The Notion of Functional Style (FS)

A FS of language is a system of interrelated language means serving a definite aim of

communication.
The Classification of FSs
The problem of the classification of FSs is one of the disputable issues of this branch
of science, for different scholars see things differently. Four out of several suggested
classifications are listed below.
1. Galperin's five FSs include:
a) The belles-lettres FS embracing 3 substyles: poetry, emotive prose, drama
b) The publicistic FS with 3 substyles: oratory, essays, feature articles in newspapers
and magazines
c) The newspaper FS with 3 substyles: brief news items, headlines, notices and
advertisements
d) The scientific prose FS with 3 substyles: exact sciences, humanitarian sciences,
popular science prose
e) The official documents FS embracing 4 substyles: diplomatic documents, business
documents, legal documents, military document.
2. Naer's seven macrostyles embrace: a) official documents; b) scientific, c) professional-technical, d) newspaper, e) publicistic, f) belles-lettres and, g) religious texts.
3. Kuznets & Skrebnev style hierarchy:
a) The literary refined style - the publicistic, the scientific-technical, the style of official
documents;
b) The free (colloquial) style - literary colloquial, familiar colloquial.
4. Arnold's style division: a) neutral style, b) colloquial style: literary, familiar, low, c)
bookish style: scientific, official documents, publicists (newspaper), oratorical, loftypoetical.
UNIT 1. THE STYLE OF OFFICIAL DOCUMENTS.
All major FS styles, the style of official documents including, usually comprise several
subdivisions or substyles. Thus, the style of official documents falls into the style (or
substyle) of 1) diplomatic documents, 2) business documents, 3) legal documents, 4)
military documents.
Like other styles of language, the style of official documents has a definite communicative aim and its own system of interrelated language means. The main aim of this
type of communication is to reach an agreement and to state the conditions binding two
parties in an undertaking, the parties being the state and the citizen, the citizen and the
citizen, the state and the state. This most general aim of the style of official documents
predetermines the peculiarities of the style, such as their composition, the extensive use
of special terminology and clichs, the use of abbreviations ( particularly abundant in
military documents ).
Let us now have a closer look at all the four subdivisions of the style of official documents.
(a) The Style of Diplomatic Documents.
To the sphere of international relations we attribute the style of diplomatic documents,
such as treaties, agreements, conventions , declarations, protocols, exchange of notes,
memoranda, acts, engagements, regulations, amendments, terms of..., minutes, etc.
(They are nearly 60 in number ).
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The style of diplomatic documents has its own characteristic features or style markers
which help us to differentiate it from other FS.
Perhaps, the most striking feature of such documents is their composition. The
principal parts of diplomatic documents in their usual order are:
1) The preamble or preliminary recitals, setting out the names of parties ( Heads of
State, States or Governments ), the purpose for which the document was concluded, the
" resolve " of the parties to enter into it, and the names and designations of the
plenipotentionaries (i.e. envoys or commissioners appointed to act according to their own
discretion).
2) The substantive clauses, sometimes known as the "dispositive provisions" or the
body.
3)?h? formal (or final) clauses dealing with technical or formal points or matters
relative to the application or entry into force of the document. Usually such clauses
relate separately to the following: the date of the documents, the mode of acceptance,
opening of the documents for signature, entry into force, duration, etc.
4) Formal acknowledgment of signature.
5) Signature by the plenipotentiaries.
Such forms have come into existence in the course of historical development of the
style and now, because of the necessity for absolute precision and the avoidance of any
ambiguity which is important in international relations, these forms are so firmly fixed
that scarcely any deviation is permitted.
Another important feature of this style is the use of special terms, i.e. words or word
groups to name a notion characteristic of some special field of knowledge or sphere of
communication. Diplomatic terminology includes terms proper (to accredit, dispatch,
order of precedence, negotiator, ambassador), and words used in the sphere of
international relations in some special meaning: instrument (document), article (part of
a treaty), clause (part of a document), party (either side in a contract), provision
(statement).
The use of non-assimilated borrowings, mainly from Latin and French (note verbale,
aidememoire, proces-verbal, presides, bona fide, etc) should also be mentioned in
connection with the diplomatic terminology. Borrowings, as we know, are characteristic
of the English language as a whole, they amount to more than a half of its vocabulary.
But for diplomatic practice they are especially relevant as for many centuries Latin and
French remained dominant languages in diplomatic relations and all diplomatic
documents were composed in Latin and French as late as the 16th century. Suffice it to
say that out of 59 types of diplomatic documents 45 names are of Latin origin, II - of
French, I - of Greek and only 2 ( settlement and bond) are "home-made", are proper
English.
