Context

Style

Cath(string str)

Последовательность обработчиков исключений

#include<iostrem>

#include<string>

#define PRINT(X) cout<<#X”=”<<X<<endl;

using namespace std;

class point {

double x,y;

static int N;

public:

point(double x1=0, double y1=0);

static int& count()

{return N;}

};

int point::N=0;

point::point(double x1=0, double y1=0)

try: x(x1), y(y1)

{N++;

if(N==1)throw ”The begin!”

if(N>2) throw string(“The end!”);

}

cath(const char*ch)

{cout<<ch<<endl;}

int main()

{

try {

PRINT(point::count());

point A(0,1);

PRINT(A.count());

point B;

PRINT(point::count());

point C;

PRINT(point::count());

point D(1,2);

PRINT(D.count());

}

{cout<<str<<endl;}

return 0;

}

Результат:

point::count()=0

The begin!”

A.count()=1

point::count()=2

 

• One very important feature of good style is that it must be entirely appro­priate for the task it is performing.

• This means that the author must take into account [even if unconscious­ly!] audience, form, and function.

• Style might be good, yet hardly noticeable – because it is concentrated on effective communication. This is sometimes known as 'transparent' good style.

• The following extract is from The Highway Code.

When approaching a roundabout, watch out for traffic already on it. Take special care to look out for cyclists or motorcyclists ahead or to the side. Give way to traffic on your right unless road markings indicate otherwise; but keep moving if the way is clear.

• This is writing which makes its points as simply and as clearly as possi­ble. The vocabulary is that of everyday life, and in manner it is speaking to a general reader without trying to make an impression or draw atten­tion to itself in any way.

• This writing is entirely free of literary effects or decoration.

• In most writing however, 'good style' is normally associated with verbal inventiveness and clever manipulation of the elements of literary lan­guage.

• The extract from Vladimir Nabokov's famous novel Lolita illustrates this point:

Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins. My sin, my soul. Lo-lee-ta: the tip of the tongue taking a trip of three steps down the palate to tap, at three, on the teeth. Lo. Lee. Ta.

• This is writing which is deliberately setting out to be impressive. It relies very heavily on decoration and ornament.

• In this extract Nabokov uses lots of alliteration – the repetition of the ‘l’ and ‘t’ sounds, metaphor – ‘light’ and 'fire' – and onomatopoeia – ‘trip’, 'tap' – as well as such fancy wordplay as the orthographic and semantic parallels between 'life' and 'fire'.

• Good style in speech and writing – like that in clothes or other matters involving taste – can go in and out of fashion.

• Style in context. Style, in any kind of speech or writing, is extremely important to the overall function of communication. In most cases, a consistency of features produces what we understand as a pleasing style. That is, the style is appropriate to the context in which it occurs.

• A discordant style is produced by the inclusion of some feature which does not fit with the stylistic context of the piece. In other words, the feature is out of place.

• An example of this might be found in a personal letter which is signed 'Yours faithfully' or an aristocratic character in a novel speaking street slang for no good stylistic reason.

The notion of norm.Norm may be defined as a set of language rules which are considered to be most standard and correct in a certain epoch and in a certain society. It is next to impossible to work out universal language norms because each functional style has its own regularities. The sentence "I ain't got no news from nobody" should be treated as non-grammatical from the point of view of literary grammar though it is in full accordance with special colloquial English grammar rules.

The notion of form.Form is a term which refers to the recognizable shape of a text or a speech act. This shape may be either physical or ab­stract. It is physical in writing and abstract in spoken communication. Written forms are novels, stories, articles, poems, letters, posters, menus, etc. Spoken forms are conversations, TV and radio commentaries, announcements, ser­mons, jokes and anecdotes, etc. The term "form" is used in linguistics and in literary criticism as a technical term. It is used when considering the shape, the construction, or the type of speech or writing. An awareness of form can help to produce more efficient communication.

The notion of text.Text literally means "a piece of writing". Charles Dickens' novel "Bleak House" is a text. A letter from a friend is a text. A caption to a picture is a text. A painting by Picasso can also be conditionally called a text. The term "text" is most used in linguistics and literary studies, where it was originally used as a synonym for "book", but it could just as easily be a poem, a letter, or a diary. This term is now in general use in other branches of the humanities such as cultural studies and film studies, where its meaning becomes "the thing being studied". In these other fields it could also be a video film, an advertisement, a painting, or a music score. Even a bus ticket may be called "a text". The term "text" is used so as to concen­trate attention on the object being studied, rather than its author.

