Bilins’ka L.I., Chyzhykova I.V., Bozhok O.I.

Prydniprovs’k State Academy of Civil Engineering and Architecture, Ukraine

The most typical devices of publicistic style

Nowadays there exist large amount of different approaches to express our own points of view our minds and attitude using various styles of speech. Among numerous speech styles the publicistic style of language is considered to be the most common. It also falls into three varieties, each having its own distinctive features. Unlike other styles, the publicistic style has a spoken variety, namely, the oratorical substyle. The development of radio and television has brought into being another new spoken variety, namely, the radio and TV соmmentary. The other two substyles are the essay (moral, philosophical, literary) and journalistic articles (political, social, economic) in newspapers, journals and magazines.

The general aim of publicistic style, which makes it stand out as a separate style, is to exert a constant and deep influence on public opinion, to convince the reader or the listener that the interpretation given by the writer or the speaker is the only correct one and to cause him to accept the point of view expressed in the speech, essay or article not merely through logical argumentation but through emotional appeal as well. This brain-washing function is most effective in oratory, for here the most powerful instrument of persuasion, the human voice, is brought into play.

Due to its characteristic combination of logical argumentation and emotional appeal, publicistic style has features in common with the style of scientific prose, on the one hand, and that of emotive prose, on the other. Its coherent and logical syntactical structure, with an expanded system of connectives and its careful paragraphing, makes it similar to scientific prose. Its emotional appeal is generally achieved by the use of words with emotive meaning, the use of imagery and other stylistic devices as in emotive prose; but the stylistic devices used in publicistic style are not fresh, or genuine. The individual element essential to the belles-lettres style is, as a rule, little in evidence here. This is in keeping with the general character of the style. The manner of presenting ideas, however, brings this style closer to that of belles-lettres, in this case to emotive prose, as it is to a certain extent individual. Naturally, of course, essays and speeches have greater individuality than newspaper or magazine articles where the individual element is generally toned down and limited by the requirements of the style.

Further, publicistic style is characterized by brevity of expression. In some varieties of this style it becomes a leading feature, an important linguistic means. In essays brevity sometimes becomes epigrammatic.

Some scholars consider the oratorical style as the oral subdivision of the publicistic style.Persuasion is the most obvious purpose of oratory.

Direct contact with the listeners permits the combination of the syntactical, lexical and phonetic peculiarities of both the written and spoken varieties of language. In its leading feature, however, the oratorical style belongs to the written variety of language, though it is modified by the oral form of the utterance and the use of gestures. Certain typical features of the spoken variety of speech present in this style are: direct address to the audience, sometimes contraction (I’ll, won’t, haven’t, isn’t and others) and the use of colloquial words.

This style is evident in speeches on political and social problems of the day in orations and addresses on solemn occasions, as public weddings, in sermons and debates and also in the speeches of counsel and judges in courts of law.

The stylistic devices employed in the oratorical style are determined by the conditions of communication. If the desire of the speaker is to rouse the audience and to keep it in suspense, he will use various traditional stylistic devices.

Tradition is very powerful in oratorical style and the 16-th century rhetorical principles laid down by Thomas Wilson in his “Arte of Rhetorique” are sometimes still used in modern oratory, though, on the whole, modern oratory tends to lower its key more and more. Stylistic devices are closely interwoven and mutually complementary thus building up an intricate pattern. As the audience relies only on memory, the speaker often resorts to repetitions to enable his listeners to follow him and retain the main points of his speech. The following extract from the speech of the American Confederate general, A. P. Hill, the participant of the Civil War in the U.S.A. is an example of anaphoric repetition:

"It is high time this people had recovered from the passions of war. It is high time that counsel were taken from statesmen” not demagogues'... It is high time the people of the North and the South understood each other and adopted means to inspire confidence in each other."

A mere repetition of the same idea and in the same linguistic form may bore the audience and destroy the speaker-audience contact, therefore synonymic phrase repetition is used instead, thus filling up the speech with details.

Repetition can be regarded as the most typical stylistic device of English oratorical style. Almost any piece of oratory will have parallel constructions, antithesis, suspense, climax, rhetorical questions and questions-in-the-narrative. It will be no exaggeration to say that almost all the typical syntactical stylistic devices can be found in English oratory. Questions are most frequent because they promote closer contact with the audience. The change of intonation breaks the monotony of the intonation pattern and revives the attention of the listeners.

The desire of the speaker to convince and to rouse his audience results in the use of simile and metaphor, but these are generally traditional ones, as fresh stylistic devices may divert the attention of the listeners away from the main point of the speech. Besides, unexpected and original images are more difficult to grasp and the process takes time. If a genuine metaphor is used by an orator, it is usually a sustained one, as a series of related images is easier to grasp and facilitates the conception of facts identified one with another. Allusions in oratorical style depend on the content of the speech and the level of the audience.

Special obligatory forms open up and end an oration, e.g. My Lords; Mr. President; Mr. Chairman; Your Worship; Ladies and Gentlemen, etc. At the end of his speech the speaker usually thanks the audience for their attention by saying: Thank you very much. Expressions of direct address may be repeated in the course of the speech and can be expressed differently: dear friends, Mark you, Mind!

As a separate form of English literature the essay dates back to the 16th century. This literary genre has definite linguistic traits which shape it as a variety of publicistic style. The name appears to have become common on the publication of Montaigne's "Essays", a literary form created by this French writer. The essay is a literary composition of moderate length on philosophical, social, aesthetic or literary subjects. It never goes deep into the subject, but merely touches upon the surface. Personality in the treatment of theme and naturalness of expression are two of the most obvious characteristics of the essay. An essay is rather a series of personal and witty comments than a finished argument or a conclusive examination of any matter.

The essay was very popular in the 17th and 18th centuries. In the 17th century essays were written on topics connected with morals and ethics, while those of the 18th century focused attention on political and philosophical problems.

In the 19th century the essay as a literary term gradually changed into what we now call the journalistic article or feature article which covers all kinds of subjects from politics, philosophy or aesthetics to travel, sport and fashions. Feature articles are generally published in newspapers. They are often written by one and the same writer or journalist, who has cultivated his own individual style.

Irrespective of the character of the magazine and the divergence of subject matter whether it is political, literary, popular-scientific or satirical, all the already mentioned features of publicistic style are to be found in any article. The character of the magazine as well as the subject chosen affects the choice and use of stylistic devices. Words of emotive meaning for example, are few, if any, in scientific articles.

The language of political magazine articles differs little from that of newspaper articles. But such elements of publicistic style as rare and bookish words, neologisms, traditional word combinations and parenthesis are more frequent here than in newspaper articles. Literary reviews stand closer to essays both by their content and by their linguistic form. More abstract words of logical meaning are used in them; they often resort to emotional language and less frequently to traditional set expressions.

So as we can see although the publicistic style of speech is referred to be the most widely used one it has some peculiarities and trends in different spheres of human activity. So we have to be very attentive when we choose our manner of speech in this or that occasions to catch attention of the audience.