Стилистика

Н. В. Обидина  

Стилистика 

Учебное пособие  

Москва – 2011 

УДК 811.111 

ББК 81.432.1 

    О 13 

Рецензент –  
кандидат филологических наук  И. В. Стекольщикова  

О 13   Обидина Н. В.  Стилистика: Учебное пособие. – М.: МПГУ, 2011. 
– 124 с.

Пособие 
содержит 
теоретический 
и 
практический 
материал 
по 
стилистике английского языка.  

Предназначено 
для 
студентов 
факультета 
славянской 
и 
западноевропейской филологии МПГУ, а также всех интересующихся 
стилистикой языка.  

В авторской редакции 

ISBN 978-5-4263-0017-0 

©  Н. В. Обидина, 2011

©  МПГУ, 2011  

©  Оформление. Издательство «Прометей», 2011 

The sight of a feather in a peacock’s tail, whenever I gaze at it, 
makes me sick! 

Charles Darwin 
(From Letter to Asa Gray,  
dated 3 April 1860) 

To my mom and dad. 

Introduction 

Ch. Darwin couldn’t find any utility in the peacock tail. Let’s find some beauty 
in its style. We apply the instruments of stylistics as a study of beauty. And analyze 
the cocktail of utility and beauty. 

The cocktail here is a play of word meanings, a pun in stylistic terms. On the 
one hand, it is used for the peafowl mail’s extravagant tail. On the other, the cocktail 
is a mixture of two or more ingredients. Such an ambiguity makes us smile and feel 
pleased. 

Stylistics seems to take place between science and art because of its aesthetic 
function. In some way we can name stylistics a discipline of beauty. But what 
discipline could beauty bear? 

Stylistics is something about beauty. Or even stylistics is about beauty. 

Thanks to Samoylova Margarita Alekseevna, Tarakanova Irina Viktorovna, 
Tataru Liudmila Vladimirovna, Stekolschikova Irina Vitalievna, Tkachenko Aleksey 
Konstantinovich, Shalygin Maxim Gennadievich, my family.  

Content 
Introduction ....................................................................................................... 1
1. Style & Stylistics ............................................................................................ 6

1.1. Style in Language ................................................................................ 6

1.2. Stylistics ............................................................................................. 11

1.3. Stylistic Analysis ............................................................................... 15
2. 
Expressive Means & Stylistic Devices .................................................. 23
2.1. Phonostylistics........................................................................................... 23

2.1.1. Phonetic & Phonological Stylistics ..................................................... 23

2.1.2. Graphological Stylistics ...................................................................... 37
2.2. Grammatical Stylistics ............................................................................. 44

2.2.1. Morphological Stylistics ..................................................................... 44

2.2.2. Syntactical Stylistics ........................................................................... 44
2.3. Lexical Stylistics ....................................................................................... 57

2.3.1. Lexis .................................................................................................... 58 

2.3.2. Semantics & Pragmatics ..................................................................... 64 

2.3.3. Intertextual Features ............................................................................ 73
3. Functional Stylistics .................................................................................... 78
3.1. Publicist Style............................................................................................ 81

3.1.1. Oratory & Speeches ............................................................................ 82 

3.1.2. Essay .................................................................................................... 84 

3.1.3. Journalistic Article & Editorial ........................................................... 84

3.1.4. Brief News Items ................................................................................. 85 

3.1.5. Advertisement & Announcement ........................................................ 87 

3.1.6. Headline .............................................................................................. 88
3.2. Scientific Style ........................................................................................... 93
3.3. Official Style ............................................................................................ 104

3.3.1. Language of Business ....................................................................... 107 

3.3.2. Legal Documents .............................................................................. 108 

3.3.3. Diplomatic Documents ...................................................................... 111 

3.3.4. Military Documents .......................................................................... 111 
Conclusion ...................................................................................................... 120
Bibliography .................................................................................................. 121

1. Style & Stylistics

The word STYLISTICS is derivative from STYLE. Style is originated from the 
Latin word stilus which meant a short stick sharp at one end and flat at the other, used 
by the Romans for writing on wax tablets. In time the meaning of the word stilus 
came to denote not only the tool of writing, but also the manner of writing.  

This manner could be hardly described. On the one hand, style is something 
individual (thus, different singers have different styles of singing), on the other, it 
belongs to society (we may talk about Russian manner of behaviour, thinking and so 
on). It includes the creative processes (which make the work of art recognizable) and 
the set of rules (distinguishing the Baroque style, etc.). The style domain spreads out 
something distinctive and something common. In other words, it covers everything. 

In such a way, it is uneasy to define style as something concrete. But also it is 
felt to be not so much abstract. Style is somewhere here and there, close and far. 
Something and somewhere between the opposite forces. By the way, stilus itself has 
two completely different ends: sharp and flat, used to change (correct) each other. 

The unsteady notion of style as an object of stylistics makes its study rather 
contradicting and interesting. All-or-nothing view does not work. So, we are trying to 
balance.  

