- •1. Stylistics as a linguistic discipline. The subject-matter and aims of stylistics.
- •2. Basic approaches to language investigation. The functions of language.
- •Stylistics and other linguistic disciplines.
- •4. Types of stylistics. Kinds of literary stylistics.
- •5. Basic notion of stylistics.
- •Variant-invariant
- •6. Stylistics and the information theory. Basic components of the information transmission model. Chief processes in the information transmission.
- •7. Style as a general semiotic notion. Different interpretations of style. Individual style.
- •8. Expressive means and stylistic devices as basic notions of stylistics.
- •9. The notion of norm. Relativity of norm
- •10. The theory of image. The structure of image.
- •11. The notion of context. Types of context
- •13. Belles letters style.
- •14. Publicistic style.
- •15. Scientific prose style.
- •16. The style of official documents.
- •17. Newspaper style.
- •18. Phonetic means of stylistics: English instrumentation and English versification.
- •Onomatopoeia
- •19. Graphical means of stylistics. Graphon.
- •20. Morphological means and devices of stylistics: sd based on the use of nouns; sd based on the use of articles.
- •21. Morphological means and devices of stylistics: sd based on the use of pronouns; sd based on the use of adjectives; sd based on the use of adverbs.
- •22. Morphological means and devices of stylistics: sd based on the use of verbs.
- •23. Word and its Semantic Structure
- •24. Types of connotative meaning.
- •25. Criteria for stylistic differentiation of the English vocabulary.
- •Words having a lexico-stylistic paradigm
- •Words having no iexico-stylistic paradigm
- •26. Stylistic functions of the words with a lexico-stylistic patadigm.
- •27. Stylistic functions of literary (high-flown) words.
- •Poetic diction.
- •Archaic words.
- •Barbarisms and foreign words.
- •28. Stylistic functions of conversational (low-flown) words
- •29. Stylistic functions of the words with no lexico-stylistic paradigm
- •30. Stylistic usage of phraseology.
- •31. The notion of expressive means and stylistic devices on the syntactical level.
- •32. Expressive means of English syntax based on the reduction of the sentence structure.
- •33. Expressive means of English syntax based on the rebundancy of the syntactical pattern.
- •34. Expressive means of English syntax based on the violation of the word order.
- •35. Stylistic devices of English syntax based on the interaction of syntactical constructions in context
- •36. Stylistic devices of English syntax based on the transposition of syntactical meaning in context.
- •37. Stylistic devices of English syntax based on the transposition of the types and means of connection between clauses and sentences.
- •38. General characteristics of stylistic semasiology. Semasiology vs onomasiology. Lexical semasiology vs stylistic semasiology. The notion of secondary nomination.
- •39. General characteristics of figures of substitution as semasiological expressive means. Classification of figures of substitution.
- •40. Figures of quantity.
- •41. Figures of quality: metonymical group.
- •42. Figures of quality: metaphoric group. Types of metaphor.
- •43. Figures of quality: epithet. Semantic and structural types of epithets.
- •44. Figures of quality: Irony. Context types of irony.
- •45. General characteristics of figures of combination as stylistic devices of semasiology.
- •46. Classification of figures of figures of combination.
- •47. Figures of identity (equivalence): simile, synonyms-substitutes and synonyms-specifiers.
- •48. Figures of opposition: antithesis, oxymoron.
- •49. Figures of inequality (non-equivalence): climax, anticlimax, pun, zeugma.
- •50 The notion of the text! Different approaches to the definition, Basic classifications of text models.
- •51 Basic notions of literary text
- •It is characterized by:
- •52 The notion of the author of the literary text. Internal and external aspects of the author’s presence. Author’s image as a textual category.
- •53 The narrator in a literary text. Types of narrators with regard to the author and with regard to the textual world.
- •54. The degree of the narrator’s presence in a literary text (degree of perceptability).
- •55 The notion of the narrative perspective (focalization). Types of narrative perspectives.
- •56 Facets of focalization (perceptive, psychological, ideological)
7. Style as a general semiotic notion. Different interpretations of style. Individual style.
According to Pr. Dolinin style is a content property of an utterance (message or text) that results from the choice of certain linguistic means rendering the logical contents of the utterance (definite phonetic realizations, lexico-grammatical structures, etc.) from the variety of denotatively and designatively similar elements.
