Colloquial vs. Literary Type of Communication. Oral vs. Written Form of Communication

The former is observed in everyday non-official communication which is known as colloquial speech. Colloquial speech occupies a prominent place in our lives, and is viewed by some linguists as a system of language means so strongly differing from those pre­sented in the formal (literary) communication that it can be classified as an independent entity with its own peculiar units and rules of their structuring,

The literary communication, most often (but not always) materializedin the written form, is not homogeneous, and pro­ceeding from its function (purpose) we speak of different functional styles. As the whole of the language itself, functional styles are also changeable. At present most scholars differentiate such functional styles: scientific, official, publicist, newspaper, belles-lettres.

Scientific style is employed in professional communication. Its most conspicuous feature is the abundance of terms denoting objects, phenomena and processes characteristic of some particular field of science and technique..

Official style, or the style of official documents, is the most conservative one. It preserves cast-iron forms of structuring and uses syntactical constructions and words long known as archaic and not observed anywhere else.

Publicist style Nowadays political, ideological, ethical, social beliefs and statements of the addresser are prevailingly expressed in the written form; which was labelled publicist in accordance with the name of the correspond­ing genre and its practitioners. Publicist style is famous for its explicit pragmatic function of persuasion directed at influencing the reader and shaping his views, in accordance with the argumentation of the author. Correspondingly, we find in publi­cist style a blend of the rigourous logical reasoning, reflecting the objective state of things, and a strong subjectivity reflecting the author's personal feelings and emotions towards the discussed subject.

Newspaper style, as it is evident from its name, is found in newspapers. When we mention "newspaper style", we mean informative materials; characteristic of newspaper only and not found in other publi­cations. To attract the reader's attention to the news, special graphical means are used: the change of type, specific headlines, space ordering, etc. We find here a large proportion of dates and personal names of countries, territories, institutions, individuals.

Belles-lettres style, or the style of creative literature may be called the richest register of communication: besides its own language means which are not used in any other sphere of commu­nication, belles-lettres style makes ample use of other styles too, for in numerous works of literary art we find elements of scientific, official and other functional types of speech. belles-lettres style has a unique task to impress_the reader aesthetically. The form becomes meaningful and carries additional information. Boundless possibilities of expressing one's thoughts and feelings make the belles-lettres style a highly attractive field of investigation for a linguist.

The first point to remember concerns the dichotomy-written;: oral, which is not synonymous to the dichotomy-literary;: colloquial, the former opposition meaning the form of presentation, the latter the choice of language means. There are colloquial messages in the written form (such as personal letters, informal notes, diaries and journals) and vice versa, we have examples of literary discourses the oral form (as in a recital, lecture, report, paper react at conference, etc.).

The second point deals with the flexibility of style boundaries: the borders within which a style presumably functions are not rigid and allow various degrees of overlapping and melting into each other. It is not accidental that rather often we speak of inter­mediate cases such as the popular scientific style which combines the features of scientific and belles-lettres styles, or the style of new journalism which is combination of publicist, newspaper and belles-letters styles, etc.

Дата добавления: 2015-11-14