In the most general, everyday grasping of the term, style refers to a conventionalized way of doing something. We are likely to think of styles as relatively fixed entities. However, a more vital theoretical point is that the concept of style also implies a side of doing. Style is a noun and a verb, and any effort at theorizing style will have to reckon with ‘style’ as cultural form in relation to ‘styling’ as cultural practice. In relation to speech and language, the study of style already has a long history, especially in the areas of literary and general stylistics (Sebeok 1960; Enkvist, Spencer & Gregory 1964), but also in sociolinguistics (Labov 1972; Eckert & Rickford 2001; Auer 2007; Coupland 2007) and in neighbouring disciplines, including pragmatics (Lakoff 1979; Hickey 1989). In these fields, the concept refers to what are recognized to be different ways of using language, whether spoken or written, linked to the assay of how particular styles are enacted in particular instances. This is the broad sense in which style will be debated in the following. It will be notable, though, to assert that a style view allows for a holistic view of meaning-making in the pragmatics of human communication and that the study of style should therefore not be confined to spoken and written language. In Labovian variationist sociolinguistics, styles have traditionally been conceptualized as situationally determined speech modes. Building on data produced in sociolinguistic interviews and similar researcher-controlled environs, a central style-linked finding emerging from the variationist paradigm is that speakers, in statistical terms, tend to modify their ways of speaking depending on how much attention they pay to their speech, which in turn will depend on the situation in which speech is produced. In this approach to style, which has counterparts in the field of general stylistics (e.g. Joos 1967), stylistic variation is largely seen as a consequence – or reflex, even – of contextual factors. Formal situations with a high degree of attention to speech are found to correlate with the use of relatively ‘formal’ or ‘standard’ features, whereas informal situations with relatively little attention paid to speech will show the use of more informal styles, of which the most famous one is what Labov calls ‘the vernacular’ (for a recent debate of this notion see Coupland 2016). Against this traditional variationist view of style, which tends to invoke a one-dimensional scale of formality to account for variation in (individual) speech style, we find approaches that take an interest in the performative and meaning-making nature of styles and styling. In this tradition, which draws on insights from the work of Gumperz (1982), Hymes (1974) and several others, styles and styling are conceptualized as dynamic processes that constitute an integral part of communicative situations and which may take part in the creation of many types of meaning. Each time a style is brought off, it invariably produces meaning in a dialectic interplay with various aspects of the situational context, rendering the idea that a style could be seen as a situational correlate insufficient as a theoretical starting point. Where the traditional variationist approach to style might be said to treat style mainly as a noun (as in Labov’s use of the concept of ‘contextual styles’), operating with a limited inventory of distinct styles organized along a continuum of formality, the alternative approach emphasizes the creative potential of styling, in the more verbal sense. The two positions on style briefly outlined here, and which are treated in more detail elsewhere (e.g. Thøgersen, Coupland & Mortensen 2016), are not incompatible. In fact, as we will show in the following, current approaches to style tend to encompass ‘consolidated’ as well as ‘dynamic’ aspects, highlighting that both perspectives must be taken into consideration if we want to provide a satisfactory account of style and styling, or ‘style in action’. In discussing style, we need to take account of the historically entrenched social meaning of particular styles as culturally familiar constructs, while at the same time recognizing the active, and potentially transformative, meaning-making potential of styling in local instances of interaction.