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Galperin distinguishes five styles in present-day

English. They are:

I. Belles Lettres

1. Poetry

2. Emotive 3.The Drama

II. Publicistic Style

1. Oratory and Speeches

2. The Essay

3. Articles

III. Newspapers

1. Brief News Items

2. Headlines

3. Advertisements and Announcements

4. The Editorial

IV. Scientific Prose

V. Official Documents

The varieties enumerated certainly differ from one another,

There is one more point that calls for discussion: the validity of

postulating a Belles-Lettres Style. It may in fact be assumed that Galperin's position is not shared by most of those interested in style

matters. The diversity of what is actually met with in books of fiction,

turns the notion of a belles-lettres style into something very vague,

possessing no constant features of its own. Not a mere chance it seems

that Galperin mentions not imaginative prose in general, but emotive

prose, giving special accent to the 'euphuistic style'.2 ^

M.D. Kuznets' cursory description of style classes runs as follows:

A. Literary, or 'Bookish' Style

1. Publicistic Style

2. Scientific (Technological) Style

3. Official Documents

B. Free ('Colloquial') Style

1. Literary Colloquial Style

2. Familiar Colloquial Style

As can be seen, both poetry and imaginative prose have been rejected

(as non-homogeneous objects), although the book is supplied with a

chapter on versification (also written by Kuznets). On the futility of

attempts to differentiate 'literary' and 'familiar' colloquial speech, see

the last chapter of this book.

Next comes the well-known work by I.V. Arnold Stylistics of Modern

English (two editions: 1973 and, thoroughly revised, 1981).5 I.V. Arnold

singles out four styles:

1. Poetic style

2. Scientific style

3. Newspaper style

4. Colloquial style

What speaks in favour of I.V. Arnold's concept is that she recog-

nises a colloquial style. Singling out a poetic and a scientific style seems

valid (remembering, of course, the distance between traditional and

modern poetry, or ancient history and molecular genetics for that

matter). The problem of newspaper style, however, leaves much food

for critical thought

Very rich in information, with a number of new problems raised

and solved, is the handbook by A.N. Morokhovsky :

1 Official business style

2. Scientific-professional style

3. Publicistic style

4. Literary colloquial style

5. Familiar colloquial style

R.G. Piotrowski singles out the 'bookish style', which is, in its turn,

subdivided into more particular types: that of literary narration

('medial'), the solemnly-poetic style (characterized as the highest); then

follow the 'scientific-professional' and 'official business style' (it might

be mentioned here, by the way, that the English denomination of this type

of speech is 'Officialese').The second style, in Piotrowski's opinion, is what he calls 'literary-

colloquial'. The reader learns that this style "grows out of interaction of

the literary language with the oral dialogical form of speech." The third

(and last) style is 'common parlance', or 'popular speech'. There are no

other styles in French — if we are to believe Piotrowski.

A rather peculiar place is occupied by the conception of M.P. Brandes:

” .all the existing definitions of style

are, on the whole, both correct and incorrect, as long as they are one-sided"

(p. 4). Here, it should be remarked at once that being 'one-sided' is by far

not always a fault of a definition: any definition is only expected to suffice

for the aims set. Definitions claiming universality and an all-round

approach to their object are theoretically absurd and of no practical use: to

get an 'all-round' view one must move round the object. Viewed from the

opposite point, the object is not the same. A definition is only meant to

separate what is being defined from what is not.

A logically strict concept of speech types was suggested by K. A. Dolinin

in his Stylistics of the French Language.21 K. A. Dolinin solves the problem

by paying attention to three basic distinctive features, positively or

negatively characterizing every type of speech: e(motional),

s(pontaneous), and n(ormative).