Types of speech

Ancient authors distinguished speech for practical and aesthetic purposes. Rhetoric dealt with the latter which was supposed to answer certain requirements, such as a definite choice of words, their assonance, deviation from ordinary vocabulary and employment of special stratums like poetic diction, neologisms and archaisms, onomatopoeia as well as appellation to tropes. One of the most important devices to create a necessary high-flown or dramatic effect was an elaborate rhythmical arrangement of eloquent speech that involved the obligatory use of the so-called figures or schemes. The quality of rhetoric as an art of speech was measured in terms of skilful combination, convergence, abundance or absence of these devices. Respectively all kinds of speech were labelled and repre­sented in a kind of hierarchy including the following types: elevated: flowery /florid/ exquisite; poetic; normal; dry; scanty; hackneyed; tasteless.

Евразийский национальный университет им. Л.Н. Гумилева

Учебно-методический комплекс дисциплины

Издание: третье

The Plain Style, Aristotle said, is simple, using many active verbs and keeping its subjects (nouns) spare. Its purposes include lucidity, clarity, familiarity, and the necessity to get its work done crisply and well. So this style uses few difficult compounds, coinages or qualifications (such as epithets or modifiers). It avoids harsh sounds, or odd orders. It employs helpful connective terms and clear clauses with firm endings. In every way it tries to be natural, following the order of events themselves with moderation and repetition as in dialogue.

The Eloquent Style in contrast changes the natural order of events to effect control over them and give the narration expressive power rather than sequential account. So this style may be called passive in contrast to active.

As strong assumptions are made subjects are tremendously am­plified without the activity of predication because inherent quali­ties rather than new relations are stressed. Sentences are lengthy, rounded, well balanced, with a great deal of elaborately connected material. Words can be unusual, coined; meanings can be im­plied, oblique, and symbolic. Sounds can fill the mouth, perhaps, harshly.

Two centuries later a Greek rhetorician and historian Dionysius of Halicarnassus who lived in Rome in the 1*' century ВС characterized one of the Greek orators in such a way: «His harmony is natural, stately, spacious, articulated by pauses rather than strongly polished and joined by connectives; naturally off-balance, not rounded and symmetrical» (43, p. 123).

Attempts to analyse and determine the style-forming features of prose also began in ancient times. Demetrius of Alexandria who lived in Greece in the 3d century ВС was an Athenian orator, statesman and Philosopher. He used the ideas of such earlier theorists as Aristotle and characterized styles by rhetoric of purpose that required certain grammatical constructions.

Dionyssius wrote over twenty books, most famous of which are «On Imitation», «Commentaries on the Ancient Orators» and «On the Arrangement of Words». The latter is the only surviving ancient study of principles of word order and euphony. For the Romans a recommended proportion for language units in verse was two nouns and two adjectives to one verb, which they called «the golden line». Gradually the choices of certain stylistic features in different combi­nations settled into three types—plain, middle and high.

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