Article In: International Journal of Corpus Linguistics: Online-First Articles
Accounting for register-internal variation
Toward a framework for analyzing communicative purpose and register comparisons for functional correspondence
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Abstract
Registers are text varieties associated with situations of use. It has now been documented, however, that texts within registers are not situationally homogeneous — just as they are not linguistically uniform. This led (2023). What is a register? Accounting for linguistic and situational variation within — and outside of — textual varieties. Register Studies, 5(1), 1–22. to propose that linguistic variation within registers functionally corresponds to situational variation among their texts. The situational factor consistently shown to vary within registers is communicative purpose. However, previous studies have examined variability in purpose within a single register and always relied on coding schemes developed for that register. As a result, there is no single taxonomy of communicative purposes to be applied across registers. This paper proposes such a framework, offering guidance for its future adaptations to other corpora, and demonstrates how its application enables (a) analyses of functional correspondence between communicative and linguistic variation among texts of several registers; (b) register comparisons for the extent of internal variation.
Article outline
- 1.Introduction: Accounting for situational variation within registers
- 2.Toward a framework for analyzing communicative purpose
- 2.1Taxonomy of communicative purposes
- 2.2Coding method
- 3.Application of the framework across registers
- 3.1Trends in cross-register coding
- 3.2Communicative purpose variation across registers
- 4.Case study: Linguistic variation explained by communicative purpose across registers
- 4.1Method
- 4.1.1Linguistic and situational variables
- 4.1.2Quantifying linguistic variation explained by purpose within registers
- 4.2Results and discussion
- 4.2.1Oral elaboration vs. information density
- 4.2.2Evidence-based stance
- 4.3Functional correspondence between communicative purpose and linguistic variation among texts on Oral Elaboration vs. Information Density
- 4.3.1Essays — evaluate
- 4.3.2Business memos — opine
- 4.1Method
- 5.Conclusion and future directions
- Notes
- Author queries
References
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