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Units of language on different levels are studied by traditional branches of linguistics such as phonetics,grammar, lexicology, whose subject-matter and the material under study are more or less clear-cut.It gets more complicated when we talk about the object of research and the material of studies of stylistics.The term itself stylistics - came into existence not too long ago.However, the scope of problems and the object of stylistic study go as far back as ancient schools of rhetoric and poetics. It is in rhetoric that we find most of the notions and terms contemporary stylisticsgenerally employs.The most complete and well developed antique system, that came down to us is the Hellenistic Romanrhetoric system.All expressive means (the object of its research) were divided into 3 large groups:

Tropes,Rhythm (Figures of Speech), andTypes of Speech.

Stylistics, unlike other linguistic subjects, does not study or describe separate linguistic units as such.Roughly speaking, stylistics is a branch of linguistics, which studies the principles, and the effect of choiceand usage of different language elements in rendering thought and emotion under different conditions of communication. I.R.Galperin asserts that stlistis, sometimes calledl i n g u o s t y l i s t i c s, is a branch of general linguistics that mainly deals with two interdependentobjectives:

the investigation of the special language media which secure the desirable effect of the utterance,andthe investigation of certain types of texts which (due to the choice and arrangement of languagemeans) are distinguished by the pragmatic aspect of communication.

These two tasks of stylistics are clearly discernible as separate fields of its investigation.The special media are called stylistic devices and expressive means (SDs and EMs); the types of texts arecalled functional styles (FSs).The first field of investigation, i.e. SDs and EMs, touches upon such general language problems as:

the aesthetic function of language,synonymous ways of rendering one and the same idea,emotional colouring in language,the interrelation between language and thought,the individual manner of an author in making use of language, etc.

The second field, i.e. FSs, brings forth the discussion of such issues as:oral and written varieties of language,the notion of the literary (standard) language,the constituents of texts larger than the sentence,the classification of the types of texts,the generative aspect of literary texts, etc.

Stylistics as a branch of linguistics overlaps with such adjacent disciplines as theory of information, theoryof communication, literature studies, psychology, sociology, logic and some others.

Stylistics, as the term implies, deals with styles.The word style is derived from the Latin word stilus (stylus) or Greek stylos which meant a short stick sharp at one end and flat at the other used by the Romans for writing on wax tablets.Later it was associated with the manner of writing.Today it can be applied in any activity which can be performed in more than one way (manner), verbalcommunication including.Hence style presupposes choice.In linguistics the word style has acquired so many interpretations that it gives ground for ambiguity.Style is frequently regarded as something that belongs exclusively to the plane of expression and not to the

plane of content because one and the same idea can be expressed in different ways.S. Chatman defines style as a product of individual choices and patterns of choices among linguistic

possibilities.Style is often understood as a technique of expression, i.e. the ability to write clearly,correctly and in a manner calculated to interest the reader. Style in this sense deals with the normalizedforms of the language.The generic term style is often identified with the individual style of an author, or the authorial style .I.R. Galperin believes that the individual style of an author is only one of the applications of the termstyle.

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In the case it should be applied to the sphere of linguistic and literary science which deals with the peculiarities of a writer's individual manner of using language means to achieve the effect he desires.The individual style as a deliberate choice of an author he distinguishes from a habitual idiosyncrasy inthe use of language units by any individual or an idiolect .Style is frequently treated as the embellishment of language. Language and style as embellishment areregarded as separate bodies when style is imposed on language for artistic effect.Style may also be defined as deviations from the lingual norm (M. Riffaterre, E. Saporta, M. Halliday,E. Enkvist).Thus, what is stylistically conspicuous, stylistically relevant, stylistically coloured is a departure from thenorm of the given national language.Here arises the problem of norm. There never has been one single norm for all.On the one hand, the notion of norm implies a recognized or received standard, or so-called pre-established, traditional and conventionally accepted parameters (i.e. characteristics) of what is evaluated(Y. M. Skrebnev).On the other, the requirements of the uncultivated part of the English-speaking population do not coincidewith those of the cultivated one: they merely have their own conception of norm.Thus, the characteristic feature of norm in language is its plurality.Moreover, one of the most essential properties of the norm in a sublanguage is its flexibility. I. R. Galperin defines style as a system of interrelated language means which serves a definite aim incommunication.Y. M. Skrebnev, acknowledging the split of a language into sublanguages, believes that style is specificityof sublanguage .Stylistic information, or stylistic colouring of a lingual unit, is the knowledge where, in what particular type of communication, the unit is current. The majority of the words are stylistically neutral.Stylistically coloured words (e.g. bookish, solemn, poetic, official, colloquial, rustic, dialectal, vulgar, etc.)have each a kind of label on them, an inscription, a kind of trade-mark showing where the unit wasmanufactured and where it generally belongs.Stylistically neutral words taken separately only denote without connoting.Stylistically coloured words preserve their label or trade-mark even in isolation.Our verbal experience helps us to identify the appurtenance of words to a certain sphere.

Besides occasionally a certain context, a specific distribution may also add some unexpected colouring to agenerally neutral word.Such stylistic connotation is called occasional .Stylistic colouring of linguistic units is also the result of their distributional capacities.The term distribution implies the possibilities of combining the given unit with its immediate environment.Thus it brings to the forefront the notion of a stylistic norm that indicates in what collocations and speechvariety certain lingual units are proper or improper.In the following examples we shall observe the opposition of three sublanguages (styles):

The old man is dead (normal literary, practically neutral). (Cf. . )The gentleman well advanced in years attained the termination of his terrestrial existence (high-flown, exquisite, pompous). (Cf. . )The ole (low colloquial for old ) bean he kicked the bucket (low colloquial, derogatory). (Cf. ( ).)

Besides, stylistics does not study or describe separate linguistic units as such.It studies their stylistic function, i.e. it is interested in the expressive potential or expressive properties of linguistic units and their interaction in conveying ideas and emotions in a certain context.There should be mentioned the following integral peculiarities of a stylistic function:

its chameleon quality,its implicit character,its accumulative character, andits irradiating character.

The chameleon quality of the stylistic function means that a certain device does not necessarily perform

the same function, it may vary from context to context. E.g. a hyperbole may be used for creating a humorous or dramatic atmosphere.Its implicit character is secured by the connotative meanings of words.Accumulation means that a certain mood or feeling is usually rendered by a group of various means. This

phenomenon is also termed convergence of devices.

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Behind irradiation stands the fact that few or even one lingual unit with an outstanding stylistic functionmay attach a peculiar sounding to the whole speech unit.According to the type of stylistic research they distinguish linguostylistics (founded by a French linguistCh. Bally) and literary stylistics.They have some meeting points or links which lie in the study of:

the literary language from the point of view of its variability;the individual manner of a writer;

poetic speech that has its own specific laws.The points of difference proceed from different points of analysis.While linguostylistics studies:

styles of sublanguages, or functional styles and their specificity, development and current state,language units from the point of view of their capacity to render evaluations and evoke emotions,

literary stylistics inevitably overlaps with areas of literary studies such as the theories of artistic imageryand literary criticism, literary genres, the art of composition, the writer's outlook, the peculiarities of acertain trend or epoch, etc.Another distinguished trend of stylistics is stylistics of decoding.It can be traced back to the works of L.V. Shcherba,B.A. Larin, M. Riffaterre, R. Jackobson and many other scholars (mainly of the Prague linguistic circle).The role and purpose of this trend was summed up by I.V. Arnold in her book on decoding stylistics:

Modern stylistics in not so much interested in the identification of separate devices as in discovering thecommon mechanism of tropes and their effect.It is common knowledge that each work of verbal art can be viewed from the point of view of its encoder (the author) and decoder (the reader, the recipient).If the literary text is analyzed from the author's (encoding) point of view such background facts as theepoch, the historical situation, the personal political, social and aesthetic views of the author, etc. areconsidered (the analysis of the extralinguistic context).But if the same text is treated from the readers (decoding) angle the maximum information is excavatedfrom the text itself: its vocabulary, sentence arrangement, composition, etc. and their interaction inrendering the authors message (the analysis of the linguistic context) .The first approach manifests the prevalence of the literary analysis. The second is based almost exclusively

on the linguistic analysis.Stylistics of decoding harmoniously combines these two methods of stylistic research and enables thereader to interpret a work with a minimum loss of its purport and message..Thus, the basic difference between linguostylistics and decoding stylistics is that the latter studies means

provided by each level not as isolated devices that demonstrate some stylistic function but as a part of thegeneral system that discloses the overall concept of the author.In other terms, expressive means and stylistic devices are treated here only in their interaction anddistribution within the text as the carriers of the authors purpose and signs of his vision of the world.The subdivisions of linguostylisticsThe subdivision of linguostylistics is based on the level-forming approach: sounds, words, phrases andsentences, paragraphs and texts are studied from the point of view of their expressive capacities, or stylisticfunction. ere belong:

Lexical stylistics (stylistic lexicology).It studies the semantic structure of the word and the interplay of the connotative and denotative meaningsof the word, as well as the interrelation of the stylistic connotations of the word and the context.Special attention is also paid to the functioning of different set expressions.What unites it with general (i.e. non-stylistic) lexicology is the study of the stylistic differentiation of thevocabulary.

