Lecture 3 Classifications of language expressive means

Nowadays there exist dozens of classifications of expressive means of a language and all of them involve to a great measure the same elements. They differ often only in terminology and criteria of classification. Two of the modern classifications of expressive means in the English language that are commonly recognized and used in teaching stylistics today will be discussed further in brief. They have been offered by G. Leech and I. R Galperin.

Stylistic theory and classification of expressive means by G. Leech

One of the first linguists who tried «to modernize» tradition­al rhetoric system was a British scholar G. Leech. In 1967 his contribution into stylistic theory in the book «Essays on Style and Language» was published in London. Paying tribute to the descriptive linguistics popular at the time he tried

Евразийский национальный университет им. Л.Н. Гумилева

Учебно-методический комплекс дисциплины

Издание: третье

To show how linguistic theory could be accommodated to the task of describing such rhetorical figures as metaphor, parallelism, alliteration, personification and others in the present-day study of literature. Proceeding from the popular definition of literature as the creative use of language Leech claims that this can be equated with the use of deviant forms of language. According to his theory the first principle with which a linguist should approach literature is the degree of generality of statement about language. There are two particularly important ways in which the description of language entails generalization. In the first place language operates by what may be called descriptive generalization. For example, a grammarian may give descriptions of such pronouns as /, they, it, him, etc. as objective personal pronouns with the following categories: first/third person, singular/plural, masculine, non-reflexive, animate/inanimate. Although they require many ways of description they are all pronouns and each of them may be explicitly described in this fashion.

The other type of generalization is implicit and would be appropriate in the case of such words as language and dialect. This sort of description would be composed of individual events of speaking, writing, hearing and reading. From these events generalization may cover the linguistic behaviour of whole populations. In this connection Leech maintains the importance of distinguishing two scales in the language. He calls them «register scale» and «dialect scale». «Register scale» distinguishes spoken language from written language, the language of respect from that of condescension, advertising from science, etc. The term covers linguistic activity within society. «Dialect scale» differentiates language of people of different age, sex, social strata, geographical area or individual linguistic habits (idiolect).

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