There are also very many obsolete and archaic words (hereto, henceforth, thereon,
whereof, whereupon). They are not terms for they are not necessarily bound to the
sphere of diplomacy; they may be used in legal practice too. But they clearly show that
the style of diplomatic documents is very conservative; it changes very slowly preserving
the tendency to use the same stereotyped words and phrases for centuries. Vocabulary
is an obvious reflector of distinctions between styles, but so are syntactic structures.
Such traits as the predominance of simple, extended sentences and complex sentences,
the preference for the separation of the subject and the predicate, the abundance of
homogeneous members as compared with other styles are peculiar of the style of
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diplomatic documents. The reason for that lies, perhaps, in the necessity of the
transparence of meaning, elimination of ambiguity, and avoidance of the wrong
interpretation of the document, which may cause undesirable consequences.
(b) The Style of Business Documents.
Business documents (and letters) are characterized by a high level of standardization.
They are in fact a combination of ready-made forms and stereotyped phrases. This
standard character of business documents has always been understood as a very
effective means of avoiding redundancy with the help of economy of linguistic units.
Lucidity and conciseness are very important.
For example, there are certain accepted ways of beginning and ending a business
letter. The usual way of address is Dear Sir, Dear Madam, or Dear Mr. Smith, Dear Mrs.
Brown if the person addressed to is known. In correspondence with strangers, it is usual
to change from Dear Sir-to Dear Mr. Smith-after the first one or two letters have been
exchanged.
Yours faithfully, Yours truly are the usual ending for all business letters. Yours
sincerely is the usual ending for letters to acquaintances.
The body of the business document (letter) should be concise and to the point,
without unnecessary information or explanation, written in short, direct sentences.
There are many standard formulas used:
a) to confirm the receiving of a letter (document ):
We have received your letter of.... We thank you for your letter dated In reply to your
letter of We acknowledge the receipt of.... We duly received your letter...;
b) to express request: Please, inform us.... We shall (should) be obliged if you .... We
shall (should) appreciate it if you We (would) ask you
c) to refer to a letter With reference to your letter of.... Referring to....We refer ...;
d) to apologise: We regret that.... Unfortunately, we We beg to
We offer our sincere apologies for e) to thank for: We acknowledge with thanks We
thank you
We appreciate.... etc.
All these formulas contribute to fostering such features as precision, exactness and
help to avoid ambiguity. At the same time they simplify and quicken business
correspondence.
It should also be mentioned that stereotyped character of business documents is the
merit of this style whereas when used in other styles such as the belles-lettres style, or
in the publicists style it becomes a drawback.
(c) The Style of Legal Documents.
The law includes many different activities from the drawing up of statutes to the
contracting of agreement between individuals, all or which need to be recorded in a
written form. In spite of their diversity, it will be not far from the truth to say that each of
these activities is in some way connected with the imposition and the conferring of
rights. And from time to time, of course, someone or other may become very curious
about his obligations and try to wriggle out of them- And someone else may try to
examine his rights to see if it is possible to stretch them to a credible limit and even
further. Consequently, whoever composes a legal document must take the greatest pains
to ensure that ii says exactly what he wants it to say and at the same time gives no
opportunity for misinterpretation. So if the composer happens to have used language
which can be taken to mean something other than he intended, he has failed in his job.
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Of all the language styles this one is perhaps the least communicative as it is designed
not so much "to enlighten language-users at large as to allow one expert to register
information for scrutiny by another. So the lawyers think that since their productions
are for those as familiar with the jargon as themselves there is no need to bother too
much about the simpler needs of a general public and that makes the language of
documents so complicated.
Doing basically the same things for many years - conveying property, drawing up wills
- lawyers have developed linguistic formulas, collections of them for each species of
transaction. Therefore much legal writing is not spontaneous, but is copied " from the
books" in which established formulas are collected. They are reliable and as far removed
from the informal spontaneous conversation as possible. It is essentially visual language,
meant to be scrutinized in silence, largely unspeakable at first sight. The reliance on
forms which were established in the past and reluctance to take risks by adopting new
ones contribute to the extreme linguistic conservatism of legal English.
Legal documents are usually set down as a solid block of script whose long lines extend
from margin to margin with practically no spacing and punctuation to defeat fraudulent
deletions and additions. The sentences in a document are usually very long and an
entire document can be composed of a single sentence and so there was no much help
from punctuation to understand it and, besides, since punctuation marks are used
mostly as prompts for oral reading of a text and legal documents are composed for
reading, they mostly do without them. One more reason for avoiding punctuation is to
prevent any possible forgery by changing the places of punctuation marks. Capitalization
was chosen as a means of revealing structure, content and logical progression to make
up for the lack of punctuation.