Phonostylistics (stylistic phonetics). General phonetics investigates the whole articulatory-audial system of language.Stylistic phonetics pays attention to the style-forming phonetic features of sublanguages: it describes

variants of pronunciation occurring in different types of speech.Special attention is also paid to the expressive potential of phonetic means as well as the prosodic featuresof prose and poetry.

NB! In written texts phonetic means are often substituted by graphical devices (the domain of study of graphical stylistics).

Grammatical stylistics.

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Non-stylistic morphology treats morphemes and their grammatical meanings in general, without regard tothe sphere of their application.Morphological stylistics is interested in the expressive potential of grammatical meanings, forms andcategories as well as the deviations from a normative word formation that are peculiar to particular sublanguages, explicitly or implicitly comparing them with the neutral ones common to all thesublanguages.

Non-stylistic syntax treats word combinations and sentences, analysing their structures and stating what is permissible and what is not in constructing correct utterances in the given language.Syntactical stylistics is one of the oldest branches of stylistic studies that grew out of classical rhetoric.It investigates the expressive potential and the influential power of the deviations from a normative wordorder, of types of sentence and of syntactical connection.It also shows what particular constructions are met with (or should be employed) in various types of speech, what syntactical structures are specific in the sublanguage in question.Besides, syntactical stylistics very often operates on longer units, from the paragraph upwards.

Functional stylistics (the theory of functional styles).Functional stylistics is a branch of linguostylistics that investigates the totality of media typical of varietiesof the national language distinguished by the communicative function, sphere of communication andcompliance with the norm. Text stylistics is one more branch of stylistic research.There exist variousdefinitions of the term text. It can be understood as a completed product of speech, representing asequence of words, grammatically connected and semantically coherent, and having a certaincommunicative goal.Text Stylistics aims at investigating the most effective ways and means of producingtexts belonging to different styles, substyles and genres.It also studies the lingual means through which different types of information and presentational mannersare conveyed as well as the verbal manifestation of text categories.1.Science cognizes the world analytically by taking things of the same sphere and class apart and establishinglogical connections between them and their constituents, i.e. by creating concepts (intellectual work).Art cognizes the reality synthetically through comparing things from different spheres and by way of associationsascribing similar features to them, i.e. by creating images (the work of imagination).An artistic image may be viewed as some model or generalised form that reflects the authors subjective vision of either existing or fictitious reality.Images presuppose an artistic presentation of the general through the individual, of the abstract through the concrete

and the sensuous.To create images artists use different materials (marble, clay, paints, sounds, etc.) .

E.g. the statue of David by Michelangelo (marble, 1501- 1504).In verbal art imagery is embodied in words used in a figurative way to attain a higher artistic expressiveness.Unlike the words in literal expressions which denote, or say directly what they mean according to common verbal

practice or dictionary usage, words in figurative expressions connote, or acquire additional layers of meaning in a particular context.Thus, the literal (dictionary, logical) meaning is the one easily restored irrespective of the context, while thefigurative (contextual) meaning is the one materialised in the given context.So, the verbal image is a pen-picture of a thing, person or idea expressed in a figurative way, i.e. by words used intheir contextual meaning. Images due to their frequent use often become recognized symbols .

E.g. a bridge for transition from past to future, from bad to good, from danger to rescue (Old Man at the Bridge by E. Hemingway).Linguistic figurativeness or linguistic imagery can be found in various lexical lingual means thatare termed either tropes (Ancient Gk. tropos to turn), or like in our course lexical stylistic devices .A trope can be defined as a sort of transfer based on the interplay of lexical meanings of a word that results inestablishing connections between different or even opposite notions or things, which are understood to have somesimilarity in the given context. NB! Imagery can be created by lexical SDs only.The rest of stylistic devices (morphological and syntactical, phonetic, graphic) do not create imagery, but serve asintensifiers: they can add some logical, emotive, expressive information to the utterance.In rhetoric the verbal image is described as a complex phenomenon, a double picture generated by linguistic means,which is based on the co-presence of two thoughts of different things active together:

the direct thought the tenor (T).the figurative thought the vehicle (V).

E.g. She (T) is a bird of passage (V).The tenor is the subject of thought, while the vehicle is the concept of a thing, person or an abstract notion with which the tenor is compared or identified.As I.V. Arnold points out, the structure of a verbal image also includes:

the ground of comparison (G) the similar feature of and V;the relation (R) between and V;the type of identification/comparison or, simply, the type of a trope.

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T G R V TROPE

She is transient like a bird of passage (simile)

She is like a bird of passage (simile)

She is a bird of passage (noun metaphor)

The bird of passageflew away (noun metaphor)

Images may be:general (macroimages), e.g. The Moon and Sixpence by W.S. Maughamindividual (microimages), e.g. that great ocean of deep depression. (Priestley)

I.R. Galperin divides images into three categories:visual, e.g. It was a feast of colour. (Maugham)aural (acoustic), e.g. He sprang to the machine, which was now going pocketa-pocketa-queep-pocketa-queep. (Thurber)relational, e.g. a man of figures, a man of great dignity. (Priestley)

2. The problem of classification of tropes has existed for centuries going back to antique schools of rhetoric.But the majority of scholars have not been interested in presenting tropes as a generalized system.Most authors propose purely subjective classifications.Some of them describe tropes and other stylistic devices in analphabetical order.Some split them into 2 groups: metaphor and metonymy.I.R. Galperin's classification of lexical stylistic devices (adopted in our course) is based on the 3 following criteria:Group 1:Interaction of different types of lexical meaning

Dictionary (logical, literal) and contextual (figurative) meanings: Metaphor, Metonymy, Irony.Primary and derivative logical meanings (of a polysemantic word): Zeugma, Pun.Logical and emotive meanings: Oxymoron, Epithet.

Logical and nominative meanings: Antonomasia.Group 2:Intensification of a feature

Hyperbole (intensification of quantity, size, emotions, etc.), Simile (intensification of affinity), Periphrasis (intensification of an inherent property).Group 3:Peculiar use of set expressionsClichs,Proverbs, Epigrams, Quotations,Allusions,Decomposition of set phrases.Lexical stylistic devices are also classified according to the degree of originality into trite and genuine.Genuine devices are original, full of imagery.Trite devices are ready-made, fixed in dictionaries clichs. Imageryseems faded there. Such cases are mainly dealt with in lexicology.

E.g. a root of the quarrel (trite metaphor).3. Metaphor (Gk. metaphora transference) as a term was originally and is still often applied indiscriminately to anykind of figurative use in art.It is often treated as parable or allegory that traditionally expresses abstract ideasthrough concrete pictures.

E.g. The texts of the Bible, The Divine Comedy by A. Dante (in verbal art).As a SD metaphor is an imaginative identification of one concept () with another (V), or a hidden comparison of two objects with no real connection . It is a transfer by similarity (likeness, affinity) resulting in the violation of normal correspondence between concepts and words. Function. Metaphors make descriptions concrete and vivid.Metaphor and simile.Metaphor like simile is based on the mental process of comparison, but, unlike in simile, inmetaphor the ground of comparison is never stated openly.

E.g. She is like a bird of passage (simile). She is a bird of passage (metaphor).Metaphors can be embodied in all the basic parts of speech nouns, verbs, adjectives and adverbs.V.A. Maltzev isolated certain structural patterns of noun metaphors, depending on the type of identification of andV, the most frequent among which are the following:

is V: E.g. Love is a disease. Women are the instruments of my pleasure (Maugham) turns into V: E.g. The fine autumn afternoon was losing its bright gold and turning into smoke and distantfading flame, so that it seemed for a moment as if all London bridges were burning down. (Priestley)Something makes into V: E.g. Lights were flickering on along the wharf, immediately giving the unlitentrances a sombre air of mystery. (Priestley)V replaces : E.g. The little devil raged in.

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In non-noun metaphors the vehicle is hidden and must be identified by properties or actions denoted by adjectives,adverbs and verbs. E.g. The passion that held Strickland was no less tyrannical than love. (Maugham)

Young Turgis intimidated everyone by sneezing explosively.Some books are to be tasted , others swallowed , and some few to be chewed and digested. (Bacon)

Metaphor has no formal limitations: it can be a word, a phrase, any part of a sentence, or a sentence as a whole.Simple metaphors contain only one vehicle. E.g. His life was a tragedy.Sustained (extended, prolonged) metaphors occur whenever one metaphorical statement, creating an image, isfollowed by another, containing a continuation, or logical development of the previous one.Hence, in a sustained metaphor the central vehicle is supported by one or more vehicles contributing to the sameimage.

