Stylistics is the study of style used in literary, and verbal language and the effect the writer/speaker wishes to communicate to the reader/hearer. It attempts to establish principles capable of explaining the particular choices made by individuals and social groups in their use of language, such as, socialization, the production and reception of meaning, literary criticism, and critical discourse analysis.

A literary genre can be seen as a set of style characteristics that is commonly recognised and agreed upon. For example, prose and poetry: the latter often involves rhyme while the former usually does not. Other aspects include the use of dialogue, the description of scenes, the use of active or passive voice, the distribution of sentence lengths, the use of specific language registers etc.

See also

• acrolect
• basilect
• literary language
• standard language
• official language
• classical language
• liturgical language