GENERAL NOTES ON FUNCTIONAL STYLES OF LANGUAGE
A functional style of language is a system of interrelated language means which serves a
definite aim in communication. A functional style is thus to be regarded as the product of a
certain concrete task set by the sender of the message. Functional styles appear mainly in the
literary standard of a language.
The literary standard of the English language is not so homogeneous as it may seem. In fact
the standard English literary language in the course of its development has fallen into several
subsystems each of which has acquired its own peculiarities which are typical of the given
functional style. The members of the language community, especially those who are
sufficiently trained and responsive to language variations, recognize these styles as
independent wholes.
The peculiar choice of language means is primarily predetermined by the aim of the
communication with the result that a more or less closed system is built up. One set of
language media stands in opposition to other sets of language media with other aims, and
these other sets have other choices and arrangements of language means.
What we here call functional styles are also called registers or d i s с о u r s e s.
In the English literary standard we distinguish the following major functional styles (hence
FS):
1) The language of belles-lettres.
2) The language of publicistic literature.
3) The language of newspapers.
4) The language of scientific prose.
5) The language of official documents.
As has already been mentioned, functional styles are the product of the development of the
written variety of language. Each FS may be characterized by a number of distinctive
features: leading or subordinate, constant or changing, obligatory or optional. Most of the
FSs, however, are perceived as independent wholes due to a peculiar combination and
interrelation of features common to all (especially when taking into account syntactical
arrangement) with the leading ones of each FS.
Each FS is subdivided into a number of substyles. Each variety has basic features common to
all the varieties of the given FS and peculiar features typical of this variety alone. Still a
substyle can, in some cases, deviate so far from the invariant that in its extreme it may even
break away.
The belles-lettres F S has the following substyles: a) the language style of poetry; b) the
language style of emotive prose; c) the language style of drama.
The publicistic F S comprises the following substyles: a) the language style of oratory; b) the
language style of essays; c) the language style of feature articles in newspapers and journals.
The newspaper F S falls into a) the language style of brief news items and communiques; b)
the language style of newspaper headings and c) the language style of notices and
advertisements. The scientific prose F S also has three divisions: a) the language style of
humanitarian sciences; b) the language style of "exact" sciences; c) the language style of
popular scientific prose.
The official document F S can be divided into four varieties: a) the language style of
diplomatic documents; b) the language style of business documents; c) the language style of
legal documents; d) the language style of military documents.
The classification of FSs is not a simple matter and any discussion of it is bound to reflect
more than one angle of vision. (Thus, for example, some stylicists consider that newspaper
articles (including feature articles) should be classed under the functional style of newspaper
language, not under the language of publicistic literature. Others insist on including the
language of everydaylife discourse into the system of functional styles. Prof. Budagov singles
out only two main functional styles: the language of science and that of emotive literature.)
But no classification, useful though it may be from the theoretical point of view, should be
allowed to blind us as to the conventionality of classification in general. When analysing
concrete texts, we discover that the boundaries between them sometimes become less and less
discernible. Thus, for instance, the signs of difference are sometimes almost imperceptible
between poetry and emotive prose; between newspaper FS and publicistic FS; between a
popular scientific article and a scientific treatise; between an essay and a scientific article.
But the extremes are apparent from the ways language units are used both structurally and
semantically. Language serves a variety of needs and these needs have given birth to the
principles on which our classification is based and which in their turn presuppose the choice
and combination of language means.
