Register and Genre

SFL and Strata:

Each stratum is embedded in the higher one
 To understand and produce
discourse you need knowledge
of ALL strata
Motivational relevancies (Hasan 1996)
i.e. what elements the sender cannot ignore in his/her
conception of what is relevant to the interaction
• The nature of the social process: what is
being achieved through the acts of verbal
meaning.
• The nature of the relationship between the
interactants
• The nature of the mode for the message
transmission
OR – Field, Tenor and Mode (Halliday 1985)
 Field
• What is the nature of the social action that is
taking place?
• What is it that the participants are engaged in?
Hasan 1996 sees this as a cline of institutionalisation :
institutionalisation individualisation

AND the cline of goal awareness:

visible invisible
 Tenor (1)
• Who is taking part in the interaction?
• What are the statuses of the participants?
• What are the roles of the participants?
• Are the relationships between the participants
of a temporary or permanent nature?
• What types of speech roles are they adopting?
Social distance cline:
maximal minimal
 Tenor (2)
• Further distinction to describe (dictate)
tenor (Butt 2002):
Regularity of contact
Modes of contact (or multiplexity)
Shared local history
Cultural capital
 Mode (1)
• What part is langauge playing in the interaction?
• What is it that the participants are expecting
language to do for them in that situation?
• What is the symbolic organisation of the text?
• What status does the text have?
• What is the function of the text in this context?
• What is the channel: written or spoken?
• What is the rhetorical mode (e.g. persuasive,
expository etc)? In other words: what is being
achieved by the text?
 Mode (2)
• What part is langauge playing in the interaction?
constitutive ancillary

• What is it that the participants are expecting

language to do for them in that situation?
(process sharing)
monologue dialogue
 Mode (3)
• Channel and Medium
writtenness spokenness

Channel: phonic or graphic

Medium: spoken – written
(Messaging: graphic channel with spoken
medium)
 Context of situation (1)
type of situation
versus
material situational setting

e.g. reading of poem independent of whether in a

school or theatre (language constitutive)
Some material situational settings impinge on the
language (discourse) more than others.
 Context of Situation (2)
• The situation types that recur in resonse to contextual
demans of a particular culture:
context of culture

which frames the context of situation:

Mutually constructuve, i.e. “context of culture both
determines and is determined by situation types, and
context of situation both construes and is construed by
the linguistic system” Fenton Smith (2005)
 Context of Situation (3)
• The situation type and the types of
expression that go with it are what have
been defined as:
Register
“Each context of situation corresponds to a
location along the dimension of register
variation – that is to a register” Matthieson
1993
 Register (1)
• “A register is a semantic concept. It can be
defined as a configuration of meanings that are
typically associated with a particualr situational
configuration of field, mode and tenor. But since
it is a configuration of meanings, a register must
also, of course, include the expressions, the
lexico.grammatical and phonological features,
that typically accompany or REALISE these
meanings” Halliday 1985
 Register (2)
• Registers constrain the meanings that are likely to
be made in situational contexts in society
• Not everyone has access to all registers (people
have registerial repertoires)
• These repertoires determine the number of
contexts that people can successfully operate in;
• Defining registers defines the overall semiotic
space of a culture (this is the task of the discourse
analyst)
Two dimensions to context theory

• Metafunctional: elements in context which

impinge on the functions of a text
• Stratal: context realises culture which is in
turn realised by language.
 CDA – cognitive model
(mentalist model)

• The relevant context is whatever mental

model the participants form of the speech
situation.
 Van Dijk’s contextual parameters
• (Social) Domain (similar to field – general area of
endeavour the participants perceive themselves to be working in
– implies an ability of interactors to identify domain)
• Institution (social groups, institutions, organisations)
• Setting (time and place)
• Local Actions (micro-level actions by which global tasks
are accomlished)
• Participants (communicative, interactional, socio-political)
• Cognition (participants’ mental models of the social
situation, their intention, knowledge of other participants and
own beliefs and ideologies)
 DA and genre analysis – a brief
history
Three main phases:
• Textualisation – focusing on lexico-
grammatical resources, typical/frequent
froms in specific genres
• Organisation – focusing on coherence and
cohesion and how these create a whole text
• Contextualisation – going beyond the text
itself to analyse the context and purpose of
the text
 Learning about genres
Most written genres studied belong to professional
domains :-
• Professionals learn the ‘language’ of their
profession at the same time and as an integral part
of the ‘content’, knowledge and ‘skills’ of their
profession. (e.g. engineers learn how to draft a
structural report as they learn about the
calculations reported therein.
• How can a tranlsator acquire this knowledge for
miriad of genres?????
Genre Analysis – Bhatia’s ‘four-
space’ model
• Language as text
• Language as genre
• Language as professional practice
• Language as social practice
Vijay K. Bhatia 2004 Worlds of written discourse
 Genres – fixed or dynamic?
• There is a certain interplay and tension
between what Bhatia calls ‘generic
integrity’ (a text genre respects in the full all
characterisitics of the genre), ‘generic
appropriation’ (a text uses features from
another genre to achieve the desired
outcome) and ‘generic creativity’ (a text
uses novel features to achieve the desired
effect thus modifying the genre)
 Contextualisation of discourse
• Purposes: institutionalized community goals
and communicative purposes
• Products: textual artefacts or genres
• Practices: Discursive practices, procedures
and processes
• Players: Discourse and professional
community memebership
Bhatia 1999
 Broader context – the whole
picture
• Company reports/letters to shareholders
• Often issued with a disclaimer (exonerating the
company from any responsibility if their future
projections are not met)
• Have to go beyond the main letter (often depicting
a rosy picture) - the disclaimer sheds a different
light on the more positive tone of the letter to
shareholders.
Bhatia 2004
Bhatia 2004 p 18
Bhatia 2004 p 19
 Discourse as genre
• “extends the analysis beyond the textual
product to incorporate context in a broader
sens to account for not only the way text is
constructed, but also for the way it is often
interpreted, used and exploited in specific
institutional or more narrowly professional
contexts to achieve specific disciplinary
goals” ibid p 20
 Translating genres – genre
knowledge
• When translating the translator needs to be
aware of differences in the context of use,
the ‘lexicogrammatical’ choices may be
different depending on the
typical/distinctive lexicogrammatical froms
of the particular genre in that particular
‘social space’
 An example:
CENTRO BENESSERE:
UTILIZZO:
E’obbligatoria la doccia
prima dell’utilizzo dei
servizi del centro
Disinfettare i piedi
all’apposita vaschetta.
Camminare scalzi o con
ciabattine di gomma
Per il rispetto e la quiete di
tutti, parlare a bassa voce
SPA:
SOME SIMPLE RULES:
Please take a shower
before using any facility
Please wash and disinfect
Your feet in the apposite
tub. Wear slippers or walk
barefoot.
Please be quiet and enjoy
the silence