The structure of stylistics

Ю.М. Скребнев

ОСНОВЫ

СТИЛИСТИКИ

АНГЛИЙСКОГО

ЯЗЫКА

УЧЕБНИК

Второе издание, исправленное

Москва

Астрель • ACT

 

 

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■д-р филол. наук, проф. Г.И. Богин) (Тверской государственный университет)

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Скребнев Ю.М.

С45 Основы стилистики английского языка: Учебник для ин-тов и фак. иностр. яз./Ю.М. Скребнев. - 2-е изд., испр. - М.: ООО «Издательство Астрель»: ООО «Изда­тельство ACT», 2003. - 221, [3] с. (на англ. яз.).

ISBN 5-17-004697-9 (ООО «Издательство ACT») ISBN 5-271-01I41-0 (ООО «Издательство Астрель»)

Построенный с учетом имеющейся учебной литературы по стилистике учебник не дублирует ее, демонстрируя строго сис­темный характер стилевых явлений на лингвопсихологических основаниях. Стилистика представлена как учение о специфи­ческих областях частных языковых систем. Различаются «сти­листика единиц» (выбор единиц из стилистической парадигмы) и «стилистика последовательностей» (типы сочетания единиц в тексте).

УДК 811.111(075.8) ББК 81.2 Англ-923

ISBN 5-17-004697-9 (ООО «Издательство ACT»)

ISBN 5-271-01141-0 ' © Сапрыкина И.Г.-наследница Скребнева Ю.М, 2000

(ООО «Издательство Астрель») © ООО «Издательство Астрель», 2000

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PREFACE

This book is intended to aid those who make teaching of English the object of their professional pursuits. It treats practically all the essentials if stylistics, and yet the user might do well to have recourse to other books on the subject, discussed or mentioned below. There is more than one reason for that.

Firstly, a number of important points are outlined very cursorily in the present edition, its main purpose being description of general principles underlying the stylistic system rather than details. Other manuals comprise, it must be admitted, more substantial and variegated illustrations, as well as numerous samples of text analysis.

Secondly, much space is given here to criticizing some widespread statements inconsistent with the evidence of linguistics or even logic. So the reader would profit by exploring other handbooks.

Thirdly, the book was written to help the reader grasp the general outlines of stylistics as a logically and linguistically interdependent system of notions, as a kind of hierarchy. Each notion must occupy its own place, its own cell in a net that covers the entire subject. A notion cannot belong to more than one class (cell). Classes never intersect in a logically infallible classification. If this requirement is lost sight of, if authors, as they often do, discuss their material at will — just as it suits their inborn dispositions, guided by their individual (mostly aesthetic, and not linguistic) associations — the bulk of stylistic devices appears as a chaotic set of disconnected items.

The author's purpose is to classify stylistic phenomena as a true linguist should do, i.e. to refute the common practice of intermingling semasiology with syntax, or phonetics, or vocabulary. An attempt was also made to avoid mixing stylistic analysis with an exposition of the theoretical foundations of stylistics. Indeed, stylistic analysis often necessitates operating with terms and notions pertaining to quite different linguistic aspects: one is at liberty to mention syntactical peculiarities of a text first, passing on to its lexical, or phonetic, or semantic features. It would be a serious blunder, however, to describe the system of stylistic concepts without strictly differentiating the lingual levels. To present stylistic phenomena as regular constituents of a well-arranged linguistic "system of systems" would not only imply a better understanding of the whole picture, but also secure the linguistic foundations of stylistics.

Satisfactory results in the philological training of teachers of English can be achieved only on condition that students have firmly mastered the basic principles of every linguistic discipline, stylistics included. This can be secured:

a) by painstakingly explaining points that are overlooked by specialists to whom they seem self-evident, though they may not be as comprehensible to beginners;

b) by repeating the most important theses when indispensable;

c) by calling the user's attention to what is general and what is special, what is common and what is different in notions discussed;

d) by extensive use of elementary illustrations, including examples outside linguistics, such as might clarify the essence of analogies, differences, logical fallacies, etc.

The book is addressed to Russian learners of English philology. On the assumption that the readers' mastery of English is as yet growing, the problems discussed are sometimes exemplified with Russian material, English illustrations following it. Comparison facilitates understanding; besides, most students have only fragmentary information concerning the stylistic theory of their mother tongue.

Still, by the time stylistics of English is taught, students have had three or four years of studies. No longer complete novices in linguistics, they usually know something about stylistic analysis. True, they mostly associate stylistics with "figurative meanings" and "expressive devices", so this book may disappoint them a little. It differs from its predecessors by showing stylistics not only as engaged in transferred meanings or in other ways of making speech ornamental, not as aiming only at evalu­ating lines of poetry, or at praising the writer's individuality, but, fundamentally, as describing the endless variety of ways a national language works.

The practical aims of the book are as follows:

1) providing the learner with a more or less comprehensive system of special terminology, thus enabling him to identify stylistic devices;

2) teaching the learner to interpret and find adequate verbal account for stylistic impressions in which the layman is at best guided by intuition;

3) aiding the learner to acquire skills in using certain types of speech. The author feels indebted to Prof. J. Thompson, of California State

University, USA, who suggested several corrections in the first part of

the original version. The author's warmest thanks are due to his Moscow editor, Natalia S. Strelkova (born and educated in America), who did her utmost to relieve the text of some of its Russian "accent".

As for the contents of the book, the author hopes to have eliminated certain shortcomings owing to critical remarks of the group of experts headed by Prof. S.M. Mezenin, Moscow. Mentioned last is Prof. G.I. Bogin (University of Tver), yet his highly competent analysis and appreciation were the greatest encouragement the author ever received.

The book would hardly have been published without the sponsorship of the Linguistic University of Nizhny Novgorod headed by Prof. J.P. Ryabov and Docent V.J. Tikhonov to whom the author is cordially grateful.

