Lectures on Comparative Stylistics

Key Words
Comparative stylistics, stylistic similarities, stylistic differences, structural stylistics, functional stylistics, functional styles, original texts, texts in translation.
Comparative stylistics (contrastive stylistics) is a linguistic discipline which studies the stylistic similarities and differences of two and more languages.

The majority of issues within comparative stylistics have not been well investigated and their further research is urgently required in the context of modern linguistics development.

The main tasks of comparative stylistics may be outlined as follows:

1. 
   to define and fix the common and distinctive features of the language units in two and more languages in terms of their expressiveness, emotiveness, imagery, and evaluation;
   
2. 
   to study the differences and similarities of the functional styles in two and more languages;
   
3. 
   to carry out the comparative study of systematic relationship between language units which are used in various spheres of communication and to define the principles of selection, combinability and arrangement of language means in the texts.
   

The basic factors that determine the formation and development of comparative stylistics are as follows:

1. 
   active processes including the change of knowledge paradigms within linguistics;
   
2. 
   widening of the range of comparative linguistics;
   
3. 
   the increasing needs for translation of various types of texts from one language into the other (adequacy level);
   
4. 
   increasing needs to enrich the theoretical and practical aspects of teaching foreign languages;
   

Traditionally comparative stylistics is divided into two main aspects – structural comparative stylistics and functional comparative stylistics.

Structural comparative stylistics studies the stylistic means of two and more languages on the basis of levels of language hierarchy (phonetic-phonological, morphological, lexical, syntactical). It aims at defining the similarities and differences of stylistic colourings of language units, stylistic differentiation of the vocabulary, stylistic-semantic features of expressive means and stylistic devices etc. Generally, structural comparative stylistics deals with the problems of “stylistic resources” of two and more languages.

Functional comparative stylistics studies the functional-stylistic differentiation of two and more languages. It concentrates on common and distinctive features of functional styles, genres, types of speech within two and more languages.

The theoretical and practical foundations of comparative stylistics were first proposed by C. Bally in his scientific research on the issues of French stylistics (1909). C. Bally used the term “stylistique externe” (outer/external/overt stylistics) which was understood as comparative stylistics.

C. Bally is considered to be the fonder of comparative stylistics since he as proclaimed the idea of comparative study of stylistic aspects of native and foreign languages. C. Bally was the first to define the general program of contrastive-stylistic investigations. But due to the absence of differentiation between comparative stylistics and other linguistic disciplines, his program remained unrealized.

Many years later the issues of comparative stylistics were thoroughly investigated in the works by A.Malblanc (1968), J. Vinay and J. Darbelnet (1977), Y.S. Stepanov (1965), A.V. Fyodorov (1971), K.A. Dolinin, A.D. Shveitser (1993), V.G. Gak (1988).

According to A.V. Fyodorov, comparative stylistics is based on the comparison of both the original texts and the texts in translation. The object of comparative stylistics may be presented by the differences in terms of the use of language means: archaisms and barbarisms, grammatical forms and types of sentences or language means belonging to the same functional style.

The fact that comparative stylistics may cover the data of two types – texts in translation and original texts allows us to point out the two relatively independent branches. Each of these two branches is distinguished by its own principal tasks and proper methods to solve these tasks.

1. 
   The branch dealing with the comparison of original texts
   
2. 
   The branch dealing with the comparison of texts in translation.
   

These two branches have principal differences in terms of their relation to the theory of translation.

While the first branch that deals with the comparison of original texts has a microlinguistic character, by contrast the second branch (dealing with the comparison of texts in translation) is of macrolinguisic character since it is closely connected with theory of translation and takes into consideration both linguistic and extralinguistic (culture-specific) factors.

The results achieved within the branch of comparative stylistics which studies the texts in translation can be used in solving a great number of practical tasks and consequently relates to the applied disciplines of linguistics.

The branch of comparative stylistics dealing with the comparison of texts in translation can be regarded as both descriptive and normative discipline since the rules of and directions that are followed in the process of comparative study are made on the basis of a high-quality/correct translation. As a result of establishing the new rules there can be elaborated the general etalon which helps to evaluate the translation and develop recommendations for it.