Stylistics and other linguistic disciplines. Let us return once more to the beginning of this textbook. At the very start it was proclaimed that such well-known disciplines of linguistics as phonetics, morphology, lexicology, and syntax deal with more or less clear-cut objects: a student would never mistake lexicology for phonetics or otherwise. This comes from the fact that the enumerated subjects are, if one may say so, level disciplines, i.e. disciplines treating one linguistic level each.
Generally speaking, the word level became very popular in twentieth century science (not necessarily linguistics: cf. molecular level) and even in political phraseology: Prime Minister level, on (at) the highest level, etc.
Being very widely employed, the word level has lost all limitations as to its applicability and is now used as a synonym to the words and expressions point of view (or viewpoint), aspect of research, sphere,plane,
domain and so forth. In linguistics, the word level is used (or perhaps misused) in collocations like language level (уровень языка), speech level, observation level (уровень наблюдения), construct level (уровень конструктов), prosodic level (просодический), phraseological level, the level of the principal parts of the sentence, and even stylistic level 23 (the latter was once proposed by Galperin).
It goes without saying that if we agreed that the word level is a synonym of viewpoint, aspect of research, etc., the above cited use of it would be quite legitimate, and surely one might then also speak of stylistic level.
But the term level as applied to language is more appropriate when used in the sense implied by the French linguist E. Benveniste, who used it to characterize the hierarchical structure of language itself, not the arbitrary aspects of research. Our compatriot Yu.S. Maslov employs the term tier ('ярус') instead.24
The smallest (shortest) unit of language is the phoneme. The sequence of phonemes making units of higher ranks represents the phonemic level. One or (in most cases) several phonemes combined(in succession) constitute a unit of a higher level,the-second level: that of morphemes, or the morphemic level. One or (usually) more than one morpheme make a word, a 'lexeme': hence, the lexical level. One or (usually) more than one word make an utterance, or, in traditional terminology, a sentence. Hence, the sentence level. Word combinations are best treated as not forming an independent level for two reasons: 1) functionally, they do not differ from words, because they name without communicating; 2) one word does not make a word combination, whereas one word can make an utterance: Out!, Why?, Winter, Nevermore.
We could go on singling out paragraph level and even text level paying homage to the now fashionable text linguistics 25 but for the fact that not every text is divided into paragraphs (especially if it is short), although every paragraph or every text is divisible into sentences (or, sometimes, coincides with one: a paragraph or a text consisting of one single sentence).
Be that as it may, the general principle is: each level consists of units of the neighbouring lower level with nothing besides: a sentence consists only of words; a word is divided into morphemes or sometimes coincides with one; a morpheme contains nothing but phonemes or is represented by one of them, as in makes ([s]), read-er ([э]), pens ([z]).
Summing up, we must say that the first meaning of the word level suggests the idea of horizontal layers of some structure. And indeed, when we come to i nspect language, we discover (as did our predecessors long ago) that language presents a hierarchy of levels, from the lowest up to the highest.
And, as we can easily conclude, each level is described by what we named above a 'level discipline': phonetics, morphology, lexicology, and syntax. To these, the modern text linguistics may be added.
Of course, stylistics does not fit in here. For, as the reader probably understands, stylistics is not a level discipline (just as history of language or comparative typology of English and Russian are not), because stylistics pertains to all the levels, to every level (the same is true, by the way, about history and typology).
Moreover, stylistics must be subdivided into separate, quite independent branches, treating one level each. Hence we have:
stylistic phonetics stylistic morphology stylistic lexicology stylistic syntax
We shall now look for the difference between general phonetics, morphology, lexicology, syntax, on the one hand, and their stylistic counterparts, on the other.
The reader will remember that the ultimate aim, as well as the general method, of stylistics is description of specific spheres of sublanguages. Therefore, whatever level we take, stylistics describes not what is in common use, but what is specific in this or that respect, what differentiates one sublanguage from others.
General (i.e. non-stylistic) phonetics, both prescriptive and theoretical, investigates the whole articulatory-audial system of language. Stylistic phonetics pays attention only to style-forming phonetic features of sublanguages: it describes variants of pronunciation occurring in different types of speech (cf. recitation or oration with colloquial speech). Special attention is also paid to prosodic features of prose and poetry.
Non-stylistic (general) morphology treats morphemes and grammatical meanings expressed by them in language in general, without regard to their stylistic value. Stylistic morphology, on the contrary, is interested in grammatical forms and grammatical meanings that are peculiar to particular sublanguages, explicitly or implicitly comparing them with the neutral ones common to all the sublanguages.
The relationship of what is taught in lecture courses as well as handbooks on lexicology and what is called here "stylistic lexicology" is somewhat more complicated. Actually, it is the chapters in lexicology books that deal with stylistic classification (stylistic differentiation) of the vocabulary that form a part of stylistics (stylistic lexicology), although there is more to stylistic lexicology than just that information. Chapters on word-building are not directly concerned with stylistic problems, unless they indicate where (in what sublanguages) this or that mode of word-formation is current. The etymological analysis of the vocabulary (the problem of borrowings in particular) is stylistically relevant only when the analyst treats cases of "living etymology", i.e. words whose foreign origin is obvious and, therefore, performs a stylistic function. The
circumstance that both lexicology and stylistics have recourse to terms like metaphor or metonymy is explained by the fact that neither of them belongs to either lexicology or stylistics: though used in both, they are terms of 'semasiology' (science of meanings) and 'onomasiology' (science of nomination). The subject matter of these branches is dealt with below.
And, finally, general (non-stylistic) syntax treats word combinations and sentences, analysing their structures and stating what is permissible and what is inadmissible in constructing correct utterances in the given language. The field of action of stylistic syntax is the same, but its approach and its aims are, as the reader is supposed to guess by now, quite different. The stylistic study of syntax (called here stylistic syntax) shows what particular constructions are met with (or should be employed) in various types of speech, what syntactical structures are style-forming (specific) in the sublanguage in question, Besides, stylistic syntax very often operates on longer units, from the paragraph upwards.
