Word and its Semantic Structure. Types of meanings. The Role of the Context in the Actualization of Meaning. Stylistic stratification of the English vocabulary
Stylistics as a branch of a linguistic science. The principal categories of stylistics. Functional stylistics. Trends in style study. Foregrounding.
Stylistics is a branch of general linguistics, the principal categories of which have been more or less definitely outlined. It deals meanly with 2 independent tasks:
· The 1st one is the investigation of the ‘inventory of special language means which secure (serve to give the certain) the desirable effect to the utterance. This field of investigation deals with expressive means and SDs.
· The 2nd field is the investigation of certain types of texts, which due to the choice and arrangement of language means are distinguished by pragmatic use of communication – that is the investigation of Functional Styles which is connected with most general linguistic problems: oral and written varieties of the language, the notion of a norm, the notion of a literary language, so on.
Functional Styles are language subsystems characterized by special lexical, phraseological and grammatical means on the one hand, and expressive, emotional and evaluative properties of language means – on the other hand.
Varieties of language
The actual situation of communication has evolved 2 variants of language:
· the spoken
· the written.
Diachronically (and historically) the spoken variety is primary and the written is secondary. Each of these varieties has developed its own features and qualities. The spoken variety differs from the written language phonetically, morphologically, lexically and syntactically.
There is also a difference between the literary (standard) language and the national language. The national language is the creation of the people as the whole. It is opposed to other national languages. The standard language is the elaborated form of the national language, which obeys different norms on all levels (phonetically, morphologically, lexically), recognized as standard and therefore acceptable in all types and kinds of discourse.
The development of the literary language is marked by the process of selection. The real creator of all literary form is the people. Scientists and writers only fix what has been established by general usage. The difference between oral and written speech manifested itself in the gap between literary and non-literary forms which led way to many varieties within the literary language – to its stratification into different styles.
The norm
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The notion of the norm mainly refers to the literary language and always presupposes a recognized accepted standard. The norm – is the invariant of the phonemic, morphological, lexical and syntactic patterns circulating in speech at a given period of time.
There are 2 conflicting tendencies in the process of establishing the norm:
· the preservation of the already existing norm
· the introduction of the new norms not yet firmly established.
The norm is composed on the sum total of generally accepted traditional form in which the structure of the language is realized. The abstract language system finds its realization in a collection of traditions and rules accepted at a given period – that is the norm. The existence of the norm presupposes the existence of the following oppositions:
· national norm – dialects
· neutral norm – colloquial norm – bookish norm.
Functional styles
The word “style” can be used in several meanings.
· The term “individual style” is applied to the unique combination of language units, expressive means and stylistic devices, peculiar to a given writer, which makes the writer’s works easily recognizable.
· Style may be viewed as technique of expression.
· The term “style” is widely used in literature to signify literary genre.
· A functional style of language is a system of interrelated means (phonetical, morphological …) which serve a definite aim in communication.
Functional styles are included into the literary standard. The peculiar choice of language means of each style is primarily predetermined by the aim of communication. The result of it is the existence of a more or less closed system (the style of official documents, the newspaper style, etc.) Functional styles manifest themselves in various forms and perform different functions of the language. Thus, some scholars distinguish the following basic functions: communicative, cognitive, emotive and metalinguistic functions (=serves to describe itself). These primary functions are inseparably connected with the number of secondary ones:
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· ‘voluntative (urging the addressee to action)
· ap’pelative (attracting the reader’s / the listener’s attention)
· ‘phatic (consists in establishing speech contacts)
· aesthetic (appealing to the aesthetic feelings of the reader / the listener)
· modal (expressing the speaker’s attitude towards what is being said)
According to different principals of classification Stylistics is subdivided into the following varieties:
- Stylistics of language and Stylistics of speech
- Lingual Stylistics and Literary Stylistics
- Stylistics of the author and Stylistics of the reader
One of the developing branches of Stylistics is Comparative Stylistics, which compares stylistic potentialities of 2 or more languages.
Each of these disciplines has its own specific tasks, approaches and methods, but all of them are interrelated and interdependent.
Lingual Stylistics and Literary Stylistics may be subdivided according to the accepted hierarchy of linguistic levels (phoneme àmorpheme à lexeme (=word) àsentence). Though Stylistics is not a level discipline, it pertains (=refers) to all linguistic levels, to every level, it is subdivided into separate branches, treating one level each:
- Stylistic phonetics
- Stylistic morphology
- Stylistic lexicology
- Stylistic syntax.
All of them differ from general phonetics, morphology, lexicology and syntax.
General (non-stylistic) phonetics investigates the whole articulatory-audial system of the language. Stylistic phonetics embraces all the phenomena of sound arrangement of the Language Style of prose and poetry (#alliteration, euphony, rhythm…)
General (non-stylistic) morphology treats morphemes and grammatical meanings expressed by them in language in general, without regard to their stylistic value. Stylistic morphology, on the contrary, is interested in grammatical forms and grammatical meanings that are peculiar to certain Functional Styles. It describes stylistic potentialities of different grammatical categories and classes of words (=parts of speech).
