Tailoring language

 

Tailoring language means that you speak differently (choose different words, tone of voice, and even grammar) to different audiences. Your friends would be one kind of audience. Think about how you speak to them. Do you speak to your parents in the same way? Do you speak to your teachers the way you speak to your parents? You probably have a number of different audiences to whom you speak in your native language – and you probably intuitively talk to each of them differently. This is called tailoring language.

 

Conversely, as you gain in proficiency, you will notice the tailoring that has gone on in the articles you read, the movies you watch, and the conversations in which you are involved.

 

 

Register, on the other hand, is a sociolinguistic term and concept that deals with the relationship between social identity and manner of speaking. Specifically, it refers to the modification of speech to the status of the speakers. One uses a different way of speaking (or different register) depending on whether one is talking to a child, an animal, a spouse, a boss, a teacher, a salesperson, or a conference audience.

 

Register choice can be very powerful. For example, one might deliberately change register from familiar to polite forms (in those languages that differentiate) to express anger (in this case, one is distancing oneself from a friend or relative – and the message can, indeed, be strong without any particular words being used). Another example might be using baby talk to an infant or small animal, slang to communicate with teenagers, or very formal speech in dealing with a clerk or other official with whom you are angry and want to impress (or the equivalent mechanisms in the language you are studying).

 

One will learn to use such differences as formal and informal pronouns in the appropriate registers in those languages that make these grammatical differences. It might take you some time to “feel” these differences, although knowing the conditions under which each is used will help you to make the correct choices whether or not you feel them. There can be many registers in a language and many different ways of expressing register. Here are some that we will discuss in some detail below:

Ø    forms of address

Ø    grammatical forms

Ø    word choice

There are also non-verbal behaviors that sometimes and in some languages accompany register choice. Some languages have more than one form of the pronoun you. One form is formal/polite (in languages, such as French and Russian, this pronoun also doubles as the plural of you); the other form is informal (and in languages like French and Russian, it doubles as the singular form)

 

Another form of address is the use of honorifics (or titles). These are traditionally used in Japanese society to show differences in age, seniority, or social status – in using these honorifics, called keigo, one chooses to elevate someone, humble oneself, etc. However, they seem to be fading out just a little in the twenty-first century; part of this is the result of more emphasis in businesses on performance over seniority for promotion, placement, and retention decisions.

 

In some cultures, neighbors and friends of parents are referred to by children as aunt and uncle even though they are not relatives. It used to be this way in the United States several decades ago and still is in some isolated places. Mostly, though, nowadays this custom has disappeared from the United States and would sound quaint to most contemporary teenagers or their parents.

Bibliography:

 

1.    Brown, H.D. (2000): Principles of Language Learning and Teaching. White Plains, NY: Addison Wesley Longman, Inc. Gass,

2.    S.M. I L. Selinker. (2008): Second Language Acquisition. An Introductory Course. New York: Routledge. VanPatten,

3.    Leaver, B.L; Ehrman, M; Shekhtman, B. (2005): Achieving Success in Second Language Acquisition. CUP

4.    B. i J. Williams. (red.) 2007: Theories in Second Language Acquisition. Mahwah, New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Publishers.

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