E.g. His life was a tragedy written in the terms of knock-about farce. (Maugham)According to the degree of originality metaphors like all the rest of the stylistic devices may be subdivided into:

Genuine (authentic, 'living'). They are original, full of imagery, and therefore are treated as SDs proper.Trite (etymological, dead, traditional, stereotyped, hackneyed, dictionary). They are fixed in dictionariesclichs with faded imagery. Thus, they are viewed as expressive means of the language. E.g. a foot of amountain, a mouth of a river, a root of the quarrel.

Stylistics deals preferably with 'living' metaphors whose function is not a mere nomination of the object in question, but rather its expressive characterization.Cases of trite metaphors are dealt with in lexicology.Having become standardised through overuse, metaphors may also exist as idioms. Today they have a literal meaning that differs from their original literal meaning because they have passed through a

metaphorical stage. E.g. to add fuel to the fire/flames.Metaphor is also a common lingual means of occasional denomination that provides us with a means of explainingthe unknown in terms of the known.Similarity on which metaphorical renaming is based may concern any propertyof the thing meant. It may be colour, form, character of motion, speed, value or anything else that shows aresemblance.

E.g. What was the name of the barking creature ?Personification is a variety of metaphor in which human properties are attributed to lifeless (or inanimate) objects mostly to abstract notions (thoughts, actions, emotions, seasons of the year, etc.).The formal indication of personification may be:

capitalising: E.g. If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster

And treat those two impostors just the same ... (Kipling)

the use of pronouns he or she instead of it: E.g . Life is hard, and Nature takes sometimes a terrible delight in torturing her children. (Maugham)

the use of verbs and adjectives that originally stand for the actions and qualities of people: E.g . The Tower Bridge raised its two arms . (Priestley)

a low and fat arm-chair. (Priestley)There are a lot of cases of trite personifications. E.g . The English ship is traditionally substituted by the pronoun she.Function. Personification adds dramatic power to the description, it expresses the author's vision of the (possible)world, or reflects the attitude of the characters to the things described.Zoonimic (animalistic) metaphors are the opposite of personification. It is the ascription of the traits of beasts to

people, usually with the intention of negative characterization or creating humour. E.g. a fox, a cow, a snake. Turgis almost snarled his reply to any civil question. (Priestley)4. Metonymy (Gk. metonymia 'changing of name') is a trope based upon contiguity upon a real connection (inwardor outward) between the object of nomination and the object whose name by way of associations is used to replaceit. (Cf. with metaphor where this connection is non-existent.)Metonymy can also be defined as a nomination of the object through one of its inherent properties.

E.g. Hulloa, fatty . What do you want? (Maugham)Function. Metonymy usually creates an ironic or even sarcastic effect, sometimes it serves intensification.According to the relation between the tenor and the vehicle the following types of metonymy are differentiated:

the abstract stands for the concrete: E.g. But then he did not really want any of these people, did not want company for companys sake . What he reallywanted was Love, Romance, a Wonderful Girl of His Own. And these had lately all been assuming the same shape inhis mind, that of Lena Golspie. (Priestley)

the container is mentioned instead of the contents:

E.g. He sipped one more bottle (of whisky).the material instead of the thing made of it:

E.g. She was glancing through his water colours .the maker stands for the thing made:

E.g. The Rembrandt turned out to be fake.He adores Mozart.

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the instrument is put for the agent: E.g. His brush can be easily recognized.

a part is put for the whole (synecdoche): E.g . There were long legs all around.Metonymy in many cases is trite . E.g . to cite Byron, hands wanted.Synecdoche can as well be expressed grammatically. An example of traditional (stereotyped) synecdoche is the useof the singular (the so-called generis singularis) when the plural (the whole class) is meant.

E.g. A woman can forgive a man for the harm he does her he said, but she can never forgive him for the sacrificeshe makes on her account. (or: The woman ...). (Maugham)The opposite type of synecdoche (the whole for a part) occurs

when the name of the genus is used in place of the name of the species: E.g. Stop torturing the poor animal (instead of the poor dog ); or

when the 'plural of disapprobation' is resorted to: E.g. Reading books when I am talking to you! (while one book is meant).5. Zeugma (Gk. zeuguana 'joining, uniting') or syllepsis (Gk. sullpsis : sul - SYN - with or together + lpsis ataking) is the blending together of two or more semantically incompatible word groups, having an identical lexicalitem (usu. a polysemantic word), into a single construction where this item is used only once.

E.g . it was a perfect purgatory of dust and confusion and gritting of teeth and soft, sweet and low profanity. (Twain)In the resultant cluster the identical lexical item is in the same grammatical (syntactical) but different semanticrelations with the adjacent units, which pertain to semantic spheres inconsistent with each other.

Thus, without being repeated the lexical unit is used in a literal and in a transferred meaning. E.g . With tears in her eyes and a Gucci bag she appeared at the door of his apartment.Function. The effect produced by zeugmatic combinations is humorous or ironical.Zeugma is an accepted stylistic device in English literature, in Russian it is beyond the literary norm.Pun the use of a word in such a manner as to bring out different meanings or applications of one polysemantic word,

or the use of words alike or nearly alike in sound but different in meaning (homophones, paronyms) , oftenwith humorous intent.It is also called wordplay, play on words, quibble, paronomasia, (Latin, from Gr.

paronomazein to call by a different name, to name besides: para besides + onomazein to name).Alongside the English term 'pun', the international (originally French) term calembour is current .

E.g. It is not my principle ('general rule of conduct') to pay the interest ('money paid for use of money lent'), and it isnot my interest ('advantage, profit, or generally, thing in which one is concerned') to pay the principal ('the originalsum lent') (a polysemantic word and homophones).

She was too beautiful for wards (a ward sounds nearly the same as words , i.e. paronyms).Function. The creation of a jocular atmosphere caused by the intentional mistreatment of the meaning of the lexicalunit either by the speaker.

E.g. I beg your pardon. I am not offended.The majority of jokes are based on punBoth zeugma and pun are based on polysemy and create a humorous effect.The distinguishing feature is mainly a structural one as

zeugma is always a structure with two adjacent elements linked with the central element which is used onlyonce; while

pun 1) is more independent as it needs a broader (than a structure) context for its decoding and there neednot necessarily be a word in the sentence to which the pun-word refers;

2) pun-words often recur.Moreover, pun is more varied as besides polysemy it rests on the use of homophones and paronyms.6. Irony (Gk. eirneia 'feigned ignorance', mockery concealed') is based on the contrast between the literal (dictionary) meaning and the intended meaning: one thing is said and the opposite is implied.Irony is generally used to convey a negative meaning (ridicule, contempt) though only positive concepts may beused in it.Y.M. Skrebnev suggested the following general scheme of irony praise stands for blame. Thus, good usedironically implies its antonym bad. E.g. God damn my wife. She is an excellent woman . I wish she was in hell. (Maugham)Very seldom the opposite type of irony where blame stands for praise is observed: coarse and accusing words areused approvingly.

E.g. Clever bastard! Lucky devil! Tough son-of-a-bitch! Besides, Y.M. Skrebnev distinguishes 2 kinds of ironic utterances:explicit ironical, which no one would take at their face value due to the situation, tune and structure:

E.g. An excellent student you are! (addressing the one with poor results), andimplicit ironical, when the ironical message is communicated against a wider context:

E.g. The Devoted Friend by O. Wilde.In oral speech, irony is often made prominent by emphatic intonation .

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In writing, the most typical signs are graphical, like inverted commas or italics .Irony can be understood from the context without any special graphical indication.Irony must not be confused with humour, although they have much in common.One of the functions of irony is producing a humorous effect.But unlike humour that always causes laughter, that isfriendly and positive by its character, irony presupposes critical evaluation of the thing spoken about and expressesridicule, mockery or contempt . In this sense irony stands closer to sarcasm when mocking and contemptuouslanguage is intended to convey scorn or insult.An ironic effect is frequently achieved by the mixture of styles: the use of the high-flown style on socially low andinsignificant topics or in a friendly talk, etc.

E.g. Mine is negation (in a kitchen). (Cf.: No!)Besides verbal (lingiustic) irony, there also exists irony which is produced extralinguistically.It is created by contrasting what the character seeks by his actions and what he obtains and may cover the wholeliterary work.Such are irony of situation or irony of fate (life) , and dramatic irony investigated in literary studies.Irony of situation is a literary technique based on the contrast between how a set of circumstances looks on the

surface and what it actually is in reality. It rests on the discrepancy between what is intended when one acts and whatthe result is.Dramatic irony is a literary technique in which the reader understands the actual meaning of what is happening, butthe character does not.There is a second variant of dramatic irony when the author adopts the characters wrongviewpoint to finally ridicule him/her and reveal his/her naivety.

