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Katarzyna Molek-Kozakowska
the expressive/impressive potential of style are Coupland’s (2007) notions of
targeting, framing, voicing, keying and loading, as they help to make the connection
between the textuality of journalistic discourse and the projection of
identities. Finally, the study considers the question whether Polish political
journalism can do without English in the age of global media, and if not, what
the likely effects (not only in terms of identity construction) of such language
mixing are.
2. Style and styling
In late modernity, social identities are becoming more and more multilayered.
The membership to social collectivities has been more a matter of choice
than determination, and such social categories of affiliation as nationhood, ethnicity,
class, religion, age group, and even gender have been demonstrated to be
electable and performable. It can be assumed that the need to express various
compound and hybrid identities has instigated ever more intense language
change, with sociolinguists trying to capture its fluidities and functionalities.
That is why they postulate to adopt the notion of style, or rather its more dynamic
counterpart, namely, styling, to study the identity-related linguistic variation
(cf. Rampton 1995, Coupland 2007).
The notion of style has been fairly well delimited and made applicable in
social sciences, as well as cultural and media studies (Hebdige 1979). However,
in linguistics the category of style is still contested and notoriously difficult to
apply for larger comparative analyses. Within communication studies, discourse
studies, semiotics, sociolinguistics and pragmatics, the notion of style has been
variously labeled. It has been conceptualized, for example, in terms of activity
type (Levinson 1979), communicative style (Selting 1999), rhetorical style
(Fairclough 2000), language style (Machin & van Leeuwen 2005), or sociolinguistic
style (Coupland 2007). As linguistic styles signify meanings, project
identities and express values verbally, David Machin and Theo van Leeuwen
(2005) see them as tools indicating not only unique personal qualities but also
group ideologies and even consumption patterns typical of particular lifestyles.
Language styles tend to be heterogeneous “composites of connotations” (2005:
587), which may well be deliberately contrived. That is why Coupland (2007)
distinguishes between expressive and impressive styles. The former are applied
relatively unconsciously and may inadvertently signal a speaker’s individual,
regional or social traits; the latter are designed to make a specific impression on
a listener and thus are related to stylization, i.e., achieving a specific effect or
reaction by applying particular linguistic devices.
For the purposes of this study, it is important to point that the notion of style
is functional and represents speakers’ “meaningful choices made in order to