The Problem of Belles-Lettres Style

1. The Problem of Belles-Lettres Style

2. A Functional style is

a patterned variety of literary text
characterized by the greater or lesser
typification of its constituents, supraphrasal units, in which the choice and
arrangement of interdependent and
interwoven language media are calculated to
secure the purport of the communication.

3. M. D. Kuznets’ classification

A. Literary, or “Bookish Style”
1. Publicistic Style
2. Scientific (Technological) Style
3. Official Documents
B. Free (“Colloquial”) Style
1. Literary Colloquial
2. Familiar Colloquial

4. I. V. Arnold’s classification

1.
2.
3.
4.
Poetic Style
Scientific Style
Newspaper Style
Colloquial Style

5. Galperin’s classification of functional styles:

Ι. Belles Lettres
1. Poetry
2. Emotive Prose
3. The Drama
ΙΙ. Publicistic Style
1. Oratory and Speeches
2. The Essay
3. Articles
ΙΙΙ. Newspapers
1. Brief News Items
2. Headlines
3. Advertisements and Announcements
4. The Editorial
ΙV. Scientific prose
V. Official Documents

6. Belles-Lettres Style

- The Language of poetry (verse)
- Emotive Prose (fiction)
- The Language of the Drama

7. Main Features of the Belles-lettres Style:

Main Features of the Belleslettres Style:
• Genuine, not trite, imagery, achieved by
purely linguistic devices.
• The use of words in contextual, often in more
than one dictionary meaning.
• A vocabulary reflecting the author’s personal
evaluation of things and phenomena.
• Lexical and syntactical idiosyncrasy.
• The introduction of the typical features of
colloquial language.

8. Language of Poetry (Verse)

• Orderly form, which is based on the
rhythmic and phonetic arrangement of
the utterance.
• Compact syntax and semantics.
• Compressed imagery.
• High emotional colouring.
• “Purity” of poetic language.
• Semantic entropy.

9. Emotive prose (fiction)

• The combination of the literary
language with the colloquial language.
• The usage of the elements from other
styles.
• Metre and rhyme
• Rich imagery
• Words with contextual meaning

10. Language of the Drama

• The language of plays is entirely dialogue.
• The stylization of colloquial language.
• “Signals of Attention”:
- no interruptions of the speaker
- long utterances (“monological dialogues”)
- “sequence sentences” connected by
“sequence signals” (pronouns, adverb,
conjunctions)
- no digressions

11. Literature:

• Skrebnev, Y. M. “Fundamentals of
English Stylistics”
• Galperin, I. R. “Stylistics”