stylistic registers

8/15/2019 Stylistic Registers

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STYLISTIC REGISTERS

English, like Romanian, French, German, Italian or any other language you can think of, can be

used in diverse communicative contexts and in different stylistic registers, from colloquial (as in your

everyday conversation with your peers in a non-academic context, e.g. over a cup of coffee in a café) to

informal (as in a relaxed seminar interaction with your peers) to formal (as in oral examinations, or in

academic writing for seminar or final evaluation). While you may find yourself in a position to use all

these registers on a daily basis, remember not to mix them on one and the same occasion or in

communicating with the same addressee!

How can you distinguish among stylistic registers? There are a few general rules that you should

bear in mind when you read or write so as to match style with the communicative circumstances

(addressee, time and place, written or oral mode), message and purpose:

STYLE

FEATURE

FORMAL INFORMAL COLLOQUIAL

vocabulary formal/literary; can bepunctuated by some loan

words/phrases; maycontain jargon

informal colloquial and chatty,even slangy

phrasal verbs very few [identified indictionaries as formal]

to investigate

+

to look into

++

contractions

(isn’t, they’ve)

generally avoided + ++

grammaticalfeatures

fairly high recurrence ofthe passive voice and of

modal adverbs/ verbs/expressions (might, seem,

quite possible, unlikely,

perhaps); use of impersonalreference (it, there; one)

preference for theactive voice; few modal

adverbs/ verbs/expressions

use of personalreference ( you)

preference for theactive voice; few

modal adverbs/verbs/ expressions

use of personalreference ( you/ ya)

sentence

structure

orderly, with a lot of

subordination, possiblylengthy at times yet usually

varied both qualitativelyand quantitatively

relaxed, with a mix of

subordination and co-ordination, but a

tendency to the latter

loose, mostly with

co-ordination(especially and ) even

where subordinationis logically possible

spelling – in thewritten mode

highly accurate; uses onlystandard abbreviations

(e.g. = for example; i.e. =that is to say )

fairly accurate; can usedigits for numbers and

abbreviations

sometimesquestionable – yet

this is not a rule, butmerely an empiricalobservation

hesitation (or

time) fillers (um,er, you know ) – in

the oral mode

none + ++

references to

external sources

cross-references to other

authors (as Wilson and Daly(1985) suggest )

casual mention of

someone else’s remark(they say ; today’s

newspapers say…)

very casual mention

of someone else’sremark (that dude

says he’s gonna)

general effect onthe audience

distance, dispassionate/scientific ‘objectivity’

a clear sense ofproximity, empathy,etc

seeming intimacy


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2 | Stylistic Registers – Assoc. prof. Estella Ciobanu

Guided Practice

Here are a few excerpts to illustrate the three stylistic registers; key features are italicised and

briefly explained [in brackets]:

Formal:

I need say nothing here, on the first head, because nothing can show better than my history

whether that prediction was verified or falsified by the result [subordination]. On the second

branch of the question [formal phrase], I will only remark [formal word], that unless I ran

through that part of my inheritance while I was still a baby, I have not come into it yet. But I do

not at all complain of having been kept out of this property; and if anybody else should be in the

present enjoyment of it [formal sentence structure and vocabulary], he is heartily welcome to

keep it. (Ch. Dickens, David Copperfield )

Informal:

Baby P’s father told yesterday how the terrified tot screamed ‘Daddy! Daddy!’ when he was

handed back [informal phrasal verb] to his monstrous mum for the final time. The dad –

separated from Peter’s slob [slang] mother – said he would be haunted for the rest of his life by

the 17-month-old’s desperate wailing. (Anthony France, The Sun, 22 May 2009)

Colloquial:

If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you’ll [contraction] probably want to know is

where I was born, and what my lousy [coll. word] childhood was like, and how my parents were

occupied and all before they had me, and [coordination] all that David Copperfield kind of crap [offensive word]; but I don’t feel like going into it. In the first place, that stuff [coll. word] bores

me, and in the second place, my parents would have about two haemorrhages apiece if I told

anything pretty personal about them. They’re quite touchy [coll. word] about anything like that,

especially my father. They’re nice and all [quirk] – I’m not saying that – but they’re also touchy as

hell [coll. comparison]. Besides, I’m not going to tell you my whole goddam [contraction: God

damn] autobiography or anything. I’ll just tell you about this madman stuff that happened to me

around last Christmas before I got pretty run-down [coll. word] and had to come out here and

take it easy. (J. D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye)

Here are two excerpts on the same topic: social anxiety disorder. They are, however, stylisticallydifferent (the first text is informal, the second formal), which may be due to their intended audience.

Apart from respectively the presence and absence of contractions as well as informal and formal

vocabulary, what other features contribute to their stylistic difference? Consider sentence structure,

ways of presenting the topic and organising the argument, as well as the sense of proximity or distance

you may derive from them, hence the likely effects on the audience. Write your findings down in the

margin of the text or on a separate sheet of paper and then compare them to my suggestions in the

table following the texts (which you should cover before answering on your own).

A woman hates to stand in line in the grocery store because she’s afraid that everyone is

watching her. She knows that it’s not really true, but she can’t shake the feeling. While she isshopping, she is conscious of the fact that people might be staring at her from the big mirrors on

the inside front of the ceiling. Now, she has to talk to the person who’s checking out her


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groceries. She tries to smile, but her voice comes out weakly. She’s sure she’s making a fool of

herself. Her self-consciousness and anxiety rise to the roof….

