Functional Styles

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The Notion of Functional Style (FS)

A FS of language is a system of interrelated language means serving a definite aim of

communication.

The Classification of FSs

The problem of the classification of FSs is one of the disputable issues of this branch

of science, for different scholars see things differently. Four out of several suggested

classifications are listed below.1.Galperin's five FSs include:

a) The belles-lettres FS embracing 3 substyles: poetry, emotive prose, drama

b) The publicistic FS with 3 substyles: oratory, essays, feature articles in newspapers

and magazines

c) The newspaper FS with 3 substyles: brief news items, headlines, notices and

advertisements

d) The scientific prose FS with 3 substyles: exact sciences, humanitarian sciences,

popular science prose

e) The official documents FS embracing 4 substyles: diplomatic documents, business

documents, legal documents, military document.

2.Naer's seven macrostyles embrace: a) official documents; b) scientific, c) profes-

sional-technical, d) newspaper, e) publicistic, f) belles-lettres and, g) religious texts.

3.Kuznets & Skrebnev style hierarchy:

a) The literary refined style - the publicistic, the scientific-technical, the style of official

documents;

b) The free (colloquial) style - literary colloquial, familiar colloquial.

4. Arnold's style division: a) neutral style, b) colloquial style: literary, familiar, low, c)

bookish style: scientific, official documents, publicists (newspaper), oratorical, lofty-poetical.

UNIT 1. THE STYLE OF OFFICIAL DOCUMENTS.

All major FS styles, the style of official documents including, usually comprise several

subdivisions or substyles. Thus, the style of official documents falls into the style (or

substyle) of 1) diplomatic documents, 2) business documents, 3) legal documents, 4)

military documents.

Like other styles of language, the style of official documents has a definite commu-

nicative aim and its own system of interrelated language means. The main aim of this

type of communication is to reach an agreement and to state the conditions binding two

parties in an undertaking, the parties being the state and the citizen, the citizen and the

citizen, the state and the state. This most general aim of the style of official documents

predetermines thepeculiarities of the style, such as theircomposition, the extensive use

of special terminology and clichés, the use of abbreviations ( particularly abundant in

military documents ).

Let us now have a closer look at all the four subdivisions of the style of official do-

cuments.

(a) The Style of Diplomatic Documents.

To the sphere of international relations we attribute the style of diplomatic documents,

such as treaties, agreements, conventions , declarations, protocols, exchange of notes,

memoranda, acts, engagements, regulations, amendments, terms of..., minutes, etc.

(They are nearly 60 in number ).

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The style of diplomatic documents has its own characteristic features or style markers

which help us to differentiate it from other FS.

Perhaps, the most striking feature of such documents is theircomposition. The

principal parts of diplomatic documents in their usual order are:

1) 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, and the names and designations of the

plenipotentionaries (i.e. envoys or commissioners appointed to act according to their own

discretion).

2) The substantive clauses, sometimes known as the "dispositive provisions" or the

body.

3)?h? 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.

4) Formal acknowledgment of signature.

5) Signature by the plenipotentiaries.

Such forms have come into existence in the course of historical development of the

style and now, because of the necessity for absolute precision and the avoidance of any

ambiguity which is important in international relations, these forms are so firmly fixed

that scarcely any deviation is permitted.

Another important feature of this style isthe use of special terms, i.e. words or word

groups to name a notion characteristic of some special field of knowledge or sphere of

communication. Diplomatic terminology includes terms proper (to accredit, dispatch,

order of precedence, negotiator, ambassador), and words used in the sphere of

international relations in some special meaning: instrument (document), article (part ofa treaty), clause (part of a document), party (either side in a contract), provision

(statement).

The use of non-assimilated borrowings, mainly from Latin and French (note verbale,

aidememoire, proces-verbal, presides, bona fide, etc) should also be mentioned in

connection with the diplomatic terminology. Borrowings, as we know, are characteristic

of the English language as a whole, they amount to more than a half of its vocabulary.

But for diplomatic practice they are especially relevant as for many centuries Latin and

French remained dominant languages in diplomatic relations 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, II - of

French, I - of Greek and only 2 ( settlement and bond) are "home-made", are proper

English.