It should be remarked here that most handbooks on phonetics or grammar (morphology and syntax), not to speak of lexicology, abound in stylistic information. Whenever the sphere of currency of a unit (or of a phenomenon) is explicitly mentioned, it is pure stylistics that the author deals with. If a phonetician informs the reader about the emphatic intonation as compared with non-emphatic, he acts as a stylist. If a grammarian admonishes the reader not to use the Nominative Absolute (John having returned, we began to work) in colloquial speech, it is stylistic syntax the grammarian is operating with.
Semasiology, onomasiology, and stylistics. Along with their formal characteristics, linguistic units (with the exception of phonemes) have meanings. Morphemes, words, word combinations, and sentences arouse in our minds associations with classes of things, processes, qualities, relations. The content associated by most people with the form of a linguistic unit is its meaning. Meanings are investigated and described by a branch of linguistics called semantics, or semasiology (the latter term is preferable, since the word semantics happens to be used instead of the word meaning).
Certain scholars (those who think the word level to be synonymous to aspect or sphere — see above) say or imply that meanings of linguistic units make an independent level — that of semantics, or semantic level.
Needless to say, this point of view is not valid if we have agreed above that levels are formed by material units (phonemes, morphemes, words, etc.). Meanings are notions, ideas, mental images, and in consequence they cannot be placed on a par with sound complexes, letter combinations, or other material manifestations of whatever kind.
But the most important reason why meanings are not 'level-forming' (in the above-accepted sense of the word level) is that meanings, as
suggested in the beginning of this discourse, associate with morphemes, words, phrases, sentences. That is to say, meanings are not attached to only one level, but, practically speaking, correlate with all of them (save the phonemes, which have no extralingual meanings, only serving to form units of the next, i.e., morphemic, level and differentiating one morpheme or one unimorphemic word from another: pin — tin — fin — bin — kin, etc.). Characteristically, similar or identical meanings maybe conveyed by units of different levels. Compare: -less = without = devoid (of) = which does not possess.
For the reasons discussed, semasiology is, one might say, an 'all-level' discipline. It is practically of no importance then, for stylistic semasiology, if it deals with meanings of morphemes, or the meanings of parts of a compound word, or with the meaning of a word, a phrase, a sentence and so on.
The same can be stated with regard to onomasiology (or: onomatology), the theory of naming. The difference between the two (semasiology and onomasiology) is as follows. If we take a linguistic unit of any rank (from morpheme upwards) and begin our inspection of its meaning (more often, meanings), of its combinability with other units of identical rank, or, to put it in a different manner, if we proceed from form to meaning, this is the way a semasiologist acts. If, on the contrary, we have an idea aroused in our mind by an external object and search for the wording, for the adequate 'name' of the idea or, more generally, if a linguist proceeds from meaning to form, his standpoint conforms to the general principle of onomasiology.
From these statements we can draw far-reaching conclusions. First: semasiology treats semantic structures of linguistic units, yet certainly having their spheres of use in view. Onomasiology treats problems of choice of linguistic units for naming extralingual objects (things, properties, relations, situations). Again, as previously, the comparative analysis of choice cannot go on without the data of semasiology. They are dialectically interwoven; their differentiation shows merely the general directions of research.
Further, it can be seen that a semasiological approach fits for analysing separate units of the vocabulary, e.g. words, especially their historical development. Hence the problems of eventual degradation or elevation of meanings, their extension or narrowing, metaphoric and metonymic changes of meaning of words — all that constitutes the usual problems of etymological studies in lexicology.
By contrast, the problem of what word, phrase, sentence was chosen and used to characterize a certain object in the text, what transfer of the name occurred in using it with reference to an unusual object (whether it was, for instance, a metaphor, metonymy, or irony) is the business of
onomasiology, and if the specificity of the sublanguage has been considered, the business of stylistic semasiology.
Paradigmatics and syntagmatics. These terms are derived from the words paradigm and syntagma. The former should be known to the learner from such combinations as the paradigm of declension (or conjugation). The expression denotes all the grammatical forms of a noun (verb) that co-exist at the moment and could be presented in the form of a list to select from (this concerns mostly inflected languages, such as Latin, German, or Russian). The latter (syntagma) has also been used in phonetics or in syntax. It usually denotes a combination of words in speech and text, a linear sequence of lexical units.
The derivative paradigmatics, often used by Russian linguists, denotes the totality of units of which language (or sublanguage) has at its disposal. Or, otherwise, the units taken together make a paradigm.
As distinct from it, the term syntagmatics, implies a totality, or a certain number of sequences of units, of chains of units following one another. Here, the units do not co-exist simultaneously ready to be chosen by the speaker (writer) for his communicative purposes, but on the contrary, each unit enters into combinations with its neighbours, with what precedes it and follows it.
Certain linguists have said that paradigmatics represents language as a system, while syntagmatics characterizes speech as a process in its development, or text, which indeed has a linear form. At first glance this explanation seems correct and even self-evident, but on closer inspection of the matter we shall come to a different result.
In fact, what is a paradigm? Only separate phonemes, or morphemes, or separate words? Of course not. Word combinations, sentences (or sentence patterns), paragraphs, and even types of texts, if arranged together as possibilities from which one selects the necessary form (the stylistically suitable variety) make up their own paradigms, too.
And, further, can it be true that language-as-a-system is only a paradigm, and that syntagmata occur only in speech? Where should they come from if they have not existed previously in our minds, i.e. in our lingual systems (the systems that we acquired in early childhood by listening to the speech of our elders)? It would really be absurd to presume that a person who knows only words could make sentences without knowing how sentences are made. Hence: language itself, language-as-a-system has both paradigmatic and syntagmatic aspects.
