The Aim: To teach students to acquire the peculiarities of publicistic and press style.

Publicist style, covering such genres as essay, feature article, most writings of: new journalism”, public speeches. it is a perfect example of the historical changeability of stylistic differentiation of discourses. In ancient Greece, e.g., it was practiced in its oral form and was known as oratoric style. Publicist style is famous for its explicit pragmatic function of persuasion directed at influencing the reader and shaping his views, in accordance with the argumentation of the author.

Antonomasia. The interplay between logical and nominal meanings of a word is called antonomasia. It is intended to point out the leading, most characteristic feature of a person or event. It is a much favored device in the belles-lettres style. It is often found in publicity style, that is in magazine and newspaper articles. In essays and in military language. the following are examples: Islay this to American friends. Mr Fcing-Bith-ways does not get very far in thus word (` THE Times`, March 1, 1956) ` I suspect that the nose and don’t knows would far out-number the Yeses` (The spectator. Feb. 17,1959)Intensification of a certain feature a thing or phenomenon. b)Simile`Things are best of all learned by Simile`. V.Y. Billings. The intensifications of some feature of the concept in question is realized in a device called simile. Ordinary comparison and simile should not be confused. Comparison means weighting 2 objects belonging to one class of things with the porpoise of establishing the degree of their sameness or difference. Simile excludes all the properties of the 2 objects except one which is made common to them. For example: `The boy seems to be as clever as his mother ` is ordinary comparison. They belong to the same class of objects. But in ` Maidens, like moths belong to heterogeneous classes of objects and Byron has found the concept `moth` to indicate one of the secondary features of the concept maiden`, i.e. to be easily lured.

Similes have formal elements in their stricture connective words such as like, as such as, as if, seem. Here are some examples of similes taken from various sources and illustrating the variety of structural designs of this stylistic device. `His mind was restless, but it worked perversely and thoughts jerked through carburetor`. (Maugham) Sometimes the simile –forming `like` is placed at the end of the phrase almost merging with it and becoming half suffix, for example:` Emily Barton was very pink, very Dresden-china-shepherdess like`. In simple no n-figurative language, it will assume the following form: ` Emily Barton was very pink, and looked like a Dresden-china-shepherdess`.

Periphrasis -It is the re-naming of an object by a phrase that brings to some particular feature of the object. It is a stylistic device and a new, genuine nomination of an object, a process which realizes the power of language to coin new names for objects by disclosing some quality of the object, even though it may be transitory, and making it along represent the object, but at the same time preserving in the mind the ordinary name of the concept. Here are some such stylistic periphrases: ` I understand you are poor, and wish to earn money by nerving the little boy, my son, who has been so prematurely deprived of what can never be replaced`. (Dickens). Here is another stylistic periphrasis which the last phrases in the sentence deciphers: `And tarot stands upon the place of skulls; The grave of France, the deadly Waterloo.` in some cases periphrasis is regarded as a demerit and should have no place in good, precise writing. Logical periphrasis is based on one of the inheritor of the object described, as in instruments of destruction (Dickens)=pistols. `Love` - the object of his admiration (Dickens)

d)euphemism there is variety of periphrasis which we shall call euphemism. Euphemism is a word or phrase used to replace an unpleasant word or expression, the word ` to die` has bred the following euphemism: to pass away, to be no more, to depart, to join the majority. So euphemisms are synonyms which aim at producing a deliberately mild effect. They refer the mind to the concept directly e.g. Dickens`s ` Pickwick papers`. `They (cannot) think we have come by the horse in some dishonest manner`. The word steal (have stolen it).

e) Hyperbole- it is deliberate overstatement or exaggeration. The following is a good example of hyperbole. A thousand pardons; scared to death; immensely obliged, ` I`d give the word to see him.` Byron says: `When people say:`` I’ve told you fifty times`. They mean to scold, and very often do.`

The publicistic styl e of language became discernible as a sep-arate style in the middle of the 18th century. It also falls into three varieties, each having its own distinctive features. Unlike other styles, the
publicistic style has a spoken variety, namely, the оratorical sиbstyle. The development of radio and television has brought into being another new spoken variety, namely, the radio and TV соттеn-
tary. The other two substyles are the essay (moral, philosophical, literary) and journalistic articles (роlitical, social, economic) in newspapers, journals and magazines. Book reviews in journals,
newspapers and magazines and also pamphlets are generally included among essays.

