Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- 1 Registers, genres, and styles: fundamental varieties of language
- PART I Analytical framework
- Part II Detailed descriptions of registers, genres, and styles
- PART III Larger theoretical issues
- 8 Multidimensional patterns of register variation
- 9 Register studies in context
- Appendix A Annotation of major register/genre studies (by Federica Barbieri)
- Appendix B Activity texts
- References
- Index
8 - Multidimensional patterns of register variation
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 June 2012
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- 1 Registers, genres, and styles: fundamental varieties of language
- PART I Analytical framework
- Part II Detailed descriptions of registers, genres, and styles
- PART III Larger theoretical issues
- 8 Multidimensional patterns of register variation
- 9 Register studies in context
- Appendix A Annotation of major register/genre studies (by Federica Barbieri)
- Appendix B Activity texts
- References
- Index
Summary
Comparing multiple registers
The preceding chapters have described the distinctive situational and linguistic characteristics of particular registers, including everyday conversation, newspaper writing, academic prose, e-mail messages, and text messaging. Through these descriptions, we have illustrated how register differences are pervasive in human communication: speakers of any language regularly encounter and use a range of registers, which all differ to some extent in their situational and linguistic characteristics.
Those chapters have also shown how register analyses are always comparative: register features are defined as linguistic characteristics that occur more frequently in the target register than in other comparison registers. Thus, in the preceding chapters, we have described the linguistic characteristics of a target register by comparison to other registers. In some cases, the situational differences between the registers being compared are large, as with the comparison of classroom teaching and textbooks in Chapter 3; in other cases, the situational differences between registers are more subtle, as with the comparison of e-mails, text messages, and conversation in Chapter 7. In all these cases, though, the comparison allows us to observe the linguistic differences associated with particular situational factors.
But what if an analyst wanted to compare the full range of registers used in a language? For example, the preceding chapters have shown how the language of conversation is dramatically different from academic writing. But what if the research goal was to compare both of these registers to other common registers, like e-mail messages and university classroom teaching?
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- Register, Genre, and Style , pp. 215 - 252Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2009