The Definition and Philosophy of Style

Style is defined as having a personal sense of fashion or as relating to the manner in which clothes are worn or arranged. It can also refer to a specific style of dress or manner of wearing your clothes, and is usually associated with art and culture. An instance of style would be how you choose to learn how to wear your hair in a particular way.

Style can be applied to individuals as well as to whole groups, for instance in politics, in sport, in education, in the media, in conversation, and in the arts. It is also used in the sciences, as in cognitive style; whereby a set of rules for the arrangement of data is called a style. In philosophical discussions style arises in relation to the meaning of language, as in logical debate, where the style of argumentative debate is a kind of style, and so on. And in academic work, it arises as a discipline of its own, for instance in literary analysis, where styles of analysis may be distinguished, and where different kinds of literary analysis may be distinguished.

For instance, in scientific discourse communities, differences in style are allowed, since a scientist who presents his/her arguments in a different way than another may not be taken seriously. In political debate, styles differ according to geographical region, caste, and other such socially constructed categories. Rhetorical debate relies on the ability to persuade and the ability to convey, where the persuasive arguments can be put in a particular style, which is dependent on the audience, the nature of the debate, and the style of delivery. In academic debate, different styles are allowed because different kinds of arguments are being put forward, and different people have different points of view.