Using a language involves not only our knowledge of its linguistic structure but also knowledge of the numeroussituations in which it can be used as a special medium of communication with its own set of distinctive andrecognizable features. We do not use one single English but numerous Englishes.It is the notion of style that has to do with how we use the language under specific circumstances for a specific

purpose.T.A. Znamenskaya believes that the existent definitions of the notion style generally intersect with the following 3meanings:1.A variety of the national language traditionally used in one of the identifiable spheres of life that is characterized

by a particular set of linguistic features, including vocabulary, grammar and pronunciation.These are chiefly associated with the degree of formality as well as social, occupational and regional varieties.

E.g. neutral, upper-class, literary (high) and common parlance, ritual speech, educated, uneducated English, etc.2. A generally accepted linguistic identity of oral and written units of discourse (speech).

Such units demonstrate style not only in a special choice of linguistic means but in their very arrangement, or composition. E.g. a lecture, a friendly letter, a newspaper article, a short story, etc.3. An individual manner of expression determined by personal factors, such as educational background, professionalor occupational experience, sense of humour, age, etc.

E.g. a personal style of communication, the style of Pushkin's early poetry.The above definitions correlate with the following postulates.A. Style involves knowledge about extra linguistic factors, i.e. the range of communicative situations (spheres)in which a language can be normatively used to perform a certain function, or achieve a certain purpose of communication.B. Style is always the result of the appropriate range of language means that deliver our message effectively. Thus,style belongs to the plane of expression and not to the plane of content because one and the same message can beverbalized in different contents.A and B postulates centre around the notion of norm.

On the one hand, we may equalize it with neutrality. On the other, the norm is dictated by the social roles of the participants of communication. We use different norms speaking with elderly people and our peers, teachers andstudents, giving an interview or testimony in court. This brings us to the conclusion that norms are flexible and varied.In Soviet and Post Soviet linguistic schools the uses of language in numerous situations are studied by the theory of functional styles, or functional stylistics (V.V. Vinogradov, M.N. Koina; I.V. Arnold, N.M. Razinkina and others).The term comes right from the consideration of such notions as function (the purpose or aim of communication),

sphere of communication and norm in their relation to speech varieties and their classification.C. Style is not only a wide-range phenomenon. Each individual has a different style, a variety of the language that isas personally distinctive as a fingerprint, i.e. a distinctive accent or dialect.It reflects an inclination for certain kinds of metaphor, the use of habitual words and turns of phrase, or certain kindsof grammatical constructions. Such habitual idiosyncrasy in the use of language is typical of any individual and iscalled idiolect.When individuality in the use of the language is considered a matter of particular importance, worthy of study inlinguistic and literary science, and deals with the peculiarities of a writer's individual manner of using languagemeans to achieve the effect he desires, we speak of the individual (personal, authorial) style of a writer or poet. Thischoice is more deliberate than simply habitual. E.g. Shakespeare's style, Faulkner's style.In other traditions language (speech) varieties are studied as sublanguages, registers, types of discourse .

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Today functional stylistics faces a number of problems that have no definite and final solutions. Here belong1) the discrimination between the approaches to the study of speech varieties by functional stylistics and discourseanalysis;2) the basic criteria for the separation of functional styles;3) the systematization (classification) of functional styles;4) the possibility of isolation as functional styles the colloquial variety and imaginative literature.There are a great many classifications of language varieties that use various criteria. There is also a lot of dispute onthe number of styles in a language.Style may be official or scientific, neutral or low colloquial, archaic or pompous, or a combination of those.Besides, styles are not homogeneous and fall into several variants all having some central point of resemblance.They are called substyles , that later fall into genres, and change in quality and quantity.Speaking of functional styles (FS), I.V. Arnold suggested a classification of FS according the basic linguisticfunction they fulfill.She started with a kind of abstract notion termed neutral style . It has no distinctive features and its function is to

provide a standard background for the other styles. The other 'real' styles can be broadly divided into two groups:1. Colloquial styles: literary colloquial; familiar colloquial; low colloquial.2. Literary bookish styles: a) scientific ; b) official documents; c) publicist (newspaper); d) oratorical; e) poetic(lofty-poetical).The function of colloquial styles is intercourse ; of scientific prose and official documents information ; publicist(newspaper), oratorical and poetic (lofty-poetical) influence .I.R. Galperin in his definition of a functional style stresses the aim of communication. According to him, a FS is asystem of interrelated language means which serves a definite aim in communication.In English he distinguishes 5 functional styles and suggests their subdivision into substyles:1. The belles-lettres style:a) poetry; b) emotive (imaginative) prose or fiction; c) the language of the drama.2. The publicist style:a) oratory and speeches; b) the essay; c) articles.3. The newspaper style : a) brief news items; b) headlines; c) advertisements and announcements; d) theeditorial.4. The scientific prose style: a) exact sciences; b) humanitarian sciences;c) popular science prose.5. The style of official documents: a) business documents; b) legal documents; c) the language of diplomacy; d)military documents

I.R. Galperin includes in his classification only the written varieties of the language. (With the only exception for such spoken varieties of publicist style as oratory and speeches).Thus, he recognizes no colloquial style. The spoken language, according to him, by its very nature is spontaneous,momentary, fleeting. I.R. Galperins position about the belles-lettres style (esp. the epithets emotive or imaginative for prose) is not shared by all.On the one hand, it is true that many works of fiction may contain emotionally coloured passages that are alsomarked by special image-creating devices.At the same time, realistic writers often resort to other techniques, i.e. they give an actual account of external events,short enumerations of everyday happenings, of the routine of social life; they reproduce the direct speech of their characters; they quote extensive extracts from legal documents, texts of telegrams, slogans, headlines of daily papers,advertisements, private letters (invented or authentic) without any evident expression of their emotions.To put it briefly, we can encounter practically every speech variety in books of fiction. Besides, works of literature

are always the reflection of the authors individual manner. They are the signs of the lack of specificity. E.g. Hemingways iceburg or telegraphic manner.Y.M. Skrebnev uses the term sublanguages in the meaning that is usu. attributed to functional styles.According to him, style is a specificity of sublanguage, and any sublanguage hasa) absolutely specific linguistic items that belong to one sublanguage only (and actually make it), e.g. metre in

poetry; b) relatively specific linguistic items applicable in several sublanguages, e.g. the use of neologisms in scientific prose and newspapers; andc) non-specific linguistic items common to all sublanguages.Specific language items are comparatively few and they become styleforming features or style markers . From thelinguistic viewpoint they may be found in lexis, phraseology, grammar and phonetics.Y. M. Skrebnev suggests the most unconventional viewpoint on the number of styles.He maintains that the number of sublanguages and their styles is infinite (if we include individual styles, stylesmentioned in linguistic literature such as telegraphic, oratorical, reference book, Shakespearean, or the style of literature on electronics, computer language, etc.).Y.M. Skrebnev rejects the idea of the complete classification of styles and believes that there are as manysublanguages with their styles as you choose (including idiolects).

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The scholar recognizes only the two major varieties of language use formal and informal (or officialese (devoidof any indication of private emotions and of any trace of familiarity) and colloquial (familiar, unceremonious)).The same does his follower V.A. Maltzev.V.L. Naers classification includes seven styles:1) official documents,2) scientific papers,3) professional-technical,4) newspaper,5) publicist,6) belles-lettres,7) religious texts.One of his merits consists in the fact that he was the only one among Soviet scholars to recognize the religiousvariety. D. Crystal , a renowned British scholar, recognizes 5 language varieties:Regional varieties that reflect the geographical origin of the language used by the speaker.

E.g. Canadian English, Cockney, etc.Social varieties that testify to the speaker's family, education, social status background. E.g. upper class and non-upper class, a political activist, a Times reader, etc.Occupational varieties that include the following types:

religious English;scientific English;legal English;

plain (official) English;

political English;news media English which is further subdivided into: newsreporting, journalistics,

broadcasting, sportscommentary, advertising.Restricted English includes uses of language when little or no linguistic variation is permitted.They appear both in domestic and occupational spheres and include the following types:

knitwrite in books on knitting;cookwrite in recipe books;congratulatory messages;newspaper announcements;newspaper headlines;sportscasting scores;

airspeak, the language of air traffic control;emergencyspeak, the language for the emergency services;e-mail variety, etc.

Individual variation involves types of speech that arise from the speaker's personal features, i.e. physique, interests, personality, experience, etc.I.R. Galperins classification of substyles of the official documents style includes

diplomatic documents, business documents,legal documents, andmilitary documents.

Y.M. Skrebnev adds here personal documents (certificates, diplomas, etc.)

The main aim of this type of communication is to reach an agreement and to state the conditions binding two parties(the state and the citizen, the citizen and the citizen, the state and the state) in an undertaking .Generally objective, concrete, unemotional and impersonal, the style of official documents presupposes

adherence to a special compositional design (coded graphical layout, clear-cut subdivision into units of information, logical arrangement of these units, order-of-priority organization of content and information);

prevalence of stylistically neutral (used in direct meaning) and bookish vocabulary ;the use of terminology and officialese vocabulary (cliches, opening and conclusive phrases);the use of conventional and archaic forms and words;the use of foreign words (especially Latin and French);the encoded character of the language reflected in the use of abbreviations, contractions, conventional

symbols , e.g. M.P. , Ltd (limited), $;absence of tropes and evaluative or emotionally coloured vocabulary;a general syntactical mode of combining several pronouncements into one sentence;an accurate use of punctuation, etc.

The Style of Diplomatic DocumentsTo the style of diplomatic documents belong nearly 60 varieties: treaties, agreements, conventions, declarations,

protocols, exchange of notes, memoranda, acts, engagements, regulations, amendments, terms of , minutes, etc.The most striking feature of the composition of such documents that consists of

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the preamble or preliminary recitals, setting out the names of parties (Heads of State, States or Governments), the purpose for which the document was concluded, the resolve of the parties to enter into it, andthe names and designations of the plenipotentionaries (i.e. envoys or commissioners appointed to act according totheir own discretion);

the substantive clauses, sometimes known as the dispositive provisions or the body;the formal (or final) clauses dealing with technical or formal points or matters relative to the application or

entry into force of the document. Usually such clauses relate separately to the following: the date of the documents,the mode of acceptance, opening of the documents for signature, entry into force, duration, etc;

formal acknowledgment of signature;

signature by the plenipotentiaries.Hardly any deviation is possible here.Among other traits can be named:The use of special terms . Diplomatic terminology includes terms proper (e.g. to accredit, dispatch, order of

precedence, negotiator, ambassador), and words used in the sphere of international relations in some specialmeaning ( e.g. instrument = document, article = part of a treaty, clause = part of a document, party = either side in acontract, provision = statement).1. The use of non-assimilated borrowings , mainly from Latin and French ( e.g. note verbale, bona fide, statusquo, force majeure, persona non grata, etc).They are especially relevant as for many centuries Latin and French remained dominant languages in diplomaticrelations and all diplomatic documents were composed in Latin and French as late as the 16th century. Suffice it tosay that out of 59 types of diplomatic documents 45 names are of Latin origin, 2 of French, 1 of Greek and only 2(settlement and bond) are home-made, proper English.

3. Frequent numbering of units.4. A lot of obsolete and archaic words (e.g. hereto, henceforth, thereon, whereof, whereupon) that clearly show thatthe style of diplomatic documents is very conservative .5. In syntax it is the predominance of simple, extended sentences and complex sentences, the preference for theseparation of the subject and the predicate, the abundance of homogeneous members. The reason for that lies,

perhaps, in the necessity of the transparence of meaning, elimination of ambiguity, and avoidance of the wronginterpretation of the document, which may cause undesirable consequences.The Style of Business DocumentsThis term implies commercial correspondence. Business documents and letters are characterized by a high level of standardization. They are in fact a combination of ready-made forms and stereotyped phrases as lucidity and conciseness are very important.Formal usage is observed in everything, including the proper variety of direct address, as well as what is called thecomplimentary clause. Besides, there must be nothing redundant and superfluous ( economy of linguistic units ) inthe text, nothing that would disclose subjective emotions, no strong expressions betraying passion or vehemence.Business letters are mostly very short. I.R. Galperin remarks that they hardly ever exceed 8 or 10 lines.The rules of composition are very strict.

The heading of the letter gives the address of the writer and the date (in the upper right-hand corner); next(lower, in the left-hand corner) the name of the addressee and his (her) address.

Then follow the polite form of direct address.The text proper is followed by the complimentary clause and, finally, the signature of the sender.

The usual way of address is Dear Sir(s), Dear Madam , Gentlemen when addressing more than one individual, Dear Mr. Smith (Mrs. Brown) if the person addressed to is known.A personal name is practically never used in the direct address of a business letter.

In correspondence with strangers, it is usual to change from Dear Sir to Dear Mr. Smith after the first one or twoletters have been exchanged.Yours faithfully, Yours truly, We remain your obedient servants, Respectfully (never used by a person of equal

position) are the usual ending for all business letters. Yours sincerely is the usual ending for letters to acquaintances.It is known that, historically, openings and closing formulas were functional necessities: in a letter the writer wasmorally obliged to emphasize his submissiveness and humbleness, his inferiority to the person addressed.The body of the business document (letter) should be concise and to the point, without unnecessary information or explanation, written in short, direct sentences.There are many standard formulas used:

to confirm the receiving of a letter (document): We have received your letter of , We thank you for your letter dated , In reply to your letter of , We acknowledge the receipt of , We duly received your letter ;

to express request : Please, inform us , We shall (should) be oblige if you , We shall (should) appreciateit if you , We (would) ask you to ;

to refer to a letter : With reference to your letter of , Referring to , We refer to ;to apologise: We regret that , Unfortunately, we , We beg to , We offer our sincere apologies for ;

to thank for : We acknowledge with thanks , We thank you , We appreciate etc.All these formulas contribute to fostering such features as precision, exactness and help to avoid ambiguity .At the same time they simplify and quicken business correspondence.

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And it is common knowledge that business letters dealing with trade or finances abound in special terms, e.g. theabbreviation inst. stands for instant and means of the current month; advance payment, insurance, wholesale, etc.The Style of Legal DocumentsThe law includes many different activities from the drawing up of statutes to the contracting of agreement betweenindividuals (conveyancing property, drawing up wills), all of which need to be recorded in a written form and areconnected with the imposition and the conferring of rights.Of all the language styles this one is perhaps the least communicative as it is designed not so much to enlightenlanguage-users at large but to allow one expert to register information for scrutiny by another.In general, legal documents are supposed to say exactly what is meant. They are highly formulaic, accept noinformality or spontaneity , and often contain the precise copying from the book .

Long lines in legal documents extend from margin to margin with practically no spacing and punctuation todefeat fraudulent deletions and additions.

The sentences in a document are usually very long and an entire document can be composed of a singlesentence and so there was no much help from punctuation to understand it.

Besides, since punctuation marks are used mostly as a prompt for oral reading of a text and legal documentsare composed for reading, they mostly do without them .

One more reason for avoiding punctuation is to prevent any possible forgery by changing the places of punctuation marks.

Capitalization was chosen as a means of revealing structure, content and logical progression to make up for the lack of punctuation.

Lexically legal documents contain terms as well as many archaisms, borrowings from French and Latin

which add a touch of formality.Legal English contains only complete major sentences , mostly in the form of statements.

Y.M. Skrebnev believes that in many respects, the sphere discussed is inseparable from what is outlined asDiplomacy and Statesmanship, Law used as a generic term as it includes International Law (and Diplomacy) as avery significant component.The parties in the court, i.e. the prosecution and the defence, use legal terminology (e.g. testimony, aggravatedlarceny), employ the traditionally accepted formulas (e.g. the objection is either sustained (i.e. pronounced valid)

by the judge, or overruled (which means declared invalid);In the USA the prosecutor speaks in the name of the people of the USA, and refers to himself also as the People . InBritain, it is the Queen in whose name the defendant is accused of the crime committed.Military documents may be of different types plans, estimates, summaries, surveys, evaluation, situation maps,orders. All of them have a certain composition (an operating order has a heading, a body and an ending).Military documents are characterized by their brevity, clarity, precision, non-admittance of many interpretations .The main purpose of making them brief is to economize time necessary for their composition, handling of messages.Military vocabulary includes terms (e.g. classification, intelligence), which helps to avoid ambiguity andmisinterpretation; special military phraseology (e.g. to hold a position, to lift fire), abbreviations, symbols .

Metaphors used serve as code signs and have no aesthetic value. There are also many proper names both personaland geographical. Abbreviations are abundant too and their number may be up to 50-60 percent of the text ( e.g. Co company, SW south west, w/o without; terms: to attack, order; phraseological units: to hold a position, to provide

protection, to lift fire).Its morphological peculiarities are

rare use of the possessive case,omission of articles,

use of two moods only imperative and indicative,use of two tenses the present ind. and the past ind.

Syntactically military documents include mostly simple short sentences nominal and verbal one-member. As a rulethere are no exclamatory and negative sentences.4. Here belong manuals, monographs, articles, presentations, theses, dissertations, etc.The aim of the scientific prose style (Latin scire to know) is to prove a hypothesis, to create new concepts, todisclose the internal laws of existence, development, relations between different phenomena, etc.It, therefore, conditions the essence of scientific prose which is objective, precise, lucid, and unemotional, devoid of any individuality; there is also a striving for the most generalized form of expression and logicality.The character of scientific writing is reflected in following most frequent peculiarities:1. The use of terms of Latin, Greek, Arabic origin. They are self-sufficient and self-explanatory words whichmake a more direct reference to something than a descriptive explanation, a non-term.Terms can be specific ( e.g. metaphor) and general scientific ( e.g. postulate).Besides, a new term in scientific prose is generally followed (or preceded) by an explanation.2. The use of numerous neologisms also followed by an explanation.3. The extensive use of bookish words and words that render abstract notions, e.g. nomenclature, algorithm.4. The restricted use of expressive means and stylistic devices. The majority of SDs are trite ( e.g. a branch of science) and are used for concretization and explanation.

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The general vocabulary employed in scientific prose bears its direct (or primary logical) referential meaning.Though emotiveness is not entirely excluded from scientific prose.There may be statements which are reinforced due to some strong belief by some emotionally coloured words,interjections, expressive phraseology or a metaphor.5. The use of a developed and varied set of connective phrases and words (showing order, result, contrast) thatsecure the logical sequence of thought and argumentation, or causal connection of utterances (causal link), e.g. thus,consequently, on the contrary.6. The use of three major types of sentence patterns that also secure the causal connection:

postulatory (self-evident and axiomatic pronouncements set at the beginning as a hypothesis, a scientificconjecture must be based on facts already known, on facts systematized and defined);

argumentative (in the central part), and formulative (in the conclusion).

7. The use of quotations and references to ground the idea .These sometimes occupy as much as half a page and have a definite compositional pattern.In particular, they contain the name of the writer referred to, the title of the work quoted, the publishing house, the

place and year it was published, and the page of the excerpt quoted or referred to.8. The use of digressions to debate or support a certain point, often placed in foot-notes .9. The frequent use of parentheses (explanatory or qualifying remarks) introduced by brackets, commas or a dash.10. The definite structural arrangement division into sections and subsections each carrying its title (and disclosinga certain aspect of the topic in question).11. The use of 'the author's we' instead of I (the sign of the authors modesty, his intention to avoid subjectivity, and

him speaking on behalf of other scholars of the field).12. The resort to complicated syntax : the use of lengthy sentences with subordinate clauses.13. The preservation of the direct word order and avoidance of ellipsis (even the usual omission of conjunctions likethat and which ).14. The preference of attribute-noun chains to of-phrases.15. The impersonality is mainly revealed in the frequent use of

passive constructions,it-sentences,non-finite verb forms (participial, gerundial and infinitive complexes),various generalizations and abstractions, e.g. The linguist would say here that ( = The linguist is supposed to

say here that )The passive constructions often used in the prose of the exact science are less frequent in the humanities as the dataand methods of investigation applied in the humanities are less objective.In the humanities some seemingly well-known pronouncement may be and is often subjected to re-evaluation,whereas in the exact sciences much can be accepted without question and, therefore, needs no comment.So, the two substyles differ in the degree of objectivity. Besides, scientific proper and technical texts ( e.g. mathematics) are more formalized due to the prevalence of formulae, tables, diagrams supplied with concisecommentary phrases.Humanitarian texts ( e.g. history, philosophy) are based on descriptive narrations supplied with exposition,argumentation and interpretation and thus, turn out to be less formal.Another ground for differentiation of the substyles is the addressee factor as it is he/she who predetermines thearrangement of the texts.Purely scientific texts address experts who are accustomed to the high degree of formality, need no explanations and

easily decode terms.Popular scientific texts address the audience at large, anyone whom the topic may concern or interest.That is why, even containing many of the enumerated styleforming features, popular scientific texts abound in

explanations that accompany terms, andillustrative examples from everyday life.

In general, they are lowered in style , more digestible and chatty which is seen through a wider use of expressive means andcolloquial elements.

So, they stand close to the language of everyday speech and analytical journalistic texts.

5. Y.M. Skrebnev states that by colloquial (i.e. with a tinge of familiarity, relaxed without being offensive) is meantwhat is only slightly lower than neutral forms of speech that are used by people when they do not mean to be rude,sarcastic or witty, when they feel at ease, do not keep in minds social obligations and conventions, do not think of how they should express themselves, only of what they intend to say.The term colloquial speech is applied by researchers to careless, unconventional, free-and-easy everyday speech of only those who are well educated and can speak 'correct' literary English perfectly well, whenever it is necessary.Uneducated or semi-educated speakers understand the literary language, but cannot actively use it themselves,making inadmissible mistakes, mostly in pronunciation, often in grammar and in choice of words.

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Their language is not colloquial, it is illiterate.Some erroneously say that colloquial speech is just oral speech or the same as dialogue.E.g. lectures, a TV announcer's speech, or a student's answers at the exams are close to bookish forms, differinggreatly from everyday colloquial speech.The dialogue of an Ambassador with a Foreign Secretary or of an attorney with a defendant are not colloquial(provided the defendant is an educated person) at all.Generally, we may state that the colloquial style is a peculiar subsystem of the English language.It exists in written and spoken varieties : dialogue, monologue, personal letters, diaries, various notes, etc.

Prepared types of texts may be thought out, have a logical composition, and are to a certain extent determined byconventional forms (e.g. letters, presentations, articles, interviews).Its spontaneous types have a loose structure and sometimes a relative coherence.When written, the function of the colloquial style is to render the specificity of everyday conversation and informal

speech . It also penetrates other speech varieties (e.g. the belles lettres works, journalistic articles, etc.) to realisticallyreproduce the typical features of the colloquial speech.Though, when we come across colloquial elements in the written forms of speech (e.g. plays, novels, stories,

journalistic articles, etc.) we always see that most of the loose ends of live conversation are thoroughly trimmed,though the degree of such stylization is varying.The specific features of the colloquial language are:1) the spontaneous character of communication;2) the private character of communication;3) face-to-faceness or immediacy.These features are reflected in the following peculiarities:

Prefabrication The colloquial style has a great amount of ready-made formulae and clichs or stereotyped unitswhich ease a spontaneous conversation.Here belong social phrases like greetings (e.g. hello, how are you?), thanks and responses (e.g. thank for , not atall , a pleasure, etc.), recognized colloquial collocations (e.g. that friend of yours).Creativity E.A. Zemskaya concludes that the colloquial system displays a greater freedom of choice and creationthan do literary spheres.As we have no time to polish our conversation deliberately, we can make corrections, thus, there are manyhesitations, false starts, loose ends in grammar.At the same time such spontaneity fosters our imagination to ascribe implications to words and create new words for the situation (nonce-words (occasional coinages) formed on morphological and phonetic analogy with other nominalwords (e.g. baldish, moody, okeydoke)). Strong emotional colouring of lingual units often typical of spoken

language lies on the boundary between prefabrication and creativity.If it is rendered by the use of genuine hyperboles, epithets, etc., it reflects creativity.The use of evaluative suffixes (e.g. deary, doggie, duckie), evaluative vocabulary, grammar forms for emphatic

purposes (e.g. progressive verb forms to express emotions of irritation, anger, etc.), idioms, trite metaphors, similesand figures of speech are the signals of prefabrication.CompressionThe colloquial speech is usually economical and laconic. It is reflected in the following language phenomena:

contracted forms, abbreviations and clipped words (e.g. ads for advertisements, ice for ice-cream,TV for television, CD for compact disk; weve for we have);words of broad semantics with the meaning specified by the situation (e.g. do, get, fix, nice, some,one).

extensive use of phrasal verbs (e.g. let smb down, put up with); simplicity of syntax.

olloquial sentences are seldom long and practically never elaborately structured .Long sentences are rarely used in colloquial informal communication, as the speaker doesnt want to lose the threadof his own thought. Isolated (independent) utterances are often elliptical and may consist of one word.It is caused bythe economy of effort and the quick tempo of speech.Colloquial syntax demonstrates numerous cases of communicativetransposition (e.g. a word combination, not comprising a verb in theimperative mood, performs the function of imperative sentence: Tea. For two. Out here. (Shaw))Moreover, in complex sentences asyndetic coordination is the norm. Coordination is used more often thansubordination.

Redundancy Of little informative force, although stylistically significant, are the following elements reflecting this tendency:colloquial interjections and exclamations (e.g. wow, hey, there, ahoy, Dear me, My God, Goodness, well, why, now,oh); expletives time - or gap-fillers (intensifiers and parenthetic elements) (e.g. well, you know, I say, let me see, sortof, awfully, absolutely, definitely, indeed, sure, if I may say so)). the pleonastic use of pronouns (syntactic tautology) (e.g. Bolivar, hes plenty tired (OHenry)). senseless repetition of words and phrases (e.g. I know this, I do)

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Emphatic intonation as a powerful semantic and stylistic instrument capable to render subtle nuances of thought andfeeling. Vocabulary is a noticeable aspect of the colloquial style.It may be subdivided intoa) literary,

b) familiar, andc) low colloquial layers.Besides the common traits of the colloquial style, its three major substyles literary colloquial, familiar colloquial (unceremonious colloquial) and low colloquial (popular speech) differ in some of the aspects.Literary colloquial style

Phonetic features: standard pronunciation in compliance with the national norm, enunciation. Morphological features: the use of regular morphological features, prevalence of active and finite verb forms.Syntactical features : syntactically correct utterances compliant with the literary norm.

