Article published In:
Register StudiesVol. 1:1 (2019) ► pp.76–99
Register in variationist linguistics
Benedikt Szmrecsanyi, Professor of Linguistics in the Quantitative Lexicology and Variational Linguistics research
group at the Katholieke Universiteit (KU) Leuven, writes this article exploring the connections between register and variationist
linguistics. He is involved with various large-scale research projects in areas such as probabilistic grammar, variationist
sociolinguistic research, linguistic complexity, and dialectology/dialectometry. Szmrecsanyi’s books include Grammatical
Variation in British English Dialects: A Study in Corpus-based Dialectometry (2013, Cambridge) and
Aggregating Dialectology, Typology, and Register Analysis: Linguistic Variation in Text and Speech (Szmrecsanyi & Wälchli 2014, Mouton de Gruyter). He is currently a principal
investigator on a major grant-funded research project titled ‘The register-specificity of probabilistic grammatical knowledge in
English and Dutch’, a project aimed at exploring the question of whether register differences lead to differences in the processes
of making linguistic choices. In sharp contrast to the status quo in variationist linguistics, where register is often ignored
entirely, much of Szmrecsanyi’s variationist research treats register as a variable of primary importance. The findings from these
studies have led Benedikt Szmrecsanyi to state that “we need more empirical/variationist work to explore the differences that
register makes” (Szmrecsanyi 2017: 696).
Article outline
- 1.How is register conceptualized in variationist linguistics?
- 2.How does register relate to the research goals within variationist linguistics?
- 3.What are the major methodological approaches that are used to analyze or account for register in variationist linguistics?
- 4.What does a typical register study look like in variationist linguistics?
- 4.1Selection of the variable
- 4.2Circumscription of the variable context
- 4.3Retrieval and annotation
- 4.4Analysis
- 4.5Interpretation
- 5.What are the most promising areas of future register research in variationist linguistics?
- Acknowledgements
- Notes
-
References
This article is currently available as a sample article.
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