Lexically legal documents contain many archaisms, borrowings from French and Latin
which add a touch of formality. Legal English contains only complete major sentences,
mostly in the form of statements.
(d) The Style of Military Documents.
Military documents may be of different types - plans, estimates, summaries, surveys,
evaluation, situation maps, orders; all of them have a certain composition (an operating
order has a heading, a body and an ending).
The style of military documents has its own lexical, morphological and syntactical
characteristics. Military documents are characterised by their clarity, brevity, precision,
non-admittance of many interpretations. The main purpose of making them brief is to
economize time necessary for their composition, handling of messages. Military
vocabulary includes terms, abbreviations, symbols, special military phraseology; a wide
use of terminology, i.e. words used in one meaning only, helps to avoid ambiguity and
misinterpretation. There are also many names - both personal and geographical.
Abbreviations are abundant too and their number may be up to 50-60 per cent of the
text (e.g. Co - company, SW - south west, w/o - without, FA - Field Artillery, MP military police). Terms: to attack, order, machine gun, tank, army; phraseological units:
to hold a position, to provide protection, to lift fire. On the morphological level we can
mention rare use of the possessive case, omission of articles, use of two moods only imperative and indicative, two tenses - the present ind. and the past ind.
Syntactically military documents include mostly simple short sentences nominal and
verbal one-member. As a rule there are no exclamatory and negative sentences.
List of terms and addreviations from the sample orders.
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order for attack ?????? ??????

armored division ( Armd Div)
classification - ???? ???????????
opord operation order - ?????? ??????
situation - ??????????
intelligence - ????????
Corps - ??????
atk???????????attack
SSouth
50808050:??????????:????X???????,Y????????;????X????????,
Y???????,??????????????????2??????????????????????????????.
Inf Div - Infantry Division - ???????? ???????
ArmdCav????????????????(??????????????????)
flank?????
UNIT 2. THE SCIENTIFIC PROSE STYLE.
The scientific prose style has three subdivisions: I) the style of humanitarian sciences,
2) the style of "exact" sciences, 3) the style of popular scientific prose.
The function of the scientific prose style is to work out and ground theoretically
objective knowledge about reality. It strives towards the most general objective and
impersonal conception.
Some of the salient features of scientific English should be underlined: such as logical
sequences, lucidity, exactness, impersonality. It also has certain distinct characteristics
with regard to vocabulary, syntax and morphology. Science is concerned with matter,
elements, substances, objects, solids, liquids, gases. Such words are in everyday use,
though they are also fundamental to scientific vocabulary. Other words are more likely to
occur only in a scientific context and they are usually derived from Greek (oxygen,
hydrogen), Latin (carbon, molecule), Arabic (alkali).They are called terms and vary
depending on the kind of science. (Note: the word science itself is derived from the Latin
scire, to know, to have knowledge of, to experience. The word scientist was introduced
only in 1840 by William Whewell, Professor of Moral Philosophy at the University of
Cambridge-Before that the scientists were known as natural philosophers ").
The above mentioned strictly scientific terms are described as "general scientific
vocabulary ", - words most naturally used to impart intellectual information irrespective
of whether the information is strictly scientific and pertains to exact or natural sciences
or humanities. They are such words as' adhere, assume, assumption, postulate,
predetermine, experiment, observation, perceive, ascribe, distinction etc. As one can see
these are the words which denote general and abstract notions, but even concrete words
in scientific English denote something abstract and general:
e.g. "The chemist must pay attention to..." Here not a particular but any chemist is
meant.
The general and impersonal character of this kind of English is emphasized by a wide
use of impersonal sentences and passive constructions. From the point of view of its style
scientific English is a statement rather than an emotive expression through imaginative
figures of speech. Sometimes scientists resort to metaphors to make an imaginative or
emotional appeal. But if in the belles-lettres style it is one of the means of creating
images, a part of its system, in scientific English it is used for explanation,
concretization, popularization, it is an inplay, not connected with the general language
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system of the style. Unlike the belles-letters style it is never original, individual but it is
always contextually bound and devoid of individuality and originality.
UNIT 3. THE NEWSPAPER STYLE
A newspaper is always very eclectic, from the stylistic point of view. So, obviously,
everything that happens to be printed in a newspaper cannot be regarded as belonging
to the newspaper style. Since the central function of the newspaper is to inform and
influence the reader on certain matters we may speak about such parts of it that
constitute the newspaper style proper as: 1) brief news items, 2) the editorial, 3)
advertisements and announcements, 4) articles purely informative in character, of great
importance are also, 5) headlines.
