Stylistics as a science. Branches of stylistics

Stylistics is a branch of general linguistics. Stylistics – is regarded as a language science which deals with the results of the act of communication.

There are 2 basic objects of stylistics: - stylistic devices and figures of speech (functional styles).

Branches of stylistics:

Lexical stylistics – studies functions of direct and figurative meanings, also the way contextual meaning of a word is realized in the text. L.S. deals with various types of connotations – expressive, evaluative, emotive; neologisms, dialectal words and their behavior in the text.

Grammatical stylistics – is subdivided into morphological and syntactical Morphological s. views stylistic potential of grammatical categories of different parts of speech. Potential of the number, pronouns… Syntactical s. studies syntactic, expressive means, word order and word combinations, different types of sentences and types of syntactic connections. Also deals with origin of the text, its division on the paragraphs, dialogs, direct and indirect speech, the connection of the sentences, types of sentences.

Phonostylistics – phonetical organization of prose and poetic texts. Here are included rhythm, rhythmical structure, rhyme, alliteration, assonance and correlation of the sound form and meaning. Also studies deviation in normative pronunciation.

Functional S (s. of decoding) – deals with all subdivisions of the language and its possible use (newspaper, colloquial style). Its object - correlation of the message and communicative situation.

Individual style study –studies the style of the author. It looks for correlations between the creative concepts of the author and the language of his work.

Stylistics of encoding. - The shape of the information (message) is coded and the addressee plays the part of decoder of the information which is contained in message. The problems which are connected with adequate reception of the message without any loses (deformation) are the problems of stylistics of encoding.

Stylistics is not equal to linguistics science, such as phonetics, linguistics disciplines – lexicology, morphology, syntax because they are level disciplines as they treat only one linguistic level and stylistics investigates the questions on all the levels and different aspects of the texts in general.

The smallest unit of language is the phoneme. Several phonemes combined make a unit of a higher level – morpheme (morphemic level). One or more morphemes makes a word, a lexeme (lexical level). One or more than one words make an utterance, a sentence (sentence level). Words combinations are treated either on the lexical or syntactical level: Winter … смысл целого предл. Never! Each level consists of units of lower level. Read – er [э] морфема.

Stylistics must be subdivided into separate, independent branches – stylistic phonetics, Stylistic morphology, Stylistic lexicology, Stylistic syntax. Whatever level we take, stylistics is describes not what is in common use, but what is specific in this or that respect, what differentiates one sublanguage from others. General (non-stylistic) phonetics investigates the whole articulatory - audial system of language. Stylistic ph-cs describes variants of pronunciation occuring in different types of speech. Special attention is also paid to prosodic features of prose and poetry. General (non-stylistic) morphology treats morphemes and grammatical meanings expressed by them in language in general, without regard to their stylistic value. Stylistic mor-gy is interested in grammatical forms and grammatical meanings that are peculiar to particular sublanguages, explicity or implicity comparing them with the neutral ones common to all the sublanguages.

Lexicology deals with stylistic classification (differentiation) of the vocabulary that form a part of stylistics (stylistics lexicology). In stylistic lexicology each units are studied separately, instead of as a whole text (group of words, word classification). General syntax treats word combinations and sentences, analyzing their structures and stating what is permissible and what is inadmissible in constructing correct utterances in the given language. Stylistic syntax shows what particular constructions are met with in various types of speech, what syntactical structures are style forming (specific) in the sublanguages in question.

Semantic level – connected with meaning.