Discourse analysis

Activity1 Look at the e-mailed response from the journal's editor. Working in small groups find what field, tenor and mode of the given text
Dear Professor,
It appears that we will be including your Forum commentary in the spring issue. I would greatly appreciate it if you could send a disk copy of your response for production purposes to my office at San Francisco State University. Please label the disk with the word processing program you are using.
Thank you in advance,
Sandra McKay

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  Compare answers as whole class. Give examples of register in your native language.
  

Activity 2. Identify the field, tenor and mode of each of these texts and, on that basis' the possible context in which the text was situated.
Text 1

This door is alarmed.
EMERGENCY USE ONLY

Text 2 Hi. R u back yet? How was it? C u l8r? 5.
Text 3
I, Henry, take you, Joylene,
To be my wedding wife,
To have and to hold
from this day forward;
for better, for worse,
for richer, for poorer,
in sickness and in health,
to love and to cherish,
till death do us part
Activity 3 Look at the definitions of the REGISTER in Discourse below and answer the following questions. Why do we need to know register, how important for language learners to be familiar with the term register

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  More generally, register is used to indicate degrees of formality in language use. The different registers or language styles that we use are sometimes called codes
  
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  "It fascinates me how differently we all speak in different circumstances. We have levels of formality, as in our clothing. There are very formal occasions, often requiring written English: the job application or the letter to the editor-the dark-suit, serious-tie language, with everything pressed and the lint brushed off. There is our less formal out-in-the-world language-a more comfortable suit, but still respectable. There is language for close friends in the evenings, on weekends-blue-jeans-and-sweat-shirt language, when it’s good to get the tie off. There is family language, even more relaxed, full of grammatical short cuts, family slang, echoes of old jokes that have become intimate shorthand--the language of pajamas and uncombed hair. Finally, there is the language with no clothes on; the talk of couples--murmurs, sighs, grunts--language at its least self-conscious, open, vulnerable, and primitive."
  (Robert MacNeil, Wordstruck: A Memoir. Viking, 1989)
  
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  "Every native speaker is normally in command of several different language styles, sometimes called registers, which are varied according to the topic under discussion, the formality of the occasion, and the medium used (speech, writing, or sign).
  "Adapting language to suit the topic is a fairly straightforward matter. Many activities have a specialized vocabulary. If you are playing a ball game, you need to know that 'zero' is a duck in cricket, love in tennis, and nil in soccer. If you have a drink with friends in a pub, you need to know greetings such as: Cheers! Here's to your good health!

  "Other types of variation are less clear cut. The same person might utter any of the following three sentences, depending on the circumstances:

  
  

I should be grateful if you would make less noise. 
Please be quiet. 
Shut up!

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  Here the utterances range from a high or formal style, down to a low or informal one-and the choice of a high or low style is partly a matter of politeness."
  

….registers such as written sports commentary, press advertising, and business letters). It is easy to demonstrate the importance of register variation for lexical analysis by contrasting the use of near-synonymous words. (big, large, and great; little vs. small; and begin vs. start).
(1) It did look pretty bad. (Conversation)
(2) The mother came away some what bewildered. (News reportage)
(3) Different laboratories have adopted slightly different formulations. (Academic prose)7
I’m pretty good at d.
riving in the snow in my car.
That looks pretty bad.
That’s a pretty cool last name, huh?
Is it a system that would be pretty easy to learn

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  Register is “the set of meanings, the configuration of semantic patterns, that are typically drawn upon under the specified conditions, along with the words and structures that are used in the realization of these meaning” (Halliday,1978)
  
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  “The notions of register proposes a very intimate relationship of text to context: indeed, so intimate is the relationship, it is asserted, that the one can only be interpreted by reference to the other” ( Kress 1985)
  
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  Some linguists classify registers as followings:
  

The registers identified are:

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  bench-level register
  
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  dialect register
  
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  facetious register
  
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  formal register
  
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  in house register
  
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  ironic register
  
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  neutral register
  
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  slang register
  
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  taboo register
  
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  technical register
  
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  vulgar register
  

The other division of registers: one prominent model, Martin Joos (1961) describes five styles in spoken English:

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