LMU München – From Words to Text:
Register, Genre and Style through the History of English
Veranstaltungsnummer: Documentation
Name: Suzana Argachof
Matrikel Nr.: 1238659
Study Programme: MA English Studies
E-Mail: [Link]@[Link]
Instead of presentation:
⬧ written documentation to be handed in on the second Friday after the end of term
(25 February) consisting of
a) critical review of two journal article a choice of article will be provided (see Moodle
‘Literature’ and file ‘), but you can take your individual picks;
Your review should have between 1200 and 1500 words, discussing aspects such as
the chapters’ approach, their contents, their best/worst parts, illustrative examples
etc.
At the end of your review, clearly state which of the chapters you prefer (give reasons
for this assessment).
b) final “essay” addressed to a non-expert audience in linguistic (but an audience
being interested in literature and language), i.e. design it as if it were to be
published in the ‘academics/science research’ section of a weekly journal,
summing up what you have learnt in class on the topics of “Register, Genre and Style
through the History of English”
Your essay should have ca. 12,000 characters including spaces, ca. 4 pages) and
should also consider the material found in introductory chapters to the topic such as
Claridge 2012 and Taavitsainen 2016 (see Moodle).
Documentation – to be submitted together with this cover sheet by 25February
2022 by email (in ONE file only).
CRITICAL REVIEW OF GRUND AND WALKER 2021
Speech Representation in the History of English: Topics and Approaches
In the book “Speech Representation in the History of English: Topics and
Approaches” Grund & Walker bring together several studies on speech
representation. D’Arcy and Vandelanotte are two of the academics who
contributed for this work. I will start by reviewing chapter four, then chapter six
and, at the conclusion, I will compare their contents and methods.
CHAPTER 4: Reconfiguring Quotation over Time and the System-Internal Rise
of be like (Alexandra D’Arcy)
D’Arcy is a very skilled writer. Her article has a clear and concise train of thought
with an interesting closure. The focus is on the “diachronic evolution of first-
person dialogue in conversational speech”. It includes the analysis of thought,
attitude and speech as well as the representation of sounds and gestures.
“I therefore consider direct quotation holistically, as a unified system for bringing
voice and action to conversational stories.” (Page 73)
During the chapter, D’Arcy explores not only the changes that some
linguistic functions have gone through, but also the natural evolution of the
English language. Two varieties of English were chosen: Victoria English
(Canada) and New Zealand English, these locals share the same language origin
as they were both British colonies in the past.
D’Arcy bases her studies in two large collections of casual speech audios
collected decades apart, so a continuous representation of spoken language is
available. The first collection is the Origins of New Zealand English Archive
(ONZE) that covers the history of New Zealand English from 1850 to the present.
And the second is the Victoria English Archive (VEA) that represents the
language of this small city in the west of Canada from 1865 to the present as well.
According to the presented data, the rise of BE like was not an innovation
in the colloquial speech, but a feature that has been developed over time “from
existing lexical and discourse-pragmatic resources.” (Page 75) As BE like is
rapidly increasing in frequency, we may be led to the wrong conclusion that it is
replacing the verb SAY, but this is not the case. BE like and SAY are not
synonyms. This relatively new form of quoting is much broader than SAY.
Four system predictors for the presentation of direct quotation are
identified and exemplified:
1. The quotative choice BE like is favoured with first persons, while SAY
and GO are favoured with third persons.
2. BE like tends to be used for thoughts and attitudes, while SAY and ASK
introduce speech and GO is favoured for sounds and gestures.
3. BE like tends to encode the Historical Present while SAY is still preferred
if the Past Tense is used.
4. In contemporary use, SAY and THINK are typically non-mimetic, while
GO and the null form are favoured with mimetic encoding and BE like has
been linked with mimetic effects since its outset, which means that people
normally employ this form to imitate (or represent) the reality.
After that, D’Arcy addresses the long-term domination of SAY, which maintained
a majority presence through a long time. However, she also points out the decline
on its trajectory which is well illustrated by a graph. The rise of BE like is also
shown in a chart, where we can easily notice its ascension. (Page 82)
The most striking feature of this study to me, is the fact that this shift of
the quotation system occurred in a very similar way, at the same time in the two
different places that have been analysed. Not because they had any contact or
influence one on the other, but purely because this was a part of the natural
evolution of the language. “Be like is evolutive, not adaptive.” (Page 96) Like a
seed that was within the language, it sprouted in all places where English was
once instituted.
I was particularly surprised to learn that this structure of BE like is
recognized, studied and valued as an evolutive change of the English quotative
system. Before reading this article, I used to consider BE like just as a teenager
way of informal talking. I had no idea it has been in development over more than
a hundred years. I also was not aware it occurs in other English-speaking
countries, for some reason, I tended to believe it was an American fad.
