CHIN2600 Chap.7 Style, Register and Enregisterment
Style, Register and Enregisterment
A register is not a vocabulary list and not a level of formality. It is a set of forms a community has come to recognise as belonging together and as signalling something about whoever uses them.
The framework sorts that recognition along three dimensions and each takes different evidence.
Repertoire characteristics cover how many forms belong to it, how many form classes they span, and what kinds of sign are involved, including prosodic and bodily ones. The range of pragmatic values covers the stereotypes attached to user, use and setting, and whether the value is positive or negative.
The social domain covers which categories of person can recognise at least some of the forms and which are fully competent in using them.
That third dimension is the one students under-use and the one that makes the concept powerful, because the group who can recognise a register is almost always far larger than the group who can produce it.
The asymmetry is why a register can be used to judge people who have no access to it.
Registers are made rather than found. Enregisterment is the process by which a set of forms comes to be recognised as tied to a category of person, and its unity comes from a model of expected conduct rather than from any grammatical property the forms share.
The chapter closes on the design that makes a variation study possible in one semester: two groups a participant would recognise as different, at most four features, a held constant situation, and the talk people produce about those features collected alongside them.
What this chapter covers
- 01
7.1 Three dimensions, and the question each one can answer
- 02
7.2 Recognition against competence, and why counting speakers gets it backwards
- 03
7.3 Enregisterment as a loop, and where a student can catch it
- 04
7.4 Three cases taught in this course, and what made each visible
- 05
7.5 Scaling a two group variation design down to one semester
- 06
7.6 Style, register and dialect: what each claim costs in evidence
Scaling a two group design down to something a student can finish
- +2Replace the occupational contrast with a reachable one. Students who finished secondary school in a Mandarin speaking country against students who finished it in Australia, both in the same tutorial.
- +3Hold the situation constant. Collect everyone in the same task, for instance a two minute spoken introduction recorded on a phone, so setting cannot produce your result.
- +3Choose two features, one commented on and one not. The first is where you expect recognition evidence; the second is your internal control.
- +2Run the metalinguistic layer deliberately. Five minutes of questions after each recording, asking what the other group sounds like.
Key terms
- Register
- A set of forms a community recognises as belonging together and as signalling something about the speaker. It is described along repertoire, pragmatic value and social domain rather than by formality.
- Repertoire size
- How many forms belong to a register, one of the three repertoire characteristics alongside grammatical range and semiotic range. It is the measure that separates a register from three words somebody noticed.
- Semiotic range
- The kinds of sign a register recruits, including lexical, prosodic and bodily ones. It is the clause that licenses gesture, distance and layout as evidence in a register analysis.
- Social domain
- The categories of person who can recognise at least some of a register's forms, and the usually much smaller set who are fully competent in producing them.
- Enregisterment
- The historical process by which forms come to be recognised as a distinct way of speaking tied to a category of person. Its unity derives from a model of expected conduct, and behaviour may not conform to it.
- Style
- In this course, what a speaker does by selecting from registers and dialect features for this moment and this audience. It is treated as an indexical resource rather than defined as a separate object.
Style, Register and Enregisterment FAQ
How is a register different from a dialect?
A dialect claim says a form patterns with a place or a group across situations, and needs the same speakers using it in more than one kind of situation. A register claim says a community recognises the forms as a set with a value attached, and needs somebody other than you treating them that way.
Does calling something a register mean it is formal?
No. A workplace in-joke vocabulary is a register, the delivery associated with online sellers is a register, and the way people speak to very small children is the standard textbook example. Formality is a pragmatic value some registers carry and many do not.
What evidence shows enregisterment rather than a form simply spreading?
Recognition rather than frequency. Spreading is a count; enregisterment means people now hear the form as saying something about the speaker, so the evidence has to be somebody treating it as meaningful, which is why talk about talk and published commentary are the standard sources.
Can I claim a stylistic choice from a single recording?
No. A stylistic claim needs within speaker variation, which means the same speaker not using the form somewhere else in your data. From one recording of one situation you can claim a register or a feature, not a style.
Assessment move
Pick a register you can already recognise but cannot produce, and write out its three dimensions before you read anything more. The exercise is short and it fixes the recognition against competence distinction permanently, because you will be describing your own position in the social domain. Then find one piece of published commentary about that register: a joke, a complaint, a listicle.
That is your enregisterment evidence, and it took ten minutes to collect.
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