What would a paradigm of only elementary units be without the knowledge of how the elements are combined in syntagmata? It would not only be useless, but even meaningless. We know the meaning of an elementary unit solely due to the knowledge of its distribution. And vice versa, what could a syntagma be without its place in the paradigm? We
should know nothing about it. Hence it follows that both syntagmatics and paradigmatics are non-existent without each other. It is true, of course, that in speech (or text), syntagmatics comes to the foreground: we perceive only syntagmata; yet in language — let us say it again — both paradigmatics and syntagmatics are represented. Perhaps we had better say that language is a system in which syntagmata as well as their constituents (elements) are presented paradigmatically.
Both are connected and interwoven; neither is thinkable without the other. For stylistics, however, strict delimitation of them is of great importance, as we are going to see further.
The most general way of subdividing stylistics is not into level-forming branches as was tentatively assumed above. It is connected with the opposition of paradigmatics to syntagmatics.
The nature, the essence of stylistic phenomena is radically different in cases where a unit itself (of whatever length — a phoneme, morpheme, word, phrase, sentence pattern, paragraph structure) is analysed as chosen out of the paradigm (and potentially opposed to those left unchosen), from cases when we try to explain the effect produced by a given pattern of combining units (also of whatever rank) in speech and text. In the former approach to the material we pass our judgement on what a unit is worth by itself; in the latter, it is the result, the stylistic value of the combination that the analyst is after. Here, the important point is that the units 'co-appear', 'co-occur' in the same text, either close to one another, or at a distance from one another. To put it in a more explicit manner, in the cooccurrence of units it is their interrelation that is stylistically relevant.
Two groups of examples will suffice to illustrate the difference between the two aspects of stylistics, the two branches of stylistics, the two systems of stylistics, in fact.
The first. When we use the word guy (instead of man), the form ain't (instead of have not, am /is /are not), the word combination real good (instead of really good), the sentence John here? (instead of Is John here?), it is one unit used instead of another (or others) which could also be employed (but they were not employed). This is what illustrates the paradigmatic branch of stylistics. Practically, in the whole of our previous discussions of stylistic problems we dealt only with cases of paradigmatic choice.
The second group of examples is of a somewhat new kind: they have not yet been discussed above. Here, we will mention only a few instances of what pertains to syntagmatics.
In the utterance I ask you, I pray, I beseech you.' it is not the verbs or their meanings that are stylistically conspicuous, but the interrelation between the meanings expressed: pray is stronger than ask; beseech is the strongest of all three. The expression really and truly contains two
synonyms, therefore we observe equality of the two notions. In the combinations, however, like life and death, black and white, now or never the notions are contrasted, opposed to each other. The famous Shakespearian paradoxes loving hate and heavy lightness show quite a different relation between logically incompatible notions: the writer treats them as if they were compatible, and he does it not without a purpose of his own.
Those were examples showing interrelations of meanings, of semantic units. But stylistic phenomena (stylistic means, or stylistic devices) also arise due to interrelation of one-level units, e.g. speech sounds. Here is a sample of repetition (recurrence) of the same consonant in the beginning of several words, either following one another or co-occurring at a small distance:
Through florescence and feud, frosts and fires it followed the laws of progression even in the Forsyte family... (Galsworthy)
The vocabulary of the text likewise participates in determining its stylistic links with the syntagmatic aspect. A stylistically coloured word predominates over its neutral environment, imparting to the context its own stylistic value. The syntagma (sentence) This man is dippy is low colloquial as a whole owing to the presence of the low colloquial word dippy (cf. the neutral variant This man is crazy). The result of combining a stylistically coloured element with neutral ones is always the same: the non-neutral (specific) clement imparts its colouring to the context. More complicated are cases of co-occurrence of units with stylistically opposite connotations (e.g. 'high' and 'low') in the same utterance:
Philoprogenitiveness, says we, is strong in semi-rural communities. (O. Henry)
The first and the two last words are presumptuously bookish, while the form says we is illiterate, not likely to be used by educated people. The effect is that of a stylistic mixture, in fact a stylistic collision. Neither stylistic party wins, and the utterance is comical.
It may also be mentioned briefly that syntagmatical (syntactic) patterns, following each other in the text, are in most cases formally different. But quite often the second utterance is syntactically assimilated to the first, resulting in parallelism: The cock is crowing. The stream is flowing... (Wordsworth). Two or more contiguous sentences or paragraphs not infrequently have identical beginnings or identical endings (all this will be discussed in detail further).
What has been said in this section leads us to the only feasible conclusion. Paradigmatic choice of units and types of co-occurrence of units in syntagmata (sequences) ought to make two separate branches of stylistics. Yet, this differentiation has seldom if ever been made. At best,
English linguists discern 'tropes' and 'figures of speech', the former being transfers of names, i.e. results of choice (paradigmatics), the latter, combinations of meanings or formal units (syntagmatics). But there is no consequent differentiation of cases when the individual unit is the object of research, and cases when the interrelation of co-occurring units is what the linguist is after. Very often tropes are classed indiscriminately as figures of speech, too, along with genuine 'figures', i.e. configurations consisting of several words.
The careless attitude of many scholars to problems of classification is best seen in their enumerations or arrangements of items discussed. Thus M. Deutschbein, a German researcher of English stylistics, provides one of the chapters of his book with the title "Simile, Metaphor, and Quotation". Obviously, the simile (expressive comparison) is a. syntagmatic phenomenon, the metaphor is a trope, a paradigmatic re-naming. As for quotations, they are literary devices very remotely con nected with stylistics. Still more amazing is the enumeration of stylistic phenomena we find in An Outline of French Stylistics ("Precis do stylistique franc, aise") by J. Marouzeau: "ellipsis, anacoluthon, metaphor litotes". The reader may take this enumeration with equanimity, but, imagine a professional grammarian arranging the chapters of his book as follows: "The predicate, the possessive case, the past continuous tense, the article, the adverbial modifier". What should we take this author for? And where should he be taken?
Summing up, we must say that the material presented in this section urges us to divide the whole of stylistics into two parts:
Stylistics of Units, or Paradigmatic Stylistics Stylistics of Sequences, or Syntagmatic Stylistics
Each is divided into: (stylistic) phonetics, morphology, lexicology, syntax, and semasiology or onomasiology.
