STYLE, CONTEXT AND REGISTER

STYLE, CONTEXT AND REGISTER

• Addressee as an influence on style
• Accommodation theory
• Context, style and class
• Style in non-Western societies
• Register
• In each of these three utterances the speaker is trying to elicit the
‘same’ information from the addressee, but the context
dramatically influences the form of the query. Each request for
information is expressed quite differently.
• Language varies according to its uses as well as its users, according
to where it is used and to whom, as well as according to who is
using it. The addressees and the context affect our choice of code
or variety, whether language, dialect or style.
 1. Addressee as an influence on style
• People use considerably more standard forms to those they
don’t know well, and more vernacular forms to their friends.
Age of Addressee
• Uttered with high pitch and a sing-song intonation there is
little doubt about the appropriate addressee of utterances.
• People generally talk differently to children (short and
grammatically simple) and to adults (more complex
sentences).
• The first utterance in example 2 was addressed by a teenage boy to
his friend’s mother when she was showing the photos of their
skiing holiday to an adult friend. The second utterance was
addressed to his friend when he brought round his own photos of
the holiday. The better you know someone, the more casual and
relaxed the speech style you will use to them. People use
considerably more standard forms to those they don’t know well,
and more vernacular forms to their friends. In a study in Northern
Ireland, for instance, people used more standard English forms
with an English stranger visiting their village than they did talking
to a fellow villager.
Age of Addressee
 Difference talking or writing to children and adult

children
• Sing song intonation
• ‘baby talk’ words
• Simpler vocabulary
• Simpler grammatical construction
• Simpler common words such as like,
play and too.
adult
• More complex sentences with
subordinate clauses (e.g) he has vowed
(in express his gratitude).
• Low frequency words such as
subsequent, exotic, resort, gratitude.
Social Background of Addressee
• The addressee or audience is very important
influence on a speaker’s style.
• The most convincing evidence of all comes from the
behaviour of the same newsreader on different
stations.
• These utterances illustrate a number of linguistic features which distinguish the
pronunci- ations of newsreaders on different radio stations. In (b) there is
simplification of consonant.
• clusters, so [la:st] becomes [la:s] and [nekst] becomes [neks]. The pronunciation
of [t] between vowels is voiced so it sounds like a [d]. Hence meeting sounds like
meeding. The definite article the is omitted before the titles Prime Minister and
Premier and the honorifics Mrs and Mr disappear. And finally, utterance (b)
contracts will not to won’t.
• All these features have been identified as typical of the contrasting styles of
newsreaders on different New Zealand radio stations. Figure 10.1 shows the
contrast between the newsreader on a middle-of-the-road station (ZB) with an
audience from the lower end of the social spectrum, compared to the
prestigious National Radio network (YA) with its older, generally better-heeled
audience.
 2. Accomodation Theory
A. Speech Convergence

Converging towards the speech of another person and usually this is a polite speech
strategy.

B. How do speakers accomodate?

- Multilingual countries
 people accomodate to others by selecting the code that is most comfortable for their
addresse.
-Bilingual countries
 people accomodate to others by using one of their bilingual language.
 Speech convergence

• The examples in the previous section have demonstrated that

when people talk to each other their speech often becomes
more similar. In other words, each person’s speech converges
towards the speech of the person they are talking to. This
process is called speech accommodation. It tends to happen
when the speakers like one another, or where one speaker has
a vested interest in pleasing the other or putting them at ease.
So the travel agent wanted to gain her customers’ orders, and
the interviewer wanted to gain his interviewee’s cooperation
C. Speech Divergence

Tends to happen when a person wants to show his /her cultural

distinctiveness, social status, ethnic identity, etc.

• Deliberately choosing a language not used by one’s addresse.

• Using a higher frequency of vernacular forms.
•People who aspire to a higher social status will diverge upwards from the speech of
those from the same social class.

Speech divergence does not always reflect a speaker’s negative attitudes

towards the addresse.

