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Belles-lettres style, or the style of imaginative literature may be called the richest register of communication: besides its own language means which are not used in any other sphere of communication, belles-lettres style makes ample use of other styles too, for in numerous works of literary art we find elements of scientific, official and other functional types of speech. Besides informative and persuasive functions, also found in other functional styles, the belles-lettres style has a unique task to impress the reader aesthetically. The form becomes meaningful and carries additional information as you must have seen from previous chapters. Boundless possibilities of expressing one's thoughts and feelings make the belles-lettres style a highly attractive field of research for a linguist.
Speaking of belles-lettres style most scholars almost automatically refer to it prose works, regarding poetry the domain of a special poetic style. Viewed diachronically this opinion does not seem controversial, for poems of previous centuries, indeed, adhered to a very specific vocabulary and its ordering. But poetry of the twentieth century does not show much difference from prose vocabulary, its subjects are no more limited to several specific "poetic" fields but widely cover practically all spheres of existence of contemporary man. So it is hardly relevant to speak of a separate poetic style in reference to contemporary literature.
Finishing this brief outline of functional styles observed in modern English, it is necessary to stress, again, two points. The first one concerns the dichotomy - written:: oral, which is not synonymous to the dichotomy literary:: colloquial, the former opposition meaning the form of presentation, the latter - the choice of language means. There are colloquial messages in the written form (such as personal letters, informal notes, diaries and journals) and vice versa: we have examples of literary discourses in the oral form (as in a recital, lecture, report, paper read at a conference etc.).
The second point deals with the flexibility of style boundaries: the borders within which a style presumably functions are not rigid and allow various degrees of overlapping and melting into each other. It is not accidental that rather often we speak of intermediate cases such as the popular scientific style which combines the features of scientific and belles-lettres styles, or the style of new journalism which is a combination of publicist, newspaper and belles-lettres styles etc.
Exercise I. Analyse the peculiarities of functional styles in the following examples:
1. Nothing could be more obvious, it seems to me, than that art should be moral and that the first business of criticism, at least some of the time, should be to judge works of literature (or painting or even music) on grounds of the production's moral worth. By "moral" I do not mean some such timid evasion as "not too blatantly immoral". It is not enough to say, with the support of mountains of documentation from sociologists, psychiatrists, and the New York City Police Department, that television is a bad influence when it actively encourages pouring gasoline on people and setting fire to them. On the contrary, television - or any other more or less artistic medium - is good (as opposed to pernicious or vacuous) only when it has a clear positive moral effect, presenting valid models for imitation, eternal verities worth keeping in mind, and a benevolent vision of the possible which can inspire and incite human beings towards virtue, towards life affirmation as opposed to destruction or indifference. This obviously does not mean that art should hold up cheap or cornball models of behaviour, though even those do more good in the short run than does, say, an attractive bad model like the quick-witted cynic so endlessly celebrated in light-hearted films about voluptuous women and international intrigue. In the long run, of course, cornball morality leads to rebellion and the loss of faith. (J.G.)
2. In tagmemics we make a crucial theoretical difference between the grammatical hierarchy and the referential one. In a normal instance of reporting a single event in time, the two are potentially isomorphic with coterminous borders. But when simultaneous, must'be sequenced in the report. In some cases, a chronological or logical sequence can in English be partially or completely changed in presentational order (e.g. told backwards); when this is done, the referential structure of the tale is unaffected, but the grammatical structure of the telling is radically altered. Grammatical order is necessarily linear (since words come out of the mouth one at a time), but referential order is at least potentially simultaneous.
Describing a static situation presents problems parallel to those of presenting an event involving change or movement. Both static and dynamic events are made linear in grammatical presentation even if the items or events are, referentially speaking, simultaneous in space or time (K.Pk.)
3. Techniques of comparison form a natural part of the literary critic's analytic and evaluative process: in discussing one work, critics frequently have in mind, and almost as frequently appeal to, works in the same or another language. Comparative literature systematically extends this latter tendency, aiming to enhance awareness of the qualities of one work by using the products of another linguistic culture as an illuminating context; or studying some broad topic or theme as it is realized ("transformed") in the literatures of different languages. It is worth insisting on comparative literature's kinship with criticism in general, for there is evidently a danger that its exponents may seek to argue an unnatural distinctiveness in their activities (this urge to establish a distinct identity is the source of many unfruitfully abstract justifications of comparative literature); and on the other hand a danger that its opponents may regard the discipline as nothing more than demonstration of "affinities" and "influences" among different literatures - an activity which is not critical at all, belonging rather to the categorizing spirit of literary history. (R.F.)
4. Caging men as a means of dealing with the problem of crime is a modern refinement of man's ancient and limitless inhumanity, as well as his vast capacity for self-delusion. Murderers and felons used to be hanged, beheaded, flogged, tortured, broken on the rack, blinded, ridden out of town on a rail, tarred and feathered, or arrayed in the stocks. Nobody pretended that such penalties were anything other than punishment and revenge. Before nineteenth-century American developments, dungeons were mostly for the convenient custody of political prisoners, debtors, and those awaiting trial. American progress with many another gim "advance", gave the world the penitentiary.