INTRODUCTION

Preliminary Remarks. Nearly every traditional branch of linguistics has definitely outlined objects and aims of research. Thus it is common knowledge that phonetics deals with speech sounds and intonation. Lexicology treats separate words with their meanings and the structure of the vocabulary as a whole. Grammar analyses forms of words (morphology) and forms of word-combinations (syntax). Although scholars differ in their treatment of the material, the general aims of the disciplines mentioned are more or less clear-cut.

This is not the case with stylistics. No one knows for sure what it is. The scope of problems stylistics is to solve, its very object and its tasks are open to discussion up to the present day, regardless of the fact that it goes back to ancient rhetoric and poetics.

The learner is expected to profit by comparing a few opinions given below. They show great divergence of viewpoints on the concept of style in linguistics.

According to I.R. Galperin, the term STYLE is presumed (by various authors) to apply to the following fields of investigation:¹

1. the aesthetic function of language;²

2. expressive means in language;³

3. synonymous ways of rendering one and the same idea;

4. emotional colouring in language;⁴

5. a system of special devices called stylistic devices;

6. the splitting of the literary language into separate systems called styles;

7. the interrelation between language and thought;

8. the individual manner of an author in making use of language. Which of the eight statements enumerated ought to be chosen as the

only suitable one? Practically, all of them have a certain bearing on the subject; each has something to do with style and stylistics. At the same time none is self-sufficient. If we try to summarize them, we would obtain a contradictory and incomplete picture. So let us examine them one by one.

1. Is the notion of style connected in any way with the aesthetic function of language? It certainly is, but only with reference to works of art, that is of poetry and imaginative prose. But works of science, diplomatic or commercial correspondence, technical instructions and many other kinds of text have no aesthetic value, or at least their authors do not intend to satisfy any human striving for beauty. Conclusion: this definition covers only ^a limited part of the problems of stylistics.

2. Do expressive means of language constitute the subj ect of stylistics? Yes, they do, yet only partly so: having recourse to the force of form rather than that of logic, they are employed in spheres of speech that aim to impress: poetry, fiction, oratory, affective informal intercourse (colloquial speech), but hardly ever science, technology, business letters. It would be wrong indeed to confine the aims of stylistics to investigating expressive means only.

3. Are synonymous ways of rendering ideas relevant to the notion of style? They certainly are. It is due to the possibility of choice, the possibility of using different words in analogous situations that styles are formed. The assumption, however, that the idea expressed by two or more synonyms remains the same, is utterly wrong. Whenever the form changes, the contents (and, along with it, the stylistic value) is bound to change too.

4. Has emotional colouring of lingual units any connection with style? No doubt it has. A poetic declaration of love and a funeral oration are different emotionally and, hence, stylistically. On the other hand, there are many text types quite unemotional, but still subject to stylistic investigation. Once again, the definition suits only a certain part of lingual material actually analysed by scholars.

5. Is style a system of special stylistic devices? It may be, except that we do not know as yet what these devices are. The definition makes a circle, not even attempting to explain anything. Besides, stylistic perception is formed in people's minds not only by "special devices", but also by certain minor features, not conspicuous by themselves, but collectively affecting the stylistic quality of the text. One may admit, though, that the style of anything is formed out of features peculiar to it, those differentiating it from whatever it may be compared to. What we say or write, what we read or hear is not style by itself, but merely has style; it demonstrates stylistic features. It is just like fashion in clothing: no one ever wears "fashion", people wear dresses or suits, fashionable or otherwise. The remark, "What she has on tonight is j ust the fashion" may be permissible in everyday life, but it involves a transfer, a renaming: "fashion" here stands for "fashionable thing". What we observe is transfer by association, by actual connection of the two notions, commonly known as "metonymy".

6. Can we say that separate systems obtained as the result of splitting the literary language are styles? No, we cannot, for the reasons that have just been discussed: separate systems within the national language are lingual systems; they are "varieties of language", "microlanguages", or "sublanguages", each of them having its own specific features, its own style. Besides, which is also important, it is wrong to deal with only the literary language, as does the definition, ignoring the fact that works of fiction often reproduce the so-called "low", or "sub-standard" types of speech. Suffice it to recall what varieties of English are used in Catcher in the Rye by Jerome Salinger, or, better still, in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain.

7. Is style (or stylistics) concerned with the interrelation between language and thought? This question can only be answered in the neg­ative. Thought and its lingual expression make an inseparable unity (although the speaker's intention may have been quite different from what was actually performed or the recipient may misinterpret the message). The same is true with regard to the interrelation between form and content (this relationship is considered by some authors to constitute the general subject of stylistics). Whenever we change the form, the content changes accordingly. (See also point 3 above.)

8. Shall we accept that style is the individual manner of an author in making use of language? Yes, the definition is acceptable — to a certain extent.⁵ No researcher can or will study individualities without a background of common premises and without aiming at generalizations. It is not only individual peculiarities that are investigated by stylistics, but peculiarities of text types as well.

On the whole one may conclude that each of the eight characteristics discussed contains some information on style and stylistics, but none of them is entirely acceptable.⁶

Searching for other possible ways of solving stylistic problems, let us recall F. de Saussure's 'language — speech' dichotomy, as well as some post-Saussurian fundamental concepts of general linguistics.⁷

Language, speech, and text. Language is a system of mental associations of elementary and complex signs (speech sounds, morphemes, words, word combinations, utterances, and combinations of utterances) with our mental picture of objective reality. Language is a psychological phenomenon of social significance. It exists in individual minds, but serves the purpose of social intercourse through speech (originally oral, nowadays to a greater extent written).

Language is said to perform two dialectically interwoven functions: communicative and cognitive. The former appears to be the primary function (language arose from the needs of intercourse and social regulation). The latter is the secondary function, although it is of colossal

importance for the development of humanity: it is due to the existence of language that mankind has acquired its immense knowledge of the outside

world.

