General Notes on Stylistics

Stylistics as a branch of General

Linguistics
 The object of Stylistics
Stylistics was recognized as a branch of General Linguistics
in the 1950s. Linguistics is defined as a academic discipline
that studies language scientifically, and stylistics, as a part of
this discipline, studies certain aspects of language variation.
Stylistics is a branch of linguistics that studies various
functional styles and expressive means and devices of the
language.
According to linguists, Stylistics studies the principles and
the effect of choice and usage of different language elements
in rendering thought and emotion under different conditions
of communication.
 The object of Stylistics
Stylistics deals with:
• the aesthetic function of the language;
• expressive means of the language;
• synonymous ways of rendering one and the same idea;
• emotional colouring in the language;
• a system of devices called stylistic devices;
• the splitting of the literary language into separate systems called
style;
• the interrelation between language and thought;
• the individual manner of an author in making use of the
language.
 Branches of Stylistics
According to the type of stylistic research scientists
distinguish several branches of stylistics. Literary
stylistics and lingua – stylistics are considered to be
the most important of them.
Both literary stylistics and lingua-stylistics study the
following aspects:
 the literary language from the point of view of
variability;
 the idiolect (individual speech) of a writer;
 poetic speech that has its own peculiarities.
Differences between literary stylistics and
lingua – stylistics
Lingua-stylistics studies functional styles and the
linguistic nature of the expressive means of the
language, their systematic character and their
functions.
Literary stylistics is focused on the composition of
the work of art, various literary genres and the
author’s views and outlook.
 Comparative Stylistics
The main focus of comparative stylistics is the
contrastive and /or comparative study of stylistic
characteristics of more than one language (e.g. English
and German, English and French, English and
Kazakh).
It aims at analyzing the key concepts of stylistics
taking into the consideration the corresponding
information from two or more languages, attempting to
explain the existing differences and similarities in style
between languages. It is connected with the theory of
translation contributing to a better and in – deep
knowledge and understanding of specific stylistic
characteristics of languages.
 Decoding Stylistics
It considers the aesthetic value of the text based on the
interaction of specific textual elements, stylistic
devices and compositional structure in delivering the
author’s message. This branch of stylistics helps the
reader in understanding of a literary work by
explaining (decoding) the information that may be
encoded by the writer and hidden from immediate
view.
When the text is analyzed from the decoding point of
view (the reader’s angle), it is necessary to take the
maximum information from the text itself (its
vocabulary, composition, sentence arrangement, etc.)
 Decoding Stylistics
If we analyze the text from the encoding point of view
(the writer’s angle) we should pay attention to the
epoch, the historical situation, and personal, political,
social and aesthetic views of the author.
The first approach is connected mostly with the
linguistic analysis, the second approach deals with the
literary analysis.
Decoding stylistics is an attempt to harmoniously
combine the two methods of stylistic analysis and
enable the linguists to interpret a work of art with a
minimum loss of its purport and message.
 Functional Stylistics
It investigates functional styles, i.e. special
sublanguages or varieties of the national language.
In the English literary standard linguists
distinguish the following major functional styles:
belles-lettres style, publicist style, newspaper style,
scientific style, official style.
Each functional style may be characterized by a
number of distinctive features, leading or
subordinate, constant or changing, obligatory or
optional.
 Functional styles
 Functional Style is a system of interrelated language means serving a
definite aim in communication. It is the coordination of the language
means and stylistic devices which shapes the distinctive features of
each style and not the language means or stylistic devices themselves.

 Each style, however, can be recoquized by one or more leading

features which are especially conspicuous. For instance the use of
special terminology is a lexical characteristics of the style of scientific
prose, and one by which it can easily be recognized.

 A style of language can be fined as a system of coordinated,

interrelated and inter-coordinated language means intended to fullfill a
specific function of communication and aiming at a defined effect.
Style of language is a historical category.
 Functional styles
 The English literary system has evolved a number of styles easily
distinguishable one from another. They are not homogeneous and fall
into several variants of having some central point of resemblance or
better to say. All integrated by the invariant — i.e. the abstract ideal
system.
 They are:

 1) Official (documents and papers);

 2) Scientific (brochures, articles, other scientific publications);
 3) Publicistic (essay, public speech);
 4) Newspaper style (mass media);
 5) Belles-lettres style (genre of creative writing);
 Functional styles
 Each of mentioned here styles can be expressed in two forms: written and oral.
 Stylistics is a sides that examines the complex of stylistically marked elements
of any language level.
 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.
 3) Publicistic style is famous for its explicit pragmatic function of persuasion
directed at influencing the reader in accordance with the argumentation of the
author.
 4) Newspaper style — special graphical means are used to attract the readers
attention.
 5) Belles-lettres style — the richest register of communication besides its own
language means, other styles can be used besides informative and persuasive
functions, belles-lettres style has a unique task to impress the reader are
aesthetically.
Stylistics and other linguistic disciplines
Stylistics is closely connected with such
disciplines as phonetics, lexicology and grammar
due to the common source of study.
Stylistics interrelates with semasiology, which is a
branch of linguistics, that studies the meaning of
words. The meaning is connected not only with the
level of the word but also it correlates with
morphemes, phrases and texts.
 TOPICS FOR DISCUSSION
1. The object of stylistics
2. The interdependent tasks stylistics deals with
3. The main branches of stylistics
4. Literary stylistics and lingua-stylistics
5. The decoding and encoding approaches to the
text analysis.
6. The interrelationship of stylistics with other
branches of linguistics.