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Chapter 5
Language and Context
- The totality of linguistic varieties used in different situations for different purposes by a particular community or a particular speaker is called that community’s, or the speaker’s linguistic or verbal repertoire.
- Many social factors can come into play in controlling which variety from the speaker’s linguistic repertoire is actually to be used on a particular occasion.


Register
- Is a style level in a language. When we speak we automatically locate ourselves on a specific stylistic level.
- A register can also mean a specialized variety of language.
- Registers are usually characterized almost entirely by vocabulary differences, either by using particular words or by using words in a particular sense.
- One of the aims of education is to introduce students to the registers (or terminologies) of particular subjects.
- Registers are an example of particular kind of language being produced by a particular kind of social context.
- Many other factors connected with the social context in which language is being used will also have a linguistic effect. One of the most important of these is formality.
Formality
- Formality subsumes very many factors including situation, social formality, kinship-relationship, politeness, seriousness, and so on.
- Most people have a good idea of the relative formality and informality of particular linguistic variants in their own language.
- Varieties of language which differ from one another in this way are called styles.