Вопросы стилистики английского языка

О.В. Томберг
М.А. Ананьина
ВОПРОСЫ 
СТИЛИСТИКИ 
АНГЛИЙСКОГО ЯЗЫКА
Учебное пособие
Москва
Издательство «ФЛИНТА»
2025
1

УДК 811.111’38(076.5)
ББК 81.432.1-5я73
Т56
Ре це нзе нты:
д-р филол. наук, проф. кафедры «Международные отношения, 
политология и регионоведение ФГАОУ ВО «Южно-уральский 
государственный университет (национальный исследовательский 
университет)» Н.Н. Кошкарова;
д-р филол. наук, директор департамента «Филологический факультет»
Уральского гуманитарного института
ФГАОУ ВО «Уральский федеральный университет
имени первого Президента России Б.Н. Ельцина»,
проф. кафедры современного русского языка
и прикладной лингвистики А.М. Плотникова
Т56 
Томберг О.В.
Вопросы стилистики английского языка : учеб. пособие /
О.В. Томберг, М.А. Ананьина. — Москва : ФЛИНТА, 2025. — 
88 с. — ISBN 978-5-9765-5541-9. — Текст : электронный.
В материалах пособия анализируются теоретические и практические вопросы стилистики английского языка. Пособие структурировано в соответствии с уровневым под 
ходом к лингвистическим явлениям; стилистические приемы и об 
разные средства иллюстрируются 
и изучаются на обширном со 
вре 
менном материале, взятом из художественных произведений англо 
язычных авторов.
Для студентов старших курсов языковых факультетов и на 
правле 
ний подготовки, изучающих дисциплину «Стилистика английского языка».
УДК 811.111’38(076.5)
ББК 81.432.1-5я73
ISBN 978-5-9765-5541-9 
© Томберг О.В., Ананьина М.А., 2025
© Издательство «ФЛИНТА», 2025
2

Contents
C H A P T E R  1. The Object of Stylistic Study  ............................................4
1.1. Problems of stylistic research. The notion of style  ....................................4
1.2. Stylistics of language and speech  
.............................................................12
1.3. Types of stylistic research and branches of stylistics  
...............................15
 
Practice Section  .......................................................................................18
C H A P T E R  2. Stylistics of Literature. Linguacultural Aspects
of Stylistic Study  
............................................................................................32
2.1. Style as motivated choice  
.........................................................................32
2.2. Linguacultural aspects of stylistic study.
The notion of the vertical context  ............................................................33
 
Practice Section  .......................................................................................45
C H A P T E R  3. Decoding Stylistics  ...........................................................49
3.1. Background of the scientifi
 c method ........................................................49
3.2. Allusive name as a type of foregrounding: Salient feature  ......................52
 
Practice Section  .......................................................................................56
C H A P T E R  4. Modern Trends in the Development of Stylistics  ..........62
4.1. Literacies in cyberspace and new genres of media style  
..........................62
4.2. Weblogs and blogs as new substyles of media functional style  
...............64
4.3. Text stylistics. Cognitive stylistics  
...........................................................69
 
