Official Writing (The Style of Official Documents)

It performs regulative function as the main one, i.e. the establishment of norms and rules in the sphere of public relations (e.g. the relations of individuals, group – individual relations, the relations of social groups and institutions, etc.). Substyles and genres: the style of law documents (laws, legislative acts, codes, instructions, orders), the style official documents (applications, references, protocols, ques­tionnaires, profiles, autobiographies, agreements, contracts), the style of diplomatic documents (agreements, pacts, communiqué s, note, me­moranda, declarations). Official writing presents conside­rable in­ner differentiation, i.e. considerable genre-stylistic distinctions depending on the functional purpose of the text, themes, sphere of use, character of the institution issuing a publication.

Stylistic features: standard, imperative and prescriptive nature, ascer­taining as leading method of presentation, precision which does not admit misinterpretation, non-personal character. Specific features of the official style characteristic of all its varieties and genres: pattern text composition, speech standard and stereotyped ways of expression and arrangement of the language means (cliché s, standard vocabulary).

Language means of the style of official documents are the following.

Graphic means: change of the print, italics, the use of graphic delimitation means – various graphic symbols (asterisks, lines, patterns, etc.) which clearly demonstrate text limitation (columns, division into parts, sections, elements, paragraphs), means of graphic design which reveal the representational form of the pattern.

Lexical means: bureaucratic cliché s (words or word-combinations), the use of special terminology to express precision, repetitions, the use of constructions with archaic elements, wide spread of vocabulary units, expressing obligation, absence of subjective emotional appraisal.

Grammatical means: nominal character (predominance of nouns, a great number of nominal prepositions and conjunctions), wide use of the genitive case, different forms of expressing imperative (verbs with the meaning of obligation, verbs of instruction, prescription, future tense forms, the imperative mood, infinitive and infinitive construc­tions), absence of the first and second person presentation and cor­related pronouns, the use of collective nouns for the expression of im­per­sonality, different patterns of statement and ascertaining, speci­fic use of aspect and tense forms (future in conditional sentences, wide use of conditional sentences in connec­tion with the necessity of de­tailed exposition and proviso, rare use of complex sentences, espe­cially with subordinate sentences of cause because of the absence of the necessity to explicate logical operations of analysis and reasoning).

Compositional devices: the patterned structure of texts of all the genres and substyles, declarative, ascertaining nature, neglect of nar­ration and discussion.