The material of stylistics in general, the bulk of stylistic notions and terms, is treated further in the succession outlined here: stylistics of units with its level-forming constituents and semasiology, then follows stylistics of sequences, subdivided in the same manner.
Summary. As a general rule, the subject matter of any science is characterized at the very beginning of a textbook: the reader is expected first simply to take on faith what the author says. Prescriptions thus prearranged usually precede argumentation and description of problems. The author of the present book, by contrast, offers a summarizing view of the matter after the reader has already been informed about the principal concepts (notions) of stylistics and its theoretical foundations.
One could have attempted formulating a "universal" definition of stylistics that would not be exhaustive. Having the last word should never
be anyone's aim. Another way seems preferable: to renounce all claims to universality, compensating for the absence of a general definition by providing a series of statements, each characterizing certain properties of stylistics from different viewpoints. Seeing all the different statements, comparing and correlating them will enable the reader to better understand the contents of stylistics, and the place it occupies among the numerous branches of linguistics.
1. Viewed in its relation to language as a system, stylistics is based on the theory of sublanguages. All speech activity is divided by researchers (though most of them would deny the fact) into a number of spheres assumed to be discrete. A sublanguage is the set of lingual units actually used in a given sphere. The overlapping part of sublanguages is made up of units that are 'neutral', since they are not associated with a definite
phere. The peripheral parts of sublanguages constitute their respective
styles" (the basic concept of stylistics).
2. Viewed in its relation to language as a set of signs and their sequence patterns, stylistics may be regarded as a linguistic discipline concentrating on connotations. The latter are those parts of the semantic structure of lingual elements and their sequences (combinations) which are not carriers of lexical or grammatical information, but mere indicators of what class the elements (sequences) belong to either the specific part (style) of a sublanguage, or the central (neutral) field.
3. Viewed in search for a general evaluation of the character of its
object, stylistics studies information often unaccounted for by an ordi
nary language user. It presents in verbal form what a layman perceives
very vaguely or ignores altogether, being led by intuition or semi-cog
nized experience in his speech activity.
4. Viewed as a linguistic branch having its own substance, stylistics
appears as a description of types of specific lingual elements and
combinations of elements — a description creating the system of concepts
to be used in analysis of material.
5. Viewed with the aim of establishing its ultimate goals or prospects,
stylistics may be defined as a branch of linguistics elaborating a system of
tests to ensure correct text attribution. The data accumulated in the course
of stylistic research should help to find out the individual properties of
concrete texts or at least of text types. In certain professional spheres
(criminology), stylistics must provide the means of extracting from texts
enough information about the writer to facilitate his identification.
6. Viewed pragmatically, i.e. as reflecting the interrelation between
language and its users' behaviour, stylistics investigates the highest
stages of linguistic competence, i.e. the ability to differentiate subsys
tems (sublanguages) in the general structure of language. The mastery
of sublanguages is akin to speaking several languages.
2 3ак. 169
7. Viewed as regards its place among other branches of linguistics (describing a national language in terms of phonetics, morphology, vocabulary, syntax, and semantics), stylistics turns out to be a more precise, more detailed and, hence, the most reliable description of the linguistic object. Non-stylistic descriptions merely state the existence in a given language of certain units or combinations of units. An impression is thus created that variants of phonemes and morphemes, synonymous words, homofunctional syntactical constructions, semantically varying denominations of the same objects of reality are of equal value, mutually exchangeable, and universally applicable. Stylistic description, on the other hand, takes into account the comparative connotational potential of such units, points out their place in the system of sublanguages, and typical spheres of use. Then, and then only, will there arise an undistorted picture of the way language functions. After all, any linguistic description, claiming the utmost adequacy, has to be a stylistic description. Grammarians, phoneticians, and compilers of dictionaries usually, though not always consistently, take this into consideration, providing some of the units with indices of their stylistic class and expressive properties.
NOTES
1 See: Galperin I.R. Stylistics. — M., 1971. P. 9-23.
2 In V.A. Zvegintsev's opinion, "... stylistic meanings convey only aesthetic information..."
(Звегинцев BA. Теоретическая и прикладная лингвистика. — М., 1968, с. 54).
3 At least, the Rostov-on-the-Don School of stylists is engaged only in what it calls
'expressive stylistics'. The device attracting attention of most of the representatives of that trend in stylistics is 'amplification', which is, properly speaking, not a device, but a result achieved by piling up all kinds of intensifiers (tropes, similes, the use of several synonyms in succession, etc.); in other words, the term denotes a phenomenon of no definite linguistic content. See: Проблемы экспрессивной стилистики. — Ростов-на-Дону, 1987. See also M. Riffaterre (Criteria for Style Analysis) who characterizes style as emphasis imposed upon the verbal message.
4 On the emotive linguistic means see numerous research papers by V.I. Shakhovsky.
3 Thus, P. Guiraud ("Les stylistiques et leurs problemes" // Essais de stylistique. — Paris, 1969) thinks that style is the specific form of a text conditioned by the function of the latter.
6 Of many other opinions concerning style and stylistics, as well as their definitions, only the most peculiar (especially those verging on the illogical) might be mentioned here. One of the best known style researchers of modernity, M. Riffaterre, begins his essay quoted above with what is clearly a pseudo-opposition: "Linguistics and Stylistics", going on to expostulate on the dual function of linguistic units, which, as he writes, are elements of both the linguistic system and the stylistic system. The scholar seems to overlook the obvious fact of hypero-hyponymic interrelation of the two notions: the latter, being admittedly part of the former, cannot be placed on a level with it — just
as it is nonsensical to say "linguistics and grammar". M. Riffaterre would most probably admit that the manifestation THEY can be regarded as the object of phonetics, morphology, lexicology (etymology). There is also no doubt that it is studied by linguistics, and yet the statement THEY is studied by both phonetics and linguistics contains more humour than serious information.
7 Saussure, Ferdinand de. Course de linguistique generale. Извлечения, см.: Ф. де Сос-
сюр. Курс общей лингвистики // Хрестоматия по истории языкознания XIX-XX веков. — М., 1956. С. 327-363.
