CHAPTER 1

"Practical Stylistics of English" is an attempt to supply the student of English stylistics with a practical appendix to the lecture and seminar course of stylistic studies. The purpose of this book is to aid the teaching process by which a student becomes aware of the richness and variety of English stylis­tic means of communication. The book is intended to acquaint students with the concepts of functional styles, stylistic semasiology, phonetic, lexical, mor­phological and syntactic expressive means and stylistic devices. We hope that students will find practical help towards success at the end of the exam­ination course and will be able to stylistically identify, classify and describe the elements of language used in speech.

Taking into account the particularities of teaching intended teachers and translators, we have provided illustrations to theoretical statements in three languages: English, Ukrainian and Russian. Some sections of exercises offer training in comparative practical work which aims at establishing stylistic par­allels between English and Ukrainian.

The book is in 8 parts. It includes 8 theoretical chapters, plans of semi­nars and independent work, practical assignments for seminars, practical as­signments for independent work, excerpts for overall stylistic analysis, fiction extracts for a comparative analysis of English and Ukrainian means of stylis­tic expression in belles-lettres, final tests in two variants, and examination questions. Practical assignments, fiction extracts for a comparative analysis and final tests were prepared by E. A. Yasinetskaya. The rest of the book was written by L. P. Yefimof.

This book does not try to cover everything. The authors lay stress on the practical aspect of stylistic studies. If the students, guided carefully by their teacher, can grasp the concepts and approaches outlined in these pages, they will establish for themselves the strong foundations upon which further courses of advanced study can be built.

The principle of amalgamation of stylistic devices into great classes, such as "figures of substitution" or "figures of combination", introduced in the the­oretical chapters was borrowed from the book Мороховский А. Н., Воро­бьева О. П., Лихошерст Н. И., Тимошенко 3. В. Стилистика английского языка. - Киев: Высшая школа, 1991. Some of our state­ments were expanded by insertions borrowed from the book English Lan­guage 2.0: An Introduction to Basics. — Manchester: Clifton Press, 1999-2002. These insertions are marked in the text by the symbol ^