1.1. Style in Language 

Style is a general manner of doing something which is typical or representative 
of a person or group, a time in history, etc. [Longman Dictionary of English 
Language and Culture, 1998]. 

Table 1 - All Sorts of Things Have Style 

# 
SORT OF THING
EXAMPLE
LANGUAGE 

1 
Individuals 
Different soccer players have different, 
recognizable styles of running, passing and 
shooting. 

Personal style of 
W. Shakespeare. 

2 
Groups of 
people 

Whole nations often do the same thing in 
different typical ways. Thus, Chinese 
cooking is based on the stir-fry technique, 
British one - on oven-cooked dishes. These 
are effectively different styles of cooking. 

The jargon of 
jazz-people. 

3 
The products of 
human beings 
Think of hair styles, for example, or 
architecture styles. 
Война и мир by 
L.N. Tolstoy. 

4 
Periods 
Baroque or Antic styles. 
Archaic words. 

5 
Places 
The midland with its typical nature and 
climate. 
Dialects. 
Variants. 

From the very beginning included in the process of writing, i.e. language, style 
went through different stages of historical development, preserving in a majority of 
standpoints its triple nature:  

Table 2 - Notion of Style 

# 
PERIOD 
CLASSIFICATION OF STYLE 

1 
Ancient Greece 
The languages of drama and tragedy (high), poetry (medial), 
comedy (low). 

2 
Ancient Rome 
Three general styles (urbanitas, rusticitas, peregrinitas) and 
three poetic genres. 

3 
Enlightment 
Lomonosov’s theory of the three styles (social and cultural 
criteria of speech evaluation). 

4 
Modern times 
Three general styles: neutral (literary normal), high (poetic, 
bookish, pompous), and low (colloquial, derogatory). 

So, generally, three styles are distinguished: the GRAND, MIDDLE and PLAIN. 
The example on clothing can give some idea of what is meant by the three styles: we 
may think of the plain style as the working dress of language, and the grand style as 
ceremonial dress for a state occasion. For the middle style, between the two, the 
watchword is elegance – perhaps respectable clothes for a night out [Leech, 1969: 
17]. 

All the rules of usage cannot be codified in dictionaries. The conventions of 
such subdivisions of the language lie in more or less unanalyzed feelings about what 
is appropriate in a certain situation. Disregarding conventions does not lead to 
misunderstanding so much as to embarrassment or amusement. If on receiving a 
formal wedding invitation Mr and Mrs Gordon Jones… you reply familiarly in 
writing Thanks a lot – so sorry I can't make it, this is a faux pas similar to that of 
turning up at the wedding without a jacket, or wearing tennis shoes at a ball. 

The question on being appropriate may be interpreted as being correct or 
suitable for a particular situation or occasion. The general system of particular 
patterns is a very abstract notion; nevertheless, there are some inner mechanisms for 
being and feeling appropriate. These mechanisms are making for choice and 
arrangement of language units. 

CHOICE 

Communicative situation presupposes a particular purpose in a particular social 
setting. The idea beard with Sit down may represent a lot of additional information, 
when expressed as ‘Take the seat, please’, ‘Do sit down’, ‘May I offer you a chair?’, 
‘Sit, Down!’ and so forth. 

This specificity lies in language variation and choice for the language user to 
achieve desired effects of the message upon the receiver of information (a reader or a 
hearer). It is well known that the search for an adequate expression often takes an 
enormous amount of time and mental effort [Гальперин, 1977: 16]. This idea is 

brilliantly expressed by В. Маяковский in the poem Разговор с финиспектором о 
поэзии:  

Поэзия — 
та же добыча радия. 
В грамм добыча, 
в год труды. 
Изводишь 
единого слова ради 
тысячи тонн 
словесной руды. 

Every premeditated use of language goes some way towards the ideal of a style 
in which linguistic choices precisely fit their purpose, and bear their full weight of 
meaning. The phrase le mot juste is misleading if it suggests that acceptable prose 
style is merely a matter of choosing the right words – it is rather a question of 
drawing freely from all the expressive resources of the language, lexical, 
grammatical, phonological and graphical, for the purpose in hand [Leech, 1969: 2728].  

To illustrate this quality, let us go through a short passage from Under the Net 
by Iris Murdoch: ‘While I was thinking these thoughts a little stream was running 
softly somewhere in my mind, a little stream of reminiscence. What was it? Something 
was asking to be remembered. I held the book gently in my hands, and followed 
without haste the course of my reverie, waiting for the memory to declare itself’. 

Indeed, Pope’s well-known definition of wit ‘What oft was thought but ne’er 
well express’d’ (An Essay on Criticism) seems to sum up the idea of linguistic choice. 
The most frequent definition of style is one expressed by Seymour Chatman: ‘Style is 
a product of individual choices and patterns of choices among linguistic possibilities’ 
[Chatman, 1967: 30]. 