8 It would be preferable to apply the word speech mainly to the process of articulating
speech sounds making up words and sentences — either audibly ("oral speech"), or mentally ("inner speech"). The current expression written speech, used by every student and teacher (including the present author) as a term of language teaching, ordinarily implies:
a) lessons at which writing prevails; exercises in writing;
b) texts on paper, blackboard, or any other surface as a product of writing (especially
often the expression written speech refers to bookish, i.e. literary, carefully structured
texts — as opposed to those of colloquial character);
c) the process of writing.
The classroom use of the expression is unavoidable and legitimate. Yet it must be considered objectionable in linguistics whenever the third meaning of the phrase is thoughtlessly opposed to 'oral speech', as it often is. As a matter of fact, the processes of speech and writing have not very much in common. Speaking is composing and producing utterances with little or no time alotted for finding the most adequate contents and form of what the speaker intends to say (or thinks he should say). Writing for its part may be a long, elaborate mental review of varieties so as to choose one of them and transfer it into graphic form, which is then written or typed. The difference between oral speech and writing (not written speech!) should be kept in mind when the reader comes to Chapter I ('Phonetics of Units').
' Gardiner, Allan H. The Distinction of 'Speech' and 'Language'//Atti del III congresso international dei linguisti. — Firenze, 1935.
10 See, for instance, «Проблемы лингвистической стилистики. Тезисы докладов». —
М., 1969.
11 Crystal D. and Davy D. (Stylistic Analysis // Investigating English Style. — L., 1969)
aptly term them 'limited languages'.
12 Амосова Н.Н. К проблеме языковых стилей в английском языке // Вестник ЛГУ,
1951, 5.
13 The list of scholars who are firm believers in the finality of the number of styles in
language would be enormous. In the last part of the present book twelve authors' conceptions are reviewed; none of them admits their number could be any greater or smaller than he or she has proclaimed. In 1989 the present author was invited by the Institute of the Russian Language of the Russian Academy of Sciences to deliver a lecture before the National Conference of Stylists. Of the many hearers who took the floor afterwards only one agreed, as he said, with practically everything he had heard. All the others protested vehemently, especially those of the older generation. One of the most impressively titled scholars (though much younger in age than most) said it was a commonly known axiom: the objective number of styles is three (neither more, nor less!).
14 Galperin I.R. Op. cit.
15 Арнольд И.В. Стилистика современного английского языка. — Л., 1981.
16 Compare, however, with the above-mentioned oral statement of the famous Russian
scholar (a specialist in French and other Romance languages) about their number being only three.
17 The term 'sublanguage' (first used in its Russian form, 'подъязык') belongs to N.D. Andreyev, whose use of it, however, is essentially different from that employed here. In Andreyev's conception, a sublanguage is predetermined by the contents of the text; it is characterized by an established choice of signifies; style, for its part, is defined by emotional aims, thus being reduced to the choice of signifiants. For the present author, it is not only the thematic aspect, the content, but all the external characteristics of the communicative situation that constitute the sphere of speech. Emotion, therefore, is as essential a factor as the logical contents of the message to convey. As for the treatment of the term 'style' by the present author, see the Introduction to this book.
1еВиноградов В.В. Итоги обсуждения вопросов стилистики // ВЯ, 1955, 1.
19 Details concerning 'hypercharacterization' of neutral units, see in: Скребнев Ю.М.
Очерк теории стилистики. — Горький, 1975 ('An Outline of Stylistic Theory'), с 22, 23.
20 See: Riffaterre M. Criteria for Style Analysis // Essays on the Language of Literature.
— Boston — New York—Atlanta, 1967; Saporta S. The Application of Linguistics to the Study of Poetic Language // Style in Language, 1966; Halliday МЛ.К. Linguistic Function and Literary Style, 1971.
21 On the problems of norm, see also: Скребнев Ю.М. Норма, нормативные реализации и
субъязыковая структура языка // Нормы реализации. Варьирование языковых средств. — Горький, 1980; Он же. Языковая и субъязыковая норма // Нормы реализации. Варьирование языковых средств. — Горький, 1984.
22 On tolerance zones, see the author's paper "Языковая и субъязыковая норма"
(mentioned in the preceding note). See also: Он же. Некоторые лингвометодические вопросы использования данных коллоквиалистики // Теория и практика лингвистического описания разговорной речи. — Горький, 1989. С. 126-137.
23 On the problem of linguistic levels see: Уровни языка и их взаимодействие. Тезисы
докладов. - М., 1967.
24 See: Маслов Ю.С. Об основных и промежуточных ярусах в структуре языка // ВЯ,
1968, 4, с. 72.
25 See: Лингвистика текста. Материалы научной конференции. Ч. 1, 2. — М, 1974.
STYLISTICS OF UNITS
The subject matter of this part of the book is analysing and classing co-referential lingual units of all levels in various spheres of speech. The term 'co-referential' means "potentially or virtually used to denote the same 'referent', i.e. thing, phenomenon, process, quality, relationship, etc.". The discussion of level-forming units is followed by a description of stylistic phenomena in semasiology.
The review of phonetic, morphological, lexical, syntactic, and semantic paradigmatics of style-forming phenomena is by no means exhaustive; it is to be remembered, besides, that stylistic phonetics and morphology have as yet been researched much less thoroughly than stylistic lexicology, syntax, and semasiology.
We begin, as promised above, our review of the problems in succession.
