Subject and tasks of stylistics.

Stylistics, sometimes called linguo-stylistics, is a branch of general linguistics. It deals mainly with two interdependent tasks: a) the investigation of the inventory of special language media which by their ontological features secure the desirable effect of the utterance and b) certain types of texts (discourse) which due to the choice and arrangement of language means are distinguished by the pragmatic aspect of the communication. The subject of stylistics can be outlined as the study of the nature, functions and structure of stylistic devices, on the one hand, and, on the other, the study of each style of language as classified, its aim, its structure, its characteristic features and the effect it produces, as well as its interrelation with other styles of language. The task we set before ourselves is to make an attempt to single out such, problems as are typically stylistic and cannot be treated in any other branch of linguistic science. There are 2 basic objects of stylistics:
- special linguistic means (stylistic devices and expressive means) which secure the desirable effect of the utterance;
- certain types of texts “discourse” which due to the choice and arrangement of the language are distinguished by the pragmatic aspect of communication (functional styles).

The two objectives of stylistics are clearly discernible as two separate fields of investigation. The inventory of special language media can be analysed and their ontological features revealed if presented in a system in which the co-relation between the media becomes evident.

The types of texts can be analysed if their linguistic components are presented in their interaction, thus revealing the unbreakable unity and transparency of constructions of a given type. The types of texts that are distinguished by the pragmatic aspect of the communication are called functional styles of language (FS); the special media of language, which secure the desirable effect of the utterance, are called stylistic devices (SD) and expressive means (EM).

SDs and EMs necessarily touches upon such general language problems as the aesthetic function of language, synonymous ways of rendering one and the same idea, emotional colouring in language, the interrelations between language and thought, the individual manner of the author in making use of language and a number of other issues.

17. Functional styles: the style of official documents and scientific prose, the newspaper style, the belletristic style, the colloquial style.

 

The style of official documents and scientific prose
1) scientific style is employed in professional communication to convey some information. It’s most conspicuous feature is the abundance of terms denoting objects, phenomena and processes characteristics of some particular field of science and technique. Also precision clarity logical cohesion.

2) Official style is the most conservative one. It uses syntactical constructions and archaic words. Emotiveness is banned out of this style.The language means used, therefore, tend to be objective, precise, unemotional, and devoid of any individuality; there is a striving for the most generalized form of expression.The first and most noticeable feature of this style is the logical sequence of utterances with clear indication of their interrelations and interdependence, that is why in no other functional style there is such a developed and varied system of connectives as in scientific prose. The most frequently words used in scientific prose are functional words – conjunctions and prepositions.

The newspaper style

Newspaper style was the last of all the styles of written literary English to be recognized as a specific form of writing standing apart from other forms. English newspaper writing dates from the 17^th century. At the close on the 16 th century short news pamphlets began to appear. Any such publication either presented news from only on e source or dealt with one specific subject.

The first of any regular series of English newspapers was the “Weekly Newes”, which first appear on May 23, 1622.

The early English newspaper was principally a vehicle of information. Commentary as a regular future found its way into the newspapers later. But as far back as the middle of the 18^th century the British newspaper was very much like what it is today, carrying on its pages news, both foreign and domestic, advertisements, announcements and articles containing comments.
English newspapers style may be defined as a system of interrelated lexical, parasitological and grammatical means which is perceive by the community speaking the language as a separate unite that basically serves the purpose of informing and instructing the reader. Not all the printed matter found in newspaper comes under newspapers style.

Since the primary function of the newspaper style is to impart information, only printed matter serving this purpose comes under newspaper style proper. Such matter can be classed as:

brief news items and communiqués,

press report advertisement and announcement.The most concise form of newspaper information is the headline. The newspaper also seeks to influence public opinion on political and other matters. Elements of appraisal may be observed in the very selection and ways of presentation of news, in the use of specific vocabulary, such as allegeand claim, casting some doubt on the facts reported, and synthetic constructions.

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

a) brief news items

b) advertisements and announcements

c) the headline

The publicistic and belletristic style

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. 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. 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 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.

"A piece of prose writing that is belletristic in style is characterized by a casual, yet polished and pointed, essayistic elegance. The belletristic is sometimes contrasted with the scholarly or academic: it is supposed to be free of the laborious, inert, jargon-ridden habits indulged by professors."Reflection on literature has most often been belletristic: practiced by authors themselves and (later) by journalists, outside academic institutions.

