Language register is the level of formality with which you speak. Different situations and people call for different registers. This is a concept I was talking about recently with some of my graduate students who dislike the idea of writing with a formal tone. They were commenting that they preferred to write in a conversational tone. Since our class is about learning to write up their academic research, I countered by saying that a manuscript submitted to a peer-reviewed journal was less likely to receive a favourable response from the editors if the tone was too conversational.
Some of them were unfamiliar with the concept of language register, so I gave them a quick overview based on Joos’ (1967) definitions:
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Explanation:
Language register is the level of formality with which you speak. Different situations and people call for different registers. This is a concept I was talking about recently with some of my graduate students who dislike the idea of writing with a formal tone. They were commenting that they preferred to write in a conversational tone. Since our class is about learning to write up their academic research, I countered by saying that a manuscript submitted to a peer-reviewed journal was less likely to receive a favourable response from the editors if the tone was too conversational.
Some of them were unfamiliar with the concept of language register, so I gave them a quick overview based on Joos’ (1967) definitions: