Stylistics

1．What is stylistics? Why is it necessary for us to learn stylistics?Stylistics means a discipline that studies the sum of stylistic features characteristic of the different varieties of language. It concerns itself with the situational features that influence variations in language use, the criterion for the classification of language variety, and the description of the linguistic features and functions of the main varieties of a language.Stylistics study: a. helps develop a consistent method of language analysis and solve problems of interpretation by bringing into focus the stylistically significant features.b. helps cultivate a sense of appropriateness and acquire a sense of style.c. sharpens understanding and appreciation of literary works.d. helps achieve adaptation in translation.2．How does Martin Joo describe the range of formality in his book?M’s range of formality: frozen, formal, consultative, casual, and intimate.3．What factors affect the degree of formality?a.S peech situation: setting purpose, audience, social relations and topic.b.L inguistic features: vocabulary; phonology syntax and semantics.4．What is a dialect? What is the relationship between regional and social dialects?Dialect:means language variations associated with different users of the language.5．What are the functions of a headline in a press advertisement?Headline is the theme and center of advertisement, often in the most conspicuous position to attract consumers’ attention. Therefore, headline is crucial to the success of advertisement. But what kind of headline is a good headline? Here are a few suggestions:(1)Hit on what readers like, and make them feel it will benefit them.(2) Try to introduce new things.(3) Use words that could arouse readers’ interest.(4) Avoid using vague words, avoid using privative words.6．What are the functions of a body copy in a press advertisement?Body CopyAfter consumers' attention has been attracted to the advertisement by headline, they will move to the body copy, which is the main part of advertising information, to find something useful. Whether an advertisement has met the consumers’ requirement, satisfied their desire, and stimulated them to take action are the factors to judge the quality of a good advertisement.7．What are the stylistic features of the press advertisement?Ⅰ. Lexical featuresa. One-syllable and simple verbs such as get and make are used.b. Emotive adjectives are adopted to arouse reader’s interest.c. Words are carefully chosen to make pun and alliteration.d. Weasel words, such as help and like, make the use of strongest language possible in advertisements.Ⅱ. Syntactical featuresa. Sentences in advertisements are short. On average, a sentence consists of11.8 words.b. Elliptical sentences are used to spare advertising cost and at the same time improve advertising effectiveness.c. Interrogative sentences and imperative sentences are common in advertisementsd. Present tense prevails in ads to suggest timelessness. And active voice is used to cater to audience’s habit in daily talk.Ⅲ. Discour se featuresA complete advertisement consists of five parts: Headline, Body Copy, Slogan, IllustrationAnd Trade Mark.Body copy is the key part, conveying product or service information.8．What are main components of a press advertisement?10. Summarize the basic requirements for the language of a effective advertisement?11. What are the stylistic features of public speech?Grammatical features:(1). Variation in sentence length, sentence are mostly of the SP(O)(C)(A) structure with occasional ASPOC(A) form.(2). Various sentence type: a. As public speeches are intended to inform ,to persuade, and to appeal, most sentences are statements; occasional questions are used to give the audience food for thought and to impress them.b. Commands can be many, often introduced by “let”.c. Vocatives of a general type are used.(3). More complex-looking group structures.Lexical features:(1). Often use accurate and clear words.(2). Adaptation of wording to particular audience.(3). Less use of phrasal verbs.Phonological features:(1). Appropriate volume and pitch variation.(2). Varying tempo and rightly timed pause.(3). Often seek to use the rhythm of language by their choice and arrangement of words.(4). Public speech is directed toward an audience sometimes very large so the speaker has to guard against sloppy articulation and articulate each word clearly and accurately. In such a variety, assimilations should not occur, but elision can sometimes occur.(5). Full use of non-verbal communication: gestures, eyes and etc.Semantic features:(1). Problem-cause-solution order (attention, need, satisfaction, visualization and action.). The use of pairs of transitional phrases stating both the idea that the speaker is leaving and the one he is coming up to.The use of internal previews and summaries.The uses of signposts like numbers, questions or simple phrase to help the audience keep track of where the speaker is in the speech.