Stylistics: Linguistics and Language
PART I INTRODUCTION
I. GENERAL NOTES ON STYLE AND STYLISTICS
Stylistics, sometimes called l i n g u o - s t y 1 i s t i c s, is a branch of general linguistics. It has now been more or less definitely outlined. It deals mainly with two interdependent tasks: a) the investi-gation of the inventory of special language media which by their ontol-ogical 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. The two obiectives of stylistics are clearly discernible as two separate fields of investigation. The inventory of special language media can be analysed and their ontological features revealed if presented in a system in which the co-relation between the media becomes evident. The types of texts can be analysed if their linguistic components are presented in their interaction, thus revealing the unbreakable unity and transparency of constructions of a given type. The types of texts that are distinguished by the pragmatic aspect of the communication are called functional styles of language (FS); the special media of language which secure the desirable effect of the utterance are called stylistic devices (SD) and expressive means (EM). The first field of investigation, i.e. SDs and EMs, necessarily touches upon such general language problems as the aesthetic function of lan-guage, synonymous ways of rendering one and the same idea, emotional colouring in languge,_the interrelation between language and thought, the individual manner of an author in making use of language and a number of other issues. The second field, i.e. functional styles, cannot avoid discussion of such most general linguistic issues as oral and written varieties of lan-guage, the notion of the literary (standard) language, the constituents of texts larger than the sentence, the generative
I. GENERAL NOTES ON STYLE AND STYLISTICS
Stylistics, sometimes called l i n g u o - s t y 1 i s t i c s, is a branch of general linguistics. It has now been more or less definitely outlined. It deals mainly with two interdependent tasks: a) the investi-gation of the inventory of special language media which by their ontol-ogical 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. The two obiectives of stylistics are clearly discernible as two separate fields of investigation. The inventory of special language media can be analysed and their ontological features revealed if presented in a system in which the co-relation between the media becomes evident. The types of texts can be analysed if their linguistic components are presented in their interaction, thus revealing the unbreakable unity and transparency of constructions of a given type. The types of texts that are distinguished by the pragmatic aspect of the communication are called functional styles of language (FS); the special media of language which secure the desirable effect of the utterance are called stylistic devices (SD) and expressive means (EM). The first field of investigation, i.e. SDs and EMs, necessarily touches upon such general language problems as the aesthetic function of lan-guage, synonymous ways of rendering one and the same idea, emotional colouring in languge,_the interrelation between language and thought, the individual manner of an author in making use of language and a number of other issues. The second field, i.e. functional styles, cannot avoid discussion of such most general linguistic issues as oral and written varieties of lan-guage, the notion of the literary (standard) language, the constituents of texts larger than the sentence, the generative