Introduction

One of the key issues in cross-linguistic register analyses is choosing the units of analysis and determining to what extent they are actually comparable. This is relevant both to the registers chosen for analysis and to the linguistic characteristics considered. In the present chapter, these issues are illustrated through a detailed comparison of English and Somali registers.

Throughout the analyses in this book, a quantitative, distributional approach is adopted to describe the linguistic characteristics of registers. These distributional patterns are interpreted functionally, based on previous research which shows that the preferred linguistic forms of a register are those that are best suited functionally to the situational demands of the variety (see, e.g., Chafe 1982; Finegan 1982; Ferguson 1983; Janda 1985; Biber 1988). For example, the situational demands of conversation are very different from those of an academic paper, and therefore the characteristic linguistic forms of these registers will be markedly different. Thus, consider the relative frequencies of first-person pronouns, second-person pronouns, and nouns in these two registers, presented in table 4.1.

Both first- and second-person pronouns are tied directly to the communicative situation in their meaning: first-person pronouns are used to refer to an actively ‘involved’ addressor, while second-person pronouns require a specific addressee in order to be felicitous. In contrast, nouns generally refer to third-person entities and can refer to either concrete objects or abstract concepts; nouns are the primary bearers of referential meaning in a text (apart from deictic, pronominal references to the immediate physical context).