Chapter 2. Extending text-linguistic studies of register variation to a continuous situational space

Abstract

In text-linguistic register research, distributions of linguistic features across registers are theorized as having a functional relationship to the situational context. A strength of this approach is its focus on frequencies of linguistic features across texts/registers. Situational variables, by contrast, have not been measured with the same granularity. Only recently have text-linguistic researchers begun to treat situational characteristics as continuous variables that vary between registers, and also across texts within registers. In the current chapter, we discuss the theoretical foundation of this perspective and present two studies of register variation from a continuous situation perspective. For both, we present methods for coding situational variables as continuous as well as key findings facilitated by the continuous situation perspective.