1. Study the vocabulary:

adherent – адгерентный (добавочный)

coherent – связный, последовательный

dichotomy – дихотомия

inherent – ингерентный (присущий)

linear – линейный

syntagmatic – синтагматический

utterance – выражение, высказывание

vowel – гласный звук, гласная буква

2. Answer the questions.

1. What is language?

2. Where does language as a system exist?

3. What is speech?

4. What does stylistics deal with?

5. What does the term ‘syntagmatic’ mean?

6. What does the stylistics of speech study?

7. What does the stylistics of language analyze?

3. Translate the sentences from Russian into English.

1. Язык является организованной системой лингвистических единиц.

2. Язык используется только в человеческой речи.

3. Стилистика – это раздел лингвистики, который связан с текстами.

4. Лингвистические единицы комбинируются и используются в речи.

5. Стилистика речи исследует стилистические свойства контекста.

6. Предметом изучения стилистики речи являются выражения.

7. Слово «синтагматика» является лингвистическим термином.

4. Explain the meanings of the following words and expressions. Make sentences with each of them:

- word combinations;

- stylistics;

- to analyse;

- language units;

- syntagmatic;

- stylistics of speech

- to deal with.

5. Retell the text.

Types of stylistic research and branches of stylistics

Literary and linguistic stylistics

According to the type of stylistic research we can distinguish literary stylistics and lingua-stylistics. They have some meeting points or links in that they have common objects of research. Consequently they have certain areas of cross-reference. Both study the common ground of:

1) the literary language from the point of view of its variability;

2) the idiolect (individual speech) of a writer;

3) poetic speech that has its own specific laws.

The points of difference proceed from the different points of analysis. While lingua-stylistics studies

-Functional styles (in their development and current state).

-The linguistic nature of the expressive means of the language, their systematic character and their functions.

Literary stylistics focused on

- The composition of a work of art.

- Various literary genres.

- The writer's outlook.

Comparative stylistics

Comparative stylistics is connected with the contrastive study of more than one language.

It analyses the stylistic resources not inherent in a separate language at the crossroads of two languages, or two literatures and is obviously linked to the theory of translation.

Decoding stylistics

A comparatively new branch of stylistics is the decoding stylistics, which can be traced back to the works of L.V. Shcherba, B.A. Larin, I. Riffaterre, R. Jackobson and other scholars of the Prague linguistic circle. A serious contribution into this branch of stylistic study was also made by Prof. I.V.Arnold (3, 4). Each act of speech has performer, or sender of speech and the recipient. The former does the act of encoding and the latter the act of decoding the information.

If we analyse the text from the author’s (encoding) point we should consider the epoch, the historical situation, the political, social and aesthetic views of the author.

But if we try to treat the same text from the reader’s angle we shall have to disregard this background knowledge and get the maximum information from the text itself (its vocabulary, composition, sentence arrangement, etc.). The first approach manifests the prevalence of the literary analysis. The second is based exclusively on the linguistic analysis. Decoding Stylistics is an attempt to harmoniously combine the two methods of stylistic research and enable the scholar to interpret a work of art with a minimum loss of its purport and message.

Functional stylistics

Special mention should, be made of functional stylistics which is a branch of lingua-stylistics that investigates functional styles, that is special sublanguages or varieties of the national language such as scientific, colloquial, business, publicist and so on.

However many types of stylistics may exist or spring into existence they will all consider the same source material for stylistic analysis – sounds, words, phrases, sentences, paragraphs and texts. That’s why any kind of stylistic research will be based on the level-forming branches that include:

Stylistic lexicology

Stylistic lexicology studies the semantic structure of the word and interrelation (or interplay) of the connotative and denotative meanings of the word, as well as the interrelation of the stylistic connotations of the word and the context.

Phonetics (or Phonostylistics) is engaged in the study of style-forming phonetic features of the text. It describes the prosodic features of prose and poetry and variants of pronunciation in different types of speech (colloquial or oratory or recital).

Stylistic grammar

Stylistic Morphology is interested in the stylistic potentials of specific grammatical forms and categories, such as the number of the noun, or the peculiar use of tense forms of the verb, etc.

Stylistic Syntax is one of the oldest branches of stylistic studies that out of classical rhetoric. The material in question lends itself ply to analysis and description. Stylistic syntax has to do with the expressive order of words, types of syntactic links (asyndeton, polysyndeton), figures of speech (antithesis, chiasmus, etc.). It also deals with bigger units from paragraph onwards.