Neutral style/ colloquial style/ bookish style

The term “neutral style” is used mostly to denote the background for realizing stylistic peculiarities of stylistically colored elements. Neutral style is characterized by the absence of stylistic coloring and by the possibility to be used in any communicative situation. This style is deliberately simplified.

If neutral style serves any situation of communication colloquial style serves situations of spontaneous everyday communication (casual, non-formal). Bookish style corresponds to public speech (non-casual, formal). This division does not coincide with the division into spoken and written language because colloquial style can be used in fiction, bookish style represented for example by oratorical style exists in the oral form only. At the same time we should remember that colloquial speech which we meet in fiction has undergone some transformations: the writer usually compresses linguistic information choosing the typical and avoiding the accidental.

Colloquial style is divided into upper colloquial, common colloquial and low colloquial. The latter two have their own peculiar features connected with region, gender, age of the speaker.

Bookish style embraces scientific, official, publicistic (newspaper), oratorical, and poetic styles.

Arnold belongs to the group of scholars who reject the existence of belles-letres style. Her opinion is that each work of literature presents an example of the author’s individual speech and thus follows its own norm, in the work of literature authors often use different FS.

She introduces the notion of language function characteristic for different FS. Intellectual-communicative function is connected with the transferring of intellectual ideas. Voluntary function serves for influencing the will-power and conscience of listener or reader.

Table

Having in mind the fact that FS is a historical category Arnold doubts that in the contemporary English language exists a separate poetic style. As it is clearly seen from the table oratorical and scientific styles are opposite to each other the first having all functions of language, the second – only one.

There are no strict boundaries separating one FS from another. The oratorical style has much in common with a publicistic one. The publisictic newspaper style is close to the colloquial style. But if we consider this problem it will be evident that we are dealing with the combination of different FS in the speech of a given individual because each FS is characterized by certain parameters concerning vocabulary and syntax. 

Publicistic style

The publicistic style of language became a separate style in the middle of the 18th century. Unlike other styles, it has two spoken varieties, namely the oratorical substyle and the radio and TV commentary. The other two substyles are the essay (moral, philosophical, literary) and journalistic articles (political, social, economic). The general aim of publicistic style is to influence the public opinion, 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 expressed point of view.

Publicistic style is characterized by coherent and logical syntactical structure, with an expanded system of connectives and careful paragraphing. Its emotional appeal is achieved by the use of words with the emotive meaning but the stylistic devices are not fresh or genuine. The individual element is not very evident. Publicistic style is also characterized by the brevity of expression, sometimes it becomes a leading feature.

The oratorical style is the oral subdivision of the publicistic style. Direct contact with the listeners permits a combination of the syntactical, lexical and phonetic peculiarities of both the written and spoken varieties of language. The typical features of this style are: direct address to the audience; sometimes contractions; the use of colloquial words. 

The SDs employed in the oratorical style are determined by the conditions of communication. As the audience rely only on memory, the speaker often resorts to repetitions to enable his listeners to follow him and to retain the main points of his speech. The speaker often use simile and metaphor, but these are generally traditional, because genuine SDs may be difficult to grasp. 

The essay is rather a series of personal and witty comments than a finished argument or a conclusive examination of the matter. The most characteristic language features of the essay are: brevity of expression; the use of the first person singular; a rather expanded use of connectives; the abundant use of emotive words; the use of similes and sustained metaphors. 

The language of journalistic articles is defined by the character of newspaper, magazine, as well as subjects chosen. Literary reviews stand closer to essays.

Publicistic style in the past it named oratoric style. The aim of the style also influence of public opinion. Bravity of expression, strong logic, strict organization of syntactical structure and a wide system of syntactical connection; the use of colloquial words, neutral, direct address to the audience.

Publicist Style ( Journalese). The major functions of the publicist style: social influence and public opinion manipulation; informative function. Additional functions: propaganda, popularization, education, organiziation, analysis and criticism, hedonism (entertainment). Stylistic features of the publicist style: interchange of standard and expressiveness, explicit evaluation, affective, impressive character, stylistic effects of "novelty", advertising, mass, group social orientation, factography (documentary precision, abundance of statistics, toponymic and proper names, factual data), neutral or formal manner of presentation, generalization, the use of arguments, multi-stylistic character.