Lexical features: the use of the basic stock of communicative vocabulary (stylistically neutral elements; the use of a wide range of vocabulary strata in accordance with the register of communication and participants'roles: formal and informal, neutral and bookish, terms and foreign words;

the use of etiquette language and conversational formulas (e.g. Nice to see you, my pleasure, on behalf of, etc); avoidance of slang, vulgarisms, dialect words, jargon.Familiar colloquial styleIt is mainly represented in spoken variety.

Phonetic features : casual, often careless pronunciation, indistinct articulation, the use of deviant forms (e.g. gonna instead of going to, whatcha instead of what do you , dunno instead of don't know ) and onomatopoeic words (e.g. whoosh, hush, yum,yak).

unrestrained emotions find their expression in speaking in a loud voice, in emphatic articulation of importantsegments of the utterance (italics and dividing into syllables in writing) (e.g. I have done it. Thousands of times!)Monotonous speech may imply anything.

Morphological features: neglect or careless use of the required verb forms, omission of auxiliaries, confusing of forms of person, number and case (e.g. we was, she don't say), but those are examples of rather popular ungrammatical than colloquialEnglish.

instances of morphemic implication dropping morphemes (e.g. real good for really good; the word pretty used

adverbially (e.g. pretty awful); the use of emphasizing forms in the continuous aspect (e.g. But I'm thinking he isn't coming after all; I'm beinghorrible.)

the use of the emphasizing do (e.g. He did promise) multiple negation which is qualified by grammarians as inadmissible, i.e. subcolloquial.Syntactical features:

the use of echo questions, repetitions of various kinds (e.g. parallel structures, repeated use of the conjunctionand);

pseudo-interrogations formed by non-interrogative sentences. Lexical features : combination of neutral, familiar and low colloquial vocabulary (including slang, vulgar and taboo words); mixture of curse words and euphemisms (e.g. damn; colourful for an eccentric person);

tautological substitution of personal pronouns and names by other nouns (e.g. you-baby, Johnny-boy); extensive use of collocations and phrasal verbs instead of neutral and literary equivalents (e.g. to turn for to go to bed).Low colloquial style is characterized by the use of the deviant (non-norminative) forms (e.g. the use of the loweredvocabulary (jargon, slang), neglect of the grammar rules, etc.)The epithet (Gk. epitheton addition) is an attributive (or adverbial) word or phrase used to characterise an object,i.e. to express an individual perception and evaluation of its features and properties. E.g. a giant moustache, a

pessimistic rumble. (Priestley)I.V. Arnold believes that it is a lexico-syntactical trope for it is usu. materialized in a sentence as an attribute, anadverbial modifier or a predicative .The epithet can be expressed by an adjective, an adverb, a noun, a participle, etc. E.g. What have I done now? she

began indignantly (an adv., an adv. mod.). (Priestley)The epithet differs from the logical (= descriptive) attribute , which shows the inherent property of a thing, thus

being objective and non-evaluating. E.g. a middle-aged man, bluey-green walls. (Priestley)Compositionally epithets fall into:

simple or word-epithets, e.g. Happiness for him had a feminine shape. (Priestley)compound epithets (formed by compound adjectives), e.g. a crescent-shaped object; wild-looking youngfellows (Priestley).

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two-step epithets (supplied with intensifiers), e.g. fatally second class public school (Priestley) phrase epithets (also called hyphenated epithets when written through a hyphen), e.g. Now he was practically a four-hundred-a-year man instead of a three-hundred-a-year man. (Priestley) reversed epithets ( composed of two nouns linked by an of-phrase where the attributive relation between themembers of the combination shows that the SD is an epithet), e.g. a thick figure of a man (Priestley)

According to I.R. Galperin, semantically epithets may be divided into 2 groups:associated underlining the essential feature of the object, e.g. tremendous moustache. (Priestley)unassociated with the noun, unexpected and striking, e.g. the inhuman drawing-room. (Priestley)

V.A. Kukharenko splits epithets into:

fixed (trite, traditional, conventional, standing), e.g. a devoted friend, magic weather.figurative (transferred) that can be metaphorical, metonymic, ironical, etc ., e.g. bushy eyebrows. (Priestley)From the point of view of the distribution of epithets in the sentence, there can be distinguished a string of epithets whose function is to give a multisided characterization. E.g. That she was not really a creature of that world onlymade her more fascinating, mysterious, romantic (Priestley)Oxymoron (Gk. oxus sharp + moros foolish) is a combination of words that express two diametrically oppositenotions.

E.g. Her cheerfulness was the cheerfulness of despair . (Maugham) Oxymoron ascribes some feature to an object or phenomenon incompatible with it, that is why one of its twocomponents can be said to be used figuratively.

E.g. loving hate! ( Shakespeare)Moreover, in oxymoron the logical meaning prevails over the emotive but the emotive is the result of the clash

between the logical and illogical. E.g. the famous drama by L. Tolstoy The Living Corpse.

Semantically an oxymoron can be of two types:evident (composed of dictionary antonyms), e.g. beautifully ugly; and

non-evident (composed of words that render mutually exclusive notions and become contextual antonyms),e.g. jolly starvation.

Structurally oxymora can be formed by an attributive combination (e.g. beautiful horror) or an adverbial wordcombination (e.g. to swear pleasingly, to be proudly weak).To less frequent types belong combinations like ugly in a pleasant way , a sweet kind of torture, etc.Close to oxymoron stands paradox, a statement that is self-contradictory or absurd on the surface.

E.g. The best way to get rid of a temptation is yield to it. (O. Wilde)Why do nice women marry dull men?

Because intelligent men wont marry nice women. (Maugham)There are a lot of cases of trite oxymora.

E.g. active leisure; terribly nice (the oxymoronic character has been lost for terribly serves as a mere intensifier, asynonym of the neutral very ).Function. In spite of the outward illogicality oxymoronic collocations are full of sober sense: they disclose seemingor genuine discrepancies of objects and phenomena as well as the contradictions of life.Sometimes they create an ironic or comical effect. E.g. the noble family of swine. (Golding)

Antonomasia (Gk. antonomasia 'naming instead; antonomazein 'to name differently) is usu. the substitutionof the of the proper name of a person for another name in order to characterize him/her.

E.g. You will laugh at me. I am a materialist, and I am a gross, fat man Falstaff , eh? the lyrical mode does not

become me (Maugham) Casanova (for a ladies' man ), a Cicero (for an orator).Function: characterization through name, creation of humorous atmosphere.There exist 2 major types of antonomasia:

A proper name is used as a common noun. Here belong: metaphorical antonomasia (when the proper name of a famous personage is applied to a person whosecharacteristic features resemble those of the well-known original or prototype).

E.g. I dont pretend to be a great painter, he said. Im not a Michael Angelo , no, but I have something ...(Maugham); and

metonymic antonomasia (observed in cases when a personal name stands for something connected with the bearer of that name).

E.g. This is my real Goya. (Galsworthy)I am fond of Dickens (= of Dickens' books).

The use of such antonomastic words demonstrates how proper nouns acquire new, logical meanings:Some of them are still spelt with capital letters, others are already spelt with small letters.

E.g. The word hooligan going back to a proper name of a person known for his lawless behavior.They can be used with an a- article.

E.g. She was beginning to like middle-aged men but really nice attractive ones had hardly morethan an occasional faint gleam of interest to spare for a Miss Matfield . (Priestley)

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They can be used in the plural. E.g. It was a pity that silly young men did not amuse her, for there were plenty of Ivors about, whereas there

were very few real grown-up men about . (Priestley)A common noun acquires a nominal meaning and is used as a proper noun.

In such usages, which are also termed speaking or telling names , token or tell-tale names , the common noun origin isstill clearly perceived.

E.g. Shark Dodson, Mr. Cheeky.Like the rest of tropes antonomasia can also be trite (traditional), e.g. a traitor is referred to as Brutus , and genuine(contextual), e.g. Mrs. Cross.Simile (Latin similis similar) is an explicit statement of partial identity (affinity, likeness, similarity) of two objects

belonging to entirely different classes of things. E.g. She felt like a shivering and bruised ant. (Priestley)The word explicit distinguishes simile from metaphor where comparison is not stated clearly:

Metaphor is a renaming where a word, a phrase, a sentence, etc. is used instead of another; simile alwaysemploys two names of two separate objects.Simile always contains at least one more component part a word or a word-group signalizing the idea of

juxtaposition and comparison.The formal signals of simile are mostly:

link words as, like establishing the analogy categorically. E.g. Her arms were like legs of mutton, her breasts like giant cabbages; her face, broad and fleshy, gave you animpression of almost indecent nakedness, and vast chin succeeded to vast chin. (Maugham)

link words as though, as if, than establishing but a slight similarity. E.g. It was as though he had become aware of the soul of the universe and were compelled to express it. (Maugham)

lexical and morphological means that establish resemblance, such as to resemble , to remind of , in a way or verbal phrases to bear a resemblance to , to have a look of ; suffixes - ish, - like, - some, -y , etc.

