Science of Stylistics, its connection with other linguistic sciences

    The drama is the language of plays. It has the form of a dialogue. Elliptical sentences and inversion characterize its syntax.

    Publicist Style falls into three kinds: oratory and speeches, the essay and articles.

    This style has spoken varieties. The purpose of it is to produce a strong and deep influence on public opinion. Its syntactical structure is logical, authors use words with emotive meaning, the stylistic devices are not fresh, this style is characterized by brevity of expression.

    Oratory and speeches imply direct contact with listeners. The author uses direct address (ladies and gentlemen, you), contractions (I’ll, won’t, isn’t) and colloquial words. This style is used on political and social occasions.

    The essay is a literary composition of moderate length on philosophical, social, aesthetic or literary subjects. This genre is characterized by brevity of expression, the use of the first person singular, connectives and emotive words, similes and metaphors.

    Articles have the following features: words of emotive meaning are few. In political articles we find rare words, neologisms and parenthesis.

    Newspaper Style has four basic classes: brief news items, headline, advertisements, and editorial. Its purpose is informing and instructing the reader.

    Brief news items have the function of informing the reader. They state facts without comments. Emotional coloring is absent. The author uses political and economic terms, clichés, abbreviations, neologisms. On grammatical level, complex sentences, verbal constructions, attributive noun groups and specific word order are typical.

    The headline is the title of a newspaper article. The main function is to inform, sometimes, to show reporter’s attitude to the facts in the article. Syntactically headlines are very short sentences (interrogative, nominative, elliptical sentences), articles are omitted, direct speech can be used.

    Advertisements have function of informing. Graphical, stylistic (lexical, syntactical) means are used for attraction of readers’ attention. Pun is often used for this purpose.

    The editorial has the function of influencing the reader, giving interpretation of facts. Editorials comment on the political and other events.

    Scientific Prose has the function to prove a hypothesis, to create new concepts, to disclose the laws of existence, development, relations between phenomena. The language of scientific prose is unemotional and impersonal. The composition is logical. Sentence pattern has three types: postulatory, argumentative and formulative. Specific terms, quotations, references, foot-notes are used.

    The style of official documents has 4 substyles: the language of business, legal, military documents, and the language of diplomacy.  The main purpose is to state the conditions for two parties in an undertaking, to reach agreement between two parties. The following characteristics are typical of this style: the use of abbreviations, conventional symbols, contractions; words in their logical dictionary meaning; strict compositional patterns; absence of emotiveness.

8. 4 Classification of functional styles given by Morokhovsky

    Literary colloquial style has the following phonetic features: standard pronunciation, phonetic compression of frequently used forms (it’s, don’t I’ve), omission of elements which are not stressed (you know him?).

    Morphological features of this style are regular, sometimes evaluative suffixes are used (doggie, deary).

    Syntactic features include the following: use of simple sentences, syntactically correct sentences, syntactical compression, finite active verb forms, ellipsis in dialogues.

    Lexical features which characterize this style are wide range of vocabulary (formal, informal, neutral, bookish, terms, foreign words, etc.), but basic vocabulary is neutral, socially accepted contracted forms and abbreviations (fridge, TV, CD), conversational formulas (my pleasure, nice to see you), gap-fillers (absolutely, kind of, so to speak, I mean), interjections (Dear me, My God, well, why, oh), phrasal verbs (let down, put up with), words of indefinite meaning (thing, stuff), phraseological expressions, idioms, figures of speech. Slang, vulgarisms, dialect words and jargon are avoided.

    As for the compositional features, this style has written and spoken varieties: monologue, dialogue, personal letters, diaries, essays, articles, etc. Prepared texts have logical compositions, spontaneous types have a loose structure.

    Familiar colloquial style is represented in spoken variety. Its phonetic features include careless pronunciation (gonna, whatcha), contracted forms (they’ve, I’d), omission of unstressed elements (you hear me?), emphasis on intonation, use of onomatopoeic words (hush, yum, yak).

    Morphological features include evaluative suffixes, nonce words.

    Syntactical features of this style are simple and short sentences, dialogues of question-answer type, parallel structures, repetitions, asyndetic coordination in complex sentences, ellipsis, prevailing coordination over subordination, syntactic tautology (That girl, she was there), gap-fillers (sure, well, OK).

    On lexical level the following characteristics are typical of this style: combination of neutral, familiar and low colloquial vocabulary (slang, vulgar, taboo words), words of general meaning (guy, job, get, do, fix, affair), limited vocabulary, colloquial interjections (boy, wow, hey, there), hyperbole, epithets, evaluative vocabulary, metaphors, simile, mixture of curse words and euphemisms (damn, dash, darned, shoot).

    The syntactical organization of an utterance is loose, no special compositional patterns are used.

    Publicist (media) style in its ‘oratory’ variety is characterized by standard pronunciation, use of intonation for conveying shades of meaning.

    Morphological features include frequent use of non-finite verb forms (gerund, participles, infinitive), non-perfect verb forms, omission of articles, link verbs, pronouns (in headlines and news items).

    This style has the following syntactical features: frequent use of rhetorical questions and interrogative sentences (in oratory), use of impersonal sentences, ellipsis, interrogative sentences (in headlines), parallel constructions.

    On lexical level this style is characterized by using clichés and set phrases, terms, abbreviations, proper names, international words, dates, figures, abstract words, elevated and bookish words, pun and vivid stylistic devices (in headlines), metaphor, alliteration, allusion, irony (in oratory), direct address (in oratory).

    Text arrangement is marked by logic, quotations are widely used. In news items we find strict arrangement of titles and subtitles, careful division into paragraphs.

    The style of official documents is characterized by outdated norm (e.g. in legal documents).

    Long complex sentences (with coordination and subordination), passive constructions, detached constructions, participles at the beginning of the sentence, normative syntax are syntactical characteristics of this style.

    The following lexical features are typical of the style of official documents: stylistically neutral, bookish vocabulary, terms, proper names, abstraction of persons (‘party’ instead of the name), clichés, archaic words (kinsman, thereby), foreign words (status quo, force majeure, persona non grata), abbreviations (Ltd for limited), words in primary meaning, absence of tropes.

    The compositional features, which describe this style, contain division of texts into units, logical organization, conventional composition of agreements, protocols, accurate use of punctuation, unemotional style.

    Scientific (academic) style has the following morphological features: terminological word building (neologism formation by affixes and conversion), use of the ‘author’s we’.

    Syntactical characteristics include direct word order, long sentences, subordinate clauses, wide use of participles, infinitive, gerund, parenthesis, passive, non-finite verb forms, impersonal constructions.

    We find the following lexical features of this style: bookish words, terms, words in primary dictionary meaning, neologisms, proper names. Interjections, phrasal verbs, colloquial vocabulary and tropes are not used.

    Types of texts depend on the scientific genre in composition (monograph, article, presentation, thesis, etc.). In scientific proper and technical texts we find many formulae, tables, diagrams; in humanitarian texts descriptive narration, argumentation and interpretation are used. References, quotations, foot-notes are widely used. Set phrases and connectives help to emphasize logical character of the narration (as mentioned above, in conclusion, finally; on the contrary, as… as…, both… and…).