Chapter I. PHONETICS OF UNITS (PARADIGMATIC PHONETICS)
Before starting the treatment of phonetics proper, a few observations concerning written and printed texts are necessary. The amount of what we read has, no doubt, essentially influenced the way modern man views language and speech. It has relegated to the background the primary and original form of language: oral speech. Hence, when we judge language, we often have in view its written representation. Printed texts do not only become an ideal standard of speech activity, but to a certain extent predetermine our linguistic judgement. One has to be a professional linguist to free oneself from the bondage of graphic images. Their importance is best seen in current phrases, such as to mispronounce half the alphabet. Indirect testimony to the importance of graphic images is frequent use of them in speech which is reflected in fiction. Look at a few instances of purely graphic metonymies and metaphors:
"He had a trick of... emphasizing 'They' as though the word stood in capitals in his dark mind". (E. Wallace)
"Diane managed to put the word 'man' into quotes so that it seemed, to pose a whole series of crude question marks" (N. Monsarrat)
"Well, there was probably a very simple explanation of Zaleshof's little 'prophesy' — mentally I put the word in inverted commas" (F. Clifford)
"Merchant's smile was as meaningless as an asterisk without a footnote". (E. McBain)
"It's his business to rescue troubled women. Right now he is working for me. The period on the end of her last sentence was the size of a baseball". (Idem)
Writing has made primarily audible speech fixed and visible, which helps man to discover in it certain properties that could not have been noticed in fleeting oral discourse. On the other hand, writing has, in a way, limited our capacity to evaluate phonetic properties of texts. Orthography, especially in languages like English, practically does not reproduce phonetic peculiarities of speech, except in cases when writers resort to 'graphons', i.e. unusual, non-standard spelling of words, showing either deviations from Standard English or some peculiarity in pronouncing words or phrases emphatically.
V.A. Kukharenko defines graphon as intentional violation of the spelling of a word (or word combination) used to reflect its authentic pronunciation. 1
Graphons are style forming, since they show deviations from the neutral (usual) way of pronouncing speech sounds and/or their combinations, as well as peculiar prosodic features of speech.
To begin with, purely individual mispronunciation of certain sounds is observed in the graphon th which stands for the letter s, thus showing the speech of those who have a lisp, as does Mr. Sleary, a personage of Hard Times by Charles Dickens:
"Thquire!... Your thervant! Thith ith a bad pieth of bithnith, thith ith..." (i.e. "Squire!.. Your servant! This is a bad piece of business, this is...").
Most spelling alterations, however, i.e. most graphons show features of territorial or social dialect of the speaker (and, ultimately, his social standing). In many cases, they show deviations from Standard English typical of whole groups of English speakers.
Highly typical in this respect is the reproduction, by many British writers, of cockney, the vernacular of the lower classes of the London population. One cockney feature is the famous 'dropping of H-s' (an inexact denomination, since 'h-s' are dropped only in graphons: what is
omitted in speech is not the letter h, but the sound [h]: 'ave (= have), 'at (= hat), 'is (= his), 'ope (= hope) and the like.
Here is a funny story of a cockney family trying to use correct English in their American visitor's presence:
"Father," said one of the children at breakfast, "I want some more 'am, please." — "You mustn't say 'am, my child, the correct form of the word is 'am," retorted his father, passing the plate with sliced ham on it. "But I did say 'am," pleaded the boy. "No, you didn't: you said 'am instead of 'am." The mother turned to the guest, smiling: "Oh, don't mind them, sir, pray. They are both saying 'am and both think it is 'am they are saying."
Another well-known peculiarity of cockney English is the substitution of the diphthong [ai] for the diphthong [ei]. The corresponding graphon is usually у in all positions where a, or ai, or ay should be.
This is how John Galsworthy reproduces the speech of one of the characters of The White Monkey (Tony Bicket):
"Is that my wife?... I see it is, from your fусе... I want the truth — I must 'ave it!... If that's 'er fyce there, then that's 'er body in the gallery — Aubrey Greene; it's the same nyme. What's it all mean?" His face had become almost formidable; his cockney accent very broad. "What gyme 'as she been plyin'? You gotta tell me before I go aht of here" (aht stands for out).
Characteristically, the change of the diphthong [ei] into [ai] occurs not only in the speech of uneducated Londoners: a very prominent statesman from Australia, interviewed at the Soviet TV, repeatedly said sy (= say) and Austrylia (= Australia).
As for American English, we shall have two quotations from what Mark Twain asserts is the Missouri Negro dialect (The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn).
"Ef you's got hairy arms en a hairy breas' it's a sign dat you's a-gwine to be rich. Well, dey's some use in a sign like dat, 'kase it's so fur ahead."
"You know dat one-laigged nigger dat b'longs to old Misto Bradish? Well he sot up a bank, en say anybody dat put in a dollar would git fo' dollars mo' at en'er de year... I was de on'y one dat had much..."
The tendency of turning the voiced th into d is not restricted to the speech of the coloured population in the USA. One of the 'bellboys', Hegglund by name (An American Tragedy by Theodore Dreiser), thus instructs Clyde Griffiths (the hero of the novel) how to behave, what to do, and where to get writing paper and pens if hotel guests want them:
"Off'n de key desk, I toldja. He's to de left over dere. He'll give 'em to ya. An' you gits ice-water in de hall we lined up in just a minute ago — at dat end over dere, see — you'll see a little door. You gotta give dat guy in dere a dime oncet in a while or he'll get sore."
It is not dialect features only, territorial and social, which are of importance for stylistics, but also variants of pronunciation (different representations of the same phoneme). The more prominent, the more foregrounding parts of utterances impart expressive force to what is said. A speaker may strengthen, emphasize, make more prominent the word when he, for instance, intensifies its initial consonant, which is shown in the graphon as doubling the letter: "N-no!" sounds more decisive, more emphatic than a mere "No!".
Another way of intensifying a word or a phrase, making it more expressive, is scanning, i.e. uttering each syllable or, generally, part of a word as a phoneticaliy independent unit, in retarded tempo. The graphic means of showing this graphon is hyphenated spelling: "Im-pos-sible!".