(2). Effective ways of delivery:a. parallelism makes the statement clear, consistent and compelling.b. antithesis contrasts ideas in a formal structure of parallelism.c. repetition helps creat a strong emotional effort.d. synonymous words are repeated to add force, clearness or balance a sentence.e. alliteration to catch the attention of audience and make ideas easier to remember.f. figurative use of language.12. What functions does a newspaper serve?Newspapers provide us with news, advertisement, editorials, cartoons, comics, fiction poems, book reviews, and art criticisms and so on. The central function of a news paper is to tell us news (functional tenor), written chiefly to be red (mode); and has different categories and different formats (straight tenor).13. What are the functions of a headline in a newspaper?Headlines play a vital part in drawing the reader’s attention to the news story.A good headline summarizes the story so that the hurried reader can get the gist of a story at a glance and evaluate the news immediately.14. What are the stylistic features of news reporting?Graphological features:Variation in the size and shapes of body types, especially the highlighting ofthe headlines, sometimes juxtaposed with pictures.Headlines often have a variety of sizes and shapes of even a different color.The news story is split into smaller nits-the use of subheadings, very short paragraphs for eye-catching and easier-to-read affect.Characteristic use of punctuation is obvious. Inverted commas are frequently used for direct or indirect quotation, or to spotlight terms for particular attention.Grammatical features:(1). Alternating use of long and short statement-type sentences.(2). Use of heavily modified nominal groups to wrap a large amount of information into the group.(3). Use of simple verbal groups.Lexical features: (use simple, accurate and vivid words)(1). Preference for journalistic words and set expressions.(2). Wide use of neologisms for eye-catching effect.a. words with extended meaning.b. nonce-words.c. coinages.d. words borrowed extensively from sports, military, commerce, science and the technology, gambling or even words from other languages.(3). Extensive use of abbreviation.(4). Avoidance of superlatives and tarnished word ornaments.(5). Avoidance of unobje ctive wording. Avoid the use of “I”, “me”, “my”, “our”in a news story except when quoting someone phrase in a news story should be factual, not tinged with the personal opinion of feelings of the reporter.Semantic features(1). Distinctive discourse pattern: inverted pyramid.(2). Simple way of transition: the unity of the news story is achieved through the obvious relatedness between sentences within a paragraph within a story, or with the use of common connectives.(3) skillful headline: headlines are noted for their wide use of ellipsis with frequent omission of articles, possessives, verb “be’, even content words, so as to shorten the length and to be more concise and comprehensive.a. wide use of present tense to convey a sense of freshness and immediacy of an event.b. future happenings are often expressed with a infinitive.c. composed of nominal groups.d. ing-forms are frequent as headlines.e. whole-sentence headlines even in the form of direct quote or command.f. seek novelty and humor rhetorically.g. alluding, punning, various figurative use of language.style: 1) a person’s distinctive language habits, or the set of individual characteristics of language use.2) a set of collective characteristics of language use; language habits share bya group of people at a given time, in a given place, amidst a given occasion, for a literary genre, etc.3) the effectiveness of a mode of expression4) a characteristic of “good” or “beautiful” literary writing.Diatypic varieties (register): language variations associated with the different use to which they are put. Registers may be distinguished according to field, mode and tenor of discourse.Dialectal varieties (dialects): means language variations associated with different users of the language.Individual dialect (idiolect): a person’s particular speech or writing style which result from such traits as his voice quality, pitch and stress patterns, favorite lexical items, and even grammatical structure.Temporal dialect: a variety which correlates with the various periods of the development of language: Old English, Middle English, Elizabethan English and Modern English.Regional dialect: a variety associated with various regions such as phonology, graphology, vocabulary and grammar.Social dialect:a variety associated with certain social group. 4 varieties of social dialect: socioeconomic status varieties, ethnic varieties, gender varieties and age varieties.Standard dialect: the variety of a language based on the speech and writingof educational native speakers of that language. Used in news media and described in dictionaries and grammars.Field of discourse:the linguistic reflection of the purposive role of the language user-the type of social activity the language user is engaged in doing in the situation in which the text has occurred.Mode of discourse:the linguistic reflection of the relationship that the language user has to the medium of communication.Tenor of discourse:the linguistic reflection of the personal relationships between speaker and hearer, and of what the user is trying to do with language for his addresses.Functional tenor:concerned with the intention of the user in using the language.Phonology: the study of the rules for the organization of sound system of a language.Graphology: the study of the writing system of language.Cohesion: implicit connectivity works best for sequence of events and reason.。