 

Colloquial style
Functions
- provides information
- communicates
Forms
- primarily spoken
Substyles
- slang; dialect; jargon
- professionalisms; vulgarisms
General Characteristics
- informal, familiar, conversational
- paralinguistic context, non-verbal communication

 

Lexical Features
- specific vocabulary
- short and simple words
- words of Germanic origin rather than of Latin origin
- word with emotional meaning: familiar forms of address, vulgarisms, evaluating adjectives
- discourse markers = fillers /‘kind of, sort of, like, actually, you know, well’/

Slang consists of a lexicon of non-standard words and phrases in a given language. Use of these words and phrases is typically associated with the subversion of a standard variety (such as Standard English) and is likely to be interpreted by listeners as implying particular attitudes on the part of the speaker. In some contexts a speaker's selection of slang words or phrases may convey prestige, indicating group membership or distinguishing group members from those who are not a part of the group.

The term dialect is used in two distinct ways. One, usage—the more common among linguists—refers to a variety of a language that is a characteristic of a particular group of the language's speakers.[1] The term is applied most often to regional speech patterns, but a dialect may also be defined by other factors, such as social class.[2] A dialect that is associated with a particular social class can be termed a sociolect, a dialect that is associated with a particular ethnic group can be termed as ethnolect, and a regional dialect

, Jargon is a term, similar to the English word slang, used to describe a specific set of words that can be attributed to a certain group or subculture. The words or set of words is significantly removed from the proper or formal language spoken in that area.

a vulgarism is an expression or usage considered non-standard or characteristic of uneducated speech or writing. In colloquial or lexical English, "vulgarism" or "vulgarity" may be synonymous with profanity or obscenity, but a linguistic or literary vulgarism encompasses a broader category of perceived fault not confined to scatological or sexual offensiveness. ("Vulgarity" is generally not used in this more restricted sense.) These faults may include errors of pronunciation, misspellings

Professionalisms, as the term itself signifies, are the words used in a definite trade, profession or calling by people connected by common interests both at work and at home. They commonly designate some working process or implement of labor. Professionalisms are correlated to terms. Terms, as has already been indicated, are coined to nominate new concepts that appear in the process of, and as a result of, technical progress and the development of science.

 

18. Phraseological Units and their classification.

A phrasogocal unit can be defined as a non-motivated word-group that cannot be freely made up in speech, but is reproduced as a ready-made unit.

The essential features of PU are: lack of motivation and stability of the lexical components. The same as word PU express a single notion and are used in a sentence as one part of it. American and British lexicography’s calls such units idioms. PU can be classified according to the ways they are formed, according the degree of motivation their meaning, structure, part-of- speech. A.V. Koonin classified phraseological units according to the way they are formed. He pointed out primary and secondary ways of forming phraseological units.
Primary ways of forming phraseological units are those when a unit is formed on the basis of a free word-group:
a) by means of transferring the meaning of terminological word-groups, e.g. in cosmic technique we can point out the following phrases: «to link up» - «cстыковаться, стыковать космические корабли» in its transformed meaning it means -«знакомиться»;
b) from free word groups by transforming their meaning, e.g. «granny farm» - «пансионат для престарелых»,

c) by means of alliteration, e.g. «a sad sack» - «несчастный случай», d) by means of expressiveness, e.g. «My aunt!», «On my God!» etc
e) by means of distorting (викривлення) a word group, e.g. «odds and ends» was formed from «odd ends»,
f) by using archaisms, e.g. «in brown study» means «in gloomy meditation»

g) by using a sentence in a different sphere of life, e.g. «that cock won’t fight»
h) when we use some unreal image, e.g. «to have butterflies in the stomach» - «испытывать волнение»,

i) formed by using expressions of writers or politicians in everyday life, e.g. «American dream» (Alby), «the winds of change» (Mc Millan).
Secondary ways of forming phraseological units are those when a phraseological unit is formed on the basis of another phraseological unit; they are:
a) conversion, e.g. «to vote with one’s feet» was converted into «vote with one’s feet»;
b) changing the grammar form, e.g. «Make hay while the sun shines» is transferred into a verbal phrase - «to make hay while the sun shines»;
c) analogy, e.g. «Curiosity killed the cat» was transferred into «Care killed the cat»;
d) contrast, e.g. «thin cat» - «a poor person» was formed by contrasting it with «fat cat»;
e) shortening of proverbs or sayings e.g. from the proverb «You can’t make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear» by means of clipping the middle of it the phraseological unit «to make a sow’s ear» was formed with the meaning «ошибаться».
f) borrowing phraseological units from other languages e.g. «to take the bull by the horns» (Latin)

 

 

19. Productive and Unproductive means of word – formation.

Affixation. Prefixes.