Language as a system of associations exists in human minds, but it manifests itself in acts of speech. As distinct from language, speech is not a purely mental phenomenon, not a system, but a momentary, fleeting psycho-physiological action, a process of sending acoustic signals (messages), perceptible to anyone within hearing.⁸

Since speech is fleeting, it can hardly be investigated by a system-hunting linguist, nor is it understood by an ordinary hearer: what we actually understand is not the process of articulating certain vowels and consonants, but its result - what was called by Allan Gardiner "text".⁹ Care should be taken not to confuse the conventional linguistic term used here with the commonly employed word which denotes only what is written or printed. Here, by text we mean a coherent sequence of signs (words) irrespective of whether it has been recorded on paper or has just remained in our memory. Hence, while a person pronounces (aloud or even mentally) / live in this house, he or she accomplishes an act of speech, but as soon as the act is completed, there is no more speech. What remains, however, after the act of communication is what we remember and can reproduce if need be, to wit: the sequence of signs — 'I + live + in + this + house' — and that is what we call a text.

The subject matter of linguistics is language as a system. Its aim is a detailed description of the structure of that system. The material at a linguist's disposal is text (or texts) as the result of speech acts. Speech as the process of uttering sounds is dealt with by experimental phonetics; as a psychogenic activity it has been thoroughly investigated by psycholinguistics or by psychology generally.

Since stylistics is a branch of linguistics, it is obvious that it also deals with texts (not with speech as fleeting actions) for the purpose of finding certain evidence concerning language as a system.

Therefore terms like speech styles, styles of speech, or stylistics of speech (as opposed to stylistics of language), often as they occur in the specialist literature,¹⁰ are misleading. It is true, of course, that style phenomena occur in speech and are found in texts, yet they appear in both not out of thin air, but directly from the system of language, from the speaker's (or writer's) experience of its possibilities. Language comprises not only elementary units (such as morphemes and words), but complex syntactic patterns, including paragraphs and structures of whole texts as well. If we did not know, for instance, what linguistic units may be used in everyday colloquial speech and what units are permissible on strictly formal occasions, if we were not aware of how to combine words, we should not be capable of speaking. A person making habitual mistakes in the use of tense forms or in the choice of words betrays peculiarities in his individual language (idiolect). There is nothing in speech that has not been in language, or, to paraphrase a Latin saying, nihil est in oratione quod поп fuerit in linguae. To be sure, unprecedented and unsuccessful word combinations, slips of the tongue, hesitation forms like "er-er-er" pertain to the domain of speech — but even they characterize the individual manner of the speaker, his idiolect.

Types of speech and their sublanguages. Now that we have discussed a few essentials differentiating language, speech, and text, a preliminary characterization of stylistics can be attempted. Stylistics, as the term implies, deals with styles. Style, for its part, can be roughly defined here as the peculiarity, the set of specific features of a text type or of a concrete text. Style is just what differentiates a group of homogeneous texts (an individual text) from all other groups (other texts). Later on we shall see that from the strictly linguistic viewpoint style turns out to be the distinctive features of that peculiar narrow language that is suitable for the group of texts or for the individual text under consideration.

The idea of particular restricted languages serving particular communicative purposes is based upon the fact that no national language is a homogeneous whole, because many of its constituents are not used in every sphere of communication, but belong to more or less strictly delimited special spheres, to specific types of speech.

Let us compare several groups of isolated words: 1) water, at, go, very, how; 2) chap, daddy, Nick, gee; 3) hereof, whereupon, aforecited; 4) sawbones, grub, oof, corking; 5) morn, sylvan, ne'er, 6) corroborate, commencement, proverbialism; 7) protoplasm, introvert, cosine, phonemic.

Not all the words enumerated may be familiar to a Russian learner of English, but the general idea must be more or less evident. The first group comprises words that can be used anywhere, in every type of communication, in any sphere, provided the subject of speech is consistent with the meanings they convey. Group 2 consists of collo­quial words, i.e. words which can be used in informal speech but never in formal communication. Group 3 is made up of words employed in documents. Group 4, on the contrary, demonstrates slang words, that is, words of still lower rank than colloquialisms; there is a strong tinge of familiarity or rudeness about them. Group 5 exemplifies high-flown words rarely used in a straightforward way outside poetic diction. Group 6 is somewhat more difficult to define: the words in it are gen­erally called "bookish", "or learned"; they are used not only in books, but at any rate in cultivated speech only — to use them in everyday oral intercourse would be wrong. Group 7 is made up of special scientific terms used only in biology, psychology, trigonometry, and phonology.

Even this cursory enumeration of word classes appropriate to specific spheres of communication shows the heterogeneous character of the vocabulary. Some of the groups are incompatible with one another. Thus bookish and poetic words that could be found in the same text practically do not co-occur with colloquial or slang words, although words of every group from 2 to 7 easily combine with neutral words (those of group 1). It follows, therefore, that the system of language reveals a motley picture of intersecting subsystems. Moreover, we can assume the existence of variegated special languages, or, we had better say, sublanguages, within the general system of a national language.¹¹ Compare the following utterances conveying nearly the same idea or, at least, referring to the same situation:

Never seen the chap, not I! Me, I never clapped eyes on this here guy. I deny the fact of ever having seen this person. I have no association with the appearance of the individual I behold.

I have certainly never seen the man.

To say that we observe here examples taken from different lan­guages would be, of course, too much. Every word and every construc­tion are English all right. And yet each utterance appears to belong and really does belong to a special variety of English (except, perhaps, utterance 5, which is neutral standard English). The colloquial character of utterance 1 is clearly seen both in the choice of words (chap) and in syntax (absence of the subject I and the auxiliary verb have, as well as the appended statement not I). Utterance 2 is low colloquial: the word guy, the illiterate demonstrative this here, the emphatic construction to clap eyes on somebody, the pronoun me as the subject in extraposition. Utterance 3 represents an official, bookish manner of speaking, typical, for instance, of the juridical sphere of intercourse. Finally, utterance 4 demonstrates a high-flown, pompous, affective manner of speech. The utterance quoted might have belonged to the famous Dickensian personage Mr. Micawber (David Copperfield) who used bombastic expressions even when addressing the ten-year-old David.