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 opition, 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.

The oratоriсal stуle of language is the oral subdivision of the publicistic style. It has already been pointed out that persuasion is the most obvious purpose of oratory."Oratorical speech," writes A. Potebnya, "seeks not only to secure the understanding and digesting of the idea, but also serves simultaneously as a spring setting off a mood (which is the aim) that may lead to action." ¹ Newspaper style was the last of all the styles of written literary English to be recognized as a specific form of writing standing apart from other forms.

English newspaper writing dates from the 17th century. At the close of the 16th century short news pamphlets began to appear. Any such publication either presented news from only one source or dealt with one specific subject. Note the titles of some of the earliest news pamphlets: "Newe newes, containing a short rehearsal of Stukely's and Morice's Rebellion" (1579), "Newes from Spain and Holland" (1593), "Wonderful and strange newes out of Suffolke and Essex, where it rayned wheat the
space of six or seven miles" (1583). News pamphlets appeared only from time to time and cannot be classed a& newspapers, though they were unquestionably the immediate forerunners of the British press.

The first of any regular series of English newspapers was the Weekly News which first appeared on May 23, 1622. It lasted for some twenty years till in 1641 it ceased publication. The 17th century saw the rise of a number of other news sheets which, with varying success, struggled on in the teeth of discouragement and restrictions imposed by the Crown. With the introduction of a strict licensing system many such sheets were suppressed, and the Government, in its turn, set before public a paper of its own — The London Gazette, first published on February 5, 1666. The paper was a semi weekly and carried official information,
royal decrees, news from abroad, and advertisements. The first English daily newspaper— the Daily Courant - was brought out on March 11, 1702. The paper carried, news, largely foreign, and no comment, the latter being against the principles of the publisher, as was stated in the first issue of his paper. Thus the early English newspaper was principally a vehicle of information. Commentary as a regular
feature found its way into the newspapers later. But as far back as the middle of the 18th century the British newspaper was very much like what it is today, carrying on its pages news, both foreign and domestic, advertisements, announcements and articles containing comments.

The rise of the American newspaper, which was brought onto American soil by British settlers, dates back to the late 17th, early 18th centuries.

It took the English newspaper more than a century to establish a style and a standard of its own. And it is only by the 19th century that newspaper English may be said to have developed into a system of language media, forming a separate functional style.

The specific conditions of newspaper publication, the restrictions of time and space, have left an indelible mark on newspaper English. For more than a century writers and linguists have been vigorously attacking "the slipshod construction and the vulgar vocabulary" of newspaper English. The very term newspaper English carried a shade of disparagement. Yet, for all the defects of newspaper English, serious though they may be, this form of the English literary language cannot be reduced— as some purists have claimed—merely to careless slovenly writing or to a distorted literary English. This is one of the forms of the English literary language characterized—as any other style—by a definite communicative aim and its own system oflanguage means.

Not all the printed matter found in newspapers comes under newspaper style. The modern newspaper carries material of an extremely diverse character. On the pages of a newspaper one finds not only news and comment on it, press reports and articles, advertisements and announcements, but also stories and poems, crossword puzzles, chess problems and the like. Since the latter serve the purpose of entertaining the reader, they cannot be considered specimens of newspaper style. It is newspaper printed matter that performs the function of informing the reader and providing him with an evaluation of the information published that can be regarded as belonging to newspaper style.

Thus, English newspaper style may be defined as a system of interrelated lexical, phraseological and grammatical means which is perceived by the community as a separate linguistic unity that serves the purpose of informing and instructing the reader.

Information and evaluation co-exist in the modern English newspaper, and it is only in terms of diachrony that the function of information can claim priority. In fact, all kinds of newspaper writing are to a greater or lesser degree both informative and evaluative. But, of course, it is obvious that in most of the basic newspaper "genres" one of the two functions prevails; thus, for example, news of all kinds is essentially informative, whereas the editorial is basically evaluative.

information in the English newspaper is conveyed, in the first place, through the medium of:

brief news items, press reports (parliamentary, of court proceedings, etc.),

articles purely informational in character, advertisements and announcements.

Lecture 14