Developmental Stylistics

Abstract Developmental stylistics, a sub-discipline of stylistics, studies the development of and changes in stylistic competence during a speaker’s life. This developmental perspective is under-used in stylistic research. The article summarises current definitions of developmental stylistics and proposes a set of new and complex parameters for a discipline that studies stylistic competence at all stages of life, in both production and reception, and in typical and less typical contexts. It discusses the main factors which make ‘developmental’ research within stylistics problematic, and which may contribute to the fragmented nature of the discipline. The wide range of topics within developmental research often calls for an interdisciplinary approach. The great variability in the way speakers communicate and interact with one another, the limited capacity to make generalisations from the research, and the analysis of various types of ‘imperfect’ language all present significant methodological challenges.