Stylistics

Basic notions
Lecture plan:
 Different approaches to the notion of style.
 The problem of norm.
 Context. Synonymy.
 Expressive Means and Stylistic Devices.
 Image and Imagery.
 Style is socially cognized and functionally
conditioned internally united totality of the
ways of using, selecting and combining
the means of lingual intercourse in the
sphere of one national language or
another, a totality corresponding to other
analogous ways of expression that serve
different purposes, perform different
functions in the social communicative
practice of the given nation (V.
Vinogradov).
 Style is a selection of non-distinctive features
of language (L. Bloomfield).

 Style is a quality of language which

communicates precisely emotions or
thoughts, or a system of emotions or
thoughts, peculiar to the author
(J. Middleton Murry).
 Norm is the invariant of the phonetic,
morphological, lexical and syntactical
patterns circulating in the language at a given
period of time (O. Morokhovsky).

 Norm is a set of language rules which are

considered to be the most standard and
correct in a certain epoch and in a certain
society (L.Yefimov).
 The context is the norm, a stylistic device
is of value against the context in which it is
used. Thus, in his opinion, the context plays
the role of the norm, and style is created as
a deviation from it (M. Riffaterre).

 He provides the definition of the stylistic

context: "…a linguistic pattern suddenly
broken by an element which is
unpredictable, and the contrast resulting
from the interference is the stylistic
stimulus”.
 O. Morokhovsky's
classification of the context

extralinguistic ( situational ) context linguistic ( speech ) context

single situational typical social historical linguistic stylistic

context situational context context context
context

lexical syntactical morphological-syntactical lexico-syntactical mixed

 Classification of the Context
according to its size according to its meaning

microcontext linguistic
(a sentence)

macrocontext extralinguistic:
(a paragraph in a text) - temporal (chronological)
megacontext - physical
(a book chapter, a story or - abstract
a book)
- psychological
 The term synonymy refers to a major
type of sense relation between lexical
items: lexical items which have the same
meaning are synonyms, and the
relationship between them is one of
synonymy.
 For two items to be synonyms, it does not
mean that they should be identical in
meaning, i.e. interchangeable in all
contexts
 Speech synonyms appear in the speech
in a certain contextual situation.

 Language synonyms exist in the

language system on all its levels. v
 EM / SD
 Expressive Means are those phonetic,
lexical, morphological and syntactic units and
forms which make speech emphatic.

 Stylistic Devices are non-language

phenomena, which are formed in speech and
do not exist out of context.
 The Difference
between EM and SD
Expressive Means Stylistic Devices

language elements of ways of combining speech

various levels which are units of the lower level in
stylistically marked at a the unit of the higher level;
definite language level;

stylistic meaning is fixed to stylistic meaning appears

the expressive means. in the context of a speech
unit.
 Image is a certain picture of the
objective world, a verbal subjective
description of this or another person,
event, sight made by the speaker with
the help of the whole set of expressive
means and stylistic devices.
 Imagery is diction that describes the five
senses (tactile, visual, auditory, olfactory,
and emotional.

 e.g. Honeysuckle and purple wisteria hung

from the trees and white magnolias mixed
with their scents in the bee-humming air
(Ralph Ellison "The Invisible Man").