In 1787, Dr. Benjamin Rush read to a small gathering in the Philadelphia home of Benjamin Franklin a paper in which he said that the right way to treat offenders was to cause them to repent of their crimes. Ironically taken up by gentle Quakers, Rush's notion was that offenders should be locked alone in cells, day and night, so that in such awful solitude they would have nothing to do but to ponder their acts, repent, and reform. To this day, the American liberal - progressive - idea persists that there is some way to make people repent and reform. Psychiatry, if not solitude will provide perfectability.
Three years after Rush proposed it, a single-cellular penitentiary was established in the Walnut Street Jail in Philadelphia. By the 1830s, Pennsylvania had constructed two more state penitentiaries, that followed the Philadelphia reform idea. Meanwhile, in New York, where such reforms as the lock-step had been devised, the "Auburn system" evolved from the Pennsylvania program. It provided for individual cells and total silence, but added congregate employment in shops, fields, or quarries during a long, hard working day. Repressive and undeviating routine, unremitting labor, harsh subsistence conditions, and frequent floggings complemented the monastic silence; so did striped uniforms and the great wall around the already secure fortress. The auburn system became the model for American penitentiaries in most of the states, and the lofty notions of the Philadelphians soon were lost in the spirit expressed by Elam Lynds, the first warden of Sing Sing (built in 1825): "Reformation of the criminal could not possibly be effected until the spirit of the criminal was broken."
The nineteenth-century penitentiary produced more mental breakdowns, suicides, and deaths than repentance. "I believe," wrote Charles Dickens, after visiting such an institution, "that very few men are capable of estimating the immense amount of torture and agony which this dreadful punishment, prolonged for years, inflicts upon the sufferers." Yet, the idea persisted that men could be reformed (now we say "rehabilitated") in such hellholes - a grotesque derivation from the idea that man is not only perfectable but rational enough to determine his behavior through self-interest.
A later underpinning of the nineteenth-century prison was its profitability. The sale and intraprison use of prison-industry products fitted right into the productivity ethic of a growing nation. Convicts, moreover, could be and were in some states rented out like oxen to upright businessmen. Taxpayers were happy, cheap labor was available, and prison officials, busily developing their bureaucracies, saw their institutions entrenched. The American prison system - a design to reform criminals by caging humans - found a permanent place in American society and flourished largely unchanged into the twentieth century. In 1871, a Virginia court put the matter in perspective when it ruled that prisoners were "slaves of the state". (Wic.)
5. BUYERS BOX FOR PACKER $ 350 m prace tag is put on Waddington
A J350 million bidding war is set to erupt for Waddington, the packaging group that last month admitted it had received a takeover approach from its management team.
At least two venture capital firms are understood to be looking at Leeds-based Waddington, which is expected to command a takeout of at least £325 a share against Friday's close of£247. One of the potential buyers is believed to be CinVen.
Waddington's management team, led by chief executive Martin Buckley and finance director Geoffrey Gibson, are preparing their own offer for title company. They are being advised by NatWest Equity Partners, which last week backed the management buyout of Noreros, the building materials outfit.
Waddington's three non-executive directors, led by chairman John Hollowood, are thought to have been alerted to the prospect of rival bidders.
City analysts said rival approaches were expected in the wake of Waddington's recent announcement, since the takeout price originally mooted was far too low. (S.T.)
6. REVEALED: BRITAIN'S SECRET NUCLEAR PLANT
A SECRET nuclear fuel plant processing radioactive material a mile from the centre of a British city has been revealed to have serious safety flaws.
Nuclear fuel more volatile than the uranium which caused the recent radioactive leak at a Japanese facility is being secretly manufactured in the Rolls-Royce plant in Derby.
Highly enriched uranium fuel is processed at the factory for the Ministry of Defence (MoD) - although this has never before been disclosed and the local population has not been told because the work is classified. They are only aware that the factory makes engines for Trident nuclear submarines.
Leaked company documents reveal that there is a risk of a "criticality accident" - the chain reaction which caused the nuclear disaster at a fuel manufacturing plant in Tokaimura last month. It has also emerged that after a safety exercise at the plant this year, inspectors concluded that it was "unable to demonstrate adequate contamination control arrangements". There is still no public emergency plan in case of disaster.
"I can't believe that they make nuclear fuel in Derby and don't have an off-site public emergency plan," said a nuclear safety expert who has visited the plant. "Even in Plymouth where they [the MoD] load the uranium fuel into the submarines, they have a publicised plan for the local population."
In the Tokaimura disaster two weeks ago, clouds of deadly radiation poured out from a nuclear fuel plant after a nuclear fission chain reaction. Most nuclear plants in Britain use fuel containing about 3% uranium 235, but in the Tokaimura incident it was about 20%, which was a contributory factor for the chain reaction.
In Derby the fuel is potentially even more unstable, containing more than 90% uranium 235. Rolls-Royce has always said that its marine power division at Raynesway, Derby, makes propulsion systems for nuclear submarines. It has never previously admitted processing the uranium fuel. (S.T.)
7. I hear America singing
I hear America singing, the varied carols I hear,
Those of mechanics, each one singing his as it should be
Blithe and strong,
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