Page 187 - DENG504_LINGUISTICS

Unit 13: Branches in Linguistics: Socio-Linguistics

or to level of formality, that is style (manner of discourse). Registers are, therefore, situationally Notes
conditioned field-of-discourse oriented varieties of a language. Some well-known definitions of register
are cited below:
1. “By register we mean a variety correlated with a performer’s social role on a given occasion.
Every normal adult plays a series of different social roles—one man, for example, may function
at different times as head of a family, motorist, cricketer, member of a religious group, professor
of bio-chemistry and so on, and within his idiolect he has varieties shared by other persons and
other idiolects appropriate to these roles. When the professor’s wife tells him to ‘stop talking
like a professor,’ she is protesting at a misuse of register.”
—J. C. Catford, A Linguistic Theory of Translation, OUP, 1965.
2. Registers are those “varieties of language which correspond to different situations, different
speakers and listeners, or readers and writers, and so on.”
—R.M.W. Dixon, “On Formal & Contexual Meaning,” A L H (Budapast), XIV.
3. “By register, itself a linguistic, not situational category, is meant a division of idiolect, or what
is common to dialects, distinguished by formal (and possibly substantial) features and correlated
with types of situations of utterance (these distinguished by such components as those here
enumerated).”
—J. Ellis, “On Contextual Meaning,” In Memory of J. R. Firth, Longmans.
According to the role of the speaker, a young lecturer, for example, will speak in different ways when
communicating with his wife, his children, his father, his colleagues, his students, or when shopping,
and so on. Each of these varieties will be a register. Examples of registral varieties according to the
subject matter or field of discourse are scientific, religious, legal, commercial writings and also the
language of newspaper, of buying and selling, of agriculture, of airport announcers, of telephone
operators, etc. The following passage belongs to the register of embroidery.
Make a small hem on the edge of the garment, turn it on to the right side, then take it down.
Arrange the lace in position over this hem, with the straight edge of the lace to the hem of edge. Pin
and tack. Sew the lace to the garment with tiny stitches worked close together as according.
A register is also determined by the medium or mode of discourse. The main distinction is between
speech and writing. But within speech one may have such distinctions as conversation, discussion,
debate, talk and lecture. And in writing we may have distinctions like a personal letter, a memoir, a
biography, an autobiography, a poem to be read, a speech to be read aloud, and a play to be performed
on a stage and so on.
The Advanced Learner’s Dictionary of Current English (1976) indexes the following types of register:
accounts ecclesiastical naval
aerospace electricity pathology
algebra engineering philosophy
anatomy farming phonetics
architecture finance photography
arithmetic football physics
art gambling physiology
astronomy geology politics
ballet geometry psychology
biblical grammar racing
biology journalism radio telegraphy
book-keeping mathematics rugby
botany mechanics science
business medical sports
chemistry meteorology tennis

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