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СТИЛИСТИКА АНГЛИЙСКОГО ЯЗЫКА

What does stylistics deal with?

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.

Stylistics, then, is a branch of linguistics dealing with variants, varieties of linguistic expression and, hence, with the subsystems making up the general system of language.

These sub-systems are created by extra-lingual factors but at the same time they have linguistic contents, i.e. they differ lingually from one another. Being itself a system of signs, language may be subdivided into parallel sub-systems, synonymous to one another. For example, special sub-systems are made up by:

  1. neutral type of linguistic intercourse;

  2. sub-standard (i.e. lying below the standard) type;

  3. super-standard (high-flown, solemn or official) type.

To these three sub-systems the following three synonymous sentences may be referred:

  1. The old man is dead.

  2. The old bean has kicked the bucket.

  3. The gentleman well advanced in years has attained the termination of his terrestrial existence.

Everybody understands the linguistic distinctions of different, but synonymous ways of expressing the similar idea.

The ultimate aim of stylistics is to establish the objective laws and practical rules of using proper linguistic forms in proper situations - to find out which form among the multitude of synonymous linguistic means conforms to the given extralingual circumstances.

On the whole, stylistics is, in a broad sense, the investigation of synonymous linguistic means for the purpose of finding out their spheres of applicability.

Stylistics resembles the so called dialectology. This branch of linguistics studies territorial variants of the national language. Stylistics studies social variants of the language - such variants as are used mostly not by different people (as in the case with dialects), but by the same person in different social situations.

Since the sub-systems used in different types of speech may ililTer from one another in every respect - phonetically, lexically, morphologically, syntactically and semantically - stylistics is connected with all corresponding branches of linguistics - with phonetics, morphology, lexicology, syntax and semasiology. Since stylistics is interested in all the aspects of language, it should be subdivided into the same branches as linguistics in general, to wit:

Stylistics, with all its subdivisions, reveals a peculiar approach towards language: it compares the sub-systems for the purpose of finding out the so-called styles.