Stylistics

Stylistics, a branch of applied linguistics, is the study and interpretation of texts of all types, but particularly literary texts, and spoken language with regard to their linguistic and tonal style, where style is the particular variety of language used by different individuals in different situations and settings. For example, the vernacular, or everyday language, may be used among casual friends, whereas more formal language, with respect to grammar, pronunciation or accent, and lexicon or choice of words, is often used in a cover letter and résumé and while speaking during a job intervie

writing designed to ensure the reader understands as quickly, easily, and completely as possible

Stylometry is the application of the study of linguistic style, usually to written language. It has also been applied successfully to music, paintings, chess, and source code.

set of linguistic variants with specific social meanings

thumb|"No, I swear, I'm not telling you this to flatter you, you have a true friend like no other. I will tell you that if you don't know it, you are the only one. Mme Verdurin was telling me this again on the last day ()", Marcel Proust, Du côté de chez Swann.

Foregrounding is a concept in literary studies that concerns making a linguistic utterance (word, clause, phrase, phoneme, etc.) stand out from the surrounding linguistic context, from given literary traditions, or from more urban knowledge. It is "the 'throwing into relief' of the linguistic sign against the background of the norms of ordinary language." There are two main types of foregrounding: parallelism and deviation. Parallelism can be described as unexpected regularity, while deviation can be seen as unexpected irregularity. As the definition of foregrounding indicates, these are relat