Often a word or a word-group is emphatically stressed by the speaker without retardation of the tempo of speech and without dividing it into the syllables. This part of the utterance is specially modulated (changing volume and pitch: rise-fall in monosyllabic and disyllabic words and, possibly, rise-fall-rise in polysyllables). The corresponding graphons in print are italics or capitalization:
She was simply beautiful, (italics) I'll NEVER see him again, (capitalization)
Curious instances of combinations of graphic means can be found in one of I.I. Turansky's books on intensification in English:2
"His wife," I said. "W-I-F-E. Homebody. Helpmate. Didn't he tell yon?" (Myrer)
"Appeeeee Noooooyeeeeeerrr!" (Idem)
Here, the reader may not at once perceive that the outcry is the well-known formula: Happy New Year!
For more examples and a more detailed treatment of graphons see the above-cited book by V.A. Kukharenko.
On the whole we must say that it is only oral speech (i.e. speech proper) that can be heard, tape-recorded, and the results of multiple hearing analysed and summarized. The graphic picture of actual speech — written or printed text gives us limited opportunities for judging its phonemic and prosodic aspects.
An essential problem of stylistic possibilities of the choice between options is presented by co-existence in everyday usage of varying forms of the same word and by variability of stress within the limits of the
'Standard', or 'Received Pronunciation'. The words missile, direct and a number of others are pronounced either with a diphthong or a monophthong. The word negotiation has either [J] or [s] for the first t. The word laboratory was pronounced a few decades ago with varying stress (nowadays the stress upon the second syllable seems preferable in Great Britain; Americans usually stress the first). The word phthisis ('tuberculosis') had six varieties of pronunciation: ['fOaisis], ['f0aisis], ['fOisis], ['Oisis], and ['taisis], ['tisis]. Modern dictionaries give only two varieties: ['fOaisis] and ['Oaisis].
It would be wrong to assume that the phonetic variability of certain words is of no interest in stylistic analysis. Every language user prefers only one of the possible variants; all the others appear to him to be alien, that is, either incorrect and low or, on the contrary, pedantically overcorrect, and, hence, unacceptable. No individual judgement concerning the stylistic value of linguistic units can be objective to the end. The learner is bidden to recall our discourse on the tolerance zones of sublanguages (see above).
A very important sense-discriminating and style-forming function is performed by prosodic features, by suprasegmental characteristics of text or single utterance: stress, emphatic stress, tones, melody — intonation in general. Melodic variants theoretically constitute a paradigm of intonation, only it must be admitted here, the continual character of differences, the impossibility of finding exact borderlines between shades of intonation, shades imparting additional meanings to utterances — all this hinders the researcher from establishing a finite number of melodic classes. Intonation, as well as some specific variation in articulation of vowels and consonants (in concordance with such paralinguistic means as gesticulation and facial expression) enable the speaker to convey innumerable additional meanings, to imply what the words employed do not say by themselves. All of us possess this capacity with regard to our native tongue. The capability of displaying non-verbal implications achieves its peak in professional actors. They say that once in the twenties, the world-famous Russian singer Fiodor Chaliapin, who was also a great actor of the opera stage, was crossing the Channel on board a ship. An Englishman accosted him and went on talking, not being aware that Chaliapin understood and was able to pronounce only one English word: 'Yes'. Chaliapin repeated this word (with numberless implications, of course) in answer to the Englishman's nearly incessant chatter. After a few minutes of this kind of 'conversation' the Englishman joined his fellow-countrymen, praising his chance interlocutor to the skies as a gentleman of profound knowledge and highly original ideas! No matter what this story is worth, a mere legend or fact, it shows the immense importance of intonation in oral communication. As for professional
actors' ability to convey complicated meanings by tone of voice and by facial expression, it should be remarked here that their ability would be superfluous, lost altogether if spectators at large were unable to understand, to interpret the message expressed extraverbally.
Another problem to be discussed in the section on phonetics of units is aesthetic evaluation of sounds (and of sound combinations or sound clusters) viewed not as sequences, but as units.
The connection between contents and form is by no means confined in phonetics to the sense-differentiating function of phonemes. The sounds themselves, though they have no extralingual meaning, possess (or seem to possess) a kind of expressive meaning and, hence, stylistic value.
As early as the eighteenth century Alexander Pope, a renowned poet of the epoch, wrote: "Soft is the sound when zephyr gently blows", but when a tempest is depicted, "The hoarse rough sound should like the torrent roar". On the whole, as Pope proclaimed, "The sound must seem an echo to the sense". Even nowadays, attempts to tie up sound and sense are made. S. Voronin, for one, a scholar of St. Petersburg, claims "symbolic relevance of sound for naming objects", or, if we call a spade a spade, he means to have found a more or less direct connection between the meaning of the word and its form. Moreover, meaning in this case is primary and the form, secondary: meaning predetermines form; the connection between form and meaning is not 'arbitrary' (as Ferdinand de Saussure presumed), not socially conventional, but seems to have, according to the ideas of Voronin's 'phonosemantics', certain natural, inherent foundations.3
These ideas remind one of numerous attempts in the past to evaluate national language taken as a whole. Our great scholar and scientist M.V. Lomonosov in his appraisal of Russian said that it suits every purpose, while other European languages are especially fit for one purpose each. Lomonosov made reference to the opinion of Charles V, who, allegedly, said he would address God in Spanish, his mistress in Italian; English was good for talking to birds, German, for giving commands to a horse.4 Of course, when Lomonosov wrote that Charles could have found in Russian the splendour of Spanish, the tenderness of Italian, and the vigour of German, he never took into account the fact that Russian was his (Lomonosov's) mother tongue!
One should always bear in mind the fact that human perception of the outer world (language included) cannot be anything but apperception, i.e. reception through the prism of previous background knowledge. In language evaluation, everyone is bound to judge from the viewpoint of one's native language. Sounds and sound combinations of foreign languages produce a definite or an indefinite impression upon us due to various kinds of native semantic associations.
Perhaps the only point to be admitted is that certain internal qualities of sounds contribute to a very generalized evaluation. So, for instance, the plosives, both voiced and voiceless [b, g, p, к ] are abrupt in comparison with such sonorant consonants as [m], [n], [1]; the vowel [u:] is hardly more "tender" than the vowel [i:], rather the contrary.
