Lecture 13 The Problem of Functional Styles

LECTURE 13

The Problem of Functional Styles

• Functional style: definition.
• Galperin’s classification of functional styles. Peculiarities of belles-lettres and scientific prose functional styles.
• Arnold’s classification of functional styles.
• Sublanguage definition. Skrebnev’s classification.
• Register: foreign scholars’ interpretation.

Text Fragments

• Jail for terror plan ‘to kill many’

A London dentist detained as he boarded a plane to Pakistan carrying night sights and computer discs full of military information was jailed yesterday for four and a half years.

Sohail Quereshi had admitted he was on his way to carry out a terrorist mission and told fellow extremists he planned ‘to kill many’, the Old Bailey heard. Scotland Yard’s anti-terror chief yesterday suggested Quereshi may have been planning to target British soldiers in Afghanistan.

2.

ROLEX

BRITISH OPEN, ST ANDREWS. Once again the cream of the world’s golfers will encounter the Valley of Sin, the Elysian Fields, the Grave, the Coffin, and Hell. And Rolex will be with them, every stroke along the way.

Text Fragments

3. The 1998 well M-1S was due to be tested, but ran into mechanical problems and only small amounts of hydrocarbons were produced to surface. This may also have been due to poor reservoir characteristics. Production from this field in 1993 was reportedly 600 barrels per day from five conventional wells, but recent scout data indicates that the highly fractured crestal wells can produce at significantly better rates.

4. Friendship, peculiar boon of heaven,

The noble mind’s delight and pride,

To men and angels only given,

To all the lower world denied.

FUNCTIONAL STYLE (FS): DEFINITIONS

• The phenomenon was thoroughly studied by Russian scholars I.R. Galperin, I.V. Arnold, M.D. Kuznets, Y.S. Stepanov and others.
• Galperin: Functional style of language is a system of interrelated language means which serves a definite aim in communication.
• Arnold: Functional style is a subsystem of language which possesses specific lexical, syntactical, sometimes phonetic features characteristic of a particular sphere of communication.