Functional Style. Register.

A functional style of language is a system of interrelated language means which serves a definite aim in communication. A func­tional style is thus to be regarded as the product of a certain concrete task set by the sender of the message. Functional styles appear mainly in the literary standard of a language.

The literary standard of the English language, like that of any other developed language, is not so homogeneous as it may seem. In fact the standard English literary language in the course of its development has fallen into several subsystems each of which has acquired its own peculiarities which are typical of the given functional style. The members of the language community, especially those who are sufficiently trained and responsive to language variations, recognize these styles as indepen­dent wholes. The peculiar choice of language means is primarily predeter­mined by the aim of the communication with the result that a more or less closed system is built up. One set of language media stands in op­position to other sets .of language media with other aims, and these other sets have other choices and arrangements of language means.

What we here call functional styles are also called registers or d i s с о u r s e s.

In the English literary standard we distinguish the following major functional styles (hence FS):

1) The language of belles-lettres.

2) The language of publicistic literature.

3) The language of newspapers.

4) The language of scientific prose.

5) The language of official documents.

As has already been mentioned, functional styles are the product of the development of the written variety of language. l Each FS may be characterized by a number of distinctive features, leading or subordi­nate, constant or changing, obligatory or optional. Most of the FSs, however, are perceived as independent wholes due to a peculiar combi­nation and interrelation of features common to all (especially when taking into account syntactical arrangement) with the leading ones of each FS.

Each FS is subdivided into a number of substyles. These represent varieties of the abstract invariant. Each variety has basic features com­mon to all the varieties of the given FS and peculiar features typical of this variety alone. Still a substyle can, in some cases, deviate so far from the invariant that in its extreme it may even break away.

We clearly perceive the following substyles of the five FSs given above.

The belles-lettres FS has the following substyles:

a) the language style of poetry; b) the language style of emotive prose; c) the language style of drama.

The publicistic F S comprises the following substyles: a) the language style of oratory; b) the language style of essays;

c) the language style of feature articles in newspapers and journals.*

The newspaper FS falls into a) the language style of brief news items and communiques; b) the language style of newspaper head­ings and c) the language style of notices and advertisements.

The scientific prose FS also has three divisions: a) the language style of humanitarian sciences; b) the language style of "exact" | sciences; c) the language style of popular scientific prose. J

The official document FS can be divided into four varieties: a) the language style of diplomatic documents; b) the language style of business documents; c) the language style of legal .documents;

d) the language style of military documents.

The classification presented here is by no means arbitrary. It is the result of long and minute observations of factual material in which not • only peculiarities of language usage were taken into account but also extralinguistic data, in particular the purport of the communication. However, we admit that this classification is not proof against criticism. Other schemes may possibly be elaborated and highlighted by different approaches to the problem of functional styles. The classification of FSs Jj is not a simple matter and any discussion of it is bound to reflect more li than one angle .of vision. Thus, for example, some stylicists consider that newspaper articles (including feature articles) should be classed M under the functional style of newspaper language, not under the language м of publicistic literature. Others insist on including the language of every- ' day-life discourse into the system of functional styles. Prof. Budagov singles out only two main functional styles: the language of science and that of emotive literature.

Date: 2015-12-17; view: 2667