Practice section  
........................................................................................74
Sources  
............................................................................................................83
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CHAP T E R 1
THE OBJECT OF STYLISTIC STUDY
1.1. Problems of stylistic research.
The notion of style
Nearly every traditional branch of linguistics has defi
 nitely 
outlined objects of research. Phonetics deals with speech sounds 
and intonation; lexicology treats separate words with their meanings 
and the structure of the vocabulary as a whole; grammar analyses 
forms of words (morphology) and forms of word combinations 
(syntax). Although scholars differ in their treatment of the material, 
the general aims of the disciplines mentioned are more or less  
clearcut.
It gets more complicated when we talk about stylistics. This term 
came into existence not too long ago. But the scope of problems 
and the object of stylistic study go as far back as ancient schools of 
rhetoric and poetics. The term stylistics is derived from the word 
“style”. The word style goes back to the Latin word “stilos”. The 
Romans called thus a sharp stick used for writing on wax tablets. It 
was already in Latin that the meaning of the word “stilos” came to 
denote not only the tool of writing, but also the manner of writing. 
With this new meaning the word was borrowed into European 
languages.
The problem that makes the defi
 nition of stylistics a curious one 
deals both with the material of studies and the object.
Look through the following abstract and point out the linguistic 
means that make it possible to identify it as fi
 ction. It illustrates that 
stylistics is concerned with the linguistic units of all levels from 
phonemes to the text as a whole.
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...Davis today had a regatta air. A new scarlet silk handkerchief 
with yellow dice dangled from his pocket like a fl
 ag on a still 
day, and his tie was bottle-green with a scarlet pattern. Even the 
handkerchief he kept for use which protruded from his sleeve 
looked new — a peacock blue. He had certainly dressed ship.
“Had a good week-end?” Castle asked.
“Yes, oh yes. In a way. Very quiet. The pollution boys were away 
smelling factory smoke in Gloucester. A gum factory.”
[...] Davis cleared his throat explosively — like a signal for the 
regatta to begin — and ran up a Red Ensign all over his face.
“I was going to ask you... would you mind if I slipped away at 
eleven? I’ll be back at one, I promise, and there’s nothing doing. If 
anyone wants me just say that I’ve gone to the dentist.”
“You ought to be wearing black,” Castle said, “to convince 
Daintry. Those glad rags of yours don’t go with dentists.”
“Of course I’m not really going to the dentist. The fact of the 
matter is Cynthia said she’d meet me at the Zoo to see the giant 
pandas. Do you think she’s beginning to weaken?”
“You really are in love, aren’t you, Davis?”
”All I want, Castle, is a serious adventure. An adventure 
indefi
 nite in length...” (G. Greene, “The Human Factor”).
As you see from this extract there are many different stylistic 
devices and expressive means which can be grouped into phonetic 
(‘scarlet silk handkerchief’, ‘yellow dice dangled from’ — 
alliteration), lexical (‘a regatta’ air — epithet; ‘dangled from 
his pocket like a fl
 ag on a still day’ — simile; use of a sustained 
metaphor comparing Davis’s appearance with a ship taking part 
in a regatta), syntactical (‘In a way. Very quiet’ — parcellated 
constructions; catch repetition (anadiplosis) of the word ‘adventure’; 
‘a new ...handkerchief ...dangled — his tie was bottle-green’ — 
use of parallel constructions). Thus we can come to the conclusion 
that the material of stylistic studies includes linguistic units on all 
hierarchical levels from sounds to words, clauses and texts when 
they are charged with a stylistic meaning. Stylistics is also concerned 
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with the interaction of these units, as well as the structure and 
composition of the whole text. Stylistics focuses on language and 
speech but in a particular aspect.
Every native speaker knows that there exist different ways 
of expressing people’s attitude towards phenomena of objective 
reality; there are different variants of expressing similar, though 
not quite identical ideas. Moreover, one can state the existence 
of different systems of expression within the general system of 
national language. This fact conditions the existence of stylistics and 
constitutes its proper object. Consider the following examples. They 
contain the illustrations of one and the same content expressed with 
the help of different linguistic means and as a result belonging to 
different styles.
1. Mike has taken a shine to Julia at once.
Good writer, he? Not likely! — These are examples of the 
colloquial style.
2. Michael has become favourably disposed towards Julia at 
once.
For him to become a novelist of note is sheer impossibility. — 
These are examples of a more academic style.
Stylistics defi
 nes what language means, chosen from a rich stock 
of a national language, are appropriate, suitable and expedient in 
the given context, and what means are inappropriate, unsuitable and 
inexpedient. Stylistics describes the expressive potential of linguistic 
units and determines the choice of means in speech required by the 
conditions of communication, its aim, the form, type and register of 
the utterance.
Stylistics is concerned with the study of style. Style is the main 
category of stylistics.
What is style? Neolinguists, according to Georges-Louis 
Leclerc, Comte de Buffon, a French naturalist, mathematician, 
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and cosmologist, have posited the point of view that “Style is 
the man”. This point of view is shared by the leading romance 
philologist Karl Vossler, the Austrian scholar Leo Spitzer and many 
others. The French novelist Gustave Flaubert considered that style is 
a way of looking at objects of attention. Style may be belles-letters 
or scientifi
 c or neutral or low colloquial or archaic or pompous, or a 
combination of those. Style may also be typical of a certain writer — 
Shakespearean style, Dickensian style, etc. There is the style of the 
press, the style of offi
 cial documents, the style of social etiquette 
and even an individual style of a speaker or writer — his ideolect. 
Stylistics deals with the study of style in language. Different 
scholars have defi
 ned style differently. Thus there are defi
 nitions 
given by the Academician V.V. Vinogradov, Prof. I.R. Galperin, 
Prof. Y.M. Skrebnev, Prof. I.V. Arnold. All of them are quoted in the 
textbook by T.A. Znamenskaya “Stylistics of the English Language. 
Fundamentals of the Course”.
One of the most general defi
 nitions of style is given by 
Prof. Skrebnev. Style is understood as a specifi
 city of a sublanguage. A national language as a general system comprises various 
special languages (sublanguages, or subsystems), e.g., telegraphic 
style, oratorical style, reference-book style, Shakespearean style, the 
style of the novel, etc. The number of sublanguages is infi
 nite. Every 
type of speech (sublanguage) uses its own lingual sub-systems: not 
all the forms comprising the national language but only a certain 
number of forms. Every sub-system consists of:
a) linguistic units common to all the sub-systems — non-specifi
 c 
(neutral) units;
b) relatively specifi
 c units;
c) specifi
 c linguistic units, to be found only in the given 
sublanguage — absolutely specifi
 c units.
It is self-evident that sublanguages differ from one another 
by their specifi
 c spheres alone, because their non-specifi
 c spheres 
coincide. Hence, specifi
 c spheres differentiating the sublanguages 
(and, ultimately, types of speech) may be called their styles, or, 
style may be defi
 ned as the specifi
 c sphere of the given sub-system. 
7

