A study examined segmental and suprasegmental elements which contribute to an impression of one speaking style as opposed to another. A corpus containing three styles of speech, casual, careful, and read, for the same linguistic content was gathered. Thirteen speakers from Paris, France (aged 24-35) were given a scenario to be acted out over the telephone, and designed to provoke changes in style during the course of the dialog. Examination of the global and individual results revealed that: (1) spontaneous styles of speech cannot be considered to be linear modifications of read speech (careful speech is not necessarily faster than read speech, but slower than casual speech, for example), but probably closer to separate types of modifications of casual speech; and (2) the same perceived style is achieved by different speakers in different ways. (One table and six graphs of data are included.) (Author/RS)