Examples of a similar kind are innumerable. Suffice it to recall the dying George Forsyte (The White Monkey by John Galsworthy) who dictates his will to his cousin Soames, a solicitor: "My three screws to young Val 'cause he's the only Forsyte who knows a horse from a donkey". Soames gives the sarcastic statement of the testator precise juridical wording devoid of irony and scorn: "I hereby leave my three racehorses to my kinsman Valerius Dartie of Wandson, Sussex, because he has special knowledge of horses".

Here, only two types of speech, two sublanguages are opposed: the colloquial sublanguage and the sublanguage of official intercourse. In what follows we shall have three: normal literary, practically neutral (1), high-flown, exquisite, pompous, affected (2), low colloquial, derogatory (3):

1. The old man is dead.

2. The gentleman well advanced in years attained the termination of his terrestrial existence.

3. The ole bean he kicked the bucket.

Corresponding Russian examples were originally suggested by N.N. Amosova more than thirty years ago: 1) Старик умер; 2) Ста­рец скончался; 3) Старый хрыч подох.¹²

Comparing the linguistic units which constitute the above cited ut­terances (both English and Russian) one notes that their stylistic value differs. Thus, the first sentence consists of stylistically indefinite, or in­different, words: each of them could be used in any text imaginable if it deals with human age and death. The structure of the sentence is also quite transparent. In the second sentence, along with stylistically indifferent (neutral) words (the, gentleman, well, in, years, of, his) there are words which cannot be regarded as belonging to a definite narrow sublanguage: advanced, attained, termination, terrestrial, existence. They are typical of cultivated speech in general, being used in many spheres of intercourse. They are not especially high-flown by themselves. What makes the utterance elevated stylistically is not the enumerated bookish words, but florid, excessively ornamental word combinations (phrases): well advanced in years and, still more pretentious attained the termination of his terrestrial existence. The Russian counterpart of this utterance (Старец скончался) comprises no elaborately euphemistic or pretentious phrases: it is the words themselves, both старец and скон­чался (especially the former), that produce the stylistic effect of elevation.

In the third utterance the only low colloquial word form is ole (= old). The rest of the low colloquial features are idiomatic phrases (old bean 'старый хрыч', kicked the bucket 'сыграл в ящик') and the superfluous pronoun he as a syntactical peculiarity of popular speech. The Russian sentence comprises two low colloquial words — хрыч and подох; there is no syntactical peculiarity.

Three classes of linguistic units. On the whole, whatever text we come to analyse, we generally find in it linguistic units that could be used practically in any text. Besides, we observe in it such units as can be found in certain other texts of more or less similar character, though not in every text imaginable. Finally (and this should be specially borne in mindl) there are units (i.e. words, word combinations, sentence patterns, etc.) that belong exclusively to the text (or to the text group) under

consideration. Simple logical reasoning brings us to the conclusion that every text, every text type, as well as their sublanguages comprise three classes of linguistic units: 1) non-specific (neutral) units; 2) relatively specific units; 3) absolutely specific units.

Since sublanguages necessarily comprise non-specific units common to all of them, we may assume that they (sublanguages) intersect with one another, i.e. coincide in their central parts. They have a common core (centre) along with non-coincident peripheral parts. We may visualize sublanguages as intersecting ellipses inscribed in a circle representing national language as a whole. See Fig. 1.

Fig. l

As can easily be seen, the intersecting ellipses coincide in the central area of the circle. To this area belong linguistic units to be met with everywhere, in every sublanguage, in every type of speech, in any text.

Let us recall the illustrations on p.10: water, at, go, very, how. They are used very frequently; there are no social limitations as to their use; every English-speaking child understands and uses them. There is nothing particular about them. That is why we place them in the central part of the circle.

Taking, however, the words commencement, corroborate, proverbialism (see above) or even such words as statement, differentiation, figurative, we observe that they are hardly ever used in everyday communication, and most of them would be unfamiliar to a child or an illiterate person. They are specific, but only relatively so, for they participate in the formation of several independent sublanguages.

To clarify the difference between relatively specific and absolutely specific lingual units we shall take the word operation. It arouses a more or less definite association with the cultivated sphere of social intercourse; it is a somewhat bookish word, practically inaccessible to, or, at any rate, very improbable in the speech of uncultured people. Hence it is specific, but its specificity is relative, not absolute, because the word is used in several spheres: in medicine, criminology, mathematics, banking, military matters.

By absolutely specific units we mean those which belong to one sublanguage only. As distinct from the word operation, used not only by surgeons but also by mathematicians, officers, financiers, etc., the words psychotherapy, carditis, pulmonary are words absolutely specific to medical science and practice. As absolutely specific units of poetic diction we may class the above-mentioned words sylvan, e'er, morn; words absolutely specific to the colloquial sublanguage are chap, daddy, gee and soon.

Up to now we have discussed separate lexical elements — words. But it goes without saying that the division into non-specific, relatively spe­cific, and absolutely specific is valid with regard to any class of linguistic units. Thus the morphemes un-, in-, -ful, -less are non-specific, whereas supra-, quasi-, etc. are bookish and, hence, specific. The same is true as concerns word combinations: a short story, to go home are non-specific combinations to be placed in the central area of the circle; о clean shave (= an obvious deception), to be nuts about somebody (= to be madly in love with somebody) are low colloquial and may be regarded as absolutely specific to that sublanguage. Finally, syntactical sentence patterns also pertain to different areas of the circle. The pattern "noun + finite verb + noun" (John reads books) must be placed in the central area; the pattern "noun + article + noun" (George — a collector!) is typical of oral communication — perhaps not absolutely colloquial, but at least relatively specific. The same with long, elaborate compound-complex sentence patterns: they are widely employed in cultivated speech — in imaginative prose, in science and technology, in lecturing, in official documents, so they are relatively specific.

