Style is a nebulous term which means different things to different people. But style refers to the way in which language is used in a given context, by a given person, for a given purpose. Style involves selection from a total linguistic repertoire of an infinite number of choices. Crystal and Davy (1981:2) have also attempted to reduce the difficulty of defining style by highlighting three interpretations of the concept. According to them, style may refer to some or all of the language habits of people one time, or over a period of time. The second interpretation is that style can be defined as saying the right thing in the most effective way. Thirdly, they defined style as “a characteristics of good, effective or beautiful writing…” The foregoing relates to some popular views on the concept of style. Some of the popular views on style include style as proper words in proper places; style as choice; style as deviation and style as the man, among others.

The notion of style as “proper words in proper places” is associated with Swift Turner (1976:21). The idea relates to the neoclassical view of correctness and appropriateness in the use of language. In other words, this way of seeing style is prescriptive and it raises more questions than it can answer. For example, we need to ask what “proper words” are; in what contexts are they proper words and who determines “proper words”, among others

Another way of seeing style is to regard it as choice. This is the position of Traugott and Pratt (1985:29) who believe that style concerns the characteristics choices of a writer or speaker in a given text. According to Osundare (2003:14) the notion of style as choice is “author-oriented.” He goes further to say that there are two forms of this concept: pre-verbal choice and verbal choice. The first has to do with psychological, cultural choice which a language user makes before encoding his thought. While the second is “the option exercised in the concrete, actual fleshing out of the original choice”. In other words, the verbal choice is the one made among possible language resources to encode thought, feelings and so on. But this view is not without its own problem. It needs to be clarified whether conscious choices only constitute style or unconscious choices should also pass as style. In the opinion of Traugott and Pratt (1985:29), we cannot restrict style to conscious choices alone for “if one had to make all… choices consciously, it would take a very long time to say anything at all.

Style has been seen as a deviation. In this light, style is perceived as deviation from the norm. This notion of style as deviation is associated with Osgood (203:21). According to this view, whatever deviates from or violates the rules of the norm is stylistic. But the problem with this concept is that the norm itself is not exclusive. There cannot be just a clearly defined norm which all users of a language must subscribe to. But this approach can be faulted on other grounds: can there not be state where there is no deviation?

Another popular view on the concept of style is Buffoon’s (1999:30) idea of style as “the man himself”. What this suggests is that style should be seen as an index of personality. We can say that this notion has affinity with the notion of seeing language as a marker of identity. Certain individual users of language are predisposed to using language in a particular way. But the problem is that no individual user of language is absolutely, constantly associated with one style. What we can derive from the foregoing is that style is not just one thing, but a conglomeration or an aggregation of many things.