Classifications of functional styles (Arnold, Kozhina). The Belles-Lettres Style

Arnold classification consists of four styles:

1. Poetic style

2. Scientific style

3. Newspaper style

4. Colloquial style

Singling out a poetic and a scientific style seems valid. But Arnold insists on the validity of the ‘newspaper style’ theory. She says that the specificity of mass media make acknowledgement of newspaper style, as one of functional style.

Galperin distinguishes five styles in present-day English:

I. Belles Lettres( беллетристика)

1. Poetry

2. Emotive prose

3. The Drama

II. Publicistic Style

1. Oratory and Speeches

2. The Essay

3. Articles

III. Newspapers

1. briefNewsItems (короткиеновости)

2. Headlines

3. Advertisements and Announcements (объявления)

4. The Editorial ( редакторскаястатья)

IV. Scientific Prose

V. Official Documents

He didn’t single out a colloquial style. Its created by the work of the author –the result of creative activity.

In the handbook by Morokhovsky, Vorobyova, Likhosherst give following classification of style:

1. official business style

2. scientific – professional style

3. publicistic style

4. literary colloquial style

5. familiar colloquial style

Kozhina lists type - forming and socially significant spheres of communication as follows:

1) official 2)scientific 3) artistic 4) publicistic 5) of daily intercourse (=colloquial).

Just as in some of the above classification we can doubt the validity of treating separately (and thus opposing) the artistic (belles-lettres) and the publicistic spheres. Not only writers of poetry or fiction, but publicists and orators as well make abundant use of ornament and expressive means of language - tropes and figures first and foremost

The Belles-Lettres Style

According to I.R. Galperin, this is a generic term for three substyles: the language of poetry; emotive prose (the language of fiction); the language of the drama. Each of these substyles has certain common features, and each of them enjoys some individuality. The common features of the substyles are the following:

1.    The aesthetico-cognitive function (a function which aims at the cognitive process, which secures the gradual unfolding of the idea to the reader and at the same time calls forth a feeling of pleasure and satisfaction which a reader experiences because he is able to penetrate into the author's idea and to form his own conclusions).

2.    Definite linguistic features:

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

•     The use of words in different meanings, greatly influenced by the lexical environment.

•     A vocabulary which will reflect to a certain degree the author's personal evaluation of things or phenomena.

•     A peculiar individual selection of vocabulary and syntax.

•     The introduction of the typical features of colloquial language to a full degree (drama), to a lesser degree (in prose), to a slight degree (poetry).

The belles-lettres style is individual in essence. This is one of its most distinctive properties. Aesthetic function as the main function of the belles-lettres style. Aesthetics as one the most important elements of human culture. Aesthetic activity as creative activity in accordance with the “laws of beauty”.

Social determination of aesthetic vision of the world (social interpretation of the of aesthetics). The objective grounds for of aesthetics discovered in the existence of the world of reality ( symmetry, rhythm, harmony, integrity, regularity, expediency, optimization). Artistic creation as a special form of cognition and exploration of reality: syncretism of cognitive, evaluative, communicative, practical activities. Art as the objective basis of artistic activity.

Works of art as integration of creative activity and perception. Art as self-reflection and “code” of culture. Other functions: educational, informational, hedonistic (entertaining), evaluative. Stylistic peculiarities of the belles-lettres style: imagery, unity and indivisibility of artistic form and contents, completeness and integrity (hierarchy and systematic interaction of different levels of the belles-lettres text ), artistic imagery produced by speech concreteness, stylistic integrity and multi-stylistic variation, (introduction of elements of other styles, e.g. of the colloquial style in the aesthetic function into the belles-lettres style), emotionality and evaluation, emphasis, and uniqueness.

Sub-styles of the belles-lettres style: poetry, prose, drama. Poetic genres: ballad, ode, pastoral, sonnet, elegy, limerick, epigram, etc. Genres in prose: a story, a short story, a novel, etc. Genres in drama: comedy, tragedy, drama, dramatic monologue, dramatic dialogue.

Stylistic difference of texts belonging to various sub-styles and genres, literary trends, artistic methods, (romanticism, realism, sentimentalism, etc.), displaying different types of presentation ( narration, description), points of view of the speaker, ( “I-speaking”, fairy-tale speaking), topics, ideas, compositional arrangements, systems of imagery, the authors’ ideostyles, presence or absence of stylization. Ideostyles.

Language means of the belles-lettres style:

phonetic means - sound reiteration, onomatopoeia (sound imitation), alliteration, euphony, consonance, dissonance. Rhyme, rhythm and metre in poetry, the notion of rhythm in prose;

vocabulary – priority of concrete words as ‘artistic speech concretization ’, unlimited choice of vocabulary (including non-literary means, jargon and slang words), multi-stylistic character, wealth of synonyms and variety of vocabulary, developed polysemy, no limits in the use of words, which belong to different functional stylistic groups of vocabulary, stylistic resources of ‘combinatory semantics” of language units, normative and irregular combinatory patterns, decorative and other functions of phraseology, decomposition of phraseology, rich, genuine imagery, the use of figures of speech or lexical stylistic devices, as a unique textual system;

grammatical means of the language: in morphology a variety and wealth of stylistic effects of morphological forms and categories ‘ for expressing ‘artistic speech concretization ’ (deicsis, specific use of aspect and temporal meanings of the verb, ‘verbal speech and plot development’ ( increase in the role and currency of the verb, special use of morphological categories of number, case, degrees of comparison for emphatic and emotive purposes; in syntax a variety and wealth of syntactical constructions, colloquial speech stylization. Means of expressive syntax: inversion, parallelism, antithesis, parcellation, gradation, detachment, different models of author and character speech presentation, different models of homogeneous secondary parts of the sentence arrangement with the priority of double and triple patterns;

compositional textual devices ( three-part compositional canon – introduction, the main part and the ending with a more complex model of prologue and epilogue), deviations from the canon and their stylistic importance, the plot development the exposition, gradation, the climax and the outcome ( the denouement), compositional peculiarities of a poetic text - rigidly fixed dimensions of textual arrangement ( the fixed number of feet, lines, regular accentual models of the foot and line arrangement, the length and arrangement of a stanza, peculiar models of stanza and text arrangement, patterned rhyme, metre and syntax constructions), extensive use of foregrounding (coupling, antithesis, convergence, the effect of deceived expectancy),the effect of replenished expectancy, parallelism, irony, hyperbole as compositional devices;

the system of stylistic devices: systemic use of imagery - textual, developed and simple non-developed metaphors, metonymies, epithets, similes, hyperboles, litotes, puns, oxymorons, zeugmas, different in form contact and distant repetitions (ordinary, anaphora, epiphora, framing, anadiplosis, chain, refrain) Intensification of the total aesthetic impact of the language means of the text.