Publicistic style and other functional styles. Publicist style as a sphere of intersection with the style of fiction / essay, sketch, lampoon, satirical article/ and scientific style /commentary, review/. Elements of conversational and official styles. Substyles and genres: publicist style proper /lampoons, articles, essays, sketches, travelogues, memoirs/, political propaganda /slogans, leaflets, proclamations/, journalese /, newspapers style - editorial (leader) article, brief news, or news columns, report, interview, reportage…/, oratory /speeches, parliamentary debates, TV discussions…/ TV and radio journalese, publicist cinematography (documentary, news-reel, etc.). New publicist genres: talk-show, reality-show, role-play show, game-show, debates, TV poll, TV commentary, new types of information programs. Inner differentiation of the publicist style and correlation of functional relevance of its different variations and genres.

1. Newspaper style

Newspaper style as a part of publicist style. That why it can’t be individual. It has no situation of communication. Newspaper style to give information, to influence, to represent social, political idea, means of pursuage. Its important to concentrate. That is why the text of newspaper style should be organized in the certain style. It must contain elements of stylistic colored words and have certain graphic organization. The articles contain questions, the sentence interrogative, elliptical construction and direct speech is included. The use of political words and expressions, cliches, colloquial words, slang, professionalisms, large amount of stylistic devises, various graphical means. The text of NP style is read by people od different social status.

English newspaper writing dates from the 17th century. The first of any regular English newspapers was the Weekly News which first appeared in May, 1622. The early English newspaper was principally a vehicle of information. Commentary found its way into the newspapers later. But as far back as the middle of the 18th century the British newspaper was very much like what it is today, carrying foreign and domestic news, advertisements, announcements and articles containing comments.

Not all the printed materials found in newspapers comes under newspaper style. Only materials which perform the function of informing the reader and providing him with an evaluation of information published can be regarded as belonging to newspaper style. English newspaper style can be defined as a system of interrelated lexical, phraseological and grammatical means which is perceived by the community as a separate linguistic unity that serves the purpose of informing and instructing the reader. Information in the English newspaper is conveyed through the medium of:

1)    brief news items;

2)    press reports;

3)    articles purely informational in character;

4)    advertisements and announcements.

The newspaper also seeks to influence public opinion on political and other matters. Elements of appraisal may be observed in the very selection and way of presentation of news, in the use of specific vocabulary, casting some doubt on the facts recorded, and syntactical constructions indicating a lack of assurance of the reporter or his desire to avoid responsibility. The principle vehicle of interpretation and appraisal is the newspaper article and the editorial in particular. Editorial is a leading article which is characterized by a subjective handling of facts. This purpose defines the choice of language elements which are mostly emotionally colored.

Newspaper style has its specific vocabulary features and is characterized by an extensive use of:

1)    special political and economic terms (president, election);

2)    non-term political vocabulary (nation, crisis, agreement, member);

3)    newspapercliches (pressing problem, danger of war, pillars of society);

4)    abbreviations (NATO, EEC);

5)    neologisms.

Problems of classification. Newspaper genres: editorial (leading article), newsreel, brief news report, reportage, interview, essay, title, topical satire, advertisement.

Graphic Means of the newspaper style: wide use of graphic means - change of prints, word-arts, italics, various graphic symbols (asterisks, etc.) used for the sake of text limitation as well as elements of compositional arrangement such as columns, titles, subtitles, parts and paragraphs.

Language Means of publicist style:

vocabulary: priority of neutral and bookish vocabulary, wide use of language means to actualize chronotop (proper and geographical names, \abundance of statistics, toponymic and proper names, facts and data), means of evaluation, neologisms, social political terminology, a great number of loan-words and international words, use words and word-combinations of other styles ( especially, conversational), against the general background of the bookish style vocabulary, including terminology as well as means of imagery to increase expressiveness / trite metaphors, metonymies, personification, metaphorical paraphrases, metaphorical use of terminology/, newspaper terms: newspaper vocabulary and cliches (journalese and bookish), decomposition of phraseological units.Word-building: loan suffixes and prefixes as well as combination of words;

grammatical means: in morphology the use of the singular number of nouns in their collective meaning, plural number for the definition of generalization, wide use of the superlative degree of adjectives in order to reveal expressiveness as well as the use of adjectives-colouratives, substantiation and evaluation of the use of numerals, adjectives and participles. Average sentence length (9-11words) and average degree of complexity in the sentence structure. Wide use of declarative sentences. The use of questions, exclamatory sentences for the sake of expressiveness. Means of expressive syntax: inversions, parallelism, antithesis, parcellation, gradation, isolation, different types of the author's words presentation and conversational constructions, different patterns in the use of homogeneous parts of the sentence - double, three-element and multi-element;

compositional and textual means: canonized three-part structure of publicist texts, the principle of “pyramid” and its effects in the composition of modern newspaper text, the use of compositional ( foregrounding) devices.