Non-literary language: stylistic aspects

In the main, stylistics has focused on literary texts as the object of analysis. This article focuses on research that has applied methods from stylistics in the analysis of non-literary texts. The article provides an overview of the relevance that the field of stylistics has for the analysis of non-literary language, specifically spoken interaction. Creativity in interaction, the sociolinguistic concept of “style” and fine-grained approaches to discourse analysis are all considered, and the article concludes with an account of reading group research and the ways in which readers co-create interpretations through interaction.