A very curious experiment is described in The Theory of Literatureby L. Timof eyev,5 a Russian scholar. Pyotr Vyazemsky, a prominent Russian poet (1792 -1878) once asked an Italian, who did not know a word of Russian, to guess the meanings of several Russian words by their sound impression. The words любовь ('love'), друг ('friend'), дружба ('friendship') were characterized by the Italian as "something rough, inimical, perhaps abusive". The word телятина ('veal'), however, produced an opposite effect: "something tender, caressing, appeal to a woman". No doubt, the Italian associated the word with signorina and the like.
The essence of the stylistic value of a sound (or a sound complex) for a native speaker consists in its paradigmatic correlation with phonetically analogous lexical units of expressly positive or (mostly) of expressly negative meaning. In other words, we are always in the grip of phonetic associations created through analogy. A well-known example: the initial sound complex Ы- is constantly associated with the expression of disgust, because the word bloody was avoided in print before 1914; as a result of it, other adjectives with the same initial sound-complex came to be used for euphemistic reasons: blasted, blamed, blessed, Mowed, blooming.
Expressions like Well, I'll be Mowed if I do! or Every blessed fool was present are frequently met with in everyday speech. Recall also Alfred Doolittle's complaining words when he learns from the housekeeper that Eliza's dirty clothes have been burnt, and she cannot be taken home at the moment (Pygmalion by Bernard Shaw):
"I can't carry the girl through the streets like a blooming monkey, can I?"
He surely does not mean a monkey 'in blossom', 'in full bloom' (!), he merely avoids saying a bloody monkey.
Each of the bl - - words enumerated stands for bloody, and since this is known to everybody, very soon all such euphemistic substitutes become as objectionable as the original word itself. And, naturally, the negative tinge of the sound-combination remains unchanged.
According to McKnight's testimony,6 other sounds in certain positions also have a more or less definite stylistic value. An English-speaking person (a native speaker, not a foreign student of English) can hardly fail to feel, George McKnight writes, a certain quality common to words ending in -sh: crush, bosh, squash, hush, mush, flush, blush. A little different in: crash, splash, rash, smash, trash, clash, dash. The scholar
does not expressly name that quality, but he probably means something negative and unpleasant in the first group. The second is presumably associated with deforming strength and quickness.
His further observations concern words beginning with fl-, as in: flame, flutter, flare, flicker, flash, flirt, and flag.
A similar stylistic phenomenon, McKnight thinks, is observable in the vowel [i] at the end of words. Here, the reason is quite obvious: this vowel is a diminutive suffix: Willie, Johnnie, birdie, kittie ("What does little birdie say?"). He also mentions whisky and brandy which, as he claims, contribute a certain popular quality to the ending; this is also seen in the words movie, bookie, newsie (= newsboy), and even taxi.
The author of the present book merely retells the foreign scholar's testimony without comment on it, and he shares McKnight's responsibility inasmuch as he repeats what his predecessor has stated, but certainly any judgement of phonetic associations could well be subjective and misleading.
As distinct from what has been discussed, the unconditionally expressive and picture-making function of speech sounds is met with only in onomatopoeia, that is, in sound imitation — in demonstrating, by pho-neticmeans, the acoustic picture of reality. First of all, the cries of beasts and birds are not only reproduced by each language in its own way (compare the English bow-wow, mew, cock-a-doodle-doo with their Russian counterparts), but even names of certain birds are onomatopoeic: cuckoo. Noise-imitating interjections bang, crack are onomatopoeia. Moreover certain verbs and nouns reflect the acoustic nature of the processes: hiss, rustle, whistle, whisper: each word contains the sibilant [s].
Onomatopoeia, or elements of it, can sometimes be found in poetry. We shall analyse two lines from the famous poem The Raven by Edgar Allan Рое. The above-mentioned verb rustle, along with certain other words of similar phonetic qualities, is used in them. Pay attention also to the sound [s] at the beginning of the first line:
And the silken sad uncertain rustling of each purple curtain Thrilled me, filled me with fantastic terrors never felt before... This quotation can be found in virtually every book on stylistics of English. Their authors, however, seldom underline the circumstance that E.A. Рое was an American; hence the words uncertain,purple, and curtain had, for the poet and his American readers, the sound [r], not the British [э:], in the stressed syllables (the so-called-American retroflexion), which certainly contributes to the expression of the idea of rustling. It may seem at first glance that we are beginning to deal with syntagmatics, with phonetics of sequences (see below). It is right, of course, that the repetition of the sounds [s] and [r] could be treated as a problem of sequences in phonetics; but here, in the present chapter, we are interested in the choice
between non-imitative or imitative words. And, perhaps, we should not have stressed the fact of the repetition of the same two sounds, but rather the fact that the sound [s] is employed to express 'softness', whereas the sound [r] helps to express, by direct imitation, the rustling of curtains.
Sound imitation may also be used for comical representation of foreign speech. An example, not from English, but from Russian literature, will serve our purpose best. The poet Vladimir Mayakovsky makes one of the characters of his comedy The Bathhouse, Pont Kitch (an American businessman in the USSR), enunciate senseless sequences of Russian words, which sound very much like English word combinations — rather incoherent, disconnected, but still English enough. One must bear in mind that Mayakovsky's knowledge of English was less than poor: he knew at most several words. All the more astonishing appears his ability to demonstrate what English speech is like. 'Ай Иван шел в рай, а звери обедали' is what Kitch says on entering the stage, and this certainly resembles the ungrammatical and actually meaningless utterance *I once shall rise very badly (!). The reader may be familiar with achievements in phonetic trickery of a similar kind often performed by Mikhail Derzhavin, a well-known Moscow actor, who, as he himself said on TV, does not speak or understand English — yet every student of English in this country will admit that Derzhavin's speech (when he imitates his foreigner) sounds very much like English, except that we cannot understand a word of it!
A peculiar phenomenon, in a way connected with onomatopoeia, but opposite to it psychologically (in the direction of associative processes), is mental verbalization of extralingual sounds (noises produced by animals, natural phenomena, industrial or traf