There are also very manyobsolete andarchaic words (hereto, henceforth, thereon,

whereof, whereupon). They are not terms for they are not necessarily bound to the

sphere of diplomacy; they may be used in legal practice too. But they clearly show that

the style of diplomatic documents is very conservative; it changes very slowly preserving

the tendency to use the same stereotyped words and phrases for centuries. Vocabulary

is an obvious reflector of distinctions between styles, but so are syntactic structures.

Such traits as the predominance of simple, extended sentences and complex sentences,

the preference for the separation of the subject and the predicate, the abundance of

homogeneous members as compared with other styles are peculiar of the style of

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diplomatic documents. The reason for that lies, perhaps, in the necessity of the

transparence of meaning, elimination of ambiguity, and avoidance of the wrong

interpretation of the document, which may cause undesirable consequences.

(b) The Style of Business Documents.

Business documents (and letters) are characterized by a high level ofstandardization.

They are in fact a combination of ready-made forms and stereotyped phrases. This

standard character of business documents has always been understood as a very

effective means of avoiding redundancy with the help of economy of linguistic units.

Lucidity and conciseness are very important.

For example, there are certain accepted ways of beginning and ending a business

letter. The usual way of address is Dear Sir, Dear Madam, or Dear Mr. Smith, Dear Mrs.

Brown if the person addressed to is known. In correspondence with strangers, it is usual

to change from Dear Sir-to Dear Mr. Smith-after the first one or two letters have been

exchanged.

Yours faithfully, Yours truly are the usual ending for all business letters. Yours

sincerely is the usual ending for letters to acquaintances.

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:

a) 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...;

b) to express request: Please, inform us.... We shall (should) be obliged if you .... We

shall (should) appreciate it if you… We (would) ask you…

c) to refer to a letter With reference to your letter of.... Referring to....We refer ...;

d) to apologise: We regret that.... Unfortunately, we… We beg to … We offer our sincere apologies for e) 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.

It should also be mentioned that stereotyped character of business documents is the

merit of this style whereas when used in other styles such as the belles-lettres style, or

in the publicists style it becomes a drawback. (c) The Style of Legal Documents.

The law includes many different activities from the drawing up of statutes to the

contracting of agreement between individuals, all or which need to be recorded in a

written form. In spite of their diversity, it will be not far from the truth to say that each of

these activities is in some way connected with the imposition and the conferring of

rights. And from time to time, of course, someone or other may become very curious

about his obligations and try to wriggle out of them- And someone else may try to

examine his rights to see if it is possible to stretch them to a credible limit and even

further. Consequently, whoever composes a legal document must take the greatest pains

to ensure that ii says exactly what he wants it to say and at the same time gives no

opportunity for misinterpretation. So if the composer happens to have used language

which can be taken to mean something other than he intended, he has failed in his job.

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Of all the language styles this one is perhaps the least communicative as it is designed

not so much "to enlighten language-users at large as to allow one expert to register

information for scrutiny by another. So the lawyers think that since their productions

are for those as familiar with the jargon as themselves there is no need to bother too

much about the simpler needs of a general public and that makes the language of

documents so complicated.

Doing basically the same things for many years - conveying property, drawing up wills

- lawyers have developed linguistic formulas, collections of them for each species of

transaction. Therefore much legal writing is not spontaneous, but is copied " from the

books" in which established formulas are collected. They are reliable and as far removed

from the informal spontaneous conversation as possible. It is essentially visual language,

meant to be scrutinized in silence, largely unspeakable at first sight. The reliance on

forms which were established in the past and reluctance to take risks by adopting new

ones contribute to the extreme linguistic conservatism of legal English.

Legal documents are usually set down asa solid block of script whose long lines extend

from margin to margin with practically no spacing and punctuation to defeat fraudulent

deletions and additions. The sentences in a document are usually very long and an

entire document can be composed of a single sentence and so there was no much help

from punctuation to understand it and, besides, since punctuation marks are used

mostly as prompts for oral reading of a text and legal documents are 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 manyarchaisms, borrowings from French and Latin

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

(d) The Style of Military Documents.

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).

The style of military documents has its own lexical, morphological and syntactical

characteristics. Military documents are characterised by theirclarity,brevity, 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, abbreviations, symbols, special military phraseology; a wide

use of terminology, i.e. words used in one meaning only, helps to avoid ambiguity and

misinterpretation. There are also manynames - both personal andgeographical.