A lot of factors determine choices in speech behavior: 
 
 
the aim of communication, 
 
the relations between the participants, 
 
the attitude towards the subject matter of communication. 

The choices may be logical, psychological, social, aesthetic, and pragmatic. 
Hence, language means selection may be: 
 
optional or obligatory, 
 
occasional or systematic, 
 
individual or common to groups of individuals, 
 
deliberate or non-deliberate. 

The problem of deliberate choice of language means and devices causes two 
varieties of what is called personal style: individual style and idiolect [Гальперин, 
1977: 13]: 

Table 3 - Varieties of Personal Style 

INDIVIDUAL STYLE 
IDIOLECT 

The habitual manner of speech, 
characterized by the peculiarities 
typical 
of 
any 
particular 
individual. 

A unique combination of language units, 
expressive means and stylistic devices peculiar to 
a given writer, which makes that writer’s works 
or even utterances recognizable. 

Language choice brings up the problem of the norm. The fact that there are 
different norms for various types and styles of language does not exclude the 
possibility and even the necessity of arriving at some abstract notion of norm as 
invariant, which should embrace all variants with their most typical properties. So the 
norm is the invariant of the language patterns circulating at a given period of time 
[Гальперин, 1977:19]. 

The norm presupposes neutral, non-marked elements. Marked ones give rise to 
the notion of style as deviation. It is necessary to place linguistic deviation into a 
wider aesthetic context, by connecting it with the general principal of foregrounding. 

FOREGROUNDING 

Foregrounding is the practice of making something stand out from the 
surrounding words or images [Leech, 2007]. It is ‘the ‘throwing into relief’ of the 
linguistic sign against the background of the norms of ordinary language’ [Wales, 
2007]. 

The term was first associated with Paul Garvin in the 1960s, who used it as a 
translation of the Czech aktualisace (literally to actualise), borrowing the terms from 
the Prague school of the 1930s [Pope, 2002].  

Building on the ideas of the Russian Formalists, the Prague School developed 
the concept of FOREGROUNDING, whereby poetic language stands out from the 
background of non-literary language by means of deviation (from the norms of 
everyday language) or parallelism. Parallelism can be described as unexpected 
regularity, while deviation can be seen as unexpected irregularity [Leech, 1969]. 

Foregrounding can occur on all levels of language (phonology, graphology, 
morphology, lexis, syntax, semantics and pragmatics) [Simpson, 2004]. Parallelism is 
usually expressed in the repetition of sounds, lexical and syntactical units. Deviation 
deals with any language aspect. 

According to the Prague School, the background language is not fixed, and the 
relationship between poetic and everyday language is always shifting. Moreover, a 
difference between parallelism and mechanical repetition strikes. As Roman 
Jakobson said, ‘any form of parallelism is an apportionment of invariants and 
variables’ [Jakobson, 1966]. So, in any parallel pattern there must be an element of 
identity and an element of contrast. 

Parallelism is typical of many other aspects of human culture. The opening 
bars of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony forcefully illustrate the patterning of constants 

and variables which is basis to almost all aspects of musical form [Austerlitz, 1961: 
439-444]: 

 

Picture 1 - Fifth Symphony by Beethoven 

As a rule, anyone who wishes to investigate the significance and value of a 
work of art must concentrate on the element of interest and surprise, rather than 
automatic pattern. Thus, foregrounding is a very general principle of artistic 
communication considering that a work of art in some way deviates from norms 
which we, as members of society, have learnt to expect in medium used [Garvin, 
1958]. To our mind, the controlling force in art is balance. 

BALANCE 

Studying style is investigating norm and deviance, invariant and variant, nonmarked and marked elements, neutrality and expression, background and foreground, 
tradition and originality. To be scientific, we are keeping balance between multiple 
opposite forces. 

In the metaphysical or conceptual sense, balance is used to mean a point 
between two opposite forces that is desirable over purely one state or the other, such 
as a balance between the metaphysical Law and Chaos - law by itself being overly 
controlling, 
chaos 
being 
overly 
unmanageable 
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Balance_%28metaphysics%29, Retrieved 15.09.2011]. 
To some extent we may accept balance between structural and emotional as the 
essence of beauty. 

BEAUTY 

As far as beauty is a characteristic or idea that provides a perceptual experience 
of pleasure, meaning, or satisfaction [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beauty, Retrieved 
10.07.2011], it is interesting to find its measure. In economical theory, a measure of 
the happiness or satisfaction is utility, gained from a good or service 
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utility_(disambiguation), Retrieved 10.07.2011]. What 
is utility in style then? 

Table 4 - Utility & Beauty in Style 

STYLE 
FUNCTION 
CREATION 

UTILITY 
Pragmatic function – to achieve a 
desirable effect in the course of 
communication. 

Standard 
language 
means, 
conditioned by the social sphere 
and 
the 
purpose 
of 
communication. 

BEAUTY 
Aesthetic function – to attract 
attention and make pleasure. 
Inventory ways of expressing 
ideas.