Re: [Ietf-languages] Language subtag registration form

[Sebastian Drude <[e-mail]>]

Thanks, John, and also Hugh.


I already answered the point of people having more than one sociolect -- 
true.

It is of course true that register and sociolect interact heavily, and 
in some (especially older) work "register" is used in a generalized 
sense that sometimes even includes dialects.
But I disagree with Peter Trudgill in this point -- technolects are 
characteristic of certain social (professional) groups and thus belong 
to the social dimension.  That these groups use the technical vocabulary 
etc. only in certain settings is indeed also related to the situation 
dimension, and it may well be that there are no informal or vulgar 
idiolects that belong to certain technolects and vice versa that 
idiolects belonging to vulgar registers do not belong to certain 
technolects (but rather socially neutral varieties).  I don't have all 
the answers here -- I just argue that we can only address these issues 
if we recognize that there are two different dimensions, and try to keep 
them apart (and then identify the interferences between them).  That's 
what ISO 21636 provides.


As to the term "register", I disagree with you, Hugh.  The south-east 
Asian and the pitch-related usages are by far not the default 
applications for the term -- a simple web search on "registers 
linguistics" shows that clearly.

Anyways, which alterantive term would you propose for the varieties in 
the situation dimension (such as formal, neutral, informal/familiar and 
vulgar registers)?  I do not know any other established term than 
"register".


Best greetings,

Sebastian

-- 

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On 25/11/2020 00:04, John Cowan wrote:
>
>
> On Tue, Nov 24, 2020 at 9:40 PM Sebastian Drude <[e-mail] 
> <mailto:[e-mail]>> wrote:
>
>     Thanks also for your interest in ISO TC 21636.  It is not yet
>     official, and I am not sure whether if I am entitled to share it,
>     so I will give a very brief summary:
>
>
> Thank you very much for this.
>
>     The eight dimensions we identified for the purposes of
>     standardized coding:
>
>      1. Space (dialects & over-regional standard varieties)
>      2. Time (epochs, periods, stages)
>      3. Social group (sociolects, including more specific technolects)
>
> People do, however, belong to more than one social group.  My daughter 
> speaks Standard English with me and AAVE with her friends, for 
> example, even in the same conversation.  Neither would be appropriate 
> for all circumstances.  The same is true of people who command both a 
> local Arabic variety and Modern Standard Arabic.  Both of these are 
> usually thought of as sociolects.
>
>     4. Medium (modalities: oral/multimodal, written, signed, whistled,
>     drummed...)
>     5. Situation (registers, e.g. of different formality, including
>     genres and the like)
>
>
> I normally think of technolects as belonging here with the registers.  
> See Peter Trudgill's classic "Standard English: What it isn't", 
> available at 
> <https://lagb-education.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/SEtrudgill2011.pdf>.
>
>     6. Person (“personal varieties” ~ elswhere sometimes called
>     “idiolects”)
>     7. Proficiency (learner varieties)
>     8. Communicative functioning (constrained communicative
>     functioning varieties, 'anomalies'
>
>
> [...]
>
>     3. The academic middle class sociolect, more specifically the
>     technolect of linguistics (social group)
>
>
> I'm using that too, and it happens to be the only one I command: but 
> see my daughter above.
>
>
>
> John Cowan http://vrici.lojban.org/~cowan [e-mail] 
> <mailto:[e-mail]>
> A witness cannot give evidence of his age unless he can remember being 
> born.
>                 --Judge Blagden
>