Roughly speaking, style is a complex of lexical, grammatical, etc. 
peculiarities by which a certain type of speech is characterized.
For example, such words as ‘water’, ‘on’, ‘take’, ‘go’ are 
frequently used in different sublanguages: in fi
 ction, offi
 cial 
documents, colloquial speech, scientifi
 c articles, etc. They are nonspecifi
 c. The words ‘view’, ‘surface’, ‘analysis’, ‘diameter’ are 
hardly ever used in everyday communication, they may be regarded 
as relatively specifi
 c in a scientifi
 c text, say, on biology, medicine 
or physics. The following words: ‘caudal’, ‘protoplasm’, ‘cell sap’, 
‘carbohydrate’ can be identifi
 ed as absolutely specifi
 c and styleforming units in a scientifi
 c text on biology.
Often linguists prefer to use the term ‘functional style’ rather 
than ‘sublanguage.’ Many authors of handbooks on German 
(E. Riesel, M.P. Brandes), French (Y.S. Stepanov, R.G. Piotrovsky, 
K.A. Dolinin), English (I.R. Galperin, I.V. Arlold, Y.M. Skrebnev, 
V.A. Maltsev, V.A. Kukharenko, A.N. Morokhovsky and others), 
Russian (M.N. Kozhina, I.V. Golub) stylistics published in our 
country propose more or less analogous systems of styles based 
on a broad subdivision of all styles into two classes: literary and 
colloquial and their varieties. These generally include from three to 
fi
 ve functional styles [Знаменская, 2006: 12—13].
The term “style”, as Prof. Galperin puts it, refers to the following 
areas of linguistic study:
1. The aesthetic function of language.
2. Expressive means in language.
3. Synonymous ways of rendering one and the same idea.
4. Emotional colouring in language.
5. A system of special devices called stylistic devices.
6. The splitting of the literary language into separate systems 
called styles.
7. The interrelation between language and thought.
8. The individual manner of an author in making use of the 
language [Скребнев, 2003: 6].
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Let’s analyze the examples of texts referring to the same object 
but having different connotations and as a result belonging to 
different functional styles or registers (genres) within a particular 
style.
The following excerpts contain the illustration of the same 
content expressed by the linguistic means of poetry and scientifi
 c 
style.
Poetry:
I am the daughter of the Earth and Water,
And the nurseling of the Sky;
I pass through the pores of the ocean and shores;
I change, but I cannot die.
For after the rain when with never a stain
The pavilion of heaven is bare,
And the winds and sunbeams with their convex gleams
Build up the blue dome of air,
I silently laugh at my own cenotaph,
And out of the caverns of rain,
Like a child from the womb, like a ghost from the tomb,
I arise and unbuild it again.
(P.B. Shelly, “The Cloud”)
Scientifi
 c / academic style (the same content): The same content 
is represented in the following passage: “Rain or snow falls off in 
rivers or glaciers, or soaks in as underground water. Eventually 
the water reaches the sea. Water is evaporated from the sea to 
form clouds, from which rain falls on to the Earth.” [Комарова, 
2004: 44—45]. These examples illustrate the sphere of domain of 
stylistics which is focused on analyzing the linguistic instruments 
of expressing the content in the given passages. Besides, stylistics 
is interested in the stylistic function of the expressive, evaluative, 
emotive and stylistic connotations which the linguistic units in both 
texts bear to the reader.
9