Theme 2. Functional Styles of the English Language

Lecture 1.

1. General Notes on Functional Styles of the English Language.

Language means which we choose for communication depend on several factors, the most important among them being the situation of the communication act. Indeed, depending on the situation (which includes the purpose of the communication and its participants) we adhere either to informal, or to formal manner. 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. (See works of O. Lapteva, O. Sirotinina, L. Zemskaya.)

The functioning of the literary language in various spheres of human activity and with different aims of communication has resulted in its differentiation. The differentiation is predetermined by two distinct factors, namely, the actual situation in which the language is being used and the aim of communication.

The actual situation of the communication has involved two varieties of language – the spoken and the written.

The literary communication, most often (but not always) materialized in the written form, is not homogeneous, and proceeding from its function (purpose) we speak of different functional styles.

[The varying aims of the communication have caused the literary language to fall into a number of self-sufficient systems (functional styles of language).]

A Functional Style of language is a system of interrelated language means, which serves a definite aim in communication. A functional style is thus to be regarded as the product of a certain concrete task set by the sender of the message. Functional style appear mainly in the literary standard of a language.

In fact the standard English literary language in the course of its development has fallen into several subsystems each of which has acquired its own peculiarities which are typical of the given functional style.

In the English literary standard we distinguish the following major functional styles. (At present most scholars differentiate such functional styles).

1. The language of belles-lettres.

2. The language of publicist literature.

3. The language of newspapers.

4. The language of scientific prose.

5. The language of official documents.

As has already been mentioned, functional styles are the product of the development of the written variety of language.

Each FS may be characterized by a number of distinctive features leading or subordinate, constant or changing, obligatory or optional.

Each FS can be recognized by one or more leading, especially conspicuous features. For instance, the use of special terminology is a lexical characteristic of the FS of scientific prose, and by which it can easily be recognized. The address “Dear Sir” will be a signal to refer the message to the FS of official documents.

Now we are in a position to give a more exact definition of a functional style than the one given earlier.

A Functional Style is a patterned variety of literary text characterized by the greater or lesser typification of its constituents, supra-phrasal units (SPU), in which the choice and arrangement of interdependent and interwoven language media are calculated to secure he purport of the communication.

Each FS is a relatively stable system at the given stage in the development of the literary language, but it changes and sometimes considerably , from one period to another. Therefore FS of language is a historical category. There are many instances to prove this. Thus, the FS of emotive prose actually began to function as an independent style after the second half of the 16^th century; the newspaper style budded from the publicistic style; the oratorical style has undergone considerable fundamental changes, and so with other FSs.

The English literary language has involved a number of FSs easily distinguishable one from another. Later we shall consider each of the FSs in its most characteristic features.