At school literature lessons, we all once studied speech styles. However, few people have remembered anything on this issue. We suggest refreshing this topic together and recalling what literary and artistic style of speech is.
What are speech styles
Before speaking in more detail about the literary and artistic style of speech, you need to understand what it is all about - the style of speech. We briefly touch on this definition.
Under the style of speech it is necessary to understand the special speech means that we use in a particular situation. These means of speech always carry a special function, and therefore they are called functional styles. Another common name is language genres. In other words, it is a set of speech formulas - or even cliches - which are used in different cases (both verbally and in writing) and do not match. This is a speech style of behavior: at an official reception with dignitaries, we speak and behave like that, and when we meet with a group of friends somewhere in a garage, cinema, club - it’s completely different.
There are five functional styles . Briefly describe them below before proceeding in detail to the issue of interest to us.
What are the styles of speech
As mentioned above, there are five styles of speech, but some believe that there is also a sixth - religious. In Soviet times, when all styles of speech were distinguished, the study of this issue was not carried out for obvious reasons. Be that as it may, there are five officially functional styles. Below we consider them.
Science style
Used, of course, in science. Its authors and addressees are scientists, specialists in a specific field. In writing , texts of this style can be found in scientific journals. This language genre is characterized by the presence of terms, general scientific words, abstract vocabulary.
Journalistic style
As you might guess, he lives in the media and is designed to influence people. Namely people, the population is the addressee of this style, which is characterized by emotionality, conciseness, the presence of commonly used phrases, often - the presence of socio-political vocabulary.
Spoken style
As you can understand by its name, it is a communication style. This is mainly an oral language genre; we need it for a simple conversation, expression of emotions, exchange of opinions. It is characterized by colloquial, vernacular sometimes even vocabulary, expressiveness, lively dialogues, and colorfulness. It is in colloquial speech that often along with words appear facial expressions and gestures.
Official business style
It is mainly a writing style and is used in an official setting for paperwork - in the field of legislation, for example, or office work. With the help of this language genre various laws, orders, acts and other papers of a similar nature are drawn up. It is easy to recognize it by its dryness, informativeness, accuracy, the presence of speech cliches, and the lack of emotionality.
Finally, the fifth, literary and artistic style (or simply - artistic) is the subject of interest for this material. So we’ll talk about it in more detail later.
Characteristics of the literary and artistic style of speech
So what is an artistic language genre? Based on its name, we can assume - and not be mistaken - that it is used in literature, specifically in fiction. This is true, this style is the language of fiction texts, the language of Tolstoy and Gorky, Dostoevsky and Remarque, Hemingway and Pushkin ... The main role and purpose of the literary and artistic style of speech is to influence the minds, the minds of readers so that they begin to think that there would be an aftertaste even after reading the book, so that I would like to think about it and return to it again and again. This genre is intended to convey to the reader the thoughts and feelings of the author, to help see what is happening in the work through the eyes of its creator, to imbue it, to live their life together with the heroes on the pages of the book.
The text of the literary and artistic style is also emotional, as well as the speech of its colloquial "brother", however, these are two different emotions. In colloquial speech, we free our soul, our brain with the help of emotions. Reading the book, on the contrary, we are saturated with its emotionality, which acts here as a kind of aesthetic means. We will tell you more about the signs of the literary and artistic style of speech by which it is not at all difficult to recognize, but for now let us dwell briefly on listing those literary genres that are characterized by the use of the aforementioned style of speech.
What genres are inherent
The artistic language genre can be found in fable and ballad, ode and elegy, in novel and novel, fairy tale and short story, in essay and short story, epic and anthem, in song and sonnet, poem and epigram, in comedy and tragedy. So, both Stefan Zweig, and Mikhail Lomonosov, and Ivan Krylov - all can equally serve as examples of the literary and artistic style of speech, no matter how different the pieces they wrote.
A little about the functions of the artistic language genre
And although we have already voiced the above, what is the main task for this style of speech, nevertheless we will give all three of its functions.
It:
- Affecting (and a strong impact on the reader is achieved with the help of a well-designed and prescribed "strong" image).
- Aesthetic (the word is not only a "carrier" of information, but also constructs an artistic image).
- Communicative (the author expresses his thoughts and feelings - the reader perceives them).
Style traits
The main stylistic features of the literary and artistic style of speech are as follows:
1. The use of a large number of styles and their mixing. This is a sign of the author's style. Any author is free to use any language means of various styles in his work - colloquial, scientific, official-business: any. All these speech tools used by the author in his book are combined into a single author’s style, according to which one can later easily guess one or another writer. That is how Gorky can be easily distinguished from Bunin, Zoshchenko from Pasternak, and Chekhov from Leskov.
2. Use words that are ambiguous. With the help of such a technique, hidden meaning is embedded in the narrative.
3. The use of various stylistic figures - metaphors, comparisons, allegories and the like.
4. Special syntactic constructions: often the order of words in a sentence is structured in such a way that it is difficult to express this way in oral speech. It’s also easy to recognize the author of the text by this attribute.
The literary and artistic style is the most flexible and borrowing. It incorporates literally everything! You can find in it neologisms (newly formed words), and archaisms, and historicisms, and swear words, and various argos (slangs of professional speech). And this is the fifth feature, the fifth distinguishing feature of the aforementioned language genre.
What else you need to know about art style
1. You should not think that the artistic language genre lives exclusively in writing. This is not at all true. In oral speech, this style also functions quite well - for example, in plays that were first written and now read aloud. And even listening to oral speech, one can well imagine everything that happens in the work - thus, it can be said that the literary and artistic style does not tell, but shows the story.
2. The aforementioned language genre is perhaps the most free from any restrictions whatsoever. Other styles have their own prohibitions, but in this case there is no need to talk about prohibitions - what restrictions can there be if the authors are allowed to even interweave scientific terms into the outline of their story. However, it’s still not worth it to abuse other style means and pass everything off as your own style - the reader should be able to understand and understand what is in front of his eyes. The abundance of terms or complex designs will make him bored and turn the page without reading it.
3. When writing a work of art, you need to be very careful in selecting vocabulary and consider what situation you are describing. If we are talking about a meeting of two officials from the administration, you can screw a couple of speech cliches or other representatives of the official business style. However, if the story is about a beautiful summer morning in the forest, such expressions will be clearly inappropriate.
4. In any text of the literary and artistic style of speech, approximately three types of speech are used approximately equally: description, reasoning, and narration (the latter, of course, occupies a large part). Also, approximately in the same proportions in the texts of the aforementioned language genre, types of speech are also used - whether it is a monologue, dialogue or polylogue (communication of several people).
5. An artistic image is created at the expense of all the means of speech available to the author. In the nineteenth century, for example, the use of "speaking surnames" was very widespread (remember Denis Fonvizin with his "Undergrowth" - Skotinin, Prostakov, and so on, or Alexander Ostrovsky in the Storm - Kabanikh). A similar method allowed with the very first appearance of the character in front of readers to indicate what a given hero is. Currently, the use of this technique has somewhat departed.
6. In every literary text there is also a so-called image of the author. This is either the image of the narrator, or the image of the hero, a conditional image that emphasizes the non-identity of the “real” author with him. This image of the author actively takes part in everything that happens with the characters, comments on events, communicates with readers, expresses his own attitude to situations, and so on.
Such is the characteristic of the literary and artistic style of speech, knowing which one can evaluate works of fiction from a completely different angle.