Semesters: 7

ECTS: 4

Form of assessment: exam

AIMS

• developing professional skills of linguistic analysis;
• shaping knowledge of using linguistic means in different areas of communication;
• teaching students to select linguistic and stylistic means for different communication purposes.

LEARNING OUTCOMES

On successful completion of this course of study students should be able to:
• demonstrate a grasp of the basic concepts of Russian and foreign stylistics; stylistic functions of linguistic units; phonetic, morphological, syntactic and lexical expressive means of linguistic units;
• recognise specific features of formal, neutral and informal communication registers; cohesion types;
• compare and contrast the use of linguistic means in different communication areas taking into consideration literary norm and emotional expression;
• analyse stylistic devices in a literary text;
• use reference literature for getting information about a stylistic situation; bilingual and monolingual dictionaries to identify absolute and contextual meaning of words.

CONTENT

Introduction and principles of stylistics as a linguistic science.

Subject and objectives of stylistics.
Developing of stylistics as a separate science. Subject and objectives of linguistics. Sociolinguistic and pragmatic aspects of stylistics. Connection of stylistics with other linguistic disciplines.

The main concepts and problems of stylistics.
Defining the concept “style”. Language style and speech style. Functional style. Classification of functional styles. Stylistic characteristics and their types. Stylistic features and linguistic means of their implementation. Stylistic meaning. Stylistic meaning in the context of paradigmatics (absolute stylistic meaning and its components: functional and stylistic, normative, expressive) and of syntagmatics (contextual stylistic meaning).
The problem of stylistic norms. Relation of stylistic norms to other types of literary linguistic norms.

Lexis and phraseology of a foreign language in stylistic aspects.

Word stock of a modern foreign language from the point of view of stylistics.
The problem of word choice. Thematic and synonymic rows. Linguistic and contextual synonyms. Stylistically differentiated and non-differentiated lexis. Characterological lexis: historisms, archaisms, neologisms, foreign words, terms, professional and jargon words. Their role in creating colouration.

Stylistic characteristics of set expressions.
Stylistic characteristics of set expressions. Stylistic functions of set expressions in different functional styles.

Means of visual expression.

Means of visual expression. Figures of speech.
Metaphors, metonymy and their types. Periphrasis and its types. Epithets. Stylistic functions of figures of speech.

Satire and humour devices.
Stylistic functions of synonymy and polysemy in creating humour. Word play, oxymoron, zeugma and other cases of logical disagreement in the stylistic aspect.

Stylistic aspect of grammar.

Stylistic aspect of morphology.
Functional stylistic characteristics of parts of speech: noun, verb, adjective. Stylistic functions of articles and word-building patterns.

Stylistic aspect of syntax.
Stylistic functions of communicative types of sentences: declarative, interrogative, imperative sentences. Types of cohesion between sentences and inside the sentence. Syntactic repetition.

Functional styles of the language.

Classification of styles. Formal style. Scientific style.
The problem of classifying styles. Social function of a style, the main stylistic characteristics and linguistic devices of their expression. Description of formal and scientific styles.

Vernacular speech. Journalistic style. Belles-lettres style.
Short characteristic of vernacular style, journalistic and belles-lettres styles. Meaningful and stylistic interpretation of literary texts.

Phonostylistics.

Stylistic functions of intonation in different functional styles. Specific features of pronunciation in vernacular language, scientific and formal styles.
Onomatopoeia, alliteration, assonance.

Macrostylistics.

Basic concepts of macrostylistics.
Macrotext and microtext. Text composition. Essential text properties. Stylistic types of texts, speech genres, etc. Architectonic function of linguistic and stylistic devices.

Compositional forms.
Compositional forms: statement, description, argument. Their short description, specific features.