Introduction to stylisticis the subject and main objectives of stylitics

THE SUBJECT MATTER OF STYLISTICS

Stylistics is a branch of General Linguistics. It studies language means on all the language levels from the point of view of their expressiveness, emotiveness, imagery, evaluation. In other words it studies the effects of the message, its impact on the reader or listener.

Expressiveness and emotiveness

• Expressiveness – in etymological sense is a kind of intensification of the utterance (or a part of it).
• Emotiveness - reveals emotions of the writer or a speaker by not directly manifesting their emotions but by echoing real feelings, designed to awaken co-experience on the part of the reader.

Expressiveness vs emotiveness

DEFINITION

• Stylistics - is a science, a branch of linguistics, investigating principles and the results of selection and use of lexical, grammatical, phonetic and other language means for the transfer of thoughts and emotions under discussion.
• Lat - stylus - a stick made of material for writing.
• Stylistics - from French " Stylistique " -instrument for Writing. Different circumstances of communication

STYLE

• “style is the man himself “(Buffon 18thc.)
• “Style is depth” Darbyshire
• “style is deviation” Enkvist
• “style is the result of an author’s success in compelling language to conform to his mode of experience (Middleton Murry)
• “Style is a contextually restricted linguistic variation” (Enkvist)
• Style is a selection of non-distinctive features of language(Bloomfield)
• Style is simply synonymous with form or expression(Benedetto Croce)
• “structures, sequences and patterns which extend beyond the boundaries of individual sentences - style (Archibald Hill )

The main problems under consideration in Stylistics are as follows: 1. Functional Stylistics 2. Stylistic differentiation of the English vocabulary 3. Types of speech 4. Stylistic Devices and Expressive Means of the language