Style as a general semiotic notion. Different interpretations of style. Individual style.

According to Pr. Dolinin style is a content property of an utterance (message or text) that results from the choice of certain linguistic means rendering the logical contents of the utterance (definite phonetic realizations, lexico-grammatical structures, etc.) from the variety of denotatively and designatively similar elements.

Style is a general semiotic notion and as such it can be defined as a specific symbolically meaningful property of human activity arising as a result of choice of a certain manner of action within the generally accepted norms and bearing information about the subject of action (social background, personal qualities).

In a style of an utterance we can find some information about the speaker:

v The attitude of the speaker towards the addressee

v The attitude of the speaker to the subject mater of speech

v The speaker’s social background, connection with a certain social group

v The speaker’s social role in the communicative act

v Emotional state of the speaker at the moment of speech

v Conditions of communication including the channel of communication (oral or written)

According to I.R. Galperin and some other scholars, the term “style” is presumed to apply to the following fields of investigation:

· The aesthetic function of language

· Expressive means in language

· Synonymous ways of rendering one and the same idea

· Emotional coloring in language

· A system of special devices called stylistic devices

· The splitting of the literary language into separate systems called styles

· The interrelation between language and thought

· The individual manner of an author in making use of language

Practically all of these eight statements have a certain bearing on the subject; each has something to do with style and stylistics. At the same time none is self-sufficient. If we try to summarize them we’ll get a contradictory picture. So let us examine them one by one using the ideas expressed by Yu. Skrebnev.

1. The notion of style is connected with the aesthetic function of language with reference to works of art, i.e. poetry and imaginative prose. But works of science, diplomatic or commercial correspondence, technical instructions and many other kinds of texts have no aesthetic value. So: this definition covers only a limited part of the problems of stylistics.
2. Expressive means of language only partially constitute the subject of stylistics. They are employed in poetry, fiction, colloquial speech, but hardly ever science, technology, business letters. It would be wrong to confine the aims of stylistics to investigating expressive means only.
3. Synonymous ways of rendering ideas are relevant to the notion of style. Styles are formed due to the possibility of choice, the possibility of using different words in analogous situations. But the idea expressed by two or more synonyms does not remain the same. It means that if the form changes, the contents and its stylistic value changes as well.
4. Emotional coloring is connected with the notion of style. A poetic declaration of love and a funeral speech are different emotionally and stylistically. On the other hand, there are many text types which are quite unemotional, but still subject to stylistic investigation.
5. The notion of “stylistic device” is very controversial. The style of anything is formed out of features peculiar to it, those differentiating it from whatever it may be compared to. What we say or write, what we read or hear is not style by itself, but merely has style; it demonstrates stylistic features. It is just like fashion in clothing: no one ever wears “fashion”, people wear clothes which demonstrate fashionable features.
6. It is wrong to say that separate systems obtained as the result of splitting the literary language are styles. One of the reasons for it is that it is wrong to deal only with the literary language, as does the definition, ignoring the fact that works of fiction often reproduce the so-called “low” types of speech (Catcher in the Rye, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn).
7. Style or stylistics, acc. to Screbnev, is not concerned with the interrelation between language and thought. Thought and its lingual expression make an inseparable unity although the speaker’s intention may have been quite different from what was actually performed or the listener or reader may misinterpret the message.
8. The definition of style as the individual manner of an author in making use of language is acceptable to a certain extent. No researcher can or will study individualities without a background or common premises and without aiming at generalizations. It is not only individual peculiarities that are investigated by stylistics, but peculiarities of text types as well.

Summing up all the definitions of style pr. Marachovsky groups them into three blocks:

v An ancient and medieval rhetoric meant by style a specific form of a piece of work (mainly oratorical work), predetermined by its function

v Style as the expression of individual experience

v Regard style from functional approach

I.V. Arnold mentions four styles: poetic style, scientific style, newspaper style, colloquial style. But Yu. Skrebnev argues that nobody and nothing prevent us from singling out and investigating more styles: something like telegraphic style, reference-book style, Shakespearean style, etc. All these styles are discernible; they characterize each their respective language.

Stylistics, as the term implies, deals with styles. Yu. Skrebnev suggests a very short definition of style: Style is a specificity of sublanguage. Style can be roughly defined as the peculiarity, the set of specific features of a text type or a concrete text. Style is just what differentiates a group of homogeneous texts (an individual text) from all other groups (other texts).

Functional styles (FS) are the subsystems of language, each subsystem having its own peculiar features in what concern vocabulary means, syntactical constructions, and even phonetics. The appearance and existence of FS is connected with the specific conditions of communication in different spheres of human life. FS differ not only by the possibility or impossibility of using some elements but also due to the frequency of their usage. For example, some terms can appear in the colloquial style but the possibility of its appearance is quite different form the possibility to meet it in an example of scientific style.

The classification of FS is a very complicated problem, that is why we will consider ideas of I.V.Arnold and I.R. Galperin, bearing in mind that Galperin treats functional styles as patterns of the written variety of language thus excluding colloquial FS. Both scholars agree that each FS can be recognized by one or more leading features. But Galperin pays more attention to the coordination of language means and stylistic devices whereas Arnold connects the specific features of each FS with its peculiarities in the sphere of communication.

According to I.R. Galperin, a functional style of language is a system of interrelated language means which serves a definite aim in communication. A functional style should be regarded as the product of a certain concrete task set by the sender of the message. Functional styles appear mainly in the literary standard of the language. These represent varieties of the abstract invariant and can deviate from the invariant, even breaking away with it.

Individual style is 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 easily recognizable. (Galperin, p.17) Naturally, the individual style of a writer will never be entirely independent of the literary norms and canons of the given period. But the adaptations of these canons will always be peculiar and therefore distinguishable. Individual style is based on a thorough knowledge of the contemporary language and allows certain justifiable deviations from the rigorous norms. Individual style requires to be studied in a course of stylistics in so far as it makes use of the potentialities of language means, whatever the characters of these potentialities may be.

All men of letters have a peculiar individual manner of using language means to achieve the effect they desire. Writers choose language means deliberately. This process should be distinguished from language peculiarities which appear in everyday speech of this or that particular individual (idiolect).

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