Functional Styles of Language

A close analysis of the interrelation between the language means in a given passage will enable the student to recognize different styles and even to build up a system incorporating them.

A functional style of language can be defined as a system of coordinated, interrelated and interconditioned language means intended to fulfill a specific function of communication and aiming at a definite effect. Each style can be recognized by one or more leading features, which are especially conspicuous. For instance, the use of special terminology is a lexical characteristic of the style of scientific prose, and one by which it can easily be recognized.

However not all texts have boundaries that are easy to identify in the use of distinctive language. For example, the artistic style has a lot of common features with the publicist one, which in its turn is often comparable with the style of humanities, such as political science, history or philosophy.

Within English literary language a number of functional styles may be distinguished. To them belong – the scientific style, the publicist (media) style, the artistic style, the style of official documents, and the colloquial style.

We will now consider two functional styles presented in the texts for analysis in the given book.

Artistic Style

Artistic style,or the style of imaginative literature may be called the richest register of communication: besides its own language means which are not used in any other sphere of communication, artistic style makes ample use of other styles too, for in numerous works of literary art we find elements of scientific, official and other functional types of speech. Besides informative and persuasive functions, also found in other functional styles, the artistic style has a unique task to impress the reader aesthetically. Boundless possibilities of expressing one’s thoughts and feelings make the artistic style a highly attractive field of research for a linguist.

The artistic style rests on certain indispensable linguistic features which are:

1. Genuine, not trite, imagery achieved by purely linguistic devices.

2. The use of words in contextual and very often in more than one dictionary meaning, or at least greatly influenced by the lexical environment.

3. A vocabulary which will reflect to a greater or lesser degree the author’s personal evaluation of things or phenomena.

4. A peculiar individual selection of vocabulary and syntax.

5. The introduction of the typical features of colloquial language to a full degree (in plays) or a lesser one (in imaginative prose) or a slight degree, if any (in poems).

The artistic style is considered a generic term for three substyles in which the main principles and the most general properties of the style are materialized. These three substyles are:

1. Poetry.

2. Imaginative prose.

3. Drama.

Each of these substyles has certain common features, typical of the general artistic style, which make up the foundation of the style, by which the particular style is made recognizable and can therefore be singled out.

Poetry

We are now going to look at the special problems in reading and understanding that poetry may set.People sometimes have fixed preconceptions about and an antipathy towards poetry. They regard it as ‘effeminate’ or ‘arty’ or ‘difficult’. These comments may be true of some poems, but they are not true of poetry as a whole. Sometimes, poems require a greater effort on the part of the reader but equally they can give the reader a satisfaction commensurate with this effort. The more you put into reading a poem, the more you are likely to get out of it.

The image, as a purely linguistic notion, is something that must be decoded by the reader.

An image can be decoded through a fine analysis of the meanings of the given word or word combination. In decoding a given image, the dictionary meanings, the contextual meanings, the emotional colouring and, last but not least, the associations which are awakened by the image should all be used. The easier the images are decoded, the more intelligible the poetic utterance becomes to the reader.

Images from a linguistic point of view are mostly built on metaphors, metonymy and simile. These are direct semantic ways of coining images. Images may be divided into three categories: two concrete (visual, aural), and one abstract (relational).

Visual images are the easiest of perception, inasmuch as they are readily caught by what is called the mental eye. In other words, visual images are shaped through concrete pictures of objects, the impression of which is present in our mind. Thus in:

“...and then my state,

Like to the lark at break of day arising

From sullen earth...” (Shakespeare)

the simile has called up a visual image, that of a lark rising.

Onomatopoeia will build an aural image in our mind, that is, it will make us hear the actual sounds of nature or things.

A relational image is one that shows the relation between objects through another kind of relation, and the two kinds of relations will secure a more exact realization of the inner connections between things or phenomena.

Thus in:

“Men of England, Heirs of Glory,

Heroes of unwritten story.

Nurslings of one mighty mother,

Hopes of her, and one another.” (Shelley)

such notions as ‘heirs of glory’, ‘heroes of unwritten story’, ‘nurslings of... mother’, ‘hopes of her...’ all create relational images, inasmuch as they aim at showing the relations between the constituents of the metaphors but not the actual (visual) images of, in this case, ‘heir’, ‘hero’, ‘nursling’, ‘hоре’.

Another feature of the poetical substyle is its volume of emotional colouring. The emotional element is characteristic of the artistic style in general. But poetry has it in full measure. This is, to some extent, due to the rhythmic foundation of verse, but more particularly to the great number of emotionally coloured words.

In the history of poetic language there are several important stages of development. At every stage the rhythmic and phonetic arrangement, which is the most characteristic feature of the substyle, remains its essence. As regards the vocabulary, it can be described as noticeably literary. The colloquial elements, though they have elbowed their way into poetry at some stages in its development, still remain essentially unimportant and, at certain periods, were quite alien to the style.

Imaginative Prose

The substyle of imaginative prose has the same common features as have been pointed out for the artistic style in general; but all these features are correlated differently in imaginative prose. The imagery is not so rich as it is in poetry; the percentage of words with contextual meaning is not so high as in poetry; the idiosyncrasy of the author is not so clearly discernible. Apart from metre and rhyme, what most of all distinguishes imaginative prose from the poetic style is the combination of the literary variant of the language, both in words and syntax, with the colloquial variant. It would perhaps be more exact to define this as a combination of the spoken and written varieties of the language.