And maybe because there is a very similar construction in my first
language (Brazilian Portuguese) that is often considered as poor language, mostly
employed by non-educated people or youth, I have never realized this way of
reporting speech as an actual category.
CHAPTER 6: Clearer Contours - The Stylisation of Free Indirect Speech in
Nineteenth-Century Fiction (Lieven Vandelanotte)
This chapter utilizes many excerpts from prominent books written during the 19th
Century, as well as some older than that, for comparison reasons. It is a complex
article, not suitable for a non-academic public as it assumes a considerable amount
of pre-knowledge from the reader.
It mainly investigates “the early novel writer’s attempts to satisfy the
readerly need to see the mind at work.” (Page 132) It discuss how the authors
innovations through the time, opened room for a freer style and how thought
reports became more frequent. According to Vandelanotte, Indirect Speech in its
Present-Day English form is clearly marked by:
➢ its sentence-initial reporting clause,
➢ its more tightly incorporated type of complement (disallowing, for
instance, non-declarative finite clauses) and
➢ its lack of a deictic shift to the represented speaker.
(Page 139)
After exposing the strictly controlled structure of indirect speech,
Vandelanotte presents a historic perspective about the emergency of what we call
today Free Indirect Speech. Several samples on stages of stylization are explored,
for instance:
➢ That-clauses used as complements limited by quotation marks.
➢ Reported questions with question mark at the end.
➢ Quotation marks for non-direct forms of speech.
These constructions might seem “striking, unusual, or even awkward from a
present-day perspective” however, they should be understood “as tried, tested, but
‘failed’ innovations […] part of the process of seeking new ways of providing
access to characters’ minds” (Page 141)
Next, a phenomenon Vandelanotte calls “distancing indirect speech” (Page
147) is discussed, which basically keeps all direct speech between quotation
marks and any descriptions of the character’s mind appear without marking. It is
very close to our current free indirect speech and seems natural from a Present-
day English perspective.
All in all, it is a very knowledgeable text, well written and coherent.
However, I found it to be a bit monotonous, featureless and unexciting, as no
illustrative examples were given and Vandelanotte’s conclusions do not stand out
in a clear and assertive way. I think the following extract had the potential to open
a more relevant path of research: “The markedness, from the present-day
perspective, of some of the earlier usage surveyed in this section does suggest that
something in the language as a whole has changed, over and above individual
stylistic choices.” (Page 141) Unfortunately, nothing else is mentioned about.
CONCLUSION
Comparing both articles, is not a simple task since their topics are so different.
While D’Arcy examines primarily the direct speech evolution through quotation,
Vandelanotte discuss how indirect speech achieved its current pattern, going
through earlier stages of fiction and novels.
If we consider only their approach, development of contents and reasoning
styles, however, I definitely prefer chapter four, because reading D’Arcy’s chapter
flowed much more smoothly, her sources of data and topic were more interesting
and there were useful charts. As for the book as a whole, I believe Grund &
Walker have done a great job. I did not know much about speech representation in
the History of English, but now, after reading some of its chapters, I have a
substantial better idea about the field and its importance.
REGISTER, GENRE AND STYLE THROUGH THE HISTORY OF ENGLISH
ESSAY: A summary of what I have learnt in this class
This was my first semester in the MA English Studies at LMU and this course has
been one of the most instructive I have been in. We have studied about: different
varieties of texts in a diachronic perspective, language of proximity x language of
distance, several linguistic features in the evolution of the fiction and novels, Old
English poetry, newspaper language, advertisements throughout the time, etc.
It was a great overview. Below I have listed the most absorbing topics that I came
across while reading the recommended chapters or during the discussions on the
Zoom meetings:
• Linguistic Levels:
On the beginning of the course, one of the first topics discussed was the definition
of the terms register, genre and style, which are used to refer to different
perspectives in text varieties. Register focuses on the situation of use. Genre
focuses on conventional structures. And style “reflect aesthetic preferences,
associated with particular authors or historical periods.” (Biber and Conrad
chapter 1)
Register is a more general term, comprising both oral and written productions
based in particular on situational, social, and professional contexts and the field or
domain of discourse (cf. also Lenker, Chapter 21). […] From the point of view of
the language user, style implies aspects like choice between linguistic items,
perceptions of appropriateness going beyond register conventions, ideas of norm
vs. deviance, and (potentially prescriptive) aesthetic notions. A given style can go
with an individual, a group of people, or a time period. […] Genres are linked to
expectations on the part of text users about the (proto-)typical functions and
(surface) features of texts belonging to the genre; thus, competent speakers have
fairly clear ideas about what a fairy tale, a letter, a prayer, or a weather forecast is
like. (Claridge 2012)
Another term important to be clarified is text. In our seminar textbook (Biber,
Douglas and Susan Conrad. 2019. Register, Genre, and Style) the term text refers
to natural language, both from speech as written forms.
