![]() Hasan interpret register as "the linguistic features which are typically associated with a configuration of situational features-with particular values of the field, mode and tenor." Field for them is "the total event, in which the text is functioning, together with the purposive activity of the speaker or writer includes subject-matter as one of the elements." Mode is "the function of the text in the event, including both the channel taken by language – spoken or written, extempore or prepared – and its genre, rhetorical mode, as narrative, didactic, persuasive, ' phatic communion', etc." The tenor refers to "the type of role interaction, the set of relevant social relations, permanent and temporary, among the participants involved". Reid in 1956, and brought into general currency in the 1960s by a group of linguists who wanted to distinguish among variations in language according to the user (defined by variables such as social background, geography, sex and age), and variations according to use, "in the sense that each speaker has a range of varieties and choices between them at different times." The focus is on the way language is used in particular situations, such as legalese or motherese, the language of a biology research lab, of a news report, or of the bedroom. The term register was first used by the linguist T. Crystal and Davy, for instance, have critiqued the way the term has been used "in an almost indiscriminate manner." These various approaches to the concept of register fall within the scope of disciplines such as sociolinguistics (as noted above), stylistics, pragmatics, and systemic functional grammar. Some prefer to restrict the domain of the term register to a specific vocabulary (which one might commonly call slang, jargon, argot, or cant), while others argue against the use of the term altogether. Due to this complexity, scholarly consensus has not been reached for the definitions of terms such as register, field, or tenor different scholars' definitions of these terms often contradict each other.Īdditional terms such as diatype, genre, text types, style, acrolect, mesolect, basilect, sociolect, and ethnolect, among many others, may be used to cover the same or similar ground. Discourse categorization is a complex problem, and even according to the general definition of register given above (language variation defined by use rather than user), there are cases where other kinds of language variation, such as regional or age dialect, overlap. kid), and refraining from using words considered nonstandard, such as ain't and y'all.Īs with other types of language variation, there tends to be a spectrum of registers rather than a discrete set of obviously distinct varieties-numerous registers can be identified, with no clear boundaries between them. For example, when speaking officially or in a public setting, an English speaker may be more likely to follow prescriptive norms for formal usage than in a casual setting, for example, by pronouncing words ending in -ing with a velar nasal instead of an alveolar nasal (e.g., walking rather than walkin'), choosing words that are considered more "formal" (such as father vs. Others have used eye-tracking software to explore sociolinguistic perception, and still others have captured language attitudes via matched guise studies.In sociolinguistics, a register is a variety of language used for a particular purpose or particular communicative situation. Members of the Interactional Sociophonetics Lab collect high-quality audio and visual data of social interactions as well as articulatory phonetic data. Many of us use experimental methods to explore sociolinguistic production and perception. Recent fieldwork has found us in rural counties of Northern California, exploring ethnic variation in Tel Aviv, on the political trail in Austin, Texas, and among drag queens in San Francisco. ![]() We regularly offer a hands-on Sociolinguistic Field Methods course and we collect data through department-wide projects, like Voices of California, as well as individual projects conducted locally and across the world. ![]() Fieldworkįieldwork is critical to much of our research. Recent graduate seminars have focused on topics such as sociolinguistic perception, sociogrammar, and interactional sociolinguistics. This includes production and perception of phonetic, semantic, and syntactic components of language. ResearchĬurrent research by sociolinguists in our department explores the social meaning and linguistic structure of variation. ![]() Sociolinguistics at Stanford combines an emphasis on social and stylistic aspects of variation with a department-wide interest in the linguistic constraints on variation. ![]()
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