Now it maybe assumed that the general principle for dividing linguistic phenomena into three classes is more or less clear to the reader. At the same time it has not yet been explained how we are to differentiate linguistic units in practical analysis. We have not learnt as yet where to place any word, word combination, or sentence structure: which of them should be placed in the centre as common to all the sublanguages, and which either in the relatively specific or absolutely specific area.

The solution of this problem is facilitated by the following statement: the status of a linguistic unit, its affiliation to one of the three classes depends on the number of sublanguages which the linguist singles out for his concrete research purposes.

It is a common blunder, shared by many prominent specialists, to think that scholars really know how many sublanguages there are in a national language, English for one.¹³ To be more explicit and less cir­cumlocutional, the overwhelming majority of stylists firmly believe they know exactly how many styles there are in English (Russian, German, and so on).

Although the definition of style has not as yet been given here, the reader will probably remember that sublanguages should not be identi­fied with styles (true, there is no sublanguage without a style of its own, but this will be discussed further). But since many prominent scholars use the term "style" with reference to what is called "sublanguage" in the present book, it would be instructive to compare the viewpoints of some of them.

Ilya R. Galperin maintains that there are five styles in English: 1) the belles-lettres style; 2) publicistic style; 3) newspaper style; 4) scientific prose style; 5) the style of official documents.¹⁴ The reader is sure to notice the absence of colloquial style in Galperin's classification. In his opinion, style is the result of creative activity of the writer; in colloquial speech there is no stylistic intention on the part of the speakers; Galperin ignores the fact that it is no concern of the hearer (reader) whether much creative energy or none was spent in producing the famous Shakespearian line To be or not to be, that is the question or an everyday utterance like Hey, you, come on in! — the reader can see the difference, but the scholar does not help him to classify the second utterance.

Irina V. Arnold mentions in her well-known handbook four styles: 1) poetic style; 2) scientific style; 3) newspaper style; 4) colloquial style.¹⁵ The authors of handbooks on German, French and Russian stylistics propose more or less analogous systems of styles — no less than three and no more than five all in all.¹⁶

But who or what prevents us from singling out and investigating more styles than have been mentioned here? Nobody and nothing! On the contrary, the reader may have met in linguistic literature expressions like telegraphic style, oratorical style, reference-book style, the style of literature on electronics, Shakespearian style, the style of the novel (story, poem). All these styles are discernible; they characterize each their respective sublanguages.

On the whole, can we ask how many sublanguages (and styles) there are in a national language? Yes, formally we can, but our question implies a wrong assumption. He who asks it believes sublanguages and styles to be physically discrete, their number 'objectively' definite, i.e. independent of our approach to the matter, of our exploratory aims. The very idea of calculating what is singled out at will is fallacious. A less risky query reads: how many sublanguages and styles can be singled out by a scholar for the purpose of linguistic research? The answer is as many (or as few) as the scholar thinks fit to attain his objectives. Hence we come to one of the most important conclusions: the number of sublanguages and styles is infinite.

Does this statement discredit in any way the usual practice of singling out only three, four, or five styles in most manuals on stylistics? No, it

does not, since every researcher strives for generalizations, for rigid systems, for starting points from which to proceed in his investigations. There are always as good individual reasons for dealing with only three styles as for trying to prove there are five of them. But the most steadfast adherent of, say, the "four-style theory" will have to admit the feasibility of studying Byron's style, telegraphic style, Dickensian style in general, and the style of American Notes by Dickens as well. Some would say the "concrete" styles enumerated here are not "language styles", but just "speech styles". Yet that would be untrue: the only difference between the American Notes and scientific papers on nuclear physics is that the former object does not develop (we may come to know the exact number of words in the book — that will never change; whatever new char­acteristics we discover, the text remains the same), whereas the latter lives on, and the researcher is at liberty to decide what publications or how many pages are to be taken for analysis.

On the whole, the statement "there are as many sublanguages with their styles as you choose, as you wish to single out" usually strikes one as careless and irresponsible. It probably needs some change in the mode of thinking to arrive at the conclusion that linguistic objects are not as discrete as they seem if based on our school experience. We are hostages of the system of linguistic thinking imposed upon us by tradition: just as we should never have noticed any frontier separating syntax from morphology if we had not been taught to see it, we would hardly be insisting on a limited number of styles in language, if not for the preparatory work done upon our brains by our school education.

One has to bear in mind that theoretical necessity of admitting the possibility of singling out an infinite number of sublanguages and style classes is quite consistent with actual singling out only the sublanguages and styles that are of some traditionally acknowledged significance for present-day society. The division of our entire speech activity into a very small number of spheres is, as a matter of fact, resorted to in the last part of the present book.

The relation between relatively specific and absolutely specific units.

The reader must have noticed by now that style is what differentiates a given sublanguage from all other sublanguages. In other words, style is formed by absolutely specific units.

Thus one understands that, for instance, 'scientific prose style' (I. Galperin), 'colloquial style' (I. Arnold), and, let us say, 'tele­graphic style' are particular features: sets of words, word combinations, sentence patterns and text structures to be met with in scientific texts, colloquial texts, and telegrams respectively. Slylistics, therefore, is interested, practically speaking, only in specific units of sublanguages.

But if so, one may ask, what function is performed by relatively specific units? Here we must return to our recent statement: the number of sublanguages is indefinite; they may be as many or, again, as few, as we think advisable.

Nothing, for instance, stands in the way of differentiating only two sublanguages in English. We shall call one of them 'the sublanguage of official intercourse', the other being that of 'informal intercourse*. In this case we obtain two intersecting ellipses as shown below (Fig. 2).

Fig. 2

Each of the two ellipses comprises an infinite number of ellipses of narrower scope representing more particular sublanguages. Thus the sublanguage of formal intercourse will embrace, for example, the sub­language of "straight new" stories, the sublanguage of commercial cor­respondence, the sublanguage of technical instructions, of science, of diplomacy, etc. The sublanguage of unofficial communication will in­clude the colloquial sublanguage, the sublanguage of low colloquial in­tercourse jargons, dialects. Fig. 3 shows this subdivision of the two sublanguages.