One of the central arguments of the book is that linguistic features are
always functional when considered from a register perspective. That is,
linguistic features tend to occur frequently in a register because they are
particularly well suited to the purposes and situational context of the
register. Thus, the third component of any register description is the
functional analysis. (Biber and Conrad chapter 1)
There are many studies on language variation among dialects, but the textbook of
this seminar focuses on the more extensive variations that occur on registers,
instead. And the dialect differences are the one exception for the rule, they are not
functional, but arbitrary and associated with a social group. “In this regard, the
linguistic variables used in register studies are exactly the opposite from those
used in dialect studies: register variables are functional, as opposed to dialect
variables, which are conventional.” (Biber and Conrad chapter 1)
• Language change:
The analysis of the registers that were kept through the time, allow us to identify
and better understand how languages change. It happens in response to both
internal as external factors. Internal factors include change in pronunciation,
grammar, syntax without any external influence, e.g.: phonetics: assimilation,
morpho-syntax: analogy, grammaticalization. And external factors include
historical events: migration, conquests, social change (stratification of society,
gender, etc.) and media change.
We also learned that a stratum (Latin for "layer") is a language that
influences or is influenced by another through contact. A substratum or substrate is
a language that has lower power or prestige than another, while a superstratum or
superstrate is the language that has higher power or prestige. Both substratum and
superstratum languages influence each other, but in different ways.
An adstratum or adstrate is a language that is in contact with another
language in a neighbor population without having identifiably higher or lower
prestige.
• Loanwords:
Borrowing foreign words is a very common process that normally happens
naturally when there is contact between the people of different places. Sometimes
words are adopted because a lack is recognised and the other language already has
a word for that, and sometimes it happens because a certain language is
considered more prestigious than other, which increases people’s interest on it.
Even though the terms loan and borrow are frequently used to describe this
situation where words are imported from another languages, we discussed in class,
that these terms do not really describe the phenomenon properly, once nothing is
taken from the source language and it is also never returned, it does not seem to be
a loan. Instead, we can think of it more as an adoption.
I started to learn how to identify which words are from Latin versus from
Germanic origin in a text, thankfully to several activities done during the classes,
but as this task can be challenging, I was very pleased to become acquainted with
The Text Visualizer tool created by the OED, which automatically shows the
etymology of each word in a text.
Still in the field of loanwords, I came to know that the preferred class of
words for loanwords in English are nouns:
“[…] nouns are typically borrowed much more often than verbs. […] Adjectives
(and adverbs) are almost as hard to borrow as verbs—this is a much less well-
known fact which has hardly received any attention so far…Words with
grammatical meanings (function words) are even harder to borrow than verbs […]
Only about 12% of all function words are borrowed.” (Durkin 2014)
• Dissociation:
As a result of borrowing, many semantic fields in English show formally unrelated
words for related concepts. For example, the usual adjective corresponding
to mouth shows the completely unrelated word form oral; compare the situation in
modern German, in which the relationship remains clear between Mund ‘mouth’
and mündlich ‘oral’; the vocabulary of German is often said to be relatively
consociated compared with that of English. (Durkin 2014)
Another example of dissociation I can think of is the word “dentist” for the
professional who works with teeth. In Portuguese, tooth is dente, and the
professional is the dentista. The fact that so many of the loanwords in English
came from Latin and French might be an advantage for English learners whose
first language also comes from Latin, as they can easily associate several words
with their NL. I have noticed the dissociation fact in many English words a long
time ago, but now I finally understood why.
• Type count x Token count:
It was very useful information to me as I did not know about it. It might be
confusing to deal with numbers and ratios in Linguistics when we count
loanwords or frequent words in different types of registers, for example, so it is
really important to specify what is being actually counted!
Attempting to estimate what proportion of the vocabulary of English is formed
ultimately from inherited words, and what proportion from words of Latin origin,
French origin, etc., is fraught with difficulties. Any figures arrived at can only be
very approximate, depending on how one deals with a great many variables.
(Durkin 2014)
Even though, as mentioned above, it cannot be considered with exactness, I found
intriguing to learn in the class that in a type count of most frequent words in
current English, only 26% of the words are of Germanic origin, as 64% come
from Latin and/or French. However, if you consider a token count instead,
Germanic words will be much more frequent, because almost all function words
in English kept their roots.
