Style, context and

register

Susarenco Teodora, Pușcaș Ana-Paula

Faculty of Letters and Arts
Group: Romanian-English
 Difference between
Register and Style
Register It is an occupational style with jargon that describes the language of groups of people with
common interests or jobs or the language used in situations associated with such groups. Jargon:
Specialised vocabulary specialists develop to talk about their specialty.

Some linguists use the term register to refer to the style of speech from slang to elevated variety. Others
restrict it to specialised vocabulary.

The difference: Style is analysed along a scale of formality. Register, when distinguished from style, is
associated with the language of a particular group of people. Other examples of registers: Journalese,
baby-talk, legalese, sports commentators, language of airline pilots, criminals, doctors, engineers,
politicians, students …etc.
 Addressee as an Influence on Style

The better you know someone, the more casual and relaxed the speech style you will
use with them.
People use more standard forms to the people they do not know well and more
vernacular forms to their friends.
A study in Northern Ireland showed that people used more standard English with
an English stranger visiting their village than they did talking to a fellow villager.
When the addressee is the influence, a speaker will choose the appropriate style
based on:
1- Relationship between the speaker and addressee.
2- How well the speaker knows the addressee.
3- How close the speaker feels to the addressee (solidarity and social distance)
4- Age of the addressee
5- Social background of the addressee.
Age of the Addressee

People talk differently to children and to adults.

Children: Talking to a child would likely be in a sing-

song
intonation and “baby talk” and when writing to them, we
use shorter explicit sentences, simple grammar and
common vocabulary items.
Elderly people: It is noticed that people tend to employ
similar stylistic features when they talk to children like
using simpler vocabulary, less complex grammar and the
use of “we” to refer to the addressee (in English).
 Social Background of the addressee
The context of an idea or event is the general situation that relates to it, and which helps it to be understood.
(Collins Co-build Dictionary, 1995)

(a) Last week the British Prime Minister Mrs Margaret Thatcher met the Australian
Premier Mr. Bob Hawke in Canberra . . . Their next meeting will not be for several
months.
(b) Las’ week British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher met Australian Premier Bob Hawke
in Canberra . . . There nex’ meeding won’t be for sev’ral months.

Based on the social role, status and background of the

addressee, the speaker either chooses to modify his/ her
speech towards or away from the style of the addressee.
This style modification is known as the Accommodation
Theory.
 Stylistic differences

3 different requests for information:

1. From a friend
Where were you last night? I rang to see if you wanted to come to the pictures
2. In court from a lawyer
Could you tell the court where you were on the night of Friday, the seventeenth of
March?
3. From a teacher to his pupils in school on the day after Halloween
I know some of you went ‘trick-or-treating’ last night and so I thought we might talk a bit
today about how you got on. Did you go out last night Jimmy?
‘eliciting the same information, but the context dramatically influences the form of the
query’
(Wife to husband)
w: Hello, how are you today?
H: I'm fine. Would you mind passing
me the bread?
W: Certainly. Would you like some
butter with your bread?
H: Yes, please. Thank you very much.
(Man Speaking to Stranger)
A: You! Tell me the time!
B: Three.
(Wife to Husband)
W: Hi honey, how was your day?
H: Great. We got a lot done. And
yours?
W: Fine, a bit stressful. Pass me that
magazine, please.
H: Here you go.
(Man Speaking to Stranger)
A: Pardon me. Do you think you could
give me the time?
B: Certainly, it's three o’clock.
A: Thank you.
B: Not at all.
 Accommodation theory

Speech convergence- when talking, the speech of the speaker

converges towards the speech of the person he/she is talking to >
speech accommodation > polite speech strategy
❑Upward convergence: convergence towards the speech of someone
with more power and status, or someone deserving respect in the
context
❑Downward convergence: convergence towards the speech of
someone with less power and status
 Specialized varieties

⦿Domain: ways of classifying social situations. Assigning a suitable variety

based on:
=> PLACE –> ROLE-RELATIONSHIP- >TOPIC
Eg. home -> family members-> family activities ; work -> boss, employees ->
work-related topics
(a particular variety of language is appropriate to the domain)

⦿
• A jargon: a group od specialists often
develop to talk about their specialty
(occupational style).
Others use the term register more
narrowly to describe:
‘the language of group of people with
common interests or jobs, or the
language used in situations associated
with such groups’.
=> The distinction is not always clear
 Why do people need jargon?

⦿Purpose:
1) label new needed concepts
2) establish bonds between members
3) enforce boundaries for outsiders

❑ Australian aboriginal secret societies

❑ Thieves and underworld jargon
❑ Jewish horse traders (Hebrew terms for numbers and parts of a horse)
SOME EXAMPLES OF JARGON
 Features which distinguish sports announcer talk as a separate register

Example: Cooley – steaming in now, - bowls to Waugh again, - stroking it

out into the covers, - just thinking about a single, - Tucker taking a few ah
shuttering steps down the wicket from the bowler’s end but Waugh
sending him back

- language quite distinguishable from language used in other contexts

Features that distinguish this register:
1. Syntactic reduction: e.g. (from baseball commentaries)- [It]
bounced to second base (omission of subject noun or pronoun)
2. Syntactic inversion: e.g. In comes Ghouri (reversal or inversion
of the normal word order)
3. Heavy noun modification: e.g. First-base umpire Larry Barnett/
This much sought-after and very expensive fast bowler (people
rather than action are the focus of interest – subject nouns
which are the focus of interest are heavily modified)
Bibliography

❖ https://awelu.srv.lu.se/grammar-and-words/register-and-style/
❖ https://www.slideshare.net/Aseelkazum/style-and-register-in-sociolinguistics
❖ https://www.skillsyouneed.com/write/formal-or-informal.html
❖ https://www.niu.edu/writingtutorial/style/formal-and-informal-style.shtml
❖ http://www.ello.uos.de/field.php/Sociolinguistics/Linguisticaccommodation
❖ https://www.englishclub.com/tefl-articles/accommodation-theory.htm
❖ https://literarydevices.net/jargon/