Abbreviations are abundant too and their number may be up to 50-60 per cent of the

text (e.g. Co - company, SW - south west, w/o - without, FA - Field Artillery, MP -

military police).Terms: to attack, order, machine gun, tank, army; phraseological units:

to hold a position, to provide protection, to lift fire. On the morphological level we can

mentionrare use of the possessive case,omission of articles, use of two moods only -

imperative and indicative, two tenses -the present ind. and the past ind.Syntactically military documents include mostlysimple short sentences – nominal and

verbal one-member. As a rule there are no exclamatory and negative sentences.

List of terms and addreviations from the sample orders.

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order for attack –?????? ??????

armored division ( Armd Div)

classification -???? ???????????

opord – operation order -?????? ??????

situation -??????????

intelligence -????????

Corps -??????

atk- ??????????? -attack

S- South

5080 - 8050: ??????????: ? ??? X- ???????, Y- ????????; ? ??? X - ????????,

Y- ???????, ??????? ??? ???????? 2 ????????? ????? ?????????? ??????.

Inf Div - Infantry Division -???????? ???????

ArmdCav- ???????????????? (??????????????????)

flank-?????

UNIT 2. THE SCIENTIFIC PROSE STYLE.

The scientific prose style has three subdivisions: I) the style of humanitarian sciences,

2) the style of "exact" sciences, 3) the style of popular scientific prose.

Thefunction of the scientific prose style is to work out and ground theoretically

objective knowledge about reality. It strives towards the most general objective and

impersonal conception.

Some of the salientfeatures of scientific English should be underlined: such aslogical

sequences, lucidity, exactness, impersonality. It also has certain distinct characteristics

with regard to vocabulary, syntax and morphology. Science is concerned with matter,

elements, substances, objects, solids, liquids, gases. Such words are in everyday use,

though they are also fundamental to scientific vocabulary. Other words are more likely to

occur only in a scientific context and they are usually derived from Greek (oxygen,

hydrogen), Latin (carbon, molecule), Arabic (alkali).They are calledterms and vary

depending on the kind of science. (Note: the word science itself is derived from the Latin

scire, to know, to have knowledge of, to experience. The word scientist was introduced

only in 1840 by William Whewell, Professor of Moral Philosophy at the University of

Cambridge-Before that the scientists were known as “natural philosophers ").

The above mentioned strictly scientific terms are described as "general scientific

vocabulary ", - words most naturally used to impart intellectual information irrespective

of whether the information is strictly scientific and pertains to exact or natural sciences

or humanities. They are such words as' adhere, assume, assumption, postulate,predetermine, experiment, observation, perceive, ascribe, distinction etc. As one can see

these are the words which denote general and abstract notions, but even concrete words

in scientific English denote something abstract and general:

e.g. "The chemist must pay attention to..." Here not a particular but any chemist is

meant.

The general and impersonal character of this kind of English is emphasized by a wide

use ofimpersonal sentences and passive constructions. From the point of view of its style

scientific English is a statement rather than an emotive expression through imaginative

figures of speech. Sometimes scientists resort to metaphors to make an imaginative oremotional appeal. But if in the belles-lettres style it is one of the means of creating

images, a part of its system, in scientific English it is used for explanation,

concretization, popularization, it is an inplay, not connected with the general language

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system of the style. Unlike the belles-letters style it is never original, individual but it is

always contextually bound and devoid of individuality and originality.

UNIT 3. THE NEWSPAPER STYLE

A newspaper is always very eclectic, from the stylistic point of view. So, obviously,

everything that happens to be printed in a newspaper cannot be regarded as belonging

to the newspaper style. Since the centralfunction of the newspaper is to inform and

influence the reader on certain matters we may speak about such parts of it thatconstitute the newspaper style proper as: 1) brief news items, 2) the editorial, 3)

advertisements and announcements, 4) articles purely informative in character, of great

importance are also, 5) headlines.

Brief news items are impersonal and objective. They present information compressed

into limited space and should be clear, interesting and devoid of ambiguity.

The editorials are of analytical, generalizing character. They are the most impersonal

for they are "the voice" of the newspaper itself.

The function of the headline is complex: headlines have to contain a clear and if

possible intriguing message to arouse interest in the potential reader, to catch his eye,

and the chief means of producing "eye-catching" effects is by making use of the full

range of graphic contrasts - bold type, italics, different other kinds of type, subhead-

lines. Besides, the headlines may intrigue the reader by their syntactic structure:

nominal phrases, elliptical sentences, exclamatory or interrogative sentences, etc.