Style is a general semiotic notion and as such it can be defined as a specific symbolically meaningful property of human activity arising as a result of choice of a certain manner of action within the generally accepted norms and bearing information about the subject of action (social background, personal qualities).
In a style of an utterance we can find some information about the speaker:
The attitude of the speaker towards the addressee
The attitude of the speaker to the subject mater of speech
The speaker’s social background, connection with a certain social group
The speaker’s social role in the communicative act
Emotional state of the speaker at the moment of speech
Conditions of communication including the channel of communication (oral or written)
According to I.R. Galperin and some other scholars, the term “style” is presumed to apply to the following fields of investigation:
The aesthetic function of language
Expressive means in language
Synonymous ways of rendering one and the same idea
Emotional coloring in language
A system of special devices called stylistic devices
The splitting of the literary language into separate systems called styles
The interrelation between language and thought
The individual manner of an author in making use of language
Practically all of these eight statements 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’ll get a contradictory picture. So let us examine them one by one using the ideas expressed by Yu. Skrebnev.
The notion of style is connected with the aesthetic function of language with reference to works of art, i.e. poetry and imaginative prose. But works of science, diplomatic or commercial correspondence, technical instructions and many other kinds of texts have no aesthetic value. So: this definition covers only a limited part of the problems of stylistics.
Expressive means of language only partially constitute the subject of stylistics. They are employed in poetry, fiction, colloquial speech, but hardly ever science, technology, business letters. It would be wrong to confine the aims of stylistics to investigating expressive means only.
Synonymous ways of rendering ideas are relevant to the notion of style. Styles are formed due to the possibility of choice, the possibility of using different words in analogous situations. But the idea expressed by two or more synonyms does not remain the same. It means that if the form changes, the contents and its stylistic value changes as well.
Emotional coloring is connected with the notion of style. A poetic declaration of love and a funeral speech are different emotionally and stylistically. On the other hand, there are many text types which are quite unemotional, but still subject to stylistic investigation.
The notion of “stylistic device” is very controversial. 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 clothes which demonstrate fashionable features.
It is wrong to say that separate systems obtained as the result of splitting the literary language are styles. One of the reasons for it is that it is wrong to deal only with the literary language, as does the definition, ignoring the fact that works of fiction often reproduce the so-called “low” types of speech (Catcher in the Rye, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn).
Style or stylistics, acc. to Screbnev, is not concerned with the interrelation between language and thought. 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 listener or reader may misinterpret the message.
The definition of style as the individual manner of an author in making use of language is acceptable to a certain extent. No researcher can or will study individualities without a background or 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.
Summing up all the definitions of style pr. Marachovsky groups them into three blocks:
An ancient and medieval rhetoric meant by style a specific form of a piece of work (mainly oratorical work), predetermined by its function
Style as the expression of individual experience
Regard style from functional approach
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.
Stylistics, as the term implies, deals with styles. Yu. Skrebnev suggests a very short definition of style: Style is a specificity of sublanguage. Style can be roughly defined as the peculiarity, the set of specific features of a text type or a concrete text. Style is just what differentiates a group of homogeneous texts (an individual text) from all other groups (other texts).
Functional styles (FS) are the subsystems of language, each subsystem having its own peculiar features in what concern vocabulary means, syntactical constructions, and even phonetics. The appearance and existence of FS is connected with the specific conditions of communication in different spheres of human life. FS differ not only by the possibility or impossibility of using some elements but also due to the frequency of their usage. For example, some terms can appear in the colloquial style but the possibility of its appearance is quite different form the possibility to meet it in an example of scientific style.
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.
According to I.R. Galperin, a functional style of language is a system of interrelated language means which serves a definite aim in communication. A functional style should be regarded as the product of a certain concrete task set by the sender of the message. Functional styles appear mainly in the literary standard of the language. These represent varieties of the abstract invariant and can deviate from the invariant, even breaking away with it.
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. (Galperin, p.17) Naturally, the individual style of a writer will never be entirely independent of the literary norms and canons of the given period. But the adaptations of these canons will always be peculiar and therefore distinguishable. Individual style is based on a thorough knowledge of the contemporary language and allows certain justifiable deviations from the rigorous norms. Individual style requires to be studied in a course of stylistics in so far as it makes use of the potentialities of language means, whatever the characters of these potentialities may be.
All men of letters have a peculiar individual manner of using language means to achieve the effect they desire. Writers choose language means deliberately. This process should be distinguished from language peculiarities which appear in everyday speech of this or that particular individual (idiolect).