Stylistic Features in English Argumentative Texts

Stylistic Features in English Argumentative Texts 
  In this section, one may find it inadequate to define issues separately: stylistic features, argumentation, and theory of translation, all of which need high competence to go round them, though some English comments may helpfully contribute in the argument of this section. Features of style may particularly contribute to the infrastructure of the argumentative English texts. In this regard, Nida and Taber (1969:134) argue, “Every feature of language, from the total structure of the discourse to the sounds of the individual words, is included in the components of style”. Chomsky in ‘LINGUISTIS, A very short introduction’ by Matthews (2003:92) goes more profound saying: “Convincing or not the argument is one that many people far beyond linguistics have found very challenging”, while Hatim (1997:145) made it clearer that “a certain degree of evaluativeness is thus inevitable in almost any kind of text”. 
  Some different argumentative structures in English are to be investigated systematically by identifying certain stylistic features in distinguishing different sequential theses (Hatim, 1997). How do English writers in argumentative texts present opinions precisely as that in Said’s intellectual book of Orientalism (1978). In order to shed light upon the possible causes of the difficulties in translation, a contrastive analysis of argumentative discourse in English and Arabic is to be carried out. Nida (2001:67) states that: 
Many translators, however, regard features of discourse as being irrelevant to their task as translators, because they think that all they must do is to reproduce the sentences more or less word for word and any problem will be automatically accounted for.
Thus, it is important to represent the style expected as that of the original SLT. This may be achieved only by tracing the ST author’s steps, rather than advocate particular stylistic rules. Leech (1981:11) confirms this experience as “to guess the author of a piece of writing simply on the evidence of his language”. Regarding this view, Hatim and Mason (1990) require the ‘familiarization’ of the translator with the author’s style of the ST. For instance, words may descriptively sound equivalent such as: ‘East’ vs. ‘Orient’, when such two items may be referred to as stylistic variants. Lyons (1981:295) says, “stylistics is the study of stylistic variation in language”. It is difficult to ensure whether these two words are said on the bases of stylistics or not. Comparing such discrepancy in the Arabic translation may lead to non explicit - equivalent variation of the two English exemplified items under analysis (الشرقٌ and شرق . (
  In this connection, one question mark may need to be raised to the preceding argument. This is because of the fruitful collaboration, which brought to the surface, the strong relationship between linguistics and philosophy. Confirming such relation would need two definitions; the first is George Mounin–mentioned in Katharina Reiss’s (1977:107) who says: “Translation is never a uniquely and exclusively linguistic operation”. The second behind these lines, is Searle (1979:162) who says: 
What to me is one of the most interesting questions in the study of language: how do structure and function interact? This question involves questions as, for example, what is the relation between the various kinds of illocutionary speech acts and the syntactical forms.  
  Reading this correctly may thus be the starting point for translators when it comes to making decisions about the context for argumentation, precisely that which signifies the intention in question. Hatim (1997:145) assures this idea by declaring, “what is required is setting a ‘tone’ and critically evaluating the content of what is being postulated as the point of departure for a given argument”. The importance of indicating the type of stylistic problem may be needed. As literature reviews, translators should believe in the necessity to create a strong sense of style in their reproduction, while Nida and Taber (1969:13) describe this need as: “It is usually quite impossible to represent some of the stylistic subtleties of the original”. 
  In addition, however, to these dimensions, the functional approach to style is targeted in order to realize something of the purpose of style. In this regard, Crystal (1995:332) generalizes that the term ‘stylistics’ can be underlined as a branch of linguistics, he (1980:10) also identifies the main purpose by asking: “why such features have been used, as opposed to other alternatives”. Nida and Taber (1969:145) tackle these functions in details and divided them as follows: “(1) Those that serve to increase ‘efficiency’, that is, those arrangements of words which provide greater ease of decoding. (2) Those that enhance interest and create impact via the choice of words, for special ‘effects”. They (ibid:150) also hold that the role of the stylistic features can be best apprehended in terms of the main two functions as: “formal and lexical”. The word order on a sequence refers to the first, while the lexical features are the idioms, which words combine for special effects, i.e. dated words in English may add colour, and setting to an account, words as “romance” and “antiquity” are some of the many.