Functional Styles

Vocabulary peculiarities:

• The abundance of special terms
• Scientific prose style is mostly unemotional.
• Special set phrases and adverbs:
• The use of bookish words: perform, comprise, susceptible, approximate, simultaneous.
• The logical emphasis may be expressed lexically
• Quantitative expressiveness exceeds qualitative one: much less limited, much the same, most essential. 

The Official Style (Style of Official Documents) – conservative, forms of structuring and clichés, syntactical constructions, archaic words, complete clarity of the subject matter, all emotiveness and subjective modality are completely excluded.

The functions:

• 1. to reach agreement between two contracting parties;
• 2. to state the conditions binding two parties in an understanding.

The sub-styles are:

• 1. style of business letters,
• 2. style of legal documents,
• 3. style of diplomacy,
• 4. style of military documents.

The Publicist Style - pragmatic function of persuasion directed at influencing the reader and shaping his views, in accordance with the argumentation of the author.

The functions:

• to exert a constant and deep influence on public opinion,
• to convince the reader or the listener that the interpretation given by the writer or the speaker is the only correct one,
• to cause the audience to accept the point of view not only by logical argumentation, but by emotional appeal as well
• It is widely used for propaganda.

The sub-styles are:

Oral form:

• the oratory/ public speeches;
• radio and TV commentary.

Written form:

• essays (moral, philosophical, literary);
• reviews in journals and magazines, pamphlets;
• journalistic articles (political, social, economic).