1887
Volume 17, Issue 1
  • ISSN 0929-0907
  • E-ISSN: 1569-9943
USD
Buy:$35.00 + Taxes

Abstract

The study considers the topic of linguistic register by examining how schoolchildren, adolescents, and adults vary the texts that they construct across the dimensions of modality (spoken/written discourse) and genre (narrative/expository discourse). Although register variation is presumably universal, it is realized in language-specific ways, and so our analysis focuses on Israeli Hebrew, a language that evolved under peculiar socio-historical circumstances. An original procedure for characterizing register — as low, neutral, or high — was applied to four text types produced by the same speaker-writers. We found that across all age groups, “neutral” items constituted the bulk of the material, and that the lexicon accounted for some 80% of variation. Developmentally, we found that acquisition of fully flexible register variation continues beyond adolescence. Finally, we observed that text types range on a cline from everyday colloquial usage in oral narratives to more formal, high-level language in written expository essays. These results are discussed in light of their implications for the nature of register variation, later language development, and the sociolinguistics of contemporary Hebrew.

Loading

Article metrics loading...

/content/journals/10.1075/pc.17.1.04rav
2009-01-01
2025-04-26
Loading full text...

Full text loading...

/content/journals/10.1075/pc.17.1.04rav
Loading
  • Article Type: Research Article
Keyword(s): discourse; genre; Hebrew; language development; register; written and spoken language
This is a required field
Please enter a valid email address
Approval was successful
Invalid data
An Error Occurred
Approval was partially successful, following selected items could not be processed due to error