Casual Register
Casual register refers to the style of language used in informal, relaxed, or familiar settings. It often includes colloquial expressions, slang, and a more relaxed grammar and pronunciation. This register is typically used in everyday conversations among friends, family, and peers, and is characterized by its lack of formality.
6 Key excerpts on "Casual Register"
eBook - ePub- Genie Gertz, Patrick Boudreault(Authors)
- 2015(Publication Date)
- SAGE Publications, Inc(Publisher)
...In a similar way, language use can be adapted differently in accordance with a situation; social context; interpersonal relations; discourse type or text genre, respectively; and subject of talk or text, respectively. For example, “baby talk” and “foreigner talk” constitute addressee-related, situational “broken” language registers, which were studied in the 1970s and 1980s by Ferguson on an empirical basis. His approach has been most influential in the American tradition of sociolinguistics. In a broad sense, within his framework, register comprises specific modes of communication, such as L2 communication or lingua franca communication, as well as languages for specific purposes. Also, it is connected to his concept of diglossia, meaning the existence of a “high” standard variety associated with written language and formal registers, and a “low” vernacular variety of a given national language. Diglossia is the case, for example, in Switzerland with Standard German versus Swiss German dialects, but it does not apply in the same way to minority languages such as SL. As a typical example of SL variation in terms of register, consider Figure 1a and 1b, two ASL signs denoting the verb die. Both signs comprise an upside-down, turning motion of the flat hand and are accompanied in the second half by a mouth shape. However, the formal sign in Figure 1a uses both hands in a bimanual motion turning upside down and from left to right. The informal sign is carried out single-handed and uses a smaller space just in shoulder height on the right side for the upside-down turning motion. As shown in this example, changing a bimanual into a single-handed sign and delimiting signing space are systematically part of SL use...
eBook - ePub- Gerard Van Herk(Author)
- 2012(Publication Date)
- Wiley-Blackwell(Publisher)
...But we also vary our language in ways that are not so split-second. The term register, like style, describes a type of speech, but it is more closely associated with a specific speech situation, often related to an occupation or particular pastime, so we can speak of a legal register or ritual language register or sports announcer register. People often speak of recipe register, although we can also think of recipe as a genre – it’s a widely recognized category of event with its own name. Other genres might include the novel, the political speech, the lecture, or the knock-knock joke. A register associated with a particular occupation or activity often develops its own special vocabulary items, known as jargon. Jargon can involve special terms, as when linguists refer to fricatives or mediopassives, or specialized meanings for existing words, as when we give particular linguistic meanings to the words register or style. Jargon makes communication more effective for in-group members – we don’t need to keep saying things like “those sounds where our phonation is all hissy.” But jargon also excludes non-members, or creates barriers to participation. (Sometimes this is the point, as with criminal “secret languages,” often called argot.) Lots of Jargon: Frequent Flyers I participate in a community of practice that just loves jargon: a discussion board for frequent flyers. Much of the jargon is borrowed from the airline industry itself, especially abbreviations and acronyms. These include airport codes (everybody writes PDX, not Portland), fare classes (it’s J and Y, not business class and economy), airline codes (LX, not Swiss International), and many other terms (GA for gate attendant). Every SE (Super Elite) FF (frequent flyer) knows that an OP-UP (operational upgrade, a free upgrade to J because the airline sold too many Y tickets) is better than a LMUG (last minute upgrade, where you pay to turn your Y ticket into J)...
eBook - ePubGrammar Survival for Secondary Teachers
A Practical Toolkit
- Geoff Barton, Jo Shackleton(Authors)
- 2018(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
...Chapter 4 Levels of formality What you need to know about levels of formality As writers, we make choices about our writing which are largely determined by context. There are three key considerations: • Purpose (Why am I writing this?) • Audience (Who am I writing this for?) • Form (So what kind of writing would be appropriate?) This chapter deals with the way we adapt our language according to context. There’s a section on the differences between spoken and written language; Standard and non-Standard English (including using Standard English in writing and speech); and formal and informal registers. However, language is rarely simply formal or informal – it tends to sit on a continuum, which is why it’s more helpful to think about levels of formality. In his memoir, Wordstruck, the novelist and journalist Robert MacNeil draws an analogy with clothing: for example, ‘the dark-suit, serious-tie language’, ‘blue-jeans-and-sweat-shirt language’, and ‘the language of pyjamas and uncombed hair’. Pupils will have learnt about Standard English, as well as formal and informal writing, in primary school. The challenge at secondary is to teach pupils to adapt language appropriately, according to audience and purpose, and in a wider range of more challenging contexts. Register also needs to be mentioned here. We use this term to refer to the specific language used in particular social contexts and by specific groups or professions (for example, legal, medical or scientific) when talking or writing about their own field of interest and expertise. In his essay, ‘Standard English: What it Isn’t’, linguist Peter Trudgill distinguishes between register and style, with register being associated more with vocabulary, and style with the degree of formality used...
