FUNCTIONAL STYLES OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE: THE PECULIARITIES OF BELLES-LETTRES STYLE AND SCIENTIFIC STYLE

Functional styles of the English Language:

- business-official style (official documents)

- scientific style (scientific articles, brochres, monographs etc)

- publicist style (essays, feature, public speeches)

- newspaper style (editorial, brief news item, headline, ads)

- belles-letters style (creative prose, poetry, drama)

Belles-lettres style:

- emotive prose (it comprises a number of genres historical, detective, and others, also novels and short stories) their functions may vary)

- drama (traditionally the speech of personages in plays is stylized to embellish the language)

- poetry (aesthetic function prevails and it calls for an abundance of expressive means and stylistic devices)

Aesthetico – cognitive function:

- inform

- suggest interpretation of the phenomena of life

- give a feeling oof pleasure

a) language means and their arrangement

b) ability to perceive relations btw seemingly unconnected facts

Linguistic features of bells-letters style

- genuine imagery

- influence of context on lexical meaning

- use if words in more than one dictionary meaning

- characteristics of both varieties of language

- elements of other styles

- strong imprint of the personality of the author

Poetry: The first differentiating property of poetry is its orderly form, which is based mainly on the rhythmic and phonetic arrangement of the utterances.

Emotive Prose: The imagery is not so rich as it is in poetry, the percentage of words with contextual meaning is not so high as in poetry, the idiosyncrasy of the author is not so clearly discernible. the combination of the literary variant of the language with the colloquial variant.

Drama: The third subdivision of the belles-lettres style is the language of plays. the language of plays is entirely dialogue. The author's speech is almost entirely excluded except for the playwright's remarks and stage directions, significant though they may be.

Scientific style: Its general aim is to inform specialists in a particular field about the latest developments.

- objective

- precise

- unemotional

- impersonal

Language features:

- use of terms

- use of words in primary meanings

- logical sequence of utterance

- varied system of connectives

- clichés

- impersonality, use of passive constructions

use of quotations and references

DEFEATED EXPECTANCY, FOREGROUNDING AND STYLISTIC FUNCTION. EXPRESSIVE MEANS AND STYLISTIC DEVICES. STYLISTIC CONVERGENCE

DECODING STYLISTICS investigates the same levels as linguistics – phonetic, graphical, lexical, grammatical. The basic difference: it studies expressive means of each level not as isolated devices but as a part of the whole text on lengthy segments of text.

FOREGROUNDING is a way of formal text organization focusing readers’ attention at definite elements and establishing semantically relevant relations between the elements of one level or more often between those of different levels.

General functions of the foregrounding types are the following:

1. Establishment of hierarchy of meanings and elements inside the text, that is emphasizing or foregrounding of the most important parts of a message.
2. Providing cohesion and integrity of the text and at the same time segmenting the text for perception convenience;
3. Putting in order the information due to which readers may decode unfamiliar elements of the code.
4. Foregrounding forms aesthetical context and fulfills a number of semantic functions, with expressiveness being one of them. Expressiveness is a property of the text or its part to convey a meaning with enhanced intensity and results in emotional or logical reinforcement, which can be either figurative or not.

The main types of foregrounding are CONVERGENCE, COUPLING and DEFEATED EXPECTANCY.

CONVERGENCE denotes a comb-n of stylistic devices promoting the same idea, emotion or motive. ex. the poem “Oxen” And heaved and heaved, still unrestingly heaved the Black Sea as if its vast tides were a conscience.

Conversion is created by a number of stylistic devices:

1. Inversion with a subject being far away from the beginning.
2. verb repetition
3. repeated conjunction AND
4. rhythm
5. author’s neologism UNRESTINGLY
6. expressive epithet VAST
7. unusual comparison when a definite noun is explained by an abstract one (tides --- conscience)

• Convergence emphasize the most important place in the text,

Defeated expectancy ( and word play) e.g. from Oliver Twist by Ch. Dickens: ‘And then followed a full description of Oliver’s dress, a person’s appearance and disappearance, with the name of Mr. Brownlow…’

COUPLING is another important type of foregrounding providing unity of poetic structure, drawing on orderliness and facilitating decoding and memorization. There are numerous examples of couplings in proverbs and sayings. No pain, no gain. Birds of a feather flock together.