Stylistic Varieties

A language is a complex of different varieties, each of which is appropriate to a certain type of situation.

In their Grammar of Contemporary English, R. Quirk and others, describe the following varieties.

According to medium: spoken and written.

According to subject matter: the language of technical and scientific description; the language of legal documents, and some others.

According to attitude (of the speaker/writer to the hearer/ reader):

normal

rigid ? formal ? or ? informal ? familiar neutral

Martin Joos in his book The Five Clocks simplified the range of language variation by cutting it into five slices (or styles). Let us consider this issue from various angles. This chapter emphasizes the oral style of language use. The Five Styles:

L)The Frozen Style

The frozen style is called that because its form and content are largely predictable, many of its linguistic units are fixed. It is the level appropriate to the most highly significant and symbolic occasions in the culture.

The linguistic characteristics of the frozen style are difficult to summarize. Much of frozen style may be exactly the same as formal in its carefully planned and often elaborate structure. A judge must say to a returning jury: ?Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, have you reached a verdict??

Eulogies (a commendatory formal statement; high praise) are one of the most typical forms of frozen style, and in some churches sermons are also largely frozen. A fixed liturgy is the most extreme example of the frozen style.

Frozen style is seldom interactive. Usually the speaker is involved in monologue, not conversation. Meetings which produce such form ulas as point of order, second, call the question, and so on are examples of such interactive frozen style.

The Formal Style

The formal style is used between persons who are unknown to each other; the formal style is for dressed-up, important occasions which demand dignity, respect precision, care in choice of words and sentence types. In this case the setting is formal - for example, a university lecture hall, parliamentary chambers, or a public auditorium.

Formal style is usually single-topic oriented. One person does the speaking, and there is little or no response from the audience. Accordingly, an English speaker is likely to employ may rather than might or can; to use a clause such as for whom did you get it? rather than who did you get it for?; and an adverb outside rather than inside of the infinitive phrase - for example, purposely to show rather than to purposely show.

There is also a tendency to use phrasal prepositions - for example, on behalf of in place of for, and with reference to in place of about. Many speakers using a formal level of language avoid the contractions of ordinary spoken English; they say cannot rather than can't, will not rather than won't, and I shall see rather than I'll see.

Not all languages, of course, have the same types of differences between consultative and formal styles, but there are certain contrasts that are similar. The formal style employs (1) fuller and more precise forms, (2) closer conformity to written styles, (3) avoidance of clipped phrases, and (4) reduction of colloquial expressions.

Date: 2016-06-12; view: 617