Stylistics

Stylistics. The study of the expressive devices of language and of various elements of literary style. Stylistics developed in the 19th and 20th centuries out of the study of rhetoric. In Ukraine, Latin and Polish baroque versions of the theory of Greek and Roman rhetoric and poetics were taught at Orthodox brotherhood schools and the Kyivan Mohyla Academy. The traditional rhetorical concepts of euphony, rhythmics, rhyme, figures, and tropes, which form the core of stylistics, had already been discussed in Meletii Smotrytsky’s Slavonic grammar (1619). Combined with the rules of poetics and versification (eg, A. Baibakov’s book of poetic rules [1774]), they became part of the secondary-school curriculum in the 19th century. The first textbooks of Ukrainian stylistics and rhetoric were published by the Galician gymnasium teacher V. Dombrovsky in the early 1920s.

Modern Ukrainian stylistics was developed in the 1920s in Soviet Ukraine by proponents of purism, such as Olena Kurylo, Oleksa Syniavsky, M. Hladky, Mykola Sulyma, Andrii Nikovsky, Serhii Smerechynsky, Borys Tkachenko, T. Sikirynsky, Hryhorii Maifet, Mykola Osypiv, and Zinaida Veselovska, and in Warsaw, Prague, and Lviv by Ivan Ohiienko, Vasyl Simovych, and Oleksander Paneiko. Accepting the folk vernacular as the basis of Standard Ukrainian and rejecting Church Slavonic, Russian, Polish, and German calques, they produced studies of the stylistics of Ukrainian folklore, 19th-century writers who wrote in the vernacular, and non-belletristic, non-vernacular genres.

Ukrainian stylistics has grown considerably after the Second World War. In the 1950s statistical methods began to be used by V. Perebyinis and others. Textbooks of Ukrainian normative stylistics ideas were written by Vasyl S. Vashchenko, Alla Koval, and I. Cherednychenko. The course on contemporary Ukrainian edited by Ivan Bilodid includes a volume on stylistics (1973). Books were published on the style of the Ukrainian press (by Mykhailo Zhovtobriukh, 1963, 1970), the style of dialogue and monologue (D. Barannyk, 1961, 1969, and P. Dudyk, 1972), scientific style (A. Koval, 1970), phonostylistics (V. Shyprykevych, 1972), the style of 14th-century official documents (M. Peshchak, 1979), and the stylistic functions of grammatical parallel forms (V. Vashchenko, 1956).

Research in literary stylistics in Soviet Ukraine were limited to the works of officially sanctioned writers. Studies on the style of premodern Ukrainian authors (by Zinaida Veselovska, Ilarion Svientsitsky, Antin Gensorsky, A. Nizhenets, L. Batiuk, Yevhen Markovsky, V. Krekoten, V. Sych, Vasyl Mykytas, V. Kolosova, P. Yaremenko) were relatively rare. In modern Ukrainian literature, studies were produced on the language of Ivan Kotliarevsky, Yevhen Hrebinka, Hryhorii Kvitka-Osnovianenko, Marko Vovchok, Taras Shevchenko, Anatolii Svydnytsky, Ivan Karpenko-Kary, Panas Myrny, Ivan Nechui-Levytsky, Pavlo Hrabovsky, Ivan Franko, Leonid Hlibov, Lesia Ukrainka, Olha Kobylianska, Mykhailo Kotsiubynsky, Vasyl Stefanyk, Arkhyp Teslenko, Marko Cheremshyna, Les Martovych, Pavlo Tychyna, Maksym Rylsky, Volodymyr Sosiura, Petro Panch, Ivan Mykytenko, Ostap Vyshnia, Maik Yohansen, Andrii Holovko, Yurii Yanovsky, Mykola Bazhan, Ivan Kyrylenko, Oleksander Korniichuk, Ivan Kocherha, Oleksander Dovzhenko, Leonid Pervomaisky, Andrii Malyshko, Oles Honchar, Hryhorii Tiutiunnyk, Natan Rybak, and Mykhailo Stelmakh.

Articles were published in the journals Movoznavstvo and Ukraïns’ka mova i literatura v shkoli and in the annual Kul’tura slova. Emigré scholars who have contributed to the study of stylistics include Dmytro Chyzhevsky, George Yurii Shevelov, I. Bezpechny, and Dmytro Nytchenko.

BIBLIOGRAPHY
Kurylo, O. Paralel'ni formy v ukraïns'kii movi, ïkh znachennia dlia styliu (Kyiv 1923)
Ohiienko, I. Ukraïns'kyi stylistychnyi slovnyk (Zhovkva 1924)
Kurylo, O. Uvahy do suchasnoï ukraïns'koï literaturnoï movy, 3rd edn (Kyiv 1925; repr, Toronto 1960)
Tkachenko, B. Narys ukraïns'koï stylistyky, 5 fasc (Kyiv nd [ca 1930])
Syniavs'kyi, O. (ed). Kul'tura ukraïns'koho slova (Kharkiv–Kyiv 1931)
Matviienko, O. Stylistychni paraleli: Proty puryzmu (Kharkiv 1932)
Skrypnyk, L. Osoblyvosti movy i styliu ukraïns'koï radians'koï khudozhn'o-istorychnoï prozy (Kyiv 1958)
Vashchenko, V. Stylistychni iavyshcha v ukraïns'kii movi (Kharkiv 1958)
Cherednychenko, I. Narysy z zahal'noï stylistyky suchasnoï ukraïns'koï movy (Kyiv 1962)
Butryn, M. Mova i styl' ukraïns'kykh pys'mennykiv: Bibliohrafichnyi pokazhchyk literatury za 1953–64 rr. (Lviv 1966)
Statystychni ta strukturni linhvistychni modeli (Kyiv 1966)
Koval', A. Praktychna stylistyka suchasnoï ukraïns'koï movy (Kyiv 1967; 2nd rev edn, Kyiv 1978)
Perebyinis, V. (ed). Statystychni parametry styliv (Kyiv 1967)
Koval’, A. Naukovyi styl' suchasnoï ukraïns'koï literaturnoï movy: Struktura naukovoho tekstu (Kyiv 1970)
Zhovtobriukh, M. Mova ukraïns'koï periodychnoï presy (kinets' XIX–pochatok XX st.) (Kyiv 1970)
Ïzhakevych, H. (ed). Teoretychni problemy linhvistychnoï stylistyky (Kyiv 1972)
Koval', A. Kul'tura dilovoho movlennia: Pysemne ta usne dilove spilkuvannia (Kyiv 1974)
Nytchenko, D. Elementy teoriï literatury i stylistyky (Melbourne 1975)
Pylyns'kyi, M. Movna norma i styl' (Kyiv 1976)
Rusanivs'kyi, V. (ed). Mova i chas: Rozvytok funktsional'nykh styliv suchasnoï ukraïns'koï movy (Kyiv 1977)
Iermolenko, S. Syntaksys i stylistychna semantyka (Kyiv 1982)
Pylyns'kyi, M. (ed). Vzaiemodiia usnykh i pysemnykh styliv movy (Kyiv 1982)
Bezpechnyi, I. Teoriia literatury (Toronto 1984)
Kukhar-Onyshko, O. Indyvidual'nyi styl' pys'mennyka: Henezys, struktura, typolohiia (Kyiv 1985)

Oleksa Horbach

[This article originally appeared in the Encyclopedia of Ukraine, vol. 5 (1993).]