Bookish Style

Colloquial Style

Thus, the Number of functional styles and the problem of The Belles-Lettres Style are the most problematic issues.

The Style of Official Documents

Scientific Style

Newspaper Style

· brief news items

· headlines

· advertisements and announcements

· the editorial

· business documents

· legal documents

· the language of diplomacy

· military documents

Prof. Galperin differs from other scholars in his views on functional styles as he includes in his classification only the written language. In his opinion style is the result of creative activity of the writer who consciously and deliberately selects language means that create style. Colloquial speech, according to him, by its nature will not lend itself to careful selection of linguistic features and there is no stylistic intention expressed on the part of the speaker. At the same time his classification contains such varieties of publicist style as oratory and speeches.

There is no unanimity about the belles-lettres style. In fact Galperin's position is not shared by the majority. This notion comes under criticism because it seems rather artificial especially in reference to modern prose.

At the same time many writers give an account of external events, social life and reproduce their characters' direct speech. Sometimes they quote extracts from legal documents, newspapers items, ad­vertisements, slogans, headlines, etc. which do not belong to belles-lettres style in its traditional meaning. So most other clas­sifications do not distinguish the language of fiction as a separate style.

Skrebnev’s classification of functional styles:

1. Literary or Bookish Style:

· publicist style

· scientific (technological) style

· official documents

2. Free (“Colloquial”) Style:

· literary colloquial style

· familiar colloquial style

As can be seen from this classification, both poetry and imaginative prose have not been included.

The system of styles by Prof. Arnold is represented in Colloquial Style:: Neutral Style:: Bookish Style.

Neutral style has no distinctive features and its function is to provide a standard background for other styles. The other 'real' styles can be broadly divided into two groups according to the scholar's approach: different varieties of colloquial styles and several types of literary bookish styles.

· literary colloquial

· familiar colloquial

· common colloquial

· scientific

· official documents

· publicist (newspaper)

· oratorical

· poetic

The inclusion of neutral style in this classification seems rather odd since unlike the others it's non-existent in individual use and should probably be associated only with the structure of the language.

One type of sublanguages suggested by Arnold in her classification— publicist or newspaper—fell under the criticism of Skrebnev who argues that the diversity of genres in newspapers is evident to any human. Of course Arnold is quite aware of the diversity of newspaper writings. However what she really means is the newspaper material specific of the newspaper only: political news, police reports, press reviews, editorials.

Arnold also suggests a table of functional styles as a sort of hierarchy:

Function Style	Commu- nicative	Prag- matic	emotive	phatic	aesthetic
oratorical	+	+	+	+	+
colloquial	+	+	+	+	-
poetic	+	-	+	-	+
Publicist	+	+	+	-	-
official	+	+	-	-	-
scientific	+	-	-	-	-

The modern approach to functional styles can be observed in Morokhovsky classification:

1. Official business style

2. Scientific-professional style

3. Publicist style

4. Literary colloquial style

5. Familiar colloquial style

Each style, according to Morokhovsky, has a combination of distinctive features. Among them we find oppositions like 'artistic— non-artistic', 'presence of personality—absence of it', 'formal— informal situation', 'equal— unequal social status'.

The famous British linguist D. Crystal suggests the following subdivision of the styles: regional, social, occupational, restricted and individual.

Regional varieties reflect the geographical origin of the language used by the speaker (EX: Canadian English, Cockney, etc.)

Social variations testify to the speaker’s family, education, social status background (EX: upper class and non-upper class, a political activist, etc.

Occupational styles is quite a big group that includes:

- Religious English

- Scientific English

- Legal English

- Plain (official) English

- Political English

- News media English further subdivided into:

· newsreporting

· journalistics

· broadcasting

· sportscommentary

· advertising

Restricted English appears both in domestic and occupational spheres:

· Knitwrite in books on knitting

· Cookwrite in recipe books

· Congratulatory messagrs

· Newspaper announcements

· Newspaper headlines

· Sportscasting scores

· Airspeak, the language of air traffic control

· Emergencyspeak, the language of emergency services

· E-mail variety, etc.

Individual variation arises from the speaker’s personal differences meaning such features as interests, physique, personality, experience.

Дата добавления: 2015-03-29