“ We know where is going but we’re denied”

Stylisation
• When someone goes beyond their usual or normal ways of
speaking and behaving and engages in a ‘high’ or ‘strong’
performance of some sort, the term ‘stylisation’ is useful. The
most obvious examples of stylisation are found in the speech
of comedians and singers who perform to entertain or amuse
us. When the British comedian Catherine Tate performs an
antagonistic teenage girl using the phrases am I bovvered? and
I ain’t bovvered, this is stylisation.
D. Accomodation problems

• It is possible to overdo convergence and offend listeners. Over convergent

behaviour may be perceived as patronishing and ingratiating.
•In general, then, reactions to speech convergence and divergence depend on the
reasons people attribute for the convergence or divergence.
 3. Context, style and class

FORMAL CONTEXTS AND SOCIAL ROLES

The formal setting where the social role of participants override their personal relationship in
determining the appropriate linguistic form (style)
 
DIFFERENT STYLES WITHIN AN INTERVIEW
The basis for the distinctions between the styles was the amount of attention people were paying
to their speech
People consistently used more vernacular features in describing situations where they had been
in danger of death, or recounting the details of fights they had seen
 
COLLOQUIAL STYLE OR THE VERNACULAR
• There are some strategies that have been used in order t o capture people’s most relaxed or
vernacular speech style :
-Topic manipulation
-Taping groups
- Choosing a very comfortable or informal setting
THE INTERACTION OF SOCIAL CLASS AND STYLE
• Some people shift style to be more formal or more vernacular, in order to be more accepted by their
interlocutors
HYPERCORRECTION
• Hypercorrection is the exaggeration of some lower class speakers in imitating middle class standard
speech
 4. Style in non-Western societies
 Japanese is one of a number of language with a special grammatical contrasts
for expressing politnes and respect for other. Japanese speakers assess their
status in relation to their addressees on the basis of such factors as “family
background, gender and age. The choice of appropriate style involves not only
pronounciation, but also word forms and syntax.

 Knowledge of the complexities of stylistic variation in country like japan

reflects a person’s educational level and social status. Better-educated people
have grether control of the various style. So the social status of speaker can be
deduced from the skill with which they select and use the various styles of
japanese.
• Javanese is another example of style in non-western societies which
illustrates the complexity of variation which can be found in in language.
There are three words for “house” in javanese language that is “omah, grija
and dalem”. Once you have selected the approprite stylistic level, you must
follow the rule fof which forms may occur which.
• Taking account of your relationship to the addresssee in the context. As
elsewhere, too, solidarity and relative ststus are important in assessing the
relationship. The result may be that each of the participants selected a
different level of javanese. If i am an ordinary educated citizen speaking to a
high goverment official. I will use the highest lelev to express respect, but
the official will use only lower level to me. Two high ststus javanes, on other
hand, will use both level high to each other.
• Javanese provides a graphic example of a language where the stylistic
choices are much more clear-cut than in english. The co-occure rules can be
explicity specified.
 5. Register

 Register is kind of jargon which a group of specialist often develop to talk

about their speciality. It could be described as an occupational style.
Some linguists describe this kind of language variaton as ‘register’ variation.
 Others use term ‘register’ more narrowly to describe the specific vocabulary
associated with different occupational groups.
Sports announcer talk

 When people describe a sporting event, the language they use is quite clearly
distinguishable from language used in other context.
 The most obvious distinguishing feature is generally the vocabulary, but the
grammar is equally distinctive.
Syntactic reduction

 There is no loss of meaning as a result of this syntactic reduction, since the

omitted elements are totally predictable in the context.
This feature of sports announcers often omit the subject noun or pronoun.
Syntactic inversion
 Reversal or inversion of the normal word order is another feature of sports
announcer talk. This device allows the announcer to foreground or focus on the
action and provides him with time to identify the subject or the action – an
important piece of information for listeners.
Syntactic reduction
• sports announcers often omit the subject noun or pronoun, as
in (a), and frequently omit the verb be as well, as utterances
(b) and (c) illustrate. Utterances (d) and (e) omit only be. There
is no loss of meaning as a result of this syntactic reduction,
since the omitted elements are totally predictable in the
context.
Syntactic inversion
• Reversal or inversion of the normal word order is another
feature of sports announcer talk. This device allows the
announcer to foreground or focus on the action and provides
time to identify the subject of the action – an important piece
of information for listeners.
Heavy noun modification
People rather than action are the focus of interest at certain points during the
spots announcer’s spiel.
Routines and formulas
An interesting feature of sports commentaries, including race-calling (horse
race), is the use of routines to reduce the memory burden on the speaker.