We should also note thatthe combination of expressiveness and standardization makes

one of the important features of the style.Standard phrases,clichés make the contact

with the reader easier. Brief news articles, for example quickly made should be devoid of

extra words (for want of space too) and easy to understand. They are quicker understood

in readymade blocks. So expressiveness very soon turns into standard and cliché when

an apt phrase or word becomes proverbial.

The basicaim of the newspaper - to report or to inform is realised in its objective,

documentary, impersonal character through the use of official, economic terminology,

proper names, abbreviations, the passive voice, etc At the same time appeal in the

newspaper is to feelings rather than to reason - hence the use ofexpressive means on

different linguistic levels: phonology - alliteration, rhythm; graphitic means -mentioned

above; paragraphing; lexicology - careful choice of words-as there is always the need for

compression of the information into a limited space, the need for clarity, the avoidance of

ambiguity; various stylistic means making the style picturesque but creating no new

image which would hardly be a good aid to readability.UNIT 5. THE STYLE OF RELIGION

The style of religion is distinguished as a separate entity by D. Crystal and D.Davy

(1969) and by V. Naer(1981); most Soviet scholars do not mention it. Still, the fact is that

this style has achieved quite a respectable status of its own in the English-speaking

countries. Though the religious form of social conscience manifests itself in numerous

forms and practices, and fulfils various functions in a society, the main aim of the

religious functional style maybe defined as expressing religious belief on public

occasions. Elements of the religious style may be used also in literature and in humour,

they can penetrate the daily colloquial speech as well. The religious style is not uniform - it falls into at least three substyles: 1) the biblical

substyle, 2) the liturgical substyle and 3) the theological discourse substyle. The forms of

realization of the religious style include, of course, the texts of the Scriptures (The Old

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Testament, The New Testament), as well as formal reading from the Scriptures, common

biblical prayers, sermons (which have more in common with other oratory pieces) and

theological discourse. There also exist books of prayers and religious hymns; prayers and

sermons are regularly televized and broadcast over the radio.

The core of the religious style is formed, in a sense, by the biblical substyle, which

seriously influences all sub-spheres of religious communication. Stylistically relevant is

the fact that The Scriptures are available in many variants, or editions. "The authorized"

version of The Bible is the so-called King James' version, characterized by archaic lexis

and syntax. Widespread nowadays are other versions of The Bible, written in easily

understood modem day English.

Let us consider some of the linguistic styleforming features.

The language is marked by graphical, lexical and syntactical peculiarities.

Graphical features includecapitalization (God, Lord),italics (it is mine, shewed you ray

kindness),archaic spelling in some editions (Iesus),numbering paragraphs.

Noticeable arearchaic pronouns (ye, thee, thou, thy, thine),archaic forms of verbs

(beholdest, considerest, asketh, receiveth, seekest, findeth), and, of course,religious

terms (Lord, Father which is in heaven, evil, devils, false prophets).

Syntactical stylistic devices may include parallelism,inversion (wide is the gate, and

great was the fall of it),anaphora (or... or...),epiphora (... you,... you) polysyndeton and so

on.

One can also come acrossmetaphors (good tree bringeth forth good fruit; rain

descended and beat against the home).

But, surprisingly, the "newest" version of The Bible makes more prominent some of

the devices which are still there, like lexical repetition and root repetition (judge-judge -

judge, the same - the same), very effective oppositions (ask - receive, seek-find, knock -

open, bread - stone, fish - snake, bad - good). The modern text also preserves most of thesyntactical stylistic devices.

UNIT 6. THE BELLES-LETTRES STYLE

The belles-lettres style is a generic term for the following three substyles: 1) the

language of poetry (verse) , 2) emotive prose (fiction) and 3) drama. Despite the fact that

the forms of realization of these substyles, known also as "genres" are rather varied in

their size and linguistic properties, still there are several principal features that make us

think they belong to a single entity.

First of all comes the commonfunction of the belles-lettres style which is broadlytermed as "aesthetico-cognitive" and which aims at the cognitive process on the one

hand, and at receiving pleasure on the other one. The cognitive process secures the

gradual unfolding of the idea to the reader, and at the same time it causes a feeling of

pleasure from the form in which the content is presented.

