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Corpus-based Approaches to Register Variation
Edited by Elena Seoane and Douglas Biber
[Studies in Corpus Linguistics 103] 2021
► pp. 19–50

Chapter 2
Extending text-linguistic studies of register variation to a continuous situational space

Case studies from the web and natural conversation

| Northern Arizona University,
| Northern Arizona University,
| Northern Arizona University,
| Northern Arizona University,
In text-linguistic register research, distributions of linguistic features across registers are theorized as having a functional relationship to the situational context. A strength of this approach is its focus on frequencies of linguistic features across texts/registers. Situational variables, by contrast, have not been measured with the same granularity. Only recently have text-linguistic researchers begun to treat situational characteristics as continuous variables that vary between registers, and also across texts within registers. In the current chapter, we discuss the theoretical foundation of this perspective and present two studies of register variation from a continuous situation perspective. For both, we present methods for coding situational variables as continuous as well as key findings facilitated by the continuous situation perspective.
Keywords: continuous situation, register analysis, situational context, web registers, conversation, communicative function
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
    • 1.1Methodological and theoretical issues arising in previous empirical studies of situational variation
  • 2.Case study 1: Situational variation among web documents
    • 2.1Background
    • 2.2Coding scheme and multi-dimensional analysis
    • 2.3Situational text types on the web
  • 3.Case study 2: Conversational discourse types
    • 3.1Coding discourse units in extended conversations
    • 3.2Analysing continuous communicative parameters to identify and describe conversational discourse types
  • 4.Conclusion
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 8 December 2021
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/scl.103.02bib
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2023. What is a register?. Register Studies 5:1 ► pp. 1 ff. DOI logo
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2023. Register variation and corpus linguistics: empirical findings and emerging theories. Special issue introduction of Corpus Linguistics and Linguistic Theory in honor of Douglas Biber. Corpus Linguistics and Linguistic Theory 19:1 ► pp. 1 ff. DOI logo
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