Functional stylistics

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FUNCTIONAL STYLISTICS 
 
The term «functional stylistics» accounts for the uneasy, almost paradoxical, 
relationship between a number of linguistic theories of the 1950s and 1960s and their 
use in literary stylistics. These theories are for the most part fun ctional, in that they 
focus on the ways in which the linguistic system operates in terms of its utilitarian 
functions. We choose this or that word or syntactic formation according to the 
requirements of the context of their use and as a result of our desir e to achieve an 
effective, functional, transference of meaning. The use of these theories as a model for 
literary-stylistic analysis is paradoxical because the context of, say, a real conversation 
is grounded in our knowledge of its actual circumstances wh ereas in a novel its context 
would be comprised of the stylistic keys and registers that constitute the fabric of the 
text. 
One of the underlying precepts of stylistics is that a natural human language 
exists in and through a diversity of situationally g rounded speech forms, which can be 
roughly and very superficially reduced to a set of the so -
called ‘literary styles’ as 
opposed to ‘conversational (spoken, colloquial) styles’. However, we can hardly allow 
ourselves to stop at that. Naturally, in any deve loped modern language there are more 
than two basic subdivisions (or functional styles). They are gradually formed in the 
course of the historical development of a language and are connected with a certain 
sphere of communication. Functional styles are cha racterized by definite linguistic 
features which allow distinguishing them from each other.
In modern philology these functional subdivisions within the system of a national 
language are best described and systematized on the categorial basis, which 
presupposes that, both the linguistic and the conceptual, (extralinguistic) characteristics 
of a speech-event are taken into account. Co-existing within the system of one 
language, functional styles have many linguistic features in common. One should not be 
surprised if in this or that functional style he would come across the features considered 
as the invariant characteristics of another [A. I. Komarova, 1996]. All these principles 
are revealed and established within a special philological discipline 
– functional 
stylistics.  
There was a time when these considerations caused heated discussions among 
the leading philologists of the world. At present they seem to be quite obvious and 
generally agreed upon. Functional stylistics has its well -elaborated theory which is not 

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invalidated by the existence of some controversial points in it, like for example the one 
concerning the functional-stylistic status of imaginative writing and the admissibility of 
viewing it as a separate functional style.
These ideas have found practical application in multiple works devoted to 
language teaching. On the basis of this theory the dichotomy of the language to be 
spoken with and the language to be spoken about was introduced [O. S. Akhmanova, 
1978] and many problems connected with optimizing foreign language acquisition were 
solved. Today achievements of functional stylistics are great enough to allow scholars 
concentrate on the pragmatic aspect of this discipline and work out a certain system of 
style application.