational and cultural level of the speaker.
An overview of functional style systems.
There are a great many classifications of language varieties that are called sublanguages, substyles, registers and functional styles that use various criteria for their definition and categorization. The term generally accepted by most Russian scholars is functional styles. A few classifications of the functional styles in modern English will be considered in this chapter.
(I) Books by I. R. Galperin on English Stylistics (1958, 1971, 1977) are among most acknowledged sources of stylistic research in this country.
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Professor Galperin distinguishes 5 functional styles and suggests their subdivision into substyles in modern English according to the following scheme:
1. The Belles-Lettres Style:
a) poetry;
b) emotive prose;
c) the language of the drama.
2. Publicist Style:
a) oratory and speeches;
b) the essay;
c) articles.
3. Newspaper Style:
a) brief news items;
b) headlines;
c) advertisements and announcements;
d) the editorial.
Scientific Prose Style.
5. The Style of Official documents:
a) business documents;
b) legal documents.
Prof. Galperin differs from many other scholars in his views on functional styles because he includes in his classification only the written variety of the language. In his opinion style is the result of creative activity of the writer who consciously and deliberately selects language means that create style. Colloquial speech, according to him, by its very nature will not lend itself to careful selection of linguistic features and there is no stylistic intention expressed on the part of the speaker. At the same time his classification contains such varieties of publicist style as oratory and speeches.
(II) In 1960 the book “Stylistics of the English Language” by M.D. Kuznetz and Y.M. Skrebnev appeared. The book was a kind of brief outline of stylistic problems. The styles and their varieties distinguished by these authors included:
1. Literary or Bookish Style:
a) publicist style;
b) scientific (technological) style;
c) official documents.
2. Free ("Colloquial") Style:
a) literary colloquial style;
b) familiar colloquial style.
As can be seen from this classification, both poetry and imaginative prose have not been included (as non-homogeneous objects) although the book is supplied with a chapter on versification.
(III) Next comes the well-known work by I. V. Arnold "Stylistics of Modern English" (decoding stylistics. Speaking of functional styles, Arnold starts with the kind of abstract notion termed 'neutral style'. It has no distinctive features and its function is to provide a standard background for the other styles. The other 'real' styles can be broadly divided into two groups according to the scholar's approach: different varieties of colloquial styles and several types of literary bookish styles.
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1. Colloquial Styles:
a) literary colloquial;
b) familiar colloquial;
c) common colloquial.
2. Literary Bookish Styles:
a) scientific;
b) official documents;
c) publicist (newspaper);
d) oratorical;
e) poetic.
Distinctive linguistic features of the major functional styles of English. Literary Style.
A description of five major functional styles is based on their most distinctive features on each level of the language structure: phonetical (where possible), morphological, syntactical, lexical and compositional. A peculiar combination of these features and special emphasis on some of them creates the paradigm of what is called a scientific or publicist text, a legal or other official document, colloquial or formal speech.
Phonetic features.
- Standard pronunciation in compliance with the national norm, enunciation.
- Phonetic compression of frequently used forms, e.g. it's, don't, I've.
- Omission of unaccented elements due to the quick tempo, e. g. know him?
Morphological features.
- Use of regular morphological features, with interception of evaluative suffixes e. g. deary, doggie, duckie.
- Prevalence of active and finite verb forms.
Syntactical features
- Use of simple sentences with a number of participial and infinitive constructions and numerous parentheses.
- Syntactically correct utterances compliant with the literary norm.
- Use of various types of syntactical compression, simplicity of syntactical connection.
- Use of grammar forms for emphatic purposes, e. g. progressive ; forms to express emotions of irritation, anger etc. Decomposition and ellipsis of sentences in a dialogue.
- Use of special colloquial phrases, e.g. that friend of yours.
Lexical features
- Wide range of vocabulary strata in accordance with the register of communication and participants' roles: formal and informal, bookish, terms and foreign words.
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- Basic stock of communicative vocabulary—stylistically neutral.
- Use of socially accepted contracted forms and abbreviations, e. g. fridge for refrigerator, ice for ice-cream, TV for television, CD for compact disk, etc.
- Use of etiquette language and conversational formulas, such as nice to see you, my pleasure, on behalf of, etc.
- Extensive use of intensifies and gap-fillers, e. g. absolutely, definitely, awfully, kind of, so to speak, I mean, if I may say so.
- Use of interjections and exclamations, e. g. Dear me, My God, Goodness, well, why, now, oh.
- Extensive use of phrasal verbs let sb. down, put up with, stand sb. up.
- Use of words of indefinite meaning like thing, stuff.
- Avoidance of slang, vulgarisms, dialect words, jargon.
- Use of phraseological expressions, idioms and figures of speech.
Compositional features
- Can be used in written and spoken varieties: dialogue, monologue, personal letters, diaries, essays, articles, etc.
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