Discourse structure, the generalized parallelism hypothesis, and FG 3194.2.3. ADS and discourse style
The notion ‘style’ is defined in Dik (1997b: 417) as “a sequence of choices
... of means of expression which have consistent values along such polar
dimensions as Formality-Informality, Politeness-Familiarity and Concise-
ness-Redundancy”. Dik points out that the choice of a given style is
strongly determined by the choice of the discourse type in the sense that
not all kinds of styles can fit in with all discourse types. As for the impact
of the style on the discourse, the definition given above seems to restrict it
to formal means of expression. In fact, if we represent the style as a layer
operator, it becomes clear that it plays, like any operator, a twofold role: on
the one hand, it combines with other operators to trigger the rules responsi-
ble for the formal realization of the discourse; on the other hand, it
codetermines the values of the operators it has in its scope, i.e. the opera-
tors of lower layers.
Let us take as an example the polar dimension Politeness-Familiarity.
The actualization and the formal realization of ADS in polite discourse in-
volve special operations such as the selection of particular interactional
devices, the extensive activation of the indirect illocutionary values, the
choice of specific lexical items as well as of certain forms of predicates and
terms. Notice that the three typological factors under discussion can inter-
act with each other in an interesting way in the sense that certain languages
handle certain discourse types and styles better than others do. The most
well known example is the case of so-called ‘polite languages’ such as, for
example, Japanese and, to a less extent, colloquial Egyptian.
4.2.4. ADS as a communicative universal
In the FG framework (cf. Dik 1997a: 7), linguistic universals are defined
within an approach which conceive of natural languages as particular solu-
tions to the communication problem, i.e. to the problem of establishing
“high-level communicative relationships between human beings”. It is
clear that ADS can be considered as one of the common linguistic proper-
ties which fit optimally into this functional conception of linguistic
universals. Notice that, given its nature, its components and its organiza-
tion, ADS is compatible with functional theories in which universals are
conceived of as Formal-Functional correlations.
The following arguments can be taken as militating in favour of the
universality of ADS. Firstly, structure (17) reflects, as pointed out above,