Unit 7

English in Use
In this chapter we will examine the distinctive features of a range of registers including conversations, sports commentaries, emails, text messages and online chartrooms and message boards. Registers are the varieties of language

associated with specific uses and communicative purposes. Conversational English Everyday face to face conversation accounts for by far the greatest amount of language use. A closer examination between speech and writing reveal some important differences and some characteristics that are unique to conversational English. The informal level of vocabulary as well as minor expletives, colloquial expressions, the use of vocatives and of the fillers or discourse particles, such as well, I mean, uhm, uh, you know, sort of and like are conversational expressions. The unplanned nature of the conversation is revealed in several instances of nonfluency, including repetitions, false starts, and hesitations. All the speakers use a great many contractions, which are frowned upon in formal writing, but are very characteristic of informal speech. Unlike written English, many of the utterances are not complete, they do not display the canonical subject- predicate structure. Instead, speakers use several fragmentary sentences. Ellipsis is a very common feature of conversational language. It refers to the omission of grammatical units. They are omitted in the interests of economy. Since they can be recovered from the immediate context, there is no need to include them. Ellipsis of the subject is particularly common , especially when the subject is I. Another characteristic is the use of tag questions. Conversational English tend to be less complex syntactically. Even when they are grammatically complete most of the utterances are simple sentences, without subordination. There is an exception since it contains two subordinate clauses. I brought that from Bow because I got it from the place next door when they threw their window frames out.
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At the phrase level, too, informal conversation tends to be relatively simple. The omission of the relative pronoun is very common in conversation, but less common in more formal contexts. In more general terms, we can say that in conversation, a major factor is relationship between speakers. However, we must say that depending on the type of conversations, these may differ in the type of language used. In face to face conversations, the relationships between the speakers is a very significant factor, as are the age and sex of the speakers. In the terms of communicative situation, it is important to consider the purpose of the exchange, the topic or topics being discussed, and the speakers attitudes toward those topics. Unscripted monologue An unscripted monologue displays many of the characteristics which can be found in family conversations or a counselling interview, because of the many pauses. A part could have a parenthetic clause, which is very unusual in formal writing. If it did occur, it would be enclosed in brackets or marked off from the rest of the sentence using dashes. Sports commentary Sports commentaries are also a type of unscripted monologue. They offer an interesting example of language use because in them the commentator has to describe events which happen as he is speaking, and over which he has no control. Sports commentaries offer us interesting examples of truly spontaneous and public language use. So on a television commentary is very noticeable that the length of the units corresponds closely with the speed of the action being described. During periods of intense fast action, the utterances are very brief and telegraphic in style, as the commentator tries to keep pace with the action. During less intense periods- when there is a lull in the game- the commentator has more time to produce longer and grammatically more complex utterances. In the telegraphic utterances, there is a great deal of ellipsis, including ellipsis of the subject. The loose of stringing together of units, without any grammatical relation between them, is called parataxis. It is contrasted with hypotaxis, which refers to relations between units based on coordination or subordination. Sport commentary provides an interesting example of some of the ways in which register can bend the rules of grammar, though only within certain limits. Despite large amounts of ellipsis and inverted word order, the commentary remains comprehensible to the listener.

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English in emails and text messages In the last decades, emails have become the preferred form of everyday written communication for many people. And for this reason nowadays email communication is now recognised as linguistic register in its own right, even if its conventions are not yet fully established. Email is a written form of language, but it is not simply a letter in electronic form. It has also many of the characteristics of speech. As a linguistic register, email is still very much in a development stage; usage varies and many users of the medium are still unsure about what the conventions are. As in writing letter in circular or emails to a mailing list, Dear all or Dear list Members are commonly used. Speed is an important aspect of email communication this refers to how they are composed and delivered. Emails - tend to be written very quickly. - are very brief - and many writers use abbreviations and acronyms to speed up the act of composition. - the limited use of capitalization is generally acceptable, it is use to give emphasis .- there is much greater tolerance of spelling errors in emails than in handwriting or print -is more likely to be misinterpreted than a letter. For this reason people use emoticons and smiles - use of idiosyncratic spelling. All of these strategies are intended to compensate for a deficiency in email communication, in comparison with face-to-face conversation, where a great deal of the meaning is communicated by the speakers facial expression, gestures, stress and intonation. Other features of speech represented in emails: The use of interjections and discourse particles Ellipsis Fragmentary sentences No subordinated clauses used
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In less personal emails, brevity is still a central feature.