Imaginative prose allows the use of elements from other styles as well. Thus we find elements of the newspaper style (see, for example, Sinclair Lewis’s “It Can’t Happen Here”); the official style (see, for example, the business letters exchanged between two characters in Galsworthy’s novel “The Man of Property”); the style of scientific prose (see excerpts from Cronin’s “The Citadel” where medical language is used).

Drama

The third subdivision of the artistic style is the language of plays. Unlike poetry, which, except for ballads, in essence excludes direct speech and therefore dialogue, and unlike imaginative prose, which is a combination of monologue (the author’s speech) and dialogue (the speech of the characters), the language of plays is entirely dialogue. The author’s speech is almost entirely excluded, except for the playwright’s remarks and stage directions.

But the language of the characters is in no way the exact reproduction of the norms of colloquial language, although the playwright seeks to reproduce actual conversation as far as the norms of the written language will allow.

The language of plays is always stylized, that, is, it strives to retain the modus of literary English, unless the playwright has a particular aim which requires the use of non-literary forms and expressions.

It may be remarked that there is a tendency in modern imaginative prose where dialogue occupies considerable space. In some of the novels it takes up three or four pages running, thus resembling a play.

Publicist Style

Publicist style falls into three varieties, each having its own distinctive features. Unlike other styles, the publicist style has a spoken variety, namely, the oratorical substyle. The other two substyles are the essay (moral, philosophical, literary) and articles (political, social, economic) in newspapers, journals and magazines. Book reviews in journals, newspapers and magazines and also pamphlets are generally included among essays.

The general aim of publicist style is to convince the reader or the listener that the interpretation given by the writer or the speaker is the only correct one and to cause him to accept the point of view expressed in the speech, essay or article not merely through logical argumentation, but through emotional appeal as well. Due to its characteristic combination of logical argumentation and emotional appeal, publicist style has features common with the style of scientific prose, on the one hand, and that of imaginative prose, on the other. Its coherent and logical syntactical structure, with an expanded system of connectives and its careful paragraphing, makes it similar to scientific prose. Its emotional appeal is generally achieved by the use of words with emotive meaning, the use of imagery and other stylistic devices as in imaginative prose; but the stylistic devices used in publicist style are not fresh or genuine.

The manner of presenting ideas, however, brings this style closer to that of artistic, in this case to imaginative prose, as it is to a certain extent individual. Essays and speeches have greater individuality than newspaper or magazine articles where the individual element is generally toned down and limited by the requirements of the style.

Further, publicist style is characterized by brevity of expression. In some varieties of this style it becomes a leading feature, an important linguistic means. In essays brevity sometimes becomes epigrammatic.

The most general distinguishing features of publicist style and its subdivisions are laid down here. We will outline only the most obvious subdivisions: oratory, essays and articles.

Oratorical substyle

The oratorical substyle of language is the oral subdivision of the publicist style. It has already been pointed out that persuasion is the most obvious purpose of oratory.

Direct contact with the listeners permits a combination of the syntactical, lexical and phonetic peculiarities of both the written and spoken varieties of language. In its leading features, however, oratorical substyle belongs to the written variety of language, though it is modified by the oral form of the utterance and the use of gestures. Certain typical features of the spoken variety of speech present in this substyle are: direct address to the audience (ladies and gentlemen, honourable member(s), the use of the 2nd person pronoun you, etc), sometimes contractions (I’ll, won’t, haven’t, isn’t and others) and the use of colloquial words.

The stylistic devices employed in oratorical substyle are determined by the conditions of communication. If the desire of the speaker is to rouse the audience and to keep it in suspense, he will use various traditional stylistic devices.

Repetition can be regarded as the most typical stylistic device of English oratorical style. Almost any piece of oratory will have parallel constructions, antithesis, suspense, climax, rhetorical questions and questions-in-the-narrative.

The desire of the speaker to convince and to rouse his audience results in the use of simile and metaphor, but these are generally tradition­al ones, as fresh and genuine stylistic devices may divert the attention of the listeners away from the main point of the speech. Besides, unexpected and original images are more difficult to grasp and the process takes time. Allusions in oratorical substyle depend on the content of the speech and the level of the audience.

The Essay

The essay is a literary composition of moderate length on philosophical, social, aesthetic or literary subjects. Personality in the treatment of theme and naturalness of expression are two of the most obvious characteristics of the essay. This literary genre has definite linguistic traits which shape it as a variety of publicist style.

The most characteristic language features of the essay are the following: 1) brevity of expression, 2) the use of the first person singular, which justifies a personal approach to the problems treated, 3) a rather expanded use of connectives, which facilitate the process of grasping the correlation of ideas, 4) the abundant use of emotive words, 5) the use of similes and sustained metaphors as one of media for the cognitive process.

Some essays, depending on the writer’s individuality, are written in a highly emotional manner resembling the style of imaginative prose, others resemble scientific prose.

Articles

Irrespective of the character of the magazine and the divergence of subject matter – whether it is political, literary, popular-scientific or satirical – all the already mentioned features of publicist style are to be found in any article. The character of the magazine as well as the subject chosen affects the choice and use of stylistic devices. Words of emotive meaning, for example, are few, if any, in popular scientific articles. Their exposition is more consistent and the system of connectives more expanded than, say, in a satirical article.

The language of political magazine articles differs little from that of newspaper articles. But such elements of the publicist style as rare and bookish words, neologisms, traditional word combinations and parenthesis are more frequent here than in newspaper articles.

The headline is a dependent form of an article. The specific functional and linguistic traits of the headline provide sufficient ground for isolating and analysing it as a specific “genre” of journalism. The main function of the headline is to inform the reader briefly of what the text that follows is about.