Register in the round: registerial cartography

Christian Mim Matthiessen

doi:10.1186/s40554-015-0015-8

Abstract

AbstractRegisterial cartography is the activity of systematically describing the registers that make up a language — with register in its original sense of a functional variety of a language, i.e. of the adaptation of the meaning-making resources of a language according to context of use. A register map of a language would thus show its composition of registers — of meanings at risk in the various cultural domains that constitute a culture. This variation according to use — register variation — is located along the cline of instantiation between the overall meaning potential of a language operating in the context of culture and the instantiation of this meaning potential unfolding as texts in contexts of situation.In this paper, I will report on a long-term register cartography project concerned with the analysis and description of the registers that collectively constitute the meaning potential of a language. The maps produced as part of the project are based on context in the first instance, since register variation is precisely variation according to context of use. Thus registers can be located within the map according to the “longitude and latitude” of context, i.e. according to the contextual parameters of field, tenor and mode. Here I will focus on a field-based map, more specifically one based on a typology of fields of activity — a characterizations of different goings-on in context. This typology differentiates eight primary types of field of activity, ‘expounding’, ‘reporting’, ‘recreating’, ‘sharing’, ‘doing’, ‘enabling’, ‘recommending’ and ‘exploring’, and their secondary and tertiary subtypes. I will then illustrate how texts operating in contexts characterized by these different fields of activity are organized semantically in terms of logico-semantic (rhetorical) relations (based on a version of RST, Rhetorical Structure Theory), showing that different relations are “at risk” depending on the nature of the field of activity. I will round off the paper by discussing how field-based maps of registers have and can be used in different areas of application.

Highlights

In this paper, I will give an interim report on a long-term project concerned with what might be called registerial cartography, with register in its original sense in linguistics of a functional variety of language
In this paper, I have been concerned with registerial cartography as an area of research, using “registerial cartography” to refer to the task of mapping a domain in terms of the registers that can be said to characterize it
I have located the domain to be mapped in registerial cartography in terms of the hierarchy of stratification and the cline of instantiation: see Figure 2 above

Summary

Introduction

I will give an interim report on a long-term project concerned with what might be called registerial cartography, with register in its original sense in linguistics of a functional variety of language. For contexts where the field of activity is that of explaining a phenomenon by reference to factors that may cause it, we can tentatively suggest that the semantic strategy is to realize the Phenomenon Identification element of the contextual structure as the nucleus of the explanatory text, and the Factors element as an elaborating satellite supporting this nucleus: see Figure 9.

Results

Conclusion