Publicistic style.

The general aim o f publicistic style is to influence public opinion, to convince the reader that the given
interpretation o f the event is the only correct one and to cause him to accept the expressed point of view
through logical argumentation and emotional appeal. Publicistic style is a blend o f the rigorous logical
reasoning, reflecting the objective state o f things and a strong subjectivity reflecting the author’s personal
feelings and emotions. Publicistic style falls into 3 varieties:

1) oratorical substyle that is a spoken variety with new spoken types - the radio and TV commentary,

2) the essay,

3) journalistic articles.

The essay is a literary composition o f moderate length on philosophical, social or literary subjects. It never
goes deep into the subject. The most characteristic features o f the essay are:

1) personality in the treatment o f theme,

2) naturalness of expression.

The characteristic language features are:

1) the brevity of expression,

2) the use o f first person singular (I think),

3) the expanded use o f connectives,

4) the abundant use o f emotive words,

5) the use o f similes and sustained metaphors.

Journalistic article is similar to newspaper article but has its differentiating characteristics:

1) rare and bookish words, neologisms, traditional word-combinations and parenthesis are more frequent
here than in newspaper articles,

2) the use of the emphatic constructions (It is he who...)

3) the use o f more abstract words o f logical meaning, emotional words and less traditional set expressions.

Oratory and Speeches.

The oratorical style is the oral subdivision of the publicistic style. Typical features o f the spoken variety are:

1) direct address to the audience (Honorable members),

2) contractions (I’ll, isn’t),

3) use of the colloquial words,

4) stylistic devices used are interwoven and complementary.

Newspaper style is a system of interrelated lexical, phraseological and grammatical means which is
perceived by the community speaking the language as a separate unity that basically serves the purpose o f
informing and instructing the reader. To attract the reader’s attention specific headlines, space ordering, a
large proportion of dates, personal names of countries, institutions, and individuals are used. Since the
primary function of newspaper style is to impart information, only printed matter serving this purpose
comes under newspaper style proper. The newspaper also seeks to influence public opinion on political and
other matters. The headlines o f news items, apart from giving information about the subject-matter, also
carry a considerable amount of appraisal (the size and arrangement of the headline, the use o f emotionally
coloured words and elements o f emotive syntax), thus indicating the interpretation o f the facts in the news
item that follows. But, of course, the principal vehicle of interpretation and appraisal is the newspaper
article and the editorial in particular. Editorials (leading articles or leaders) are characterized by a subjective
handling o f facts, political or otherwise. They have much in common with classical specimens of publicistic
writing and are often looked upon as such. However, newspaper evaluative writing unmistakably bears the
stamp o f newspaper style. Thus, it seems natural to regard newspaper articles, editorials included, as
coming within the system of English newspaper style. But it should be noted that while editorials and other
articles in opinion columns are predominantly evaluative, newspaper feature articles, as a rule, carry a
considerable amount of information, and the ratio of the informative and the evaluative varies substantially
from article to article. To understand the language peculiarities of English newspaper style it will be
sufficient to analyse the following basic newspaper features:

1) brief news items,

2) advertisements and announcements,

3) the headline,

4) the editorial.

Brief News Items

The principal function of a brief news item is to inform the reader. It states facts without giving explicit
comments, and whatever evaluation there is in news paragraphs is for the most part implicit and as a rule
unemotional. News items are essentially matter-of-fact, and stereotyped forms of expression prevail. As an
invariant; the language of brief items is stylistically neutral, which seems to be in keeping with the allegedly
neutral and unbiased nature of newspaper reporting: in practice, however, departures from this principle of
stylistic neutrality (especially in the so-called "mass papers") are quite

common. It goes without saying that the bulk of the vocabulary used in newspaper writing is neutral and
common literary. But apart from this, newspaper style has its specific vocabulary features and is
characterized by an extensive use of:
1) Special political and economic terms, e. g. Socialism, constitution, president, apartheid, by-election,
General Assembly, gross output, p er capital production.

2) Non-term political vocabulary, e. g. public, people, progressive, nation-wide, unity, peace.

3) Newspaper cliches, i. e. stereotyped expressions, commonplace phrases familiar to the reader, e. g. vital
issue, pressing problem, informed sources, danger o f war, to escalate a war, war hysteria, overwhelming
majority, amid stormy applause.

4) Abbreviations. News items, press reports and headlines abound in abbreviations of various kinds. Among
them abbreviated terms-names o f organizations, public and state bodies, political ssociations, industrial
and other companies, various offices, etc. - known by their initials are very common, e. g. UNO ( United
Nations Organization), TUC (Trades Union Congress), NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization), AFL-CIO
(American Federation of Labour-Congress o f Industrial Organizations), EEC (European Economic
Community), TGWU (Transport and General Workers Union), FO (Foreign Office), PIB (Prices and Incomes
Board).