In public places, such as work, meetings, or shopping, people with social anxiety feel that

everyone is watching, staring, and judging them (even though rationally they know this isn’t

true). The socially anxious person can’t relax, ‘take it easy’, and enjoy themselves in public. In

fact, they can never fully relax when other people are around. It always feels like others are

evaluating them, being critical of them, or ‘judging’ them in some way. The person with social

anxiety knows that people don’t do this openly, of course, but they still feel the self-

consciousness and judgment while they are in the other person’s presence. It’s sometimes

impossible to let go, relax, and focus on anything else except the anxiety and fear. Because the

anxiety is so very painful, it’s much easier just to stay away from social situations and avoid

other people altogether.

(‘What Is Social Anxiety?’, SP /SAA, )

Social anxiety is the fear of social situations and the interaction with other people that canautomatically bring on feelings of self-consciousness, judgment, evaluation, and scrutiny. Put

another way, social anxiety is the fear and anxiety of being judged and evaluated negatively by

other people, leading to feelings of inadequacy, embarrassment, humiliation, and depression. If a

person usually becomes anxious in social situations, but seems fine when they are alone, then

‘social phobia’ may be the problem.

Social anxiety disorder (social phobia) is a much more common problem than past estimates

have led us to think. Millions of people all over the world suffer from this devastating and

traumatic problem every day, either from a specific social anxiety or from a more generalized

social anxiety.

(‘The Least Understood Anxiety Disorder’, )

FEATURES TEXT 1 [INFORMAL] TEXT 2 [FORMAL]

contractions + (it’s, isn’t, can’t ) -

vocabulary informal (shake the feeling, take it easy,

easier just to, let go)

sentence

structure

sometimes short sentences, not

connected to each other by means ofconnectives, with similar structure

although the pattern tends to be similar,

the sentences are different in the way thefocus on the agent/cause, use

subordination and connectives (Putanother way, then)

discourse:argument

structure

A lengthy, seemingly personalised,example (that elicits sympathetic

response to the person), followed by an

impersonal listing of similar cases,

precedes the identification anddefinition of the situation; the original

text has many more ‘personalised’ casestudies before it offers the definition. All

in all, the text intimates it is dealingwith people – if unnamed – rather thansimply with social and psychological

cases.

The definition of the situation, followedby an appositive explanation intended to

ensure all readers can comprehend it, is

then appended a brief example in a much

less personalised case study form thanthe first text; statistical data follows in

the second paragraph. All in all, the text

sounds more ‘objective’ and ‘scientific’ by

scrutinising the ‘symptoms’, not thepeople.


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Altering the stylistic register to signal different communicative contexts and audiences

Awareness of who your intended audience is should definitely influence your stylistic choices, as

we have already seen above. However, there may be practical instances when you need to alter the

style of a given text so as to adapt it for a different audience and communication purpose. Below is one

such example of stylistic transfer from informal and spoken to formal and written (Jordan 1980:19):

Economics? ... Yes, well, um ... economics is, I suppose, about people trying to ... let me see...

match things that are scarce – you know – with things that they want, ... oh yes, and how these

efforts have an effect on each other ... through exchange, I suppose.

Economics is the social science that studies how people attempt to accommodate scarcity to

their wants and how these attempts interact through exchange.

As can be seen, the time fillers (well, um, let me see, you know, oh yes), quasi-rhetorical questions

(economics? ) and verbs that state opinion rather hesitantly (I suppose) in the informal text have been

eliminated in the formal definition. In fact, you should avoid the general tenor of the informal answer

above – gross hesitancy – in an exam, or you risk failing it! Likewise, the very loose sentence structure

of the informal definition has been replaced by a more concise yet definitely coherent sentence in its

formal version, while unnecessarily lengthy and informal subject-verb structures (things that are

scarce) or turns of phrase (match things…) have been ‘trimmed’ t o abstract nouns (scarcity ) and verbs

(accommodate), stylistically suitable in the new context.

Practice

Identify the stylistic register of each of the texts below and explain which features you have taken into

account. Is the style (stylistic register as well as layout) appropriate to the communicative context?

Dear Fred

Thanks a lot for the invitation I’m afraid Sue is ill so

we won’t be able to come See you soon

All the best

Tom

Dear Professor Smith,

Thank you very much for the kind invitation to dinner. I regret that my wife is ill so that it will not be

possible for us to come. I do hope, however, that I shall have an opportunity of seeing you again in the

near future.

Yours sincerely,

Tom Jackson


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The following sentences are mixed formal and informal . Write F or I in the brackets after each

sentence.

a.

The project will be completed next year.

b. I showed that his argument did not hold water.

c.

I wonder why he put up with those terrible conditions for so long.d. Five more tests will be necessary before the experiment can be concluded.

e. It is possible to consider the results from a different viewpoint.f.

It has been proved that the arguments so far are without foundation.

g. He’ll have to do another five tests before he can stop the experiment.h. It is not clear why such terrible conditions were tolerated for so long.

i. There are a number of reasons why the questionnaire should be revised.j. We’ll finish the job next year.

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