3 Characteristics of Scientific Prose Style and Style of Literary Works

3.1 General Classification of Styles

The word style is derived from Greek word stýlos, where it means the way of writing, composition.
F. Miko understands style as “ a type of expression and communication act in some particulary fixed parts of social communication.”
Every text has some special characteristics, which make up that, what we call the style of text, functional style. Except functional styles we cannot forget the style of author. Singularity of the style of text, writing itself, is realized within the functional style, in a case of literary text within aesthetic style and in a case of non-literary text within scientific prose style. According to F.Miko, there is a relationship between functional style, the style of author and the style of writing:

Functional Style => Style of Author => Style of Writing
(characteristic signs (characteristic signs (characteristic signs
of the texts of some of the texts of some of some writing)
particular communication particular author)
area)

Traditional classification of styles is:
Objective styles: Objective-subjective styles: Subjective styles:
educational style publicistic style colloquial style
administrative style essayistic style aesthetic style
rhetorical style

When studying English stylistics, we find some differences between classification of styles in comparison with Slovak system. We recognize the belles -letters style [corresponds to aesthetic (umelecký) style in Mistrík`s classification], publicistic style, newspaper style [both correspond to publicistic (publicistický) style], scientific prose style [corresponds to educational (odborný) style] and the style of official documents [corresponds to administrative (administratívny) style]. Different terminology should be noticed when comparing English and Slovak. Sometimes it might be even more convenient to discuss the language of a particular text rather than trying to include the text under some of the umbrella terms. For example, the Slovak term publicistický štýl covers different areas than the English term publicistic style. The term essayistic style is also rare in English. Language of essays is discussed within publicistic style as one of its three varietes. Similarly, the notion of colloquial style is often referred to as language of conversation.

Borders of styles are not as clear and stable as the scheme shows. It is because the style is the manner of purposeful selection, regular arrangement and use of language means with regards to the situation, function, intention of the writer and contentual parts of the expression. The means of language are lexical, grammatical and phonological, but there have to be considered paralanguagic means as well. Comparing with systems as the phonological, grammatical or lexical one, the system of styles is changing faster, crossing its borders using characteristics of individual styles.
When comparing literary (aesthetic) and non-literary (scientific) texts, the basic differencial point is style. It is necessary to perceive the style on all its levels. Finally, according to the major characteristics of individual styles, texts differ to literary (aesthetic) and non-literary (scientific).