The Pubicistic Style, its Substyles, and their Peculiarities

The pubicistic style treats certain political, social, economic, cultural problems. The aim of this style is to form public opinion, to convince the reader or the listener.

Substyles: The oratory essays, journalistic articles, radio and TV commentary.

The main features:

• a logically precise clear cut syntax;

• a carefully and thoroughly thought out selection of words;

• the use of sd and em;

• carefull paragraphing;

• intonation full of conviction and persistence;

• consiseness (сжатость).

Oratory. The oratorical style is the oral subdivision of the publicist style. It makes use of a great number of expressive means to arouse and keep the public's interest: repetition, gradation, antithesis, rhetorical questions, emotive words, elements of colloquial speech. Similes and metaphors are generally traditional. It is prepared beforehand and it is a monologue. It has some special formulas of address and conclusion (e.g. ladies and gentlemen).

Radio and TV commentary is less impersonal and more expressive and emotional.

The essay is very subjective and the most colloquial of the all substyles of the publicistic style. It is a literary composition of moderate length on philosophical, social, aesthetic, etc. subjects. It makes use of expressive means and tropes. It is characterized by:

• brevity of expressions,

• the use of the 1-st person singular (personal approach to the problem)

• expanded use of connections;

• naturalness of expressions;

• the abundant use of emotive words;

• use of similes and sustained metaphors.

The journalistic articles.

All the above mentioned features of PFS are to be found in any article. The character of the magazine as well as the subject chosen affects the choice and use of SDs. Words of emotive meaning, for example, are few in popular scientific articles. It is full of bookish, high- flown words, neologisms, parenthesis.

The Newspaper fs, its Substyles and their Peculiarities

To understand the language peculiarities of English newspaper style it will be sufficient to analyse the following basic newspaper features:

1) brief news items;

2) advertisements and announcements;

3) headlines;

4) the editorial.

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 vocabulary features are:

a) special political and economic terms (e.g. gross output, president);

b) non-term political vocabulary (e.g. public, progressive );

c) newspaper clichés (e.g. vital issue );

d) abbreviations (e.g. UNO, NATO);

e) neologisms.

Grammatical peculiarities:

• Complex sentences with a developed system of clauses;

• Verbal constructions (infinitive, gerundial, participial);

• Passive Voice;

• Syntectical complexes;

• Specific word-order

Headlines. The headline is a dependent form of newspaper writing. The main function is to inform the reader briefly of what the text that follows is about. Syntactically headlines are represented by sentences of various structure:

very short and catching sentences,

full declarative sentences,

interrogative sentences (e.g. Do you love war),

nominative sentences (e.g. forgotten worker),

elliptical sentences with different elements omitted (e.g. well win),

headlines including direct speech,

phrases with verbals (e.g. fighting that tax).

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 advertisements and announcements information is arranged according to the subject matter into sections: births, marriages, deaths, business offers, personal etc.

The main features:

• may be built on the elliptical pattern;

• brevity of expressions;

• vocabulary is neutral.

The editorial. The function of the editorial is to influence the reader by giving an interpretation of certain facts. It comments on the political and other events of the day. It appeals not only to the readers mind, but to his feelings as well. So the editorial is characterized by:

• emotionally coloured language elements, both lexical and structural,

• use of colloquial words, slang, professionalisms.

• use of trite metaphors and epithets,periphrases,

• allusions .