Functional styles.
A system of interrelated lang means which serve the
main pragmatic purpose of the functional style.
Five main f.s.:
1. belle-letters style
2. newspaper style
3. publicistic style
4. of official documents
5. style of scientific prose
Belle-letters style:
1. the lang of poetry
2. drama
3. of emotive prose
B.f. style – the purpose is not to prove but only to
suggest a possible interpretation of the phenomena of
life by forcing the reader to see the view-point of the
writer. Aesthetic purpose. It is individual in essence.
Categories:
1) C. of segmentation – 2 main variants: pragmatic and
content-variational. Pragmatic segmentation is a division
of the text into volumes, books, parts, chapters and
paragraphs. Content-var. segm. is a peculiarity of B.f.s –
division into author’s speech and smb else’s speech. The
author’s speech: description, narration, digressions. The
character’s speech is a dialogue.
Features:
1) Genuine, not trite imagery achieved by purely
linguistic devices.
2) The use of words in contextual and very often
in more than one dictionary meaning.
3) A vocabulary which will reflect the author’s
personal evaluation of things and phenomena.
4) Peculiar individual selection of vocabulary and
syntax.
5) The introduction of the typical features of coll.
lang to a full degree in plays or a lesser degree
in emotive prose, in the slight degree in poems.
From the syntactical point of view the characters’ speech
is noted for the use of simple syntactical constructions,
the use of coll. vocabulary, elliptical sentences. The
speech of the characters sounds coll., everyday, casual.
The word-stock is also noted for its coll. origin. Neutralcoll. vocabulary is used in abundance.
The author’s speech is characterized by its developed
syntactical constructions, by the use of participial,
gerundial and infinitive complexes, literary, neutralliterary and neutral vocabulary.
The pragmatic purpose – to create the aesthetic effect.
Language of drama is characterized by the
compositional peculiarities of the text. The author’s
speech is practically excluded and only can be observed
in author’s remarks and stage directions. The character’s
speech is presented at full. The lang of drama is
characterized by its coll. nature, by the spoken manner
of its syntactical constructions. The characters open up
and develop in their own speech. The pragmatic purpose
– to create the aesthetic effect.
Newspaper style
A system of interrelated lexical, phraseological and
grammatical means, which is perceived by the
community speaking the lang as a separate unity that
basically serves the purpose of informing and instructing
the reader, and partially rendering evaluation. We
distinguish between editorials, brief news items,
advertisements and announcements, headlines.
Brief news items – explicit information, level or zero
evaluation, complicated syntactical constructions,
developed system of clauses, abundance of non-finite
forms, lang is charascterized by clichés, trite metaphors,
EMs, fixed word-combinations. Special political and
economic terms, non-term political vocabulary,
abbreviations, neologisms. Can consist of 1-3
paragraphs of classical structure:
 introductory sentence
 the development of the idea
 summarizing sentence.
Headlines of brief news items are very informative.
They tend to omit articles, auxiliary verbs,
demonstrative pronouns. Neutral, neutral-coll. and
neutral-literary vocabulary. Functional purpose – to
draw attention of the reader and to inform him.
Editorials tend to evaluate events, they tend to express
the point of view, they are less packed. They are longer,
contain greater number of paragraph, but they have the
same fixed structure.
Advertisements and announcements are highly
evaluative, not very informative. The texts are not very
long. They render the information about the object and
ascribe positive evaluation to the goods advertised . Of
all newspaper texts announcements exhibit a use of
greater number of trite means of speech imagery.
Headlines. Function – to inform the reader briefly of
what the news that follows is about. Omitted articles.
Phrases with verbals. Full declarative sentences.
Interrogative sentences. Nominative sentences. Elliptical
sentences. Questions in the form of statements. English
headlines are short and catchy. They may contain
emotionally coloured words, often resort to a deliberate
breaking-up of set expressions. (Cakes and bitter ale).
The pun. Alliteration.
Expressive means and stylistic devices
3 main types of EMs and SDs:
1. phonetic
2. lexical
3. syntactical
EM is characterized by its fixed structure, trite imagery,
the cliché-like form. SDs are characterized by their
originality, the unexpectedness, the difficulty of the
process of understanding. All SDs are characterized by a
fixed structure, built according to certain model. All
lexical SDs fall into 2 groups: trite and genuine. We
distinguish between several groups of lexical SDs. The
principle according to which they are divided:
1) Interrelation of different types of lex. meaning
1. Interaction of the primary logical and contextually
imposed meaning:
- Metaphor – similarity of certain features or properties.
Sustained metaphors are usually trite metaphors which
are prolongued or extended by means of context. The
principal metaphor is the central image which is
supported by the contributory images.
- Metonymy – association connecting the 2 concepts.
- Irony – 2 meanings stand in opposition to each other.
2. Interaction between the primary logical and emotive
types of meaning:
- Exclamatory words
- Epithet
- Oxymoron – the meanings of the 2 words clash, being
opposite in sense.
4. Interaction between the primary logical and derivative
types of meaning:
- Zeugma – the use of a word in the same grammatical
but different semantic relations to 2 adjacent words in
the context.
- Pun.
5. Interaction between the primary logical and
nominative meanings:
- Antonomasia (token names).
2) Use of set constructions (clichés, proverbs, sayings,
decomposition of set phrases).
3) Exaggeration of a certain feature – SD based on
intensification of a certain feature:
- Simile
- Hyperbole – exaggeration to such a degree as will
show its utter absurdity.
- Periphrasis.
- Euphemism.
The purpose of SDs – the creation of the aesthetic effect,
rendering evaluation and modality.
Phonetic
EMs:
rhythm,
rhyme,
alliteration,
onomaetopia. Alliteration renders negative evaluation.
Syntactical stylistic devices:
1. SPU and paragraphs – spans of utterances longer
than a sentence.
2. Compositional patterns of syntactical arrangement –
inversion, detached constructions (He came in first, very
flushed), parallel constructions, chiasmus (He came in,
in he came), repetitions, enumeration, suspence (the less
important parts are placed at the beginning), climax
(gradual increase in significance, importance or
emotional tension), antithesis.
3. Particular ways of combining parts of utterances –
asyndeton, polysyndeton, gap-sentence link, particular
use of coll. constructions, ellipsis, break-in-the-narrative
(unwillingness to proceed, the supposition that what
remains to be said is completely understood, uncertainty
what should be said), questions-in-the-narrative,
represented speech (uttered – the presentation of the
actual utterance through the author’s language, (“No, he
is not”. She knew that he was not.); unuttered - the
representation of the thoughts and feelings of the
character.
Stylistic use of structural meaning – rhetorical questions
and litotes (He was no coward).
Newspaper text analysis.
1. Summary
2. Definition of the functional style.
3. The lexical organization: clichés, trite
metaphors, etc.
4. Newspaper vocabulary words: neutral, coll.,
neutral-literary,
neutral-coll.
(claim,
chancellor).
5. Striking EMs.
6. Syntactical structures.
7. The author’s interpretation of the text and
author’s modality.