PART ONE
GENERAL POINTS OF STYLISTICS
Stylistics and Its Concern
The term “Stylistics” comes from the French word, which is a derivative of the word “style”. The word style comes from the Latin word, meaning the name of a sharp instrument used by the Romans for writing on wax tablets. Later on it came to be metonymically used for a manner of writing or a mode of expressions.
Stylistics is a new branch of General Linguistics, which studies the principles and effectiveness of the choice and usage of lexical, grammatical, phonetic and graphic means of the language to render thoughts, feelings and emotions under various conditions of communication.
One of the American linguists Michael Riffater wrote: “Stylistics studies the act of communication not merely as producing a verbal chain, but as bearing the speaker’s personality and as compelling the addressee’s attention”.
Stylistics studies the means of linguistic expressiveness in carrying a huge load of information. To decode this information, one should give a detailed and thorough analysis of the stylistic functioning of all the linguistic means used.
Stylistics is a part of Poetics, a science, which studies the structure of literary works and the system of aesthetic means used. Stylistics is subdivided into Literary and Lingual Stylistics.
Literary Stylistics concerns itself with the individual style of a writer, belonging to a definite literary school or trend. It studies a combination of expressive means used by some author, typical of a certain trend or some literary epoch and factors, determining poetic expressiveness.
The main concerns of Lingual Stylistics are the following:
· The study of functional styles as subsystems of the literary language, distinguished from one another by a peculiar set of independent language means and fulfilling a specific function in communication.
· The study of linguistic elements from the viewpoint of their ability to render emotions, feelings, additional associations and evaluations.
The two branches of Stylistics are interdependent, as the object of their investigation is the same (i.e. language).
Speaking about Lingual Stylistics, Olga Sergeyevna Akhmanova distinguished Language Stylistics and Speech Stylistics.
According to her, Language Stylistics studies: 1) the peculiarity of language subsystems, the specific vocabulary, phraseology and syntax; 2) expressive, emotive, evaluative features of various linguistic means.
Speech Stylistics, in her opinion, studies texts, the way they render the content, the literary norm and deviations from norm.
One and the same information may be rendered differently, depending on the situation of communication, on the social status of the interlocutors, on their relations, on the emotional attitude of the speakers, their mood and health. These facts are not explicitly expressed in the text; they are rendered in different roundabout ways. Thus the main task of Stylistics is to give the stylistic analysis of the given information or to decode it.
Information in speech may be of two types:
· Subject, logical information making up the essence of the utterance;
· Additional information about conditions of communication and the participants of communication.
E.g. I weally don’t know whewer I’m a good girl. (= “I really don’t know whether I’m a good girl” Here in addition to the content the author also describes the person’s manner of speaking)
There exist two trends in the stylistic analysis: 1) to single out the key idea of the extract (i.e. to define different stylistic devices, to assert the initial hypothesis); 2) to single out some formal details, peculiarities of the text (i.e. explain their usage, considering them in their interaction and then formulate the idea and the theme of the extract). Both ways of analysis are aimed at revealing the unity of form and meaning, at perceiving the text as a unit.
Of late there has appeared a new term “Stylistics of Decoding” or “Stylistics of Perception” opposed to the term “Stylistics of Encoding”.
Stylistics of Encoding presupposes the knowledge not only of the creative biography of the author, but also of the literary epoch, literary trend and the history of literature
Stylistics of Decoding studies the way a literary work influences the reader. It concentrates the reader’s attention on the analysis of the linguistic means used. It deals with text interpretation.
Stylistic functions
Stylistics does not study linguistic elements as such, it studies their expressive potential in contexts, i.e. it deals with their stylistic functions. By function, following the American linguist Michael Holliday, we mean a role played by this or that class of words in the structure of a higher linguistic plane.
Stylistic function is an expressive potential of linguistic element interaction in the context, which enables the author to render alongside with the subject logical content of the text its expressive, emotive, evaluative and aesthetic information.
As to the question of classification of stylistic functions, the majority of linguists speak of descriptive, emotive and evaluative functions, but the problem demands further investigation.
Irene Vladimirovna Arnold speaks of some peculiarities, typical of stylistic functions:
· Accumulation – one and the same mood, idea, feeling, etc. Is rendered in the text by a number of stylistic devices. A group of stylistic devices fulfilling one stylistic function forms convergence.
· Implication arises due to connotation.
· Irradiation, which is opposite to accumulation. For example, a long utterance may contain only one or two high-flown words, but due to them the whole text will sound high-flown, and vice versa.
Stylistic function shows the stylistic significance of linguistic elements in their interaction in decoding the author’s intentions. It should not be confused with stylistic devices.
Varieties of the Language
Language serves as a means of communication. The actual situation of communication, its aim and the language function in different spheres of human activity have given rise to two varieties of the language: the spoken and the written ones, each with its own peculiarities. Diachronically the spoken variety is primary and the written one is secondary.
The main differences are the following:
· The spoken variety presupposes the presence of an interlocutor, while the written variety – his absence;
· The spoken variety presupposes the form of a dialogue, while the written one – that of a monologue;
· The advantage of the spoken variety is the human voice with all its modifications, various intonation patterns and gestures.
