The belles-lettres style (poetry)

The belles-lettres style is a generic term for 3 substyles:

1. The language of poetry, or simply verse.

2. Emotive prose, or the language of fiction.

3. The language of the drama.

All of them perform the common aesthetico-cognitive function.

In spite of the diversity of genres, their common linguistic features are:

- Genuine imagery, achieved by linguistic devices.

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

- A vocabulary which will reflect the author’s personal evaluation of things or phenomena.

- A peculiar individual selection of vocabulary and syntax, a kind of lexical and syntactical idiosyncrasy.

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

One of the most distinctive properties of the belles-lettres style is its being individual in essence.

The first differentiating property of poetry is its orderly form, which is mainly based on the rhythm and rhyme. In general, rhythm is an alternation or an interchange of stressed and unstressed elements (syllables).

Classic English verse is called syllabo-tonic as it is based on the number of syllables (syllabo) and the distribution of stresses (tonic). The smallest segment of a verse line is the foot (стихотворная стопа) that consists of 1 stressed syllable and 1 or 2 unstressed ones. The struct-re of the foot determines the metre (размер, метр, ритм) , i.e. the type of poetic rhythm of the line. English metrical patterns are: 1.iambus(U –´), e.g. mistake, prepare, etc. 2.trochee (–´ U), e.g. evening, honey, etc. 3.dactyl (–´UU), e.g. wonderful, beautiful, etc. 4.amphibrach (U –´U), e.g. continue, pretending, etc. 5.anapaest (UU–´), e.g. understand, disagree, etc. The number of feet corresponds to the number of stresses. English verse is predominantly iambic pentameter (пятистопный ямб). Rhymeless verse is called blank verse (белый стих in Russian). The largest unit in verse is the stanza (also called a strophe) (строфа. Stanza patterns: the heroic (эпический) couplet, the Spencerian stanza, the ottava rima, the ballad stanza, the sonnet.

Lexical peculiarities of

· fresh, unexpected imagery which assumes in poetry a very compressed form.

· Images built on metaphor, metonymy and simile.

· great number of emotionally-coloured words.

The style of news media (broadcast journalism)

BJis the field of news and journals which are published via television  and the World Wide Web.

Entertaining genres include a bunch of shows, comedies, sitcoms, etc.Educational formats differ according to the intended audience: adults or children viewers. Current news in broadcasting is reported in the news bulletin or newscast presented by one or more anchors or announcers. It traditionally consists of a series of news items and falls into several blocks (e.g. general, politics, business, sport, weather). Sometimes it is expanded by a crawl line. In addition, television and radio news programmes start up and end with headline. It is a news round-up which contains the main news issues read out before the full broadcast and summarized at the end.

Features:

· impartiality of expression.

· neutral and cliched language.

The style of the broadcast programmes can take the whatever shape — from everyday conversation (e.g. "vox pop" interviews) to literature (e.g. dramatized documentaries). Even a weather forecast can be transmitted either in a formal or informal style. In BJ the viewers and listeners are influenced not only by the figurative (e.g. genuine metaphors and similes) and argumentative (e.g. opinions of experts, eyewitnesses' evidence) verbal means. The impact is reinforced by different non-verbal modes, i.e. by the observer's voice and personality, a special selection of background sound techniques (e.g. energetic or sorrowful music). In television it is intensified by the video image (e.g. pitiful pictures).

The broadcast of various public events (e.g. funerals, inaugurations, processions) is often accompanied by TV and radio commentaries. They can be of two types: the "play-by-play" and the "colour-adding" commentaries. The feature of the "play-by-play" commentary is a highly formulaic manner of expression. As such commentaries are oral reports of the on-going activities, they are characterized by the use of the present tense, ellipsis, and the inverted word order. One of the "survival" devices is the frequent use of the passive constructions that allows the commentator to delay voicing the player's name.

Text stylistics. Types of info. Basic textual segments. Text categories

Text – a completed product of speech, representing a sequence of words, grammatically & semantically connected & having communicative aim. Text Stylistic aims at investigating the most effective ways and means of producing texts belonging to different styles, substyles and genres.

The main types of textual information: 1. Factual- data about people, things, and events existing in real or fictitious worlds. It is logical and objective by character. 2. Conceptual  -reflects the author's individual understanding of things described, subjective. 3. Subtextual -implicit information stylistic by its nature. The main basis is implication (direct meaning + associative).

Texts (esp. of the belles-letters style), can possess the aesthetic inf which can be created on the basis of all the three types of content information.

The basic textual segment. A supra-phrasal unit (expresses only one definite thought and can be extracted from the context without losing a semantic independence). Often coincides with the paragraphwhich consists ofthesis (in the topic or key sentence) & the supporting details (around the main idea).Patterns of the paragraph: deductive ( the most important info comes at the top of the p.), inductive (opposite), deductive-inductive( 2 key sentences). Paragraphing has different char. in dif. functional styles (science –logical, legal docs – traditional, press – psychological, poetry &emo. prose – aesthetic).

Text categories: 1. content ctgr (charact. the text in terms of its semantics and pragmatics: informativity, modality, expressiveness, emotiveness, accentuation, intertextuality (межтекст. связь)). 2. structural ctgr (represented by cohesion, integrity, completeness).

The style of religion

The main aims of the religious FS - expressing religious belief on public occasions, explaining the existing world, regulating individual/group behaviour.

Elements of the relig. st. may be found in literature; daily colloquial speech in the form of allusions, quotations, set expressions and create humour. Forms of RFS: the texts from the Bible, books of prayers and religious hymns, common prayers, sermons, songs. Falls into at least three substyles:

1) the biblical (Stylistically relevant because of the biblical quotations, metaphorical (figurative) language, diversity of books)

2) the liturgical (reading from the Scriptures)

3) the theological discourse substyle.