The notion of context. Types of context. A linguistic context is the encirclement of a language unit by other language units in speech. Such encir­clement makes the meaning of the unit clear and unambiguous. It is especially important in case with polysemantic words. Microcontext is the context of a single utterance (sentence). Macrocontext is the context of a paragraph in a text. Megacontext is the context of a book chapter, a story or the whole book.

An extralingual (situational) context is formed by extralingual con­ditions in which communication takes place. Besides making the meaning of words well-defined, a situational context allows the speaker to economize on speech efforts and to avoid situationally redundant language signs. The com­mands of a surgeon in an operating room, such as "scalpel", "pincers" or "tampon", are understood by his assistants correctly and without any addi­tional explanations about what kind of tampon is needed.

Extralingual context can be physical or abstract and can significantly affect the communication. A conversation between lovers can be affected by surroundings in terms of music, location, and the presence of others. Such surroundings form a physical context.A dialogue between colleagues can be affected by the nature of their relationship. That is, one may be of higher status than the other. Such nature forms an abstract context.Historical accounts are more easily understood when evoked in the context of their own time. Such context is called temporal or chronological.There would be a psychologi­cally advantageous context within which to tell one's spouse about that dent­ed bumper on the new car. Such context may be called psychological.

No linguistic unit exists in a vacuum and this is why dictionaries have only a limited function in conveying meaning devoid of context. Words do not have an absolute meaning. Shades of meaning emerge with variation in context. For example, if we say that "Peter the First was a great mon­arch", we are using great as an adjective to imply stately qualities and a large-scale impression of a historical figure. On the other hand, if we say "We had a great time at the party last night", the word great takes on a different meaning. The implication is that we enjoyed ourselves, and we wish to convey this in a rather exaggerated way. We are confident that our listener will understand. If we express our feelings to a sexual partner using the word love, that word means something quite different to the love we express to a two-year-old child. The context is different, and it affects the meaning of the word love.

In a detailed linguistic sense, a unit of meaning which we refer to as a morpheme can only be seen as such in context. For example, within the context of the word elephant, the fragment ant cannot be classed as a morpheme. This is because it is an integral part of that larger morpheme, elephant. However, considered on its own as a word, ant (the insect) is a morpheme. Here it is in a different context: Ants are industrious. Similarly, used as a prefix in a word such as antacid, it is a bound morpheme mean­ing against or opposite.

• In poetry we find that context is crucial to meaning and its effect. If we take Robert Browining's use of disyllabic rhyme as used in 'The Pied Piper of Hamelin', we find the following sequence:

You hope because you're old and obese

To find in the furry civic robe ease.

• In this context the word 'obese' promotes a humorous and lighthearted effect. However, if our doctor warned us that we were overweight [obese] and stood a great risk of heart attack, it would not be such a laughing matter.

• If it is at all helpful, the idea of context can be illustrated by use of an analogy with colour.

• A flash of crimson on a white background looks very vivid, and it can even make the white look slightly pink.

• However, crimson on a black background loses its radiance and almost disappears.

The notion of speech.Speech and writing are two different systems. They are closely related, but not the same. Speech is normally a continuous stream of sound. It is not broken up into separate parts like writing. People do not speak in sentences or paragraphs, they make up the content of what they are saying quite spontaneously, without any planning or long deliberation. Conversations are often accompanied by other sign systems which aid un­derstanding. These might be physical gestures, facial expressions, even bodi­ly posture. Meaning in speech is also commonly conveyed by tone and other non-verbal means such as irony. Speech quite commonly includes false starts, repetition, hesitation, "fillers" with no lexical or grammatical meaning, such as "um" and "er", and even nonsense words which replace terms which can not be recalled, such as "mingy" and "doodah".

Speech may often be quite inexplicit – because the participants in a con­versation can rely on the context for understanding. Speech can not be revised or edited in the same way as writing. Most people unconsciously or deliberately employ a wide range of speech varieties or functional styles in their everyday conversation. Linguists regard speech as primary and writing as secondary. Language changes take place far more rapidly in speech than in writing.

