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Language, Context and Text
Vol. 2:1 (2020) ► pp.22–58

Progress and tensions in modelling register as a semantic configuration

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Halliday (1978: 111) defines register as “the configuration of semantic resources that the member of a culture typically associates with a situation type.” Elsewhere, however, he stresses that when we talk of “a register” this is a term of convenience: register is more properly theorised as continuous variation along many linguistic dimensions. In this paper I review progress in our capacity to describe register and context of situation and ask whether the tension between discrete and continuous models of register might hinder such progress. I then consider Hasan’s (1983, 2013) contextually-open networked model of message semantics, arguing that in conjunction with context networks it has potential to map register variation but still needs to be tested across a large and varied set of domains. Examples from healthcare interaction ground the discussion.

Keywords: register, context of situation, semantic networks, context networks, stratal alignment, registerial cartography, tenor, agentive role, surgical team interaction, healthcare communication
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Halliday’s idea of register has always been one of continuous variation
    • 2.1Register and sociolinguistics
    • 2.2Variation and clarification in Halliday’s definitions of register
  • 3.Illustrating some of the issues – from shopping to seeing the doctor
  • 4.How does recent work on register orient to the idea of continuous variation?
    • 4.1Favoured and foregrounded options
    • 4.2System re-setting and blocking
    • 4.3Registerial cartography
    • 4.4Parameters of context
    • 4.5Corpus and computational approaches
  • 5.Semantic networks and register as continuous and multidimensional variation
    • 5.1Hasan’s semantic networks
    • 5.2Demonstrating the networked approach – surgical interaction
  • 6.Discussion
  • 7.Concluding remarks
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 29 January 2020
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/langct.00020.moo
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