E.g. He reminded you of those jolly, fat merchants that Rubens painted . (Maugham) I believe youre right, Sandycroft said Mr. Smeeth, with the air of a dutiful cross-talk comedian. (Priestley)

the place where Strickland lived had the beauty of the Garden of Eden . (Maugham)He had a small, still babyish mouth (Priestley).

The function of simile is specifying and illustrating.There exist a lot of trite (hackneyed, familiar) similes in the English language.

E.g. as clear as a day, as black as a crow, to behave like a lamb.Like metaphors similes can be sustained or extended .

E.g. Her tranquillity was like the sullen calm that broods over an island which has been swept by a hurricane.(Maugham)Simile must be distinguished from logical comparison or comparison proper , which brings together two things

belonging to one class, i.e. deals with what is logically comparable, while in simile there is usu. a bit of fantasy. E.g. He is as clever as his father (the same class of objects human beings).Hyperbole (Gk. hyperbol excess) is a deliberate exaggeration or overstatement of a feature (quantity, size, etc.)essential to the object.

E.g. I am dying of hunger (exaggerated feelings).Hyperbole differs from a mere exaggeration intended to be understood as an exaggeration.Y.M. Skrebnev points out there must be something illogical in hyperbole, something unreal, impossible, contrary tocommon sense.

E.g. There were several brigades of Santa Clauses , tons and tons of imitation holly , and enough cotton wool tokeep the hospitals supplied for the next ten years. (Priestley)The logical and psychological opposite of hyperbole is meiosis (Gk. a lessening from meioun to diminish).It is lessening, weakening, reducing the real characteristics of the object of speech to mean the opposite of what issaid.

E.g. It will cost you a pretty penny (a large sum of money is implimed).Meiosis should not be confused with a variant of hyperbole, i.e. understatement : when the object spoken about isreally small or insignificant, and the expression used to denote it strengthens, exaggerates and emphasizes itssmallness and insignificance. E.g. a cat-size pony (= a very small pony), a drop of water (= not much water).Meiosis is typical of the British manner of speech, in opposition to American English in which hyperbole seems to

prevail.

E.g. An English girl and an American girl climb a steep mountain in the Alps. The English girl says: It's a bitexhausting, isn't it? The American echoes: Why, sure, it's terrific!!!Function. Hyperbole adds dramatic force or attributes a humorous or even ironical sounding.Many hyperboles have become trite.E.g. A thousand pardons.

I've told you forty times.Haven't seen you for ages!

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Periphrasis (Gr. periphrazein to express in a roundabout way: peri round + phrazein to show, to say) is aroundabout way used to name some object or phenomenon. The other term for it is circumlocution.

E.g. the attacking force (for a gang, a band). (OHenry)Periphrasis is a description of what could be named directly by a possible shorter and plainer wording;it is naming the characteristic features of the object instead of naming the object itself.Thus, it is akin to metonymy.The difference between periphrasis and metonymy is that the former is always a phrase, i.e. consists of more thanone word.

E.g. a thriller (for an exciting book) metonymy,two hundred pages of blood-curdling narrative (for an exciting book) periphrasis.

Periphrases can also be genuine (real, artistic, etc.) , and trite (traditional, stereotyped, dictionary, etc.) . E.g. instruments of pleasure (for women). (Maugham)The stylistic effect (function) of periphrasis varies from elevation to humour and irony.Periphrasis can be divided into 3 types:

Logical periphrasis based on inherent properties of a thing. E.g. He looked again at the poor dead thing that had been man , and then he started back in dismay. (Maugham)

Figurative (imaginative) periphrasis based on imagery (usu. a metaphor or a metonymy). E.g. a chevalier of fortune or chevalier of industry (for all sorts of adventurers and swindlers; for bandits).(OHenry),

Euphemistic periphrasis.The origin of the term 'euphemism' discloses the aim of the device very clearly, i.e. speaking well (Gr. eu well

+ pheme speaking).It implies the social practice of replacing the tabooed words or coarse expressions by conventionally more acceptablewords and phrases that seem less categoric, milder, more harmless (or at least less offensive).

E.g. the word to die has the following euphemisms: to pass away, to expire, to be no more, to depart, to join themajority, to be gone, to kick the bucket, to give up the ghost, to go west .Euphemism is a term of speech ethics that is sometimes figuratively called a whitewashing device.Euphemisms may be divided into several groups according to their spheres of application.The most recognized types are the following: 1) religious, 2) moral, 3) medical, and 4) parliamentary and political. E.g . a garbage man is today substituted for a sanitation worker ;

having sexual intercourse with making love to, sleeping with ;crippled and handicapped disabled ;undeveloped countries developing.

The abundant use of periphrastic and euphemistic expressions is a sign of periphrastic or euphemistic style of expression which at times becomes a norm and a requirement.

E.g . a colourful personality (for an excessively eccentric person).Set expressions (clichs, proverbs, epigrams, quotations, allusions, etc.) are treated in different ways in lexicologyand stylistics. Lexicology studies the character of a set expression and its components, its etymology and meaning.Stylistics is interested in the communicative effect and expressive power of a set phrase.Besides, when a set expression is used in its unaltered form it can be qualified as an expressive means of thelanguage; when used in a modified variant it assumes one of the features of a SD, it acquires a stylistic meaning,though not becoming a SD.A clich is a word or expression which has lost its originality or effectiveness because it has been used too often.Practically all tropes tend to lose their imaginative power, or part of their imaginative power thus becoming trite, butoften they retain their emotional colouring.In other words, a clich is a kind of stable word combination which has become familiar, has won generalrecognition and which by its iteration has been accepted as a unit of the language. E.g . rosy dreams of youth,deceptively simple, the march of science, rising expectations, growing awareness, to see things through rose-coloured glasses.The effects achieved by using clichs include besides expressing emotions or attitudes, also evaluation and brevity.To say Jack of all trades is shorter than a person who can turn his hands to any kind of work .Proverbs are short, well-known, supposedly wise sayings usu. in simple language.Proverbs are brief statements showing in a condensed form the accumulated peoples wisdom and life experience of the community and serving as conventional practical symbols for abstract ideas.Their typical features are: rhythm, rhyme and/or alliteration, brevity (which manifests itself also in the omission of articles and connectives), the use of contrasts, synonyms, antonyms, etc.Proverbs are usually didactic and involve imagery. E.g. Out of sight, out of mind.Proverbs should not be confused with maxims, i.e. with non-metaphorical precepts. E.g. Better late than never; Younever know what you can do till you try. They are not allegorical; there is nothing figurative in them, they areunderstood literally, word for word.The usage of proverbs is marked by their possible modifications , which result in a particular effect: the modifiedform of the proverb is perceived against the background of the fixed form, thus enlivening it, and giving it a newvigour.

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In other words, a modified proverb presupposes a simultaneous application of two meanings: the face-value or primary meaning, and an extended meaning drawn from the context. E.g . Come, he said, milk is spilt (its no usecrying over spilt milk).An epigram (Gr. epigraphein to write on) is a short clever amusing saying or a poem. In most cases epigrams arewitty statements coined by some individuals whose names we know (unlike in proverbs).They have a generalizing function and are self-sufficient. Brevity, rhythm, alliteration and often rhyme make themsimilar to proverbs.There are special dictionaries which are called "Dictionaries of Quotations." These, in fact, are mostly dictionaries of epigrams. E.g. A thing of beauty is a joy forever. (Keats)Originally, a form of monumental description in ancient Greece, the epigram was developed into a literary form by

poets of Hellenistic age (a period of Greek literature from the death of Alexander the Great (323 B.C.) to that of Cleopatra (31 B.C.).Epigrams are close to aphorisms. Though the latter are shorter and do not look like quotations.A quotation is a repetition of a phrase or statement from a book, speech and the like used by way of authority,illustration, proof or as a basis for further speculation on the matter in hand. (I.R. Galperin)Quotations are usually marked graphically by inverted commas, dashes or italics, they are mostly accompanied by areference to the author of the quotation. The reference is made either in the text or in a foot-note. Quotations neednot necessarily be short.

E.g. Friends, Romans, countrymen Lend me your ears. (Shakespeare)

Quotations often turn into epigrams. E.g. To be or not to be? (Shakespeare)Quotations used as an argumentative technique allow no modifications of meaning. Such quotations are especiallyfrequent in scientific texts, in religious writing and in the journalistic style.An allusion (Latin allusio a playing with) is an indirect quotation, reference or a hint by word or phrase to ahistorical, literary, mythological or biblical fact which is presumably known to the listener/reader.As a rule no indication of the source of the allusion is given, which makes it different from quotations proper (directquotations) and epigrams.Another diffe