The notion of writing. Writing is the use of visual symbols which act as a code for communication between individuals or groups. Writing is a lan­guage variety and should be regarded as entirely separate from speech. The code of written language consists of letter-forms (the alphabet) used to form a visual approximation of spoken words. The spelling of most words in En­glish is now fixed. The relationship between spelling and pronunciation is consistent in Russian and Ukrainian but not consistent in English. Words are formed in accordance with the conventions of spelling, then combined ac­cording to the rules of syntax to form meaningful statements.

Mistakes in spelling and grammar might be tolerated in casual writing, such as personal correspondence, but they are generally frowned on in all types of public and formal writing. Writing cannot include any non-verbal gestures or the communication features which accompany spoken language – such as facial expression, physical gestures, or tone of voice. The written word has to rely on choice of vocabulary, punctuation and printed emphasis (italics, capital letters) to produce such effects.

The notion of expressive means.Expressive means of a language are those phonetic, lexical, morphological and syntactic units and forms which make speech emphatic. Expressive means introduce connotational (stylistic, non-denotative) meanings into utterances. Phonetic expressive means in­clude pitch, melody, stresses, pauses, whispering, singing, and other ways of using human voice. Morphological expressive means are emotionally co­loured suffixes of diminutive nature: -y (-ie), -let (sonny, auntie, girlie, streamlet). The range of emotional suffixes is much wider in synthetic lan­guages than in English. Compare the following:

 

Suffix	Ukrainian language words	Russian language words
- ок	дубок, деньок	дубок, денек
- ик	Коник	Домик
- иця, - ица	Водиця	Водица
- ичкa - ечкa - очкa	Водичка Пічечка Сіточка	Водичка Печечка Сеточка
- инкa	Сніжинка	Снежинка
- очок - ечка - eчкo	Дубочок Книжечка Словечко	Дубочок Книжечка Словечко

To lexical expressive means belong words, possessing connotations, such as epithets, poetic and archaic words, slangy words, vulgarisms, and interjections. A chain of expressive synonymic words always contains at least one neutral synonym. For example, the neutral word money has the following stylistically coloured equivalents: ackers (slang), cly (jargon), cole (jar­gon), gelt (jargon), moo (amer. slang), moolah (amer. slang), mopus (slang), oof (slang), pelf (bookish), rhino (conversat.), spondulicks (amer. slang), cash (conversat.), boot (slang), brads (conversat.), chuck (amer. slang), lettuce (slang), lolly (slang), ante (slang), bread (slang), dumps (conversat.), beens (slang), blunt (slang), crap (slang), dough (conversat.), etc. A chain of expressive synonyms used in a single utterance creates the effect of climax (gradation): “Знову дзвеніли,бриніли,сурмили комарі, допікали, дошкулювали, діймали, жерли, гризли” (Ю. Яновський).

To syntactic expressive means belong emphatic syntactic constructions. Such constructions stand in opposition to their neutral equivalents. The neu­tral sentence "John went away" may be replaced by the following expres­sive variants: "Away went John" (stylistic inversion), "John did go away" (use of the emphatic verb "to do"), "John went away, he did" (emphatic confirmation pattern), "It was John who went away" ("It is he who does it" pattern). Compare: «Это знают все» (neutral) = «Bce это знают!» (exclamatory) = «Kmo же этого не знает?» (rhetorical). A number of Russian and Ukrainian expressive syntactic structures have no identical equiv­alents in English. It concerns impersonal sentences, denoting natural phe­nomena and physical conditions of living beings (Teнeem. Beчepeem. Пempy не cnumcя. Чтo-mo гнemem), infinitival sentences (Быть беде! He быть meбe моим мужем! K комy oбpamumьcя зa noмoщью?), generalized-personal statements (Что посеешь, то и пожнешь. С кем поведешься от того и наберешься).

The notion of stylistic devices. Stylistic devices (tropes, figures of speech) unlike expressive means are not language phenomena. They are formed in speech and most of them do not exist out of context. According to principles of their formation, stylistic devices are grouped into phonetic, lexico-semantic and syntactic types. Basically, all stylistic devices are the result of revaluation of neutral words, word-combinations and syntactic structures. Revaluation makes language units obtain connotations and stylistic value. A stylistic de­vice is the subject matter of stylistic semasiology.