5) Neologisms. These are very common in newspaper vocabulary. The newspaper is very quick to react to
any new development in the life o f society, in science and technology. Hence, neologisms make their way
into the language o f the newspaper very easily and often even spring up on newspaper pages, e. g. lunar
rover (a vehicle for exploratory travel on the lunar surface), sing-in (a musical act or event in which the
audience serves as a chorus or joins in the singing), overkill (the ability to annihilate an enemy or objective
several times over), ice-up (the freezing over snow or water).

Advertisements and Announcements

The principal function of advertisements and announcements is to inform the reader. There are two basic
types o f advertisements and announcements in the modern English newspaper: classified and non-
classified. In classified advertisements and announcements

various kinds o f information are arranged according to subject-matter into sections, each bearing an
appropriate name: BIRTHS, MARRIAGES, DEATHS, IN MEMORIAM, BUSINESS OFFERS, PERSONAL, etc.

This classified arrangement has resulted in a number of stereotyped patterns regularly employed in
newspaper advertising:

1) elliptical pattern of the sentence,

2) the absence o f all articles and some punctuation marks,

3) sentences which are grammatically complete also tend to be short and compact,

4) The vocabulary is on the whole essentially neutral with a few emotionally coloured words or phrases used
to attract the reader's attention. Emotional colouring is generally moderate.
As for the non-classified advertisements and announcements, the variety o f language form and
subjectmatter is so great that hardly any essential features common to all may be pointed out. The reader's
attention is attracted by every possible means: typographical, graphical and stylistic, both lexical and
syntactical.

The headline (the title given to a news item or an article) is a dependent form of newspaper writing. It is
in fact a part of a larger whole. The main function o f the headline is:
1) to inform the reader briefly o f what the text that follows is about,
2) to show the reporter's or the paper's attitude to the facts reported or commented on,
3) to instruct the reader.
Usually there is only one headline to each article. But in some newspapers the articles go with two or
three or even four headlines.

The Editorial
The function o f the editorial is to influence the reader by giving an interpretation of certain facts.
Editorials comment on the political and other events o f the day. Their purpose is to give the editor's
opinion and interpretation of the news published and to suggest to the reader that it is the correct one.
Like any evaluative writing, editorials appeal not only to the reader's mind but to his feelings as well.

Scientific Prose style.

The aim of scientific prose is to prove a hypothesis, to create new concept, to disclose the laws o f
existence. The language tends to be objective, precise, unemotional, devoid of any individuality. The
characteristic features of this style are:
1) the logical sequence o f utterances with a varied system of connectives to indicate their interrelation
and interdependence and the repeated use of such clicl^s -proceeding from, as it was said above, in
connection with and other lexico-syntactical form s emphasizing the logical connection and
independence o f consecutive parts of discourse,
2) the use of terms specific to each given branch of science and denoting objects, phenomena and
process,
3) precision, clarity and logical cohesion,
4) specific sentence patterns, they are o f 3 types:
postulatory, argumentative and formulative,
5) the use quotations and references. The references have a definite pattern: author, title o f work quoted,
the publishing house, the place and year it was published and the pages o f the except quoted,
6) the frequent use o f foot-notes not of the reference kind but digressive in character. Everything that
seems not to be immediately relevant to the matter in hand but may indirectly back up the idea will be
placed in a foot-note.
7) the impersonality is revealed in the frequent use of
passive construction: Acid was taken.

The style of official documents or officialese.

The substyles of official documents style are:

1) the language of business documents;

2) the language of legal documents;

3) the language of diplomacy;

4) the language of military documents.

It is the most conservative style, preserving cast- iron form o f structuring and using syntactical
constructions and words long known as archaic and not observed anywhere else. All emotiveness and
subjective modality are completely banned out o f this style. The aim o f this style is to state the conditions
binding two parties in an undertaking, to reach agreement between two contrasting parties.

The characteristic features of this style are:

1) conventionality o f expression - a special system of cliches, terms and set expressions by which each
substyle can easily be recognized: I beg to inform you, provisional agenda, on behalf of Each of the
subdivisions of this style has its own peculiar terms, phrases and expressions which differentiate it from
other substyles:

Finance: extra revenue, taxable capacities,

Diplomatic: high contracting parties, to ratify an agreement, extra - territorial status,

Legal: summary procedure, a body o f judges.

2) the encoded character of language symbols - the use of abbreviations, conventional symbols and
contractions,

3) the use of words in their logical dictionary meaning,

4) the absence of emotive words,

5) definite compositional patterns of documents: eg.: the structure of a business letter includes: 1) address o
f the sender, 2) the date, 3) the address of the

addressee and his name, 4) salutation, 5) the body of the

letter itself, 6) conventional good-bye phrase, 7) the enclosure if there is any,

6) a general syntactical mode o f combining several pronouncements into one sentence.