· The spoken variety cannot be detached from the speaker, while the written one can be detached from the writer.
All the above mentioned factors help the speaker to render additional information. The written variety should compensate for it, seeking for the ways to render the same implications by some linguistic means. The spoken variety differs from the written one phonetically, lexically, morphologically and syntactically.
One should not overuse the peculiarities of the spoken language in the written variety. To assert a political, cultural or educational impact, one should apply to the written language with its careful organization, deliberate choice of words and constructions, thus it bears a greater responsibility than its spoken counterpart.
Morphological and Phonetic Differences. In spoken language contracted forms are used, though we may come across them in the written variety to show the territorial or social dialects and colloquialisms: he instead of him, don’t instead of doesn’t, them instead of this/that/these, etc.
E.g. She used to play tennis with he and Mrs.Torrance.
The striking difference between the two varieties lies in the vocabulary used:
| Typically colloquial | Typically bookish |
| I take it To hang out Lass | I understand it To go around Girl, etc. |
In spoken language words are often intensified by interjections, curse words, adjectives which have lost their primary meaning, words of hesitation, etc.
E.g. Well, she was awfully nice. I’m busy, you know.
Syntactic Peculiarities of the Spoken Variety. They are not so strong as lexical ones; and reveal the situational character of communication.
E.g. “Playing, children?” /ellipsis/; “She fell ill?” /word order/;
“If you do it again I’ll –“ /unfinished sentence/
“Amanda she is a nice girl.” /the use of two subjects/ etc.
STYLISTIC SEMASIOLOGY
PART ONE
GENERAL POINTS OF STYLISTICS
Stylistics and Its Concern
The term “Stylistics” comes from the French word, which is a derivative of the word “style”. The word style comes from the Latin word, meaning the name of a sharp instrument used by the Romans for writing on wax tablets. Later on it came to be metonymically used for a manner of writing or a mode of expressions.
Stylistics is a new branch of General Linguistics, which studies the principles and effectiveness of the choice and usage of lexical, grammatical, phonetic and graphic means of the language to render thoughts, feelings and emotions under various conditions of communication.
One of the American linguists Michael Riffater wrote: “Stylistics studies the act of communication not merely as producing a verbal chain, but as bearing the speaker’s personality and as compelling the addressee’s attention”.
Stylistics studies the means of linguistic expressiveness in carrying a huge load of information. To decode this information, one should give a detailed and thorough analysis of the stylistic functioning of all the linguistic means used.
Stylistics is a part of Poetics, a science, which studies the structure of literary works and the system of aesthetic means used. Stylistics is subdivided into Literary and Lingual Stylistics.
Literary Stylistics concerns itself with the individual style of a writer, belonging to a definite literary school or trend. It studies a combination of expressive means used by some author, typical of a certain trend or some literary epoch and factors, determining poetic expressiveness.
The main concerns of Lingual Stylistics are the following:
· The study of functional styles as subsystems of the literary language, distinguished from one another by a peculiar set of independent language means and fulfilling a specific function in communication.
· The study of linguistic elements from the viewpoint of their ability to render emotions, feelings, additional associations and evaluations.
The two branches of Stylistics are interdependent, as the object of their investigation is the same (i.e. language).
Speaking about Lingual Stylistics, Olga Sergeyevna Akhmanova distinguished Language Stylistics and Speech Stylistics.
According to her, Language Stylistics studies: 1) the peculiarity of language subsystems, the specific vocabulary, phraseology and syntax; 2) expressive, emotive, evaluative features of various linguistic means.
Speech Stylistics, in her opinion, studies texts, the way they render the content, the literary norm and deviations from norm.
One and the same information may be rendered differently, depending on the situation of communication, on the social status of the interlocutors, on their relations, on the emotional attitude of the speakers, their mood and health. These facts are not explicitly expressed in the text; they are rendered in different roundabout ways. Thus the main task of Stylistics is to give the stylistic analysis of the given information or to decode it.
Information in speech may be of two types:
· Subject, logical information making up the essence of the utterance;
· Additional information about conditions of communication and the participants of communication.
E.g. I weally don’t know whewer I’m a good girl. (= “I really don’t know whether I’m a good girl” Here in addition to the content the author also describes the person’s manner of speaking)
There exist two trends in the stylistic analysis: 1) to single out the key idea of the extract (i.e. to define different stylistic devices, to assert the initial hypothesis); 2) to single out some formal details, peculiarities of the text (i.e. explain their usage, considering them in their interaction and then formulate the idea and the theme of the extract). Both ways of analysis are aimed at revealing the unity of form and meaning, at perceiving the text as a unit.
Of late there has appeared a new term “Stylistics of Decoding” or “Stylistics of Perception” opposed to the term “Stylistics of Encoding”.
Stylistics of Encoding presupposes the knowledge not only of the creative biography of the author, but also of the literary epoch, literary trend and the history of literature
Stylistics of Decoding studies the way a literary work influences the reader. It concentrates the reader’s attention on the analysis of the linguistic means used. It deals with text interpretation.
Дата: 2018-12-21, просмотров: 489.