Brief news items are impersonal and objective. They present information compressed
into limited space and should be clear, interesting and devoid of ambiguity.
The editorials are of analytical, generalizing character. They are the most impersonal
for they are "the voice" of the newspaper itself.
The function of the headline is complex: headlines have to contain a clear and if
possible intriguing message to arouse interest in the potential reader, to catch his eye,
and the chief means of producing "eye-catching" effects is by making use of the full
range of graphic contrasts - bold type, italics, different other kinds of type, subheadlines. Besides, the headlines may intrigue the reader by their syntactic structure:
nominal phrases, elliptical sentences, exclamatory or interrogative sentences, etc.
We should also note that the combination of expressiveness and standardization makes
one of the important features of the style. Standard phrases, clichs make the contact
with the reader easier. Brief news articles, for example quickly made should be devoid of
extra words (for want of space too) and easy to understand. They are quicker understood
in readymade blocks. So expressiveness very soon turns into standard and clich when
an apt phrase or word becomes proverbial.
The basic aim of the newspaper - to report or to inform is realised in its objective,
documentary, impersonal character through the use of official, economic terminology,
proper names, abbreviations, the passive voice, etc At the same time appeal in the
newspaper is to feelings rather than to reason - hence the use of expressive means on
different linguistic levels: phonology - alliteration, rhythm; graphitic means -mentioned
above; paragraphing; lexicology - careful choice of words-as there is always the need for
compression of the information into a limited space, the need for clarity, the avoidance of
ambiguity; various stylistic means making the style picturesque but creating no new
image which would hardly be a good aid to readability.
UNIT 5. THE STYLE OF RELIGION
The style of religion is distinguished as a separate entity by D. Crystal and D.Davy
(1969) and by V. Naer(1981); most Soviet scholars do not mention it. Still, the fact is that
this style has achieved quite a respectable status of its own in the English-speaking
countries. Though the religious form of social conscience manifests itself in numerous
forms and practices, and fulfils various functions in a society, the main aim of the
religious functional style maybe defined as expressing religious belief on public
occasions. Elements of the religious style may be used also in literature and in humour,
they can penetrate the daily colloquial speech as well.
The religious style is not uniform - it falls into at least three substyles: 1) the biblical
substyle, 2) the liturgical substyle and 3) the theological discourse substyle. The forms of
realization of the religious style include, of course, the texts of the Scriptures (The Old
6

Testament, The New Testament), as well as formal reading from the Scriptures, common
biblical prayers, sermons (which have more in common with other oratory pieces) and
theological discourse. There also exist books of prayers and religious hymns; prayers and
sermons are regularly televized and broadcast over the radio.
The core of the religious style is formed, in a sense, by the biblical substyle, which
seriously influences all sub-spheres of religious communication. Stylistically relevant is
the fact that The Scriptures are available in many variants, or editions. "The authorized"
version of The Bible is the so-called King James' version, characterized by archaic lexis
and syntax. Widespread nowadays are other versions of The Bible, written in easily
understood modem day English.
Let us consider some of the linguistic styleforming features.
The language is marked by graphical, lexical and syntactical peculiarities.
Graphical features include capitalization (God, Lord), italics (it is mine, shewed you ray
kindness), archaic spelling in some editions (Iesus), numbering paragraphs.
Noticeable are archaic pronouns (ye, thee, thou, thy, thine), archaic forms of verbs
(beholdest, considerest, asketh, receiveth, seekest, findeth), and, of course, religious
terms (Lord, Father which is in heaven, evil, devils, false prophets).
Syntactical stylistic devices may include parallelism, inversion (wide is the gate, and
great was the fall of it), anaphora (or... or...), epiphora (... you,... you) polysyndeton and so
on.
One can also come across metaphors (good tree bringeth forth good fruit; rain
descended and beat against the home).
But, surprisingly, the "newest" version of The Bible makes more prominent some of
the devices which are still there, like lexical repetition and root repetition (judge-judge judge, the same - the same), very effective oppositions (ask - receive, seek-find, knock open, bread - stone, fish - snake, bad - good). The modern text also preserves most of the
syntactical stylistic devices.
UNIT 6. THE BELLES-LETTRES STYLE
The belles-lettres style is a generic term for the following three substyles: 1) the
language of poetry (verse), 2) emotive prose (fiction) and 3) drama. Despite the fact that
the forms of realization of these substyles, known also as "genres" are rather varied in
their size and linguistic properties, still there are several principal features that make us
think they belong to a single entity.