Fig. 3

It stands to reason that, firstly, the scope of the non-specific sphere is by no means constant, but changes in accordance with the number of the sublanguages we single out for research. Compare Figs. 1 and 2 to see that in the second instance the overwhelming majority of linguistic units are non-specific. It follows, secondly, that what was relatively specific in Fig. 1 becomes either non-specific or absolutely specific when the number

of sublanguages is reduced. In Fig. 2 there is no space whatever for relatively specific units: they have become absolutely specific.

One example will suffice to understand the principle of relativity in stylistic classifications. The words individual, person, man, chap, guy are more or less synonymous, as all of them imply the meaning 'a human being' (of male sex — except the word person used with reference to either sex). It is obvious then that only the word man is absolutely non-specific. Chap and person, in their turn, are also very widely used English words, but of course the former is a little 'lower', and the latter 'higher', than man. The same may be said about the words guy and individual, respectively. Now, if we intend to establish several sublanguages to sort out every unit where it really belongs, the words person and chap will get somewhere in the intersection of the ellipses, i.e. in the relatively specific spheres of the high-flown and low colloquial sublanguages, whereas the words individual and guy will occupy the extreme, non-intersecting periphery of their respective ellipses.

But the picture changes as soon as we have decided to differentiate only two sublanguages — those of official and unofficial intercourse. Here, only the highest and the lowest words — individual and guy ac­quire (or preserve) the status of absolutely specific units; the rest of them (person, man, chap) become non-specific.

Note. Care should be taken to understand that the schemes illustrate only the theoretical principle, not the actual stylistic structure of language. The figures are merely to help visualize the interrelations (coincidences and individualities) of sublanguages. Language as it is cannot be presumed to consist of regularly identical ellipses. A sublanguage may happen to have certain units in common not with its geometrical neighbour, but with a remote one. Easily imaginable and obviously true to life is a sublanguage of an extremely limited sphere of use. Its schematic representation would include fragments of the neutral, relatively specific, or absolutely specific parts of the circle; its form could be quite different from that of an ellipse; it might be a figure of an irregular shape, occupying some space inside the circle, far from its boundaries or its centre. The reader is requested to picture the sublanguage of, say, a streetcar conductor, who uses only professional formulas and gives some information to occasional passengers concerning the locality.

Sublanguages¹⁷ and styles. Now we can approach the problem of defining the notion of style. It has been several times hinted above that style is what differentiates one text or one homogeneous group of texts from other texts (or other groups). To be more exact, we deal here not with texts, but with sublanguages underlying them. Since we also know what is non-specific (common to all, devoid of characterizing function)

and what is specific (particular, characterizing) we can easily understand the most general linguistic definition of style. It reads: Style is specificity of sublanguage.

This definition appears unexpectedly short, and the reader accustomed to elaborate, heavy-going, all-inclusive definitions could perhaps doubt its validity.

Indeed, habitual discourses on style have much more complicated wording. Suffice it to inspect the classical definition of style, the one belonging to V. V. Vinogradov. This scholar treats style as "socially cog­nized 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, a totality corresponding to other analogous ways of expression that serve different purposes, perform different functions in the social communicative practice of the given nation".¹⁸

This definition is not only overburdened with such self-evident characteristics as "lingual intercourse in the sphere of one national language or another" or "in the social communicative practice of the given nation", but it leaves, besides, a number of problems without an answer.

First of all, is the social cognizance of style really its distinctive feature? In other words, is style only what is acknowledged by society as a special, separate style? If it be so, do linguists' discussions on the number of styles in language influence the final result in any way? Further: what is to be done in view of the fact that a considerable number of native speakers does not "cognize" or at least cannot give a comprehensive definition of this or that style? What percentage of the population should be aware of the existence of a certain style to make it socially acknowledged as a legitimate style? And, finally, was Pushkin's style a socially cognized style before it was researched and masterfully described by V.V. Vinogradov in his book, The Style of Pushkin?

Vinogradov's definition of style, like many other definitions, identi­fies style with the totality of characteristics of the lingual form without differentiating relevant and irrelevant features of that form. Properly speaking, the definition makes no attempt at differentiating what char­acterizes the given type of speech from what is common to several types or even to every type of speech, to every sublanguage.

Following Vinogradov's definition, we should be obliged to describe all the features of texts investigated, irrespective of their importance, which is practically never done in stylistic descriptions. Analysing, for instance, the sentence / ain't never done nothing no stylist would mention the fact that its subject is the pronoun of the first person singular, or

that the direct object is expressed by the word nothing. Although these statements are correct, they do not disclose any particularities of the sentence analysed. Instead, he will certainly single out the specific features of it, namely: the use of the 'ungrammatical* (non-standard) form ain't, which stands here for haven't; and the triple negation (ain't, never, nothing), considered inadmissible by grammarians (most normal negative sentences must contain one negation: J haven't ever done anything). Only the form ain't and the triple negation are specific features putting the sentence to low colloquial, uncultivated speech class.

Stylistic colouring and stylistic neutrality. Since style is the specificity of a sublanguage, it is self-evident that non-specific units of it do not participate in the formation of its style. Units belonging to all the sublanguages are stylistically neutral. Thus we observe an opposition of stylistically coloured specific elements to stylistically neutral non-specific elements.

The essence of stylistic perception consists in mental confrontation of what one hears (or reads) with one's previous linguistic experience: to understand a verbal message means not only to decipher the sense of each linguistic unit (and the sense of their combination), but at the same time to evaluate the units and the total from the viewpoint of their appurtenance to either the neutral (non-specific) sphere of language or to the stylistically coloured sphere. The stylistic colouring, in its turn, is nothing but the knowledge where, in what particular type of communication, the unit in question is current. On hearing, for instance, the above-cited utterance, / ain't never done nothing, we compare it with what we know about standard and non-standard forms of English, and this will permit us to pass judgement on what we have heard or read.