Stylistics is a branch of linguistics which applies the theory and method ology of mod ern linguistics to the study of style.It studies the use of language in specific contexts and attempts to account for the characteristics that mark the language use of individuals and social groups. It is usually concerned with the examination of written language, particularly literary texts. The stylistic analysis of a text involves the d escription of a writer’s/speaker’s verbal choices which can be abstracted as style.Concepts of style:1.”styl e” may refer to some or all of the language habits of one person. 2.The word may refer to some or all of the language habits shared by a group of peopl e at one time,or over a period of time. 3.the word may be used in an evaluative sense, referring to the effectiveness of a mod e of expression. 4.Partly overlapping with the three senses just mentioned, the word may refer solely to literary language.The needs for stylistics:1.styl e is an integral part of meaning. 2.Stylistics may help us to acquire a “sense of styl e”. 3.Stylistics prepares the way to the intrinsic study of literature.The concept of text: A text is any passage, spoken or written, of whatever length, that forms a unified whole. A text is realized by a sequence of language units, whether they are sentences or not.The concept of context: “Context” has been und erstood in various ways. It may be linguistic or extra-linguistic. Linguistic context is alternatively termed as CO-TEXT, which refers to the linguistic units preceding and/or following a particular linguistic unit in a text. Extra-linguistic context refers to the relevant features of the situation in which a text has meaning. The term CONTEXT may includ e not only the co-text, but also the extra-linguistic context of a text.An elliptical sentence is contextually conditioned. The ellipsis is recoverable from the preceding linguistic context. The ellipsis avoids repetition so as to focus on the new information.Incomplete sentences: sentences in which for some reason the speaker never reaches the end of what he intends to communicate.Reiteration refers to the use of an alternative expression as a replacement for an expression in the preceding context.Collocation may refer to: A. the conventional restriction of the ways in which words are used together. B. a tend ency of co-occurrence. Sets of words tend to turn up together.Medium refers to graphic signs or speech sounds by meas of which a message is conveyed from one person to another.Attitud e is related to the Role Relationships in various situations. Role Relationships range from temporary to permanent. Some role relationships are easier to id entify by the language than others.Fiel d of discourse refers to the type of social activity in which language plays a part. One aspect of the field is the subject matter. The subject matter can be practically anything, ranging from technical to non-technical: the theory of relativity, physiology and medicine.Another important aspect of the field—the purpose which the language serves in a social activity.The administration=the government/ apartment=flat/attorney=solicitor or barrister/automobile=car/bar=pub/biscuit=scone/can=tin/cookie or cracker=biscuit/elevator=lift/engineer=engine driver/faculty=staff/fall=autumn/first floor=ground floor/gas or gasoline=petrol/mail=post/movie=firm/one way ticket=single(ticket)/overpass=flyover/round-trip ticket=return(ticket)/sneakers=plimsolls/store=shop/truck=lorry or van/yiel d=give awayslang: baby=girl or woman/bad=good or excellent/hip=sophisticated or uptodate/high=a non-intoxicated feeling of exhilaration/square=a conventional person/swell or super or some=good or excellent or outstanding or notable or distinguished/a couple of=a few/kind of or sort of=somewhat or rather/a lot or lots of=a great d eal or many/sure=surely or absolutely/awfully or so or plenty or real=very or extremely or exceedingly or acutelyeuphemisms: senior citizen for ol d man or woman/newly single for divorced/memorial park for graveyard/funeral director for und ertaker/sanitation collector for garbage collector/industrial action for strike/to eliminate for to kill or to murd er/domestic helper for servant/hair stylist for barber/airhostess for waitress aboard a plane/knowl edge-based nonpossessor for idiot/the South, or the developing countries for countries that have littl e industrialization and low standard of living/Two freedom fighters took the oppressor’s life away for The general was murdered by two terrorists头韵：Alliteration/腹韵：Assonance/辅韵：Consonance/倒韵：Reverse Rhyme/头尾韵：Pararhyme/韵:Rhyme。