First of all comes the common function of the belles-lettres style which is broadly
termed as "aesthetico-cognitive" and which aims at the cognitive process on the one
hand, and at receiving pleasure on the other one. The cognitive process secures the
gradual unfolding of the idea to the reader, and at the same time it causes a feeling of
pleasure from the form in which the content is presented.
The belles-lettres style rests on certain important linguistic features which include:
1. Genuine imagery achieved by purely linguistic devices.
2. The use of words in contextual and very often in more than one dictionary meaning.
3. A vocabulary which will reflect the author's personal evaluation of things or phenomena described.
4. A peculiar individual selection of vocabulary and syntax, a kind of lexical and
syntactical idiosyncrasy.
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The above features are observed in all the three substyles of the belles-lettres functional style - in poetry, in emotive prose and in drama; of course, the features manifest
themselves differently in a given style, and. in addition, each substyle possesses some
other specitific features.
For instance, the outstanding feature of poetry is its orderly FORM, which is based
primarily on the rhythmic and phonetic arrangement of the utterance, and which is
easily recognizable. Even short verse forms are set forth in a specific graphical variant of
presentation where lines are arranged into columns. Among the lexical peculiarities of
verse is also IMAGERY, which, being the generic feature of the belles-lettres style
assumes in poetry a very compressed form with its rich associative power, frequent
occurrence and surprising variety of means and devices of materialization (like
metaphors of different types, metonymies, similes etc). The EMOTIONAL element is used
in poetry to its full measure, this tendency finds its embodiment here in a great number
of emotionally coloured words, many of which have been regarded as poetic words.
Another substyle of the belles-lettres functional style - emotive prose - is sometimes
termed "fiction", and the term seems apt since most of the works of creative authors
reflect facts, events and characters which have never lived in reality, but inhabited the
imaginative worlds of the authors. The subtyle of emotive prose possesses all the generic
features pointed out above, but imagery is not so rich, as in poetry, the number of words
with contextual meaning is not as high as in poetry, the peculiarity of the author is not
so noticeable. In addition to that it would be possible to define the emotive prose
substyle as a combination of the spoken and written varieties of the language, since
there are always two forms of speech present - monologue (usually the author's speech)
and dialogue (the speech of characters).
Unlike the emotive prose, where there is a combination of monologue (the author's
speech, the character speech) and dialogue (the speech of characters), the language of
plays is entirely dialogue or polylogue; the author's speech is present only in the
playwright's remarks and stage directions. The language of characters, of course, is in no
way the exact reproduction of the colloquial speech, thus its stylization is one of the
features.
UNIT 7. The Colloquial Style.
The colloquial style is a peculiar subsystem of the English language. On the one hand,
its major field of application is found in the spoken variety of language, on the other
hand, elements of this style penetrate the written varieties such as the belles-lettres
style, the publicistic style and the newspaper style, etc.
When written, the colloquial styles function is to render the specificity of everyday
conversation. Underlying many of its specific features are the following factors:
1) the spontaneous character of communication; 2) the private character of communication; 3) face-to-faceness.
1) The colloquial style has a great amount of ready-made formulae, clichs, all kinds of
prefabricated patterns. Spontaneous conversation is facilitated by using stereotyped
units. One can mention among them the so-called social phrases such as greetings
(hello, how are you?), thanks and responses (thank for..., not at all..., a pleasure, etc.)
2) Creativity is also a result of spontaneous speech production. We make our
conversation as we go along. We have no time to polish it deliberately, but one can do
corrections, thus there are many hesitations, false starts, loose ends in grammar and
syntax.
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3) Compression tends to make speech more economical and laconic. It is reflected in

the use of the following language phenomena:
a) Shortened forms and clipped words (nouns: fridge, lab, math; verbs: am - 'm, is -'s,
are - 're, have -'ve, etc.).
b) Words of broad semantics (thing, one).
c) Ellipsis is usual in face-to-face communication as the situation (context) easily
supplies the missing pan (Same time, same place?)
d) Simplicity of syntax. Long sentences are seldom used in colloquial informal
communication, for a simple reason that the speaker doesn't want to lose the thread of
his own thought.
4) Redundancy reflects another aspect of unprepared speech production. Among the
elements reflecting this tendency are:
a) time-fillers (you know, I say, let me see, sort of).
b) the pleonastic use of pronouns (John, he is late).
c) senseless repetition of words and phrases (Liza: I'm a good girl, I am.) Vocabulary is
a noticeable aspect of the colloquial style. It may be subdivided into a) literary, b)
familiar, and, c) low colloquial layers though the dictionaries do not reflect this division
adequately.