Affixation is the formation of new words with the help of derivational affixes. Prefixes are affixes which precede the root(have the semantic meaning). According to they origin they can be devided into: foreign - anti- antisocial, extra- ordinary, ultra- modern, trans- transvalue. Native

According to they semantic meaning: 1) priority - ex-president, pre- prediction);2 ) negation – in-infallibility, dis- dissent, 3) opposition - contra- contradiction, anti-antibody, 4) locality - sub-subway, hypo- hypodermic. 5) reversion – dis- dissent, un- undelete, 6) incompleteness – demi- demiseason, dys- dystrophy.

 

Conversion is the word formation process in which a word of one grammatical form becomes a word of another grammatical form without any changes to spelling or pronunciation.

Conversion is the main way of forming verbs in Modern English. Verbs can be formed from nouns of different semantic groups and have different meanings because of that, e.g:

a) verbs have instrumental meaning if they are formed from nouns denoting parts of a human body e.g. to eye, to finger, to elbow, to shoulder etc. They have instrumental meaning if they are formed from nouns denoting tools, machines, instruments, weapons, e.g. to hammer, to machine-gun, to rifle, to nail,

b) verbs can denote an action characteristic of the living being denoted by the noun from which they have been converted, e.g. to crowd, to wolf, to ape;

c) verbs can denote addition or deprivation if they are formed from nouns denoting an object, e.g. to fish, to dust, to peel, to paper;

d) verbs can denote an action performed at the place denoted by the noun from which they have been converted, e.g. to park, to garage, to bottle, to corner, to pocket;

e) verbs can denote an action performed at the time denoted by the noun from which they have been converted e.g. to winter, to week-end.

Verbs can be also converted from adjectives, in such cases they denote the change of the state, e.g. to tame (to become or make tame), to clean, to slim etc.

Nouns can also be formed by means of conversion from verbs. Converted nouns can denote

a) instant (приклад ) of an action e.g. a jump, a move;

b) process or state e. g. sleep, walk;

c) agent of the action expressed by the verb from which the noun has been converted, e.g. a help, a flirt, a scold,

d) object or result of the action expressed by the verb from which the noun has been converted, e.g. a burn, a find, a purchase;

e) place of the action expressed by the verb from which the noun has been converted, e.g. a drive, a stop, a walk.

Many nouns converted from verbs can be used only in the singular form and denote momentaneous actions. In such cases we have partial conversion. Such deverbal nouns are often used with such verbs as: to have, to get, to take etc., e.g. to have a try, to give a push, to take a swim.

Compounding is the word formation process in which two or more lexemes combine into a single new word. Compound words may be written as one word or as two words joined with a hyphen. For example:

noun-noun: note + book → notebook adjective-noun: blue + berry → blueberry verb-noun: work + room → workroom noun-verb: breast + feed → breastfeed verb-verb: stir + fry → stir-fry adjective-verb: high + light → highlight verb-preposition: break + up → breakup preposition-verb: out + run → outrun adjective-adjective: bitter + sweet → bittersweet preposition-preposition: in + to → into

Compound nouns should not be confused with nouns modified by adjectives, verbs, and other nouns. For example, the adjective black of the noun phrase black bird is different from the adjective black of the compound noun blackbird in that black of black bird functions as a noun phrase modifier while the black of blackbird is an inseparable part of the noun: a black bird also refers to any bird that is black in color while a blackbird is a specific type of bird.

 

Reversion orBack-formation is the word formation process in which an actual or supposed derivational affix detaches from the base form of a word to create a new word.

Back-formation or reversion may be found in the formation of words belonging to different parts of speech:

a) verbs made from names of agent with the suffixes -er, -or, -our /-eur, -ar, -rd,e.g, broker > broke;; hawker > to hawk (разносчик, уличный торговец – торговать вразнос); sculptor> to sculpt;

b) verbs made from nouns with the suffix -ing,e.g. kittling > to kittle(детеныш – приносить детенышей); awning > to awn;

c) verbs made from nouns with abstract suffixes -ence, -tion, -sion, -is, -y, -ment,

-age, -ery, e.g. infraction > to infract (нарушение правила,); television > to televise, emplacement > to emplace;

d) verbs made from adjectives, e.g. luminescent > to luminesce (светящийся – светить); frivolous > to frivol(пустой, легкомысленный);

е) nouns made from adjectives, e.g. greedy> greed; nasty >nast;

It is to be remarked that the most active type of back-formation in Modern English is derivation of verbs from compounds that have either - er or -ing as their last element, e.g.:

to house-break < house-breaker (взломщик, громила);

to house-clean < house-cleaner;

to house-keep < to house-keeper;

to bootleg < bootlegger(торговец контрабандными спиртными напитками);