Understanding Language Registers: Formal, Technical, Literary & More

Posted on Mar 19, 2025 in Social Anthropology

Understanding Different Language Registers

Language registers are varieties of language used in different social settings. Here’s a breakdown of common registers:

Standard Register

  • Topic: Generic and specific
  • Channel: Oral and written
  • Objective: Objective
  • Reliability: Medium
  • Character:
    1. Variety supradialectal, used publicly, both oral and written.
    2. Facilitates communication within the whole community linguistically.
    3. Associated with language in media, teaching, and areas of publishing information and dissemination.
    4. Holds a degree of formality.
    5. Conforms to grammatical rules.
    6. Neutral, not marked by jargon, colloquialisms, or vulgarisms.
    7. Aims to be objective and impersonal.
    8. Used in various areas: news, interviews, shopping, administration, propaganda, advertising.

Scientific-Technical Register

  • Topic: Specific
  • Channel: Written
  • Intent: Objective
  • Formality: High
  • Character:
    1. High formality, primarily written for a public audience.
    2. Expression is accurate and without ambiguity.
    3. Avoids polysemy and double meanings.
    4. Uses specific, monosemic words.
    5. Abundance of artificial and abstract symbols (logic, math, physics, chemistry, etc.).
    6. Lexicon includes neologisms, jargon, foreign words, and Latinisms.
    7. Always objective, avoiding personal references.
    8. Uses clear and controlled syntax.
    9. Passive sentences, non-personal verb forms, nominalizations, and third-person usage are common.

Literary Register

  • Topic: Specific
  • Channel: Written
  • Intention: Subjective and objective
  • Reliability: High
  • Character:
    1. Formal registration and public use, primarily written.
    2. Generally subjective, especially in poetry.
    3. Presents realities invented or recreated by the author.
    4. Uses metaphors, comparisons, metonymy, and figurative senses.
    5. Employs polysemy, synonyms, and ambiguity.
    6. Not precise and unambiguous, open to different interpretations.
    7. Very elaborate, expressive, and evocative.
    8. Utilizes cultivated forms, archaisms, and dialectalisms.

Family Register

  • Topic: Generic
  • Channel: Oral
  • Intention: Subjective (interpretation and reporting)
  • Formality: Low
  • Character:
    1. Primarily oral, although it may appear in writing.
    2. Associated with family and private uses, considered informal.
    3. Expresses a subjective attitude.
    4. Very expressive and connotative language that combines words, gestures, intonation, and parallelism.
    5. Spontaneous, repetitive, and simple.
    6. May contain inaccuracies and vulgarisms.
    7. Uses comparisons, figurative senses, phrases, euphemisms, and exaggerations.
    8. Elementary and specific vocabulary, but not very expressive and simple.
    9. Syntax abounds in juxtaposition.
    10. Function is varied: emphatic, ironic, euphemistic, sarcastic.
    11. Depends on dramatic context and shows the