LECTURE 8. STYLISTIC VARIETIES OF ENGLISH.

Issues of the lecture:

1) Phonostylistics as a branch of phonetics.

2) The notion of the phonetic norm.

3) Speech styles and functional styles.

4) Functions of language and functional styles.

· Informational Style

· Academic style (Scientific).

· Publicistic style (Oratorial).

· Declamatory style (Artistic).

· Conversational style (Familiar).

5) Slang and register.

Things to pay special attention:

Classifications of functional styles.

There have been several classifications of speech styles suggested by phoneticians, although no generally accepted one has been worked out and the peculiarities of different styles have not yet been sufficiently investigated.

D.Jones distinguishes as notable among different styles of pronunciation the rapid familiar style, the slower colloquial style, the natural style used in addressing a fair-sized audience, the acquired style of the stage, and the acquired style used in singing.

Academician L.V.Scerba believed there has to be distinguished a great variety of speech styles, in accordance with the great variety of different social occasions and situations, but for the sake of simplicity he suggested that only two styles of pronunciation should be distinguished:

1) colloquial style characteristic of people’s quite talk;

2) full style, which we use when we want to make our speech especially distinct and, for this purpose, clearly articulate all the syllables of a word.

The full style of pronunciation should not be identified with spelling pronunciation. The full formal style is NOT completely free from the weak forms of structural words (e.g. auxiliary verbs, etc.) or from all kinds of assimilations characteristic of both the careful colloquial and rapid familiar styles of pronunciation.

Style is depth, deviations, choice, context style restricted linguistic variation, style is the man himself (Buffon).

According to Galperin the term ‘style’ refers to the following spheres:

1) the aesthetic function of language (it may be seen in works of art- poetry, imaginative prose, fiction).

2) synonymous ways of rendering one and the same idea (possibility of using different words in similar situations is connected with the question of style).

3) expressive means in language (employed mainly in the following spheres – poetry, fiction, colloquial speech).

4) emotional coloring in language (e.g. declaration of love, funeral oration, poems (verses)).

5) a system of special devices called stylistic devices (e.g. She wears ‘fashion’ = what she wears is fashionable or is just the fashion (methonimy)).

6) the individual manner of an author in making use the individual style of speaking, writing must be investigated with the help of common rules and generalization.

Galperindistinguishes five styles in present-day English:

I. Belles Lettres ( беллетристика)

1. Poetry

2. Emotive prose

3. The Drama

III. Publicistic Style

1. Oratory and Speeches

2. The Essay

3. Articles

IV. Newspapers

1. Brief News Items (короткие новости)

2. Headlines

3. Advertisements and Announcements (объявления)

4. The Editorial (редакторская статья)

V. Scientific Prose

VI. Official Documents

Arnold’s classification consists of four styles:

1. Poetic style

2. Scientific style

3. Newspaper style

4. Colloquial style

Arnold insists on the validity of the ‘newspaper style’ theory. She says that the specificity of mass media make acknowledgement of newspaper style, as one of functional style.

In the handbook by Morokhovsky, Vorobyova, Likhosherst, they give following classification of style:

1. official business style

2. scientific – professional style

3. publicistic style

4. literary colloquial style

5. familiar colloquial style

Kozhina lists type-forming and socially significant spheres of communication as follows:

1) official

2)scientific

3) artistic

4) publicistic

5) of daily intercourse (=colloquial).

Just as in some of the above classification we can doubt the validity of treating separately (and thus opposing) the artistic (belles-lettres) and the publicistic spheres. Not only writers of poetry or fiction, but publicists and orators as well make abundant use of ornament and expressive means of language - tropes and figures first and foremost.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Literature:

DEFINING DIALECT

(Wolfram, Dialects and American English, p. 2-4)

Professional students of language typically use the term dialect as a neutral label to refer to any variety of a language which is shared by a group of speakers. Languages are invariably manifested through their dialects, and to speak a language is to speak some dialect of that language. In this technical usage, there are no particular social or attitudinal evaluations of the term (no "good" or "bad"); it is simply how we refer to any language variety that typifies a group of speakers within a language.

While linguists accept this technical definition of the term, happily arguing about what forms belong to a particular dialect or how two dialects differ, non-specialists tend to use dialect in a somewhat different sense.

One popular use of the term dialect refers to those who simply speak differently from the local, native community of speakers. Another common use of the term refers to those varieties of English whose features have, for one reason or another, become recognized throughout our society. The society at large recognizes a "southern drawl" or a "Boston accent." In other words, if the variety contains features that are generally acknowledged and commented about by the society as a whole, then it may be recognized as a dialect even by the speakers themselves. If someone keeps telling you that you speak a dialect, after a while, you start to believe that you do.

In the most extreme case, dialect is used to refer to a kind of deficient or "broken" English. In this case, dialect is perceived as an imperfect attempt to speak "correct" or "proper" English. If, for example, members of a socially disfavored group produce a structure such as His ears be itching instead of His ears are itching, it is assumed that they have attempted to produce the Standard English form but failed. The result is incorrectly perceived as a "deviant" or "deficient" form of English. Based on the careful examination of such forms, dialectologists take the position that dialects are not deviant forms of language, but simply different systems, with distinct subsets of language patterns.

This particular use of dialect has strong negative connotations, as many of the popular uses of dialect do. Without qualification, the popular use of the term dialect carries connotations ranging from mildly to strongly negative.

Finally, the term dialect often serves as an indirect label for a particular socially disfavored variety of English. A person speaking a recognized, socially stigmatized variety of English may be said to speak "the dialect". Such designations have, for example, been used to refer to the speech of low-income Afro-Americans, as a kind of euphemistic label for this variety. In this sense, with the definite article, "the dialect" behaves more like a proper noun. Notice that people would not refer to a socially acceptable variety as the dialect.