Functional Styles of the English Language

According to Galperin: Functional Style is a system of interrelated language means serving a definite aim in communication. It is the coordination of the language means and stylistic devices which shapes the distinctive features of each style and not the language means or stylistic devices themselves. Each style, however, can be recoquized by one or more leading features which are especially conspicuous. For instance the use of special terminology is a lexical characteristics of the style of scientific prose, and one by which it can easily be recognized. Classification: 1. The Belles - Lettres Functional Style. a) poetry; b) emotive prose; c) drama; 2. Publicistic Functional Style, a) oratory; b) essays; c) articles in newspapers and magazines; 3. The Newspaper Functional Style. a) brief news items; b) advertisments and announcements; c) headlines; 4. The Scientific Prose Style. a) exact sciences; b) humanitarian sciences; c) popular- science prose; 5. The Official Documents Functional Style. a) diplomatic documents; b) business letters; c) military documents; d) legal documents;

The classification of FS is a very complicated problem, that is why we will consider ideas of I.V.Arnold and I.R. Galperin, bearing in mind that Galperin treats functional styles as patterns of the written variety of language thus excluding colloquial FS. Both scholars agree that each FS can be recognized by one or more leading features. But Galperin pays more attention to the coordination of language means and stylistic devices whereas Arnold connects the specific features of each FS with its peculiarities in the sphere of communication.

I.R. Galperin distinguishes five major functional styles in the English literary standards. According to I.R. Galperin, a functional style of language is a system of interrelated language means which serves a definite aim in communication.

The language of belles-letres.

The language of publicistic literature.

The language of newspapers.

The language of scientific prose.

The language of official documents.

Each functional style is subdivided into a number of substyles. Individual style is a unique combination of language units, expressive means and stylistic devices peculiar to a given writer, which makes that writer's works or even utterances easily recognizable.

I.V. Arnold mentions four styles: poetic style, scientific style, newspaper style, colloquial style. But Yu. Skrebnev argues that nobody and nothing prevent us from singling out and investigating more styles: something like telegraphic style, reference-book style, Shakespearean style, etc. All these styles are discernible; they characterize each their respective language. Yu. Skrebnev considers that the number of sublanguages and styles is infinite. But since scholars usually strive for generalization they will be always trying to form more or less large units and call them styles.

The Publicistic Style treats certain political, social, economic, cultural problems.

The general aim of publicistic style is to influence the public opinion, to convince the reader or the listener that the interpretation given by the writer or the speaker is the only correct one and to cause him to accept the expressed point of view.

Publicistic style is characterized by coherent and logical syntactical structure, with an expanded system of connectives and careful paragraphing. Its emotional appeal is achieved by the use of words with the emotive meaning but the stylistic devices are not fresh or genuine. The individual element is not very evident. Publicistic style is also characterized by the brevity of expression, sometimes it becomes a leading feature.

The oratorical style is the oral subdivision of the publicistic style. Direct contact with the listeners permits a combination of the syntactical, lexical and phonetic peculiarities of both the written and spoken varieties of language. The typical features of this style are: direct address to the audience; sometimes contractions; the use of colloquial words. The SDs employed in the oratorical style are determined by the conditions of communication. As the audience rely only on memory, the speaker often resorts to repetitions to enable his listeners to follow him and to retain the main points of his speech. The speaker often use simile and metaphor, but these are generally traditional, because genuine SDs may be difficult to grasp.

The essay is rather a series of personal and witty comments than a finished argument or a conclusive examination of the matter. The most characteristic language features of the essay are: brevity of expression; the use of the first person singular; a rather expanded use of connectives; the abundant use of emotive words; the use of similes and sustained metaphors.

The language of journalistic articles is defined by the character of newspaper, magazine, as well as subjects chosen. Literary reviews stand closer to essays.

Newspaper style. Includes informative materials: news in brief, headlines, ads, additional articles. Reviews are not N.S. to attract the readers attention special means are used by british & am. Papers ex: specific headlines, space ordering. We find here a large proportion of dates, personal names of countries, institutions, individuals. To achieve an effect of objectivity in rendering some fact or event most of info is published anonymously, without the name of newsman who supplied it, with little or no subjective modality. But the position of the paper becomes clear from the choice not only of subj. matter but also of words denoting international or domestic issues.

Substyles. To understand the language peculiarities of English newspaper style it will be sufficient to analyze the following basic newspaper features

1) brief news items; Brief items: its function is to inform the reader. It states only facts without giving comments. The vocabulary used is neutral and common literary. Specific features are: a) special political and economic terms; b) non-term political vocabulary; c) newspaper clichés; d) abbreviations; e) neologisms.

2) advertisements and announcements; Advertisements and announcements. The function of advertisements and announcements is to inform the reader. There are two types of them: classified and non-classified. In classified the information is arranged according to the subject matter: births, marriages, deaths, business offers, personal etc.

3) headlines; Headlines. The main function is to inform the reader briefly of what the news is to follow about. Syntactically headlines are very short sentences, interrogative sentences, nominative sentences, elliptical sentences, sentences with articles omitted, headlines including direct speech. Present tense. Infinitive for future. Passive forms. Verbals. Drop.