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The term was first used by the linguist Thomas Bertram Reid in 1956 , and brought into general currency in the 1960s by a group of linguists who wanted to distinguish between 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 chooses between them at different times” (Halliday et al, 1964). 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 participants and their relationships) and Mode (the channel of communication, e.g. spoken or written). Any or all the elements of language may vary in different registers — Vocabulary , Syntax , Phonology , Morphology , Pragmatic Rules and/or different Paralinguistic features such as pitch, volume and Intonation in spoken English, or size and speed of sign production in a Sign Language . Registers often also have non-linguistic prescriptions such as appropriate Dress Code s, Body Language , and Proximity Of Speakers to one another. As with other types of Language Variation , we tend to find register continuums rather than discrete varieties — there’s an endless number of registers we could identify, with no clear boundaries to where each one starts and ends. Discourse categorisation is a complex problem, and even in the general definition of ‘register’ given above (language variation defined by use not user), there are cases where other kinds of language variation, such as regional or age dialect, overlap. As a result of this complexity, there is far from consensus about the meanings of terms like ‘register’,‘field’ or ‘tenor’; different writers’ definitions of these terms are often in direct contradiction of each other. Additional terms such as Diatype , Genre , Text Type , Style , Acrolect , Mesolect and Basilect (to name a few) may be used to cover the same or similar ground. Some prefer to restrict the domain of the term 'register' to a specific vocabulary (Wardhaugh, 1986) (which we might commonly call Jargon ), while others argue against the use of the term altogether. These various approaches with their own ‘register’ or set of terms and meanings fall under disciplines such as Sociolinguistics , Stylistics , Pragmatics or Systemic Functional Grammar . REGISTER AS FORMALITY SCALE One of the most analysed areas where the use of language is determined by the situation is the formality scale. Writers (especially in Language Teaching ) have often used the term 'register' as shorthand for formal/informal style, although this is an aging definition. Linguistics textbooks may use the term ‘tenor’ instead (Halliday 1978), but increasingly prefer the term 'style' — “we characterise styles as varieties of language viewed from the point of view of formality” (Trudgill, 1992) — while defining ‘registers’ more narrowly as specialist language use related to a particular activity, such as academic jargon. There is very little agreement as to how the spectrum of formality should be divided. In one prominent model, Joos (1961) describes five styles in spoken English:
Three-tiered division
It should be noted that the boundaries between the registers are constantly shifting and changing. What is unacceptable today could easily become 'cool' tomorrow! SEE ALSO
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