The belles-lettres style rests on certain important linguisticfeatures which include:

1. Genuine imagery achieved by purely linguistic devices.

2. The use of words in contextual and very often in more than one dictionary meaning.

3. A vocabulary which will reflect the author's personal evaluation of things or phe-

nomena described.4. A peculiar individual selection of vocabulary and syntax, a kind of lexical and

syntactical idiosyncrasy.

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The above features are observed in all the three substyles of the belles-lettres fun-

ctional style - in poetry, in emotive prose and in drama; of course, the features manifest

themselves differently in a given style, and. in addition, each substyle possesses some

other specitific features.

For instance, the outstanding feature of poetry is its orderly FORM, which is based

primarily on the rhythmic and phonetic arrangement of the utterance, and which is

easily recognizable. Even short verse forms are set forth in a specific graphical variant of

presentation where lines are arranged into columns. Among the lexical peculiarities of

verse is also IMAGERY, which, being the generic feature of the belles-lettres style

assumes in poetry a very compressed form with its rich associative power, frequent

occurrence and surprising variety of means and devices of materialization (like

metaphors of different types, metonymies, similes etc). The EMOTIONAL element is used

in poetry to its full measure, this tendency finds its embodiment here in a great number

of emotionally coloured words, many of which have been regarded as poetic words.

Another substyle of the belles-lettres functional style - emotive prose - is sometimes

termed " fiction", and the term seems apt since most of the works of creative authors

reflect facts, events and characters which have never lived in reality, but inhabited the

imaginative worlds of the authors. The subtyle of emotive prose possesses all the generic

features pointed out above, but imagery is not so rich, as in poetry, the number of words

with contextual meaning is not as high as in poetry, the peculiarity of the author is not

so noticeable. In addition to that it would be possible to define the emotive prose

substyle as a combination of the spoken and written varieties of the language, since

there are always two forms of speech present - monologue (usually the author's speech)

and dialogue (the speech of characters).

Unlike the emotive prose, where there is a combination of monologue (the author's

speech, the character speech) and dialogue (the speech of characters), the language of plays is entirely dialogue or polylogue; the author's speech is present only in the

playwright's remarks and stage directions. The language of characters, of course, is in no

way the exact reproduction of the colloquial speech, thus its stylization is one of the

features.

UNIT 7. The Colloquial Style.

The colloquial style is a peculiar subsystem of the English language. On the one hand,

its major field of application is found in the spoken variety of language, on the other

hand, elements of this style penetrate the written varieties such as the belles-lettres

style, the publicistic style and the newspaper style, etc. When written, the colloquial style’sfunction is to render the specificity of everyday

conversation. Underlying many of its specificfeatures are the following factors:

1) the spontaneous character of communication; 2) the private character of commu-

nication; 3) face-to-faceness.

1) The colloquial style has a great amount ofready-made formulae, clichés, all kinds of

prefabricated patterns. Spontaneous conversation is facilitated by using stereotyped

units. One can mention among them the so-calledsocial phrases such as greetings

(hello, how are you?), thanks and responses (thank for..., not at all..., a pleasure, etc.)

2)Creativity is also a result of spontaneous speech production. We make ourconversation as we go along. We have no time to polish it deliberately, but one can do

corrections, thus there are many hesitations, false starts, loose ends in grammar and

syntax.

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3)Compression tends to make speech more economical and laconic. It is reflected in

the use of the following language phenomena:

a)Shortened forms andclipped words (nouns: fridge, lab, math; verbs: am - 'm, is -'s,

are - 're, have -'ve, etc.).

b)Words of broad semantics (thing, one).

c)Ellipsis is usual in face-to-face communication as the situation (context) easily

supplies the missing pan (Same time, same place?)d) Simplicity of syntax. Long sentences are seldom used in colloquial informal

communication, for a simple reason that the speaker doesn't want to lose the thread of

his own thought.

4)Redundancy reflects another aspect of unprepared speech production. Among the

elements reflecting this tendency are:

a)time-fillers (you know, I say, let me see, sort of).

b)the pleonastic use of pronouns (John, he is late).

c)senseless repetition of words and phrases (Liza: I'm a good girl, I am.) Vocabulary is

a noticeable aspect of the colloquial style. It may be subdivided into a) literary, b)

familiar, and, c) low colloquial layers though the dictionaries do not reflect this division

adequately.

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