Style, context and

register
Acknowledgement of country
• Review session 4
• Introduce key concepts and ideas
• Explore speech styles and register
• Introduce communication accommodation
theory
Group 5
Session 4 key takeaway
Key words

index styles registers

speech speech
accommodation
convergence divergence

stylisation
Key ideas
Speech styles
Speech styles
Style
&
Register
Style
Register

(Halliday 1978)
(Kortmann, 2005)
Formality scale
Joos (1961)

more formal less formal

Frozen Formal Consultative Casual Intimate

Text messages
• What can you know
about the speakers
in these messages?

1
5
Teaching register
• Try rewriting these utterances for different formality
levels.
The meteorological
A conditions were most
favourable today.

Please speak
B more quietly.

C Hey, dude.
Discourse markers and register
• In which
contexts are
you most likely
to use these
discourse
markers?
Corpus tools and register
• Try looking up discourse markers in a corpus
Enumerative Contrastive Summative

“for one thing” “alternatively” “to sum it all up”

“firstly” “on the other hand” “therefore”

Style and identity
What influences speech style?
 • What is the function of these
utterances?

A. Where were you last night? I rang to

see if you wanted to come to the
movies.

Examples B. Could you tell us where you were on

the night of Friday the seventeenth of
March?

C. I know some of you went out last night

and so I thought we might talk a bit
today about how you got on. Did you
go out last night, Jimmy?
Examples

1. Excuse me. Could I have a look at

your photos, please?

2. C’mon Tony, gizzalook, gizzalook.

Parentese (baby-talk)
 Stylisation

Ben Rampton, 1999, 2005

Example for analysis
Code-switching
 Examples

• Em có ý này mn xem được ko. "sth that makes u surprised". những t ừ mang
nghĩa Old Meaning á. mình chưa gặp bao giờ. mình có thể thử tổng hợp
nghĩa của các từ lạ lạ đó ạ!
Reasons for code-
switching
Use your white-voice
Communication Accommodation Theory

Howard, Giles (1977)

Style Modification
Purpose
Conclusion
 References
• Giles, H. (Ed.). (2016). Communication accommodation theory : Negotiating personal relationships and
social identities across contexts. Cambridge, United Kingdom: Cambridge University Press.
• Hai Ha Vu (2017) “Only When I Am Not Ashamed of Myself Can I Teach Others”: Preservice English-
Language Teachers in Vietnam and Code-Switching Practices, Journal of Language, Identity &
Education, 16:5, 285-298, DOI: 10.1080/15348458.2017.1305906
• Lynn E. Grant & Thi Hang Nguyen (2017) Code-switching in Vietnamese university EFL teachers’
classroom instruction: a pedagogical focus, Language Awareness, 26:3, 244-259, DOI: 
10.1080/09658416.2017.1402915
• Joos, Martin. 1961. The five clocks. New York: Harcourt
• Rampton, B. (1999), Crossing. Journal of Linguistic Anthropology, 9: 54-56.
doi:10.1525/jlin.1999.9.1-2.54
• Halliday, Michael A. K. 1978. Language as social semiotic. Bath: Pitman Press.
• Gumperz, John J. "The sociolinguistic significance of conversational code-switching." RELC
journal 8, no. 2 (1977): 1-34.