eBook - ePubExploring the Spanish Language
An Introduction to its Structures and Varieties
- Christopher Pountain(Author)
- 2016(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
...7 Register In Chapter 6 we looked at diatopic and diastratic variation in modern Spanish. In this chapter and the next we will consider what is sometimes called diaphasic variation. First of all we look at register, i.e. variation according to the situation in which language is used, or the purpose for which it is used. As with diatopic and diastratic variation, it turns out that such external circumstances can often be correlated with internal, structural features of language. Native speakers can make judgements about what is appropriate and inappropriate linguistically in a particular situation, an ability which is sometimes called communicative competence (Hymes 1974: 75), just as surely as they can recognise the acceptability or unacceptability of grammatical forms. Unlike diatopic and diastratic linguistic variation, however, register has primarily been studied as a property of written texts, and while the geographical and social variation observable in speech is largely subconscious on the part of the speaker, written register is often a more consciously cultivated phenomenon. Furthermore, the characterisation and classification of situation and purpose cannot by its very nature be as rigorous as identification of such variables as sex, age, or even social class, and it is rarely possible to say that a particular text uniquely exemplifies one particular register. Certain situations of use in fact demand and exploit register-switching (e.g. quoted conversational forms in a newspaper report, allusory language, parody). We must distinguish between categorisation of the situation or purpose of a text and the identification of its characteristic linguistic features. Register is often characterised (following Halliday 1978: 31–5) according to the parameters of field, tenor and mode. Field relates to the subject-matter of the discourse, tenor to the relation between the participants (e.g. speaker and hearer, writer and reader) and mode to the medium employed (e.g...
eBook - ePubVarieties of Modern English
An Introduction
- Diane Davies(Author)
- 2014(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
...Hymes’s model was intended for the study of rather ritualised speech situations in which speakers could be expected to follow the rules of interaction laid down by their speech communities. In a wedding ceremony, for example, individual participants follow set ways of speaking, as established in their culture and community, so we can analyse such situations fairly easily with Hymes’s model (they have a very clear ‘act sequence’ and equally describable ‘ends’ and ‘norms’, for instance). Ordinary conversation, by contrast, is far less rigid than this and allows speakers more freedom to influence the interaction in certain ways, depending on their individual feelings and intentions. Speakers interact in ways that cannot simply be put down to ‘norms’, and their actual words and intended meanings may not match up in the way that happens (or is supposed to happen anyway) in official or ceremonial contexts. The study of what speakers may mean and how they are understood (i.e. the study of pragmatics) goes beyond our present concern with situational context. However, the way we describe situational context clearly needs to take account of the fact that speakers do not simply ‘respond’ passively to the situations in which they find themselves, but can actively ‘shape’ those situations through their use of language. 8.3 Register Register is a useful concept in the study of language in context. Spolsky (1998:34) writes: A register is a variety of language most likely to be used in a specific situation and with particular roles and statuses involved. Examples might be a toast at a wedding, sports broadcast, or talking to a baby. A register is marked by choices of vocabulary and of other aspects of style. The term ‘register’ is connected to language variation according to use, rather than to variation according to the user, for which we have the term ‘dialect’...
eBook - ePubSocial interaction, Social Context, and Language
Essays in Honor of Susan Ervin-tripp
- Dan Isaac Slobin, Julie Gerhardt, Amy Kyratzis, Jiansheng Guo, Dan Isaac Slobin, Julie Gerhardt, Amy Kyratzis, Jiansheng Guo(Authors)
- 2014(Publication Date)
- Psychology Press(Publisher)
...159). The nature of these "relevant social cues" was spelled out in greater detail by Ervin-Tripp, when she noted that: The more we study speech in natural settings, the more we find systematic variation within every speaker, reflecting who he is addressing, where he is, what the social event may be, the topic of discussion, and the social relations he communicates by speaking. The regularities in these features of speech make them as amenable to analysis as the abstracted rules called grammars. Competence in speaking includes the ability to use appropriate speech for the circumstance and when deviating from the normal to convey what is intended. It would be an incompetent speaker who used baby talk or randomly interspersed sentences in baby talk or in a second language regardless of circumstance. It would be equally incompetent to use formal style in all situations and to all addressees in a society allowing for a broader range of variation. Ervin-Tripp, 1973, p. 268 The acquisition of register knowledge, then, is the process by which children learn "to use appropriate speech for the circumstance." This involves the coordination of several types of knowledge at once. First, children must have the linguistic tools necessary to exhibit the kinds of register variation characteristic of their society — e.g., they must have available different names for the same referent (potty vs. toilet) and different grammatical forms to express the same speech act ("Close the door" vs. "Would you please close the door?"). Second, they must be aware of those aspects of discourse participants and setting that demand register shifts in their society — e.g., do you "simplify" your speech for both children and foreigners, as in many Western societies (Ferguson, 1975), or do you register shift for only one of these groups as in Western Samoa (Shore, 1982)...