We can further state that stylistic colouring, as well as stylistic neutrality of linguistic units is the result of their distributional capaci­ties. The term distribution, widely used in the second half of the twen­tieth century, implies the possibilities of combining the given unit with its immediate environment. Distribution is the totality of environments of the unit. See, by way of illustration, the forms haven't and ain't. The former has nearly universal distribution: it can be used in all types of oral communication, except the official ones, in which the form have not is preferable. The distribution of the latter (ain't) is confined to subcolloquial, uncultivated types of speech; it was shown above in the sentence with several negations.

What the layman's experience shows him is the distributional potential of the unit, in the linguist's conception it is the place occupied by the unit in the system of sublanguages.

To help visualize our discussion of stylistic colouring and stylistic neutrality, we could say that stylistically coloured units (bookish, solemn,

poetic, official or, on the contrary, colloquial, rustic, dialectal, vulgar) have each something like a label on them — some "inscription", a kind of "trade-mark" showing where the unit was manufactured, where it generally belongs, and in what collocations it is proper or improper. Hence, we can say, stylistically coloured units are definitely characterized.

Coming, however, to inspect the units commonly called neutral, what can we state concerning their "trade-marks"? Do they really have none? Do they only denote without connoting? The answer will be in the negative. Like any other unit, a neutral one is bound to possess connotations in its semantic structure. But its connotations (its "labels", or "trade-marks") are manifold, are, in fact, innumerable. No one can tell how many labels showing the sphere of its currency the word water has. We have met this word in thousands of combinations, in various spheres of intercourse. Therefore, its connotations being numerous and varied (sometimes even opposite in the stylistic class they belong to), the general result is their mutual annihilation.¹⁹ The resultant connotation is indefinite, i.e. neutral.

Neutrality and norm. Quite a number of prominent scholars abroad, as well as in this country, along with other definitions of style, come to the conclusion that style may also be defined as deviations from the lingual norm. In their opinion, what is stylistically conspicuous, stylistically relevant, stylistically coloured is a departure from the norm of the given national language. Such or similar statements may be found in the works of Michael Riffaterre, E. Saporta, M. Halliday. Needless to say, they all substitute the word norm for the word neutrality.

But perhaps both norm and neutrality are words of the same meaning? Perhaps the statement, 'what is stylistically coloured is a departure from the norm', makes sense and should be accepted?

To answer this question, we ought to know the exact meaning of the word norm. Obviously the notion of norm implies pre-established and conventionally accepted parameters (i.e. characteristics) of what is evaluated. Let us again have recourse to extralinguistic analogies. What do we call the norm of bread rationing, say, in times of war? It is only the weight of the ration and its quality (established sort of bread), but never the real, concrete portion of bread a soldier has received. What is the qualification norm in sports? Of course, not the action of the sportsman corresponding to the requirements, but their abstract characteristics: the number of kilograms for weight-lifters, the number of centimetres for jumpers, the number of seconds for sprinters.

The same is true with regard to linguistics. The sentence / haven't ever done anything (see above) is not the norm itself, but conforms to the literary norm, being the realization of the latter. And what shall we say about the sentence J ain't never done nothing? To be sure, it deviates from the literary norm (from standard English), but it fully conforms to the

requirements of the uncultivated part of the English-speaking population: they merely have their own conception of norm!

There are as many norms as there are sublanguages. Each sublanguage is subject to its own norm. To reject this statement would mean admitting abnormality of everything that is not neutral. If style were departure from norm, in this case only ABC-books or the texts of the first lessons of English handbooks for foreigners would be considered "normal". Everything else, anything that manifests peculiarities of whatever kind, would have to be condemned as "abnormal". Shakespeare, Dickens, Galsworthy, O. Henry, Dreiser, scientific and technical texts, announcements and advertisements, orations, headlines, telegrams and everyday speech — all this would be for the most part "abnormal" if we were to believe M. Riffaterre and his colleagues.²⁰

This is absurd, of course. One should not confuse what is neutral with what is normal. The characteristic feature of norm in language is its plurality. There never has been one single norm for all.²¹

Borderlines or borderlands of sublanguages. The sublanguages rep­resented above by clear-cut ellipses inscribed in circles show merely the general principle of the relationship between areas occupied by absolutely specific (style-forming), relatively specific, and non-specific (neutral) linguistic units. This has been done to facilitate visualization. The borderlines between sublanguages are only theoretically assumed to be clear-cut. Linguistic reality is much more complicated than its description.

First of all, there exist no objective criteria for classifying units that fit into more than one class. The greatest difficulties arise, of course, in the sphere of phonetics: we can never be sure whether a slight change in the quality of a vowel or a consonant is an individual peculiarity of a native speaker or whether it is as far from normal as to be a foreigner's accent, a mispronunciation of speech sounds. The problem seems easier with morphemes, words, and word combinations, because they are discrete units: no one could mistake one unit for another. And yet this circumstance does not make the problem easier either. Morphemes, words, word combinations, and sentences are indeed individual and discrete, but their stylistic quality is by no means as definite as we have seen above, where examples were specially selected to illustrate stylistic identities, differences, and contrasts. There is certainly no doubt as to stylistic colouring when we oppose the bookish morphemes sub-, super-, ultra- to the neutral ones: un-, re-, -less, -ful. The same is valid with regard to units of higher ranks. We remember that the word go is neutral, chap and daddy are colloquial, hereof or whereupon are unmistakably official and so on. It is, further, a well-known fact that the use of the so-called Nominative Absolute (My brother coming home, we sat down to dinner) is confined to written

forms of speech; the construction is also employed in official forms of oral communication, but sounds too pretentious in colloquial speech (just as the Russian причастные and деепричастные обороты). We can be quite sure about some sentence forms:

He will certainly never become a good writer, (neutral) For him to become a novelist of note is sheer impossibility. (bookish)

Good writer, he? Not likely! (colloquial)

But perhaps more often convenient to corroborate the theory accepted here do we observe cases when one is not sure where the unit in question belongs. Are the words swell (in the sense of 'very good'), corking (of the same meaning) colloquial or subcoUoquial, i.e. belonging to slang? Are the words and expressions smeller ('nose') or old bean only subcoUoquial (low colloquial) or vulgar? The answer certainly depends on the viewpoint of the language user. Similarly, shall we refer words like democracy or constitution to the superneutral (literary, slightly bookish) or to the neutral layer? Of course, they are hardly ever used by little children, but is this fact any criterion at all? Every grown-up person who speaks English knows them.