Text messages Text messages are typically brief written messages sent between mobile devices, such as cellular phones, pagers and PDAs. They rarely contain more than a few characters, and use a minimum of punctuation and capitalisation Words are often abbreviated, and many contractions used Where a choice is available, many users will prefer to type a short word (which can be keyed quickly) instead of an even slightly longer alternative. They are noted for their abbreviations, though in fact many of those that are used are already standard abbreviations in written English. The difference is that they are sometimes used in text messages in slightly different- and sometimes very creative- contexts. The use of certain numeric characters, such as 2, as words or parts of words, has become fairly standard in text messages The use of 2 for to is legitimised on the basis of their similar sounds in speech. It is also used to represent part of a word. The numeral 4 is also pressed into service in text messaging, either as substitute for the preposition for, or as substitute for the syllable fore. The use of 4 in based on similarity of sounds. The use of u instead of you, your, yourself.

Text messages often look quite different from traditional writing, but they are nonetheless fundamentally grammatical. To illustrate this, we need only to expand a text message to a more traditional written form. English in chatrooms and message boards Chatrooms and message boards are online forums which allows users in more or less any location to communicate with others anywhere in the world. Chatroom suggest a similarity between online chatting and everyday spoken conversation, that is face to face chatting among friends. There are many similarities between the two, but the crucial difference is that online chatters are anonymous. This anonymity may mean that chatters are less self- conscious, less concerned about they present themselves to others, and, as result, less concerned about the niceties of grammar, spelling and punctuation.

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The exchange of chat in a chatroom tends to be fast- paced, with typically short utterances followed by several conversations taking place at the same time. In this sense they resemble conversation, though the medium is writing. Chatters may use: Unusual spelling or capitalisation to simulate stress or pronunciation Abbreviations and abbreviated spellings Sentences typically short Many instances of ellipsis of the grammatical subject or the verb A very relaxed tone, informal and generally light-hearted.

Chatrooms are probably the medium in which the boundaries between writing and speech are most blurred. They offer an unprecedented opportunity to produce informal, spontaneous writing. Message boards Differ from chatrooms in two important respects. Firstly they are usually devoted to a single topic, such as politics, social issues, entertainment, or hobbies and interests. Secondly, messaging is much less a live activity than online chatting. Contributors to message boards generally upload their messages to the board, and may wait several hours or days for a response. In terms of composition, messaging is much slower than online chatting. These two factors mean that the kind of English used in many boards is sometimes quite close to formal, written English. In others, we can clearly detect the informality of spoken language. So, the formality of the language depends to some extent on the seriousness of the topic under discussion.

Includes: Relative clauses Vocatives Abbreviations and contractions Fragmentary sentences Capitalisation for emphasis

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The language of literature In prose fiction and drama as most of the language used in literature is also find in other uses of language. Writers select form what is available in the language as a whole. Poetry, however, often departs from the norms of language use in two respects: In deviations from the rules and conventions of ordinary language And, excessive regularities.

Some poets are more inclined to keep close to everyday uses of language. The deviations encountered are located in various aspects of the language. Poetry: Is distinctive visually Some modern poets defy the old convention to start each line to begin with capital letter and the ordinary language conventions of spelling and punctuation. Often create new words- tend to follow the normal rules for word formation rather than being deviant. Some eventually enter the general language. Very few words with the prefix un; Conversion- is a common process for the formation of new words. Poets introduce nonce-words through conversion. Sometimes the poets lexical innovations are compounds, the combinations of two words into one. Also they introduce unusual collocations of words, which may require figurative interpretations. Some deviations are grammatical. Departures from normal word order are common in poetry. Excessive regularities are expressed in the systematic organization of features that otherwise occur unsystematically in the language. Poetry is marked often by patterns of sound: metre, rhyme and alliteration. Another type of patterning is parallelism. Parallel structures exhibit grammatical, lexical and semantic similarities. Some parallelism could take the form of chiasmus ( a reversal of the order of the two parts of the parallel structures: the except- clause comes first in one line, and second in the other line.

Foregrounding Literary language, especially poetic language, is distinguished by the consistency with which it uses foregrounding. The term foregrounding is a visual metaphor; it refers to the language features that stand out from the background of normal use

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Ambiguity Poets, introduce ambiguity intentionally to convey simultaneous meanings. Puns, which are based on multiple interpretations, are employed playfully in poetry as in jokes and advertisements, though they may also have a serious purpose. Grammatical ambiguities are also found in poetry. They are generally more difficult to analyse than lexical ambiguities.