Introduction to stylisticis the subject and main objectives of stylitics

THE MAIN TRENDS IN STYLE STUDY

• Depending on the approach and the final aim of investigation, the linguists distinguish the following trends of stylistics
• Functional Stylistics
• Decoding Stylistics
• Individual style study
• Practical Stylistics

Functional Stylistics

• Functional Stylistics is the most all-embracing “global” trend in style study. It studies functional styles of the language. Functional style is a system of language means intended to fulfil a specific function of communication and aiming at a definite effect. It is possible to say that the attention of functional stylistics is focused on the message in its correlation with the communicative situation.

Functional style

• Belles-letter style embracing numerous gender of creative writing.
• Publicistic style covering such genres as essay, feature article, public speeches.
• Newspaper style observed in the majority of material printed in newspaper.
• Scientific style found in articles, brochures, monographs, and other scientific publication.
• Official style represented in all kind of official documents and papers.

Decoding Stylistics

• Decoding stylistics studies problems connected with adequate reception of the message without any informational losses or deformations. It is called decoding because a writer or a speaker (the addresser) sends information (a code) and the addressee (a reader or a listener) decodes it.

Individual style study

• In the centre of attention of the individual style study are the problems of an individual author’s style, looking for correlation’s between the creative concepts of the author and the language of his works. Individual style is a unique combination of language units, expressive means and stylistics devices peculiar to a given writer, which makes that writer’s works or even utterances easily recognisable.

Individual style

• Individual style implies the peculiarities of a writer’s individual manner of using language means to achieve the effect he desires: components of individual style -
• composition of phrasal units
• rhythm and melody of utterances
• system of imagery
• preference for definite stylistic devices and their correlation with neutral language media
• interdependence of the language means employed by the author and those characteristic to his personages.