Answer the following questions

ANSWER THE FOLLOWING QUESTIONS:

1. 
   What is the subject matter of Stylistics?
   
2. 
   What are the main trends in Stylistics?
   
3. 
   What do we understand under expressive means ?
   
4. 
   What is a stylistic device?
   
5. 
   How are trends grouped?
   
6. 
   What are the main problems in Stylistics?
   

1. Stylistics is a branch of General Linguistics. It studies language means on all the language levels from the point of view of their expressiveness, emotiveness, imagery, evaluation. In other words it studies the effects of the message, its impact on the reader or listener. The subject of stylistics can also be outlined as the study of the nature, functions and structure of stylistic devices (SD), on the one hand, and, on the other – the study of language styles (functional style), its aim, its structure, its characteristic features.

2. Depending on the approach and the final aim of investigation we distinguish the following trends of stylistics:

1. functional stylistics

2. decoding stylistics

3. individual style study

4. practical stylistics

3. The expressive means of a language are those phonetic, morphological, word-building, lexical, phraseological and syntactical forms which exist in language-as-a-system for the purpose of logical and/or emotional intensification of the utterance.

4. Stylistic device is a conscious and intentional intensification of some typical structural or semantic language unit that becomes a generative model. It follows then that a stylistics device is an abstract pattern into which any content can be poured.

5. According to the structural hierarchy of language levels, suggested by a well-known Belgian linguist E. Bienveniste in 1962 we distinguish the following groups of SD:

1. phonetic SD,

2. morphemic SD,

3. lexical SD,

4. syntactical SD,

5. lexico-syntactical SD

6. Thus the main problems under consideration in stylistics are as follows:

1. Functional styles.

2. Stylistic Differentiation of the English Vocabulary.

3. Types of Speech.

4. Stylistic Devices (SD) and Expressive Means (EM) of the language

IDENTIFY THE FUNCTIONAL STYLE TYPES OF THE FOLLOWING TEXT EXTRACTS:

1. 
   Business can be hard. Heck, life can be hard. We’re all on a journey, and we’ve all been down in the dumps before, wondering if what we’re doing is really worth it. Wondering if what we’re doing is really making an impact. But, it’s important that we’re always moving forward. This is a lesson that I learned early in life. I remember I was around 4 years old, and I was learning to ride my bike with my uncle and my father. Of course, I fell off multiple times while I was learning to cycle, and I remember I one time I  cut my knee pretty badly. At that point I really just wanted to quit and go home. But, my family told me: “you can’t quit now, you’re almost there. Just try it once more!” You’ve probably heard that before too, right?
   

ANSWER:The newspaper functional style

2. 
   Amphibians can grow to different sizes, smaller ones are only 1 cm in length  and larger ones can reach up to one and a half metres. Those that live mostly on land breathe through their lungs, others, which live mainly in water have gills. An amphibian’s skin is wet and often covered with a sticky fluid that prevents it from becoming dry. Some species lose their outer skin layer several times a year. Others produce poison that protects them from enemies.
   

ANSWER: The scientific prose style

3. 
   With only 39 days until the presidential election, misinformation about voting is swirling around the internet, more than 300 lawsuits regarding the election have been filed, and the pandemic rages on, devastating the U.S. economy.
   

ANSWER: The publicistic functional style

4. 
   With reference to our telephone conversation yesterday I’d like to tell you that we offer you the position of Senior Lawyer in our company. You will be provided with full medical insuranceaccording to the corporate policy. Your salary will be $200 000 per year according to your request. You may learn about job conditions in job offer attached to this letter.
   

ANSWER:The official documents functional style

5. 
   ”Rosemary Fell was not exactly beautiful. No, you couldn't have called her beautiful. Pretty? Well, if you took her to pieces... But why be so cruel as to take anyone to pieces? She was young, brilliant, extremely modem, exquisitely well dressed, amazingly well read in the newest of the new books, and her parties were the most delicious mixture of the really important people and... artists - quaint creatures, discoveries of hers, some of them too terrifying for words, but others quite presentable and amusing.”
   

ANSWER: The belles-lettres functional style