Stylistics and its objectives. Linguostylistics and literary stylistics.
Stylistics, sometimes called lingvo-stylistics, is a branch of general linguistics, which studies the principles, and effect of choice and usage of different language elements in rendering thought and emotion under different conditions of communication. Objectives: a) the investigation of the inventory of special language media which by their ontological features secure the desirable effect of the utterance and b) certain types of texts (discourse) which due to the choice and arrangement of language means are distinguished by the pragmatic aspect of the communication. Types of stylistic research: literary stylistics; 2. linguistic st.; 3. Comparative st.; 4. Decoding st.; 5. Functional st.; 6. Stylistic lexicology; 7. Stylistic grammar. Literary stylistics nd lingu-stlistis hv some meeting points or links in that they have common objects of research. Consequently they have certain areas of ross-rfrn. Both study the common ground of: 1. the literary language from the point of view of its variability; 2. the idiolect (individual speech) of writer; 3. poetic speech that has its own specific laws. The points of difference proceed from the different points of analysis. While lingua-stylistics studies: 1. Functional styles (in their development and current state). 2. The linguistic nature of the expressive means of the language, their systematic character and their functions. Literary stylistics is focused n: 1. The composition of work of art; 2. Various literary genres; 3. h writer's outlook.
Stylistics is concerned with such issues as: 1. The aesthetic function of language; 2. expressive means in language (aim to effect the reader or listener); 3. synonymous ways of rendering one and the same idea (with the change of wording a change in meaning takes place inevitably); 4. emotional colouring in language; 5. a system of special devices called stylistic devices; 6. the splitting of the literary language into separate systems called style; 7. the interrelation between language and thought; 8. the individual manner of an author in making use of the language.
Its essential that we look at the object of stylistic study in its totality concerning all the above-mentioned problems.
The Stylistics of decoding
In terms of information theory the author's stylistics may be named the stylistics of the encoder: the language being viewed as the code to shape the information into the message, and the supplier of the information, respectively, as the encoder. The addressee in this case plays the part of the decoder of the information contained in the message; and the problems connected with adequate reception of the message without any informational losses or deformations, i.e., with adequate decoding, are the concern of decoding stylistics.
A comparatively new branch of stylistics is the decoding stylistics, which can be traced back to the works of L. V. Shcherba, . . Larin, , Riffaterre, R. Jackobson and other scholars of the Prague linguistic circle. serious contribution into this branch of stylistic study was also made b Prof. I.. Arnold. Each act of speech has the performer, or sender of speech and the recipient. h former does the act of nding and the latter the act of decoding the information. If we analyze the text from the author's (encoding) point of view we should consider the epoch, the historical situation, the personal political, social and aesthetic views of the author. But if we try to treat the same text from the reader's angle of view we shall have to disregard this, background knowledge and get the maximum information from the text itself (its vocabu1ary, msition, sntn arrangement, t.) The first approach manifests the prevalence of the literary analysis. h second is based almost exclusively n the linguistic analysis. Decoding stylistics is an attempt to harmoniously mbine the two methds of stylistic research and nb the scholar to interpret work of art with minimum loss of its purport and message.
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The concept of style.
Different scholars have defined style differently at different times. In 1955 the Academician V.V. Vinogradov defined style as socially determined and functionally conditioned internally united totality of the ways of using, selecting and combining the means of lingual intercourse in the sphere of one national language or another. In 1971 Prof. I.R. Galperin offered his definition of style as is a system of co-ordinated, interrelated and inter-conditioned language means intended to fulfil a specific function of communication and aiming at a definite effect. According to Prof. Screbnev style is what differentiates a group of homogeneous texts from all other groups Style can be roughly defined as the peculiarity, the set of specific features of text type or of a specific text.