Stylistic lexicology studies stylistic functions of words, the interaction of direct / indirect meaning, the contextual meaning of words, expressive, emotive and evaluative potentialities of words. It also investigates stylistic differentiation of the English vocabulary.
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General (non-stylistic) syntax treats word combinations and sentences, analyzing what structures are accepted as correct in the given language and what structures are considered incorrect. Stylistic syntax is concerned with the expressive potentialities of Word-order, different types of sentence structures and syntactic ties (=связи). It also investigates special syntactic expressive means and specific features of supraphrasal units and paragraphs.
Foregrounding
The ability of a verbal element to obtain extra significance, to say more in a definite context was called by Prague linguists foregrounding: indeed, when a word (affix, sentence), automatized by the long use in speech, through context developments, obtains some new, additional features, the act resembles a background phenomenon moving into the front line - foregrounding.
A contextually foregrounded element carries more information than when taken in isolation, so it is possible to say that in context it is loaded with basic information inherently belonging to it, plus the acquired, adherent, additional information. It is this latter that is mainly responsible for the well-known fact that a sentence always means more than the sum total of the meanings of its component-words, or a text means more than the sum of its sentences. So, stylistic analysis involves rather subtle procedures of finding the foregrounded element and indicating the chemistry of its contextual changes, brought about by the intentional, planned operations of the addresser, i.e. effected by the conscious stylistic use of the language.
Word and its Semantic Structure. Types of meanings. The Role of the Context in the Actualization of Meaning. Stylistic stratification of the English vocabulary
The word- names, qualifies and evaluates the micro-and macrocosm of the surrounding world. The most essential feature of a word is that it expresses the concept of a thing, process, phenomenon, naming (denoting) them. Concept is a logical category, its linguistic counterpart is meaning. Meaning, as the outstanding scholar L. Vygotsky put it, is the unity of generalization, communication and thinking.
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Stylistics is a domain where meaning assumes paramount importance. In stylistics meaning is viewed as a category which is able to acquire meanings imposed on the words by the context. That is why such meanings are called contextual meanings. In stylistics it is important to discriminate shades or nuances of meaning, to atomize the meaning, the component parts of which are now called the semes i.e. the smallest units of which meaning of a word consists. It is now common knowledge that lexical meaning differs from grammatical meaning in more than one way. Lexical meaning refers the mind to some concrete concept, phenomenon, or thing of objective reality, whether real or imaginary. Lexical meaning is thus a means by which a word-form is made to express a definite concept. Grammatical meaning refers our mind to relations between words or to some forms of words or constructions bearing upon their structural functions in the language-as-a-system. Grammatical meaning can thus be adequately called "structural meaning".
Three types of meaning can be distinguished, which we shall call logical, emotive and nominal respectively.
Logical m-ing is the precise naming of a feature of the idea, phenomenon or object, the name by which we recognize the whole of the concept. This meaning is also synonymously called referential meaning or direct meaning. All the meanings fixed by authoritative English and American dictionaries comprise what is called the semantic structure of the word. The meanings that are to be found in speech or writing and which are accidental should not be regarded as components of the semantic structure of the word. They may be transitory, inasmuch as they depend on the context. They are contextual meanings.
The potentiality of words can also be noted in regard to emotive m-ng. Emotive meaning also materializes a concept in the word, but, unlike logical meaning, emotive meaning has reference not directly to things or phenomena of objective reality, but to the feelings and emotions of the speaker towards these things or to his emotions as such. Therefore the emotive meaning bears reference to things, phenomena or ideas through a kind of evaluation of them. Mаnу words acquire an emotive meaning only in a definite context. In that case we say that the word has a contextual emotive meaning.
And finally we come to nominal meaning. There are words which, while expressing concepts, indicate a particular object out of a class. In other words, these units of the language serve the purpose of singling out one definite and singular object but of a whole class of similar objects. These words are classified in grammars as proper nouns. The nature of these words can be understood if we have a clear idea of the difference between the two main aspects of a word: "nomination" and "signification". These aspects are also called "reference" and "signification" or "denotation" and "connotation".
In the semantic actualization of a word the context plays a dual role: on one hand, it cuts off all meanings irrelevant for the given communicative situation. On the other, it foregrounds one of the meaningful options of a word, focusing the communicators' attention on one of the denotational or connonational components of its semantic structure.
The significance of the context is comparatively small in the field of stylistic connotations, because the word is labelled stylistically before it enters some context, i.e. in the dictionary: recollect the well-known contractions -vulg., arch., si., etc., which make an indispensable part of a dictionary entry. So there is sense to start the survey of connotational meanings with the stylistic differentiation of the vocabulary.
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