Our task becomes especially difficult if we take into account the in­evitable divergence of opinion. Practically every language user has his own favourites and pet peeves in the world of words and expressions. Every speaker (and hearer) passes his own judgement on them. What one considers to be neutral another takes for stylistically coloured — some people place the linguistic units higher or lower than do others.

Therefore we may come to the conclusion that there are no strict borderlines between sublanguages as well as within them (between ab­solutely specific, relatively specific, and neutral spheres). What was pre­sented above as strict borderlines is more likely to be 'borderlands', that is, 'strips of uncertainty', or perhaps we had better name them 'zones of tolerance' (or 'tolerance zones'). The term implies that the units of such a zone are just tolerable in both neighbouring spheres: using one of them, we may hope not to depart from the norm of the sphere in question.

Fig. 4 shows the borderlines between the sublanguages and their spheres as tolerance zones: strips of no definite width.

The reader will have noticed that the borders of the circle itself (i.e. of the national language as a whole) are also indefinite, unclear. Why? Because we never know for sure where the given national language ends and another language begins; it is impossible sometimes to say whether a borrowed word, a borrowed word combination, a construction has already become part and parcel of this language (although it is still felt as foreign), or whether it remains an often used quotation from a foreign language. How about the now world-famous Russian words perestroika and glasnost? Are they brand-new English words of Russian coinage or merely exotic lexical units denoting phenomena of great social importance for this country? What should we say as to the status of such words in Russian as дисплей, дизайн, брифинг (display, design, briefing)? Have they become Russian words?

Another circumstance which renders the stylistic status of certain units indefinite is the fact that they change their stylistic qualities with the lapse of time. There always are units in actual use which to some of us seem obsolescent or utterly obsolete, yet from the viewpoint of others (mostly of those of the older generation) they appear quite normally bookish or even neutral. On the other hand, the process of coining and borrowing new linguistic units (especially words and expressions) is always going on. A number of innovations acquire the "rights of citizenship" imperceptibly. The majority of newcomers, however, look ostentatious, unwonted or even monstrous, and one can never tell when the moment might come for them to turn into habitual, usual, normal words and expressions.

This much will probably suffice to understand why borders separating sublanguages are not borderlines, but rather borderlands: tolerance zones.²²

THE STRUCTURE OF STYLISTICS

Stylistics and other linguistic disciplines. Let us return once more to the beginning of this textbook. At the very start it was proclaimed that such well-known disciplines of linguistics as phonetics, morphology, lexicology, and syntax deal with more or less clear-cut objects: a student would never mistake lexicology for phonetics or otherwise. This comes from the fact that the enumerated subjects are, if one may say so, level disciplines, i.e. disciplines treating one linguistic level each.

Generally speaking, the word level became very popular in twentieth century science (not necessarily linguistics: cf. molecular level) and even in political phraseology: Prime Minister level, on (at) the highest level, etc.

Being very widely employed, the word level has lost all limitations as to its applicability and is now used as a synonym to the words and expressions point of view (or viewpoint), aspect of research, sphere, plane,

domain and so forth. In linguistics, the word level is used (or perhaps misused) in collocations like language level (уровень языка), speech level, observation level (уровень наблюдения), construct level (уровень кон­структов), prosodic level (просодический), phraseological level, the level of the principal parts of the sentence, and even stylistic level ²³ (the latter was once proposed by Galperin).

It goes without saying that if we agreed that the word level is a synonym of viewpoint, aspect of research, etc., the above cited use of it would be quite legitimate, and surely one might then also speak of stylistic level.

But the term level as applied to language is more appropriate when used in the sense implied by the French linguist E. Benveniste, who used it to characterize the hierarchical structure of language itself, not the arbitrary aspects of research. Our compatriot Yu.S. Maslov employs the term tier ('ярус') instead.²⁴

The smallest (shortest) unit of language is the phoneme. The sequence of phonemes making units of higher ranks represents the phonemic level. One or (in most cases) several phonemes combined (in succession) constitute a unit of a higher level, the second level: that of morphemes, or the morphemic level. One or (usually) more than one morpheme make a word, a 'lexeme': hence, the lexical level. One or (usually) more than one word make an utterance, or, in traditional terminology, a sentence. Hence, the sentence level. Word combinations are best treated as not forming an independent level for two reasons: 1) functionally, they do not differ from words, because they name without communicating; 2) one word does not make a word combination, whereas one word can make an utterance: Out.', Why?, Winter, Nevermore.

We could go on singling out paragraph level and even text level paying homage to the now fashionable text linguistics ^2S but for the fact that not every text is divided into paragraphs (especially if it is short), although every paragraph or every text is divisible into sentences (or, sometimes, coincides with one: a paragraph or a text consisting of one single sentence).

Be that as it may, the general principle is: each level consists of units of the neighbouring lower level with nothing besides: a sentence consists only of words; a word is divided into morphemes or sometimes coincides with one; a morpheme contains nothing but phonemes or is represented by one of them, as in makes ([s]), reader ([э]), pens ([z]).

Summing up, we must say that the first meaning of the word level suggests the idea of horizontal layers of some structure. And indeed, when we come to inspect language, we discover (as did our predecessors long ago) that language presents a hierarchy of levels, from the lowest up to the highest.

And, as we can easily conclude, each level is described by what we named above a 'level discipline': phonetics, morphology, lexicology, and syntax. To these, the modern text linguistics maybe added.

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