• Surprising fact:
Even though the major influences in English come from the Scandinavian
languages during Old English and Latin/French in Middle English, it also has
some loanwords from Greek and Japanese! The loanwords from Greek and
Japanese though, are translation loans, due to the different writing systems. I also
learned that the term used for this type of loan is calque which is a French word.
• Distribution of lexical word classes across registers:
I found Biber charts very instructive. Analysing their contents, I thought about the
importance of memorising a good amount of nouns and verbs when you are
learning a new language, especially for conversation purposes. Pronouns are also
extremely frequent in spoken language. Adjectives and adverbs, at the other hand,
are much less frequent. For someone who already knows the basics, however,
whose goal is to better understand fiction, academic texts or newspapers, focusing
on learning more nouns should definitely be the priority.
Besides, this perspective of analysing a language through its different
registers was new to me and I found it very authentic. We often study traditional
grammars, that treat the language as a “homogeneous whole” but looking into the
variations across registers is a deeper way to examine a language as it is actually
used.
There are many charts in Chapter 9 (Biber and Conrad 2019). The aim of
the authors with all those quantitative descriptions was to represent the typical
patterns of use of the language in each type of register.
• Communication means:
Letters, telegrams, e-mails, SMS messages, blogs, Instagram, Facebook, Twitter,
Zoom – all of these everyday tools play a different role for diversified purposes,
but all of them use language to communicate. When e-mail was invented, people
used it mostly to send messages to their family and friends – Language of
Proximity. After WhatsApp, however, e-mails became more formal, an
appropriate way to make contact with people or entities with whom we do not
have a close relationship – Language of Distance.
Still in the field of communication and linguistic analysis, I came to know
about the Sketch Engine through this course. It is useful for a wide range of
purposes, for instance, when we are to examine the right collocation of a word
within a context:
Sketch Engine is the ultimate tool to explore how language works. Its algorithms
analyse authentic texts of billions of words (text corpora) to identify instantly what
is typical in language and what is rare, unusual or emerging usage. It is also
designed for text analysis or text mining applications. Sketch Engine is used by
linguists, lexicographers, translators, students and teachers. It is a first-choice
solution for publishers, universities, translation agencies and national language
institutes throughout the world. ([Link])
• Newspapers:
Professor Lenker shared with the class her enthusiasm for the broad possibilities
of studies that are now available due to the digitalization of old archives of
newspapers. This fruit of technology allows innumerable topics to be researched,
comparisons to be made and new exploration paths to be taken.
She also raised our awareness about the fact that nowadays, most
newspapers receive their news from agencies, I did not know about that, and I
think the old way was better, because if all the information is centralized, coming
from a same source, it gets easier to be manipulated and there is less variety of
content.
While analysing newspaper texts linguistically, I personally enjoyed very
much to see the evolution of text structure from the 17th century to the present. I
cannot imagine a newspaper without headlines, so it was interesting to find out
that they only begin to be used in the 19th century, evolving from fewer than three
words to seven words per headline, as we are accustomed to see today.
We also observed the linguistic features that differentiate newspaper texts
from academic prose and conversation. For instance, nouns as pre-modifiers of
nouns are extremely common in newspapers, common in academic prose but rare
in conversation. Adverbials of time and place are by far the most common in
newspapers, common in conversation, but rare in academic prose.
Another major difference is that newspapers focus more on current
newsworthy events and have more emphasis on simple reporting, while academic
prose is expected to analyse and explain (not just report).
Even inside the newspaper genre, there are several distinct categories, such
as: foreign news, home news, crime reports, death notices, letters, advertisements,
etc. A report is expected to describe an event with as little bias as possible. In
basic news reportage, the writer will not overtly state opinions about an issue. In
contrast, an editorial persuades readers to an opinion. They have the specific
purpose of stating an opinion and arguing for it.
Interesting comparisons between British and American newspapers were
also made available through a table showing the number of words in each section
of the respective countries. According to this data, UK newspapers appear to have
almost the double amount of foreign/world news than the US newspapers. Maybe
it happens because being a small country, the UK often includes reports from
other European countries. The US, at the other hand, is huge, which explains the
fact that they might have more domestic news to publish.
REFERENCES
1. Biber and Conrad 2019. Register, Genres and Styles. Cambridge
University Press.
2. Biber, Douglas, Stig Johansson, Geoffrey N. Leech, Susan Conrad,
Edward Finegan. 2021. Grammar of Spoken and Written English
3. Claridge, Claudia. 2012. Styles, registers, genres, text types. English
historical linguistics : an international handbook ; volume 1
4. Durkin, Philip. 2014. Borrowed words : a history of loanwords in English.
Oxford: Part I "Introducing the concepts" and "Introducing the Concepts"
