Week 11: Registers, Styles, and Dialects

This week’s readings mainly deal with language variation across situations of use and among social groups. Each speech situation is determined by topics, locations, activities, goals, people, and their roles. These aspects will come together in a particular choice of language variety. Chapter 10 also talks about the speech situation in formality and informality and similarities and differences between spoken and written registers, and how they serve different purposes. On chapter 11, the differences in speech ways may result from geographical separation and social distance. These two views separate people and may eventually lead to distinct speech patterns. The example for geographical separation is Proto-Indo-European language. This language was spoken six thousand years ago, and has now come to many various languages such as Spanish, French, Italian, Portuguese, and Germanic, and so on. An example for social distance would be African-American English. The partly reason why it remains distinct from American English is because of the social distance between whites and African Americans. In addition, this chapter also examines the principal varieties of English throughout the world. English can be simply divided into British and American types. The difference is not just only between the spelling, but also between pronunciation as well as syntax and grammar. Moreover, it is quite interesting to learn a certain number of characteristics of African-American English and Chicano English.