Structural And Functional Classification Of Syntactic Stylistic Devices: A Comparative Approach

Abstract

This article proposes a structural–functional framework for classifying syntactic stylistic devices and applies it comparatively to English and Russian. The structural dimension captures how a device reorganizes linear order, phrase integration, and clause combining; the functional dimension models discourse effects such as emphasis, coherence, perspectivization, and emotive coloring. The approach reconciles typological contrasts—English with its relatively fixed word order and prosodically salient phrasing, Russian with its flexible linearization and tolerance for detachment and parcellation—by treating devices as marked selections against language-specific neutral baselines. Using insights from functional stylistics, Prague School information structure, and rhetorical poetics, the paper demonstrates that formally similar devices may carry different functional loads across languages, and that functional equivalence in translation is often achieved via non-isomorphic structures. The results support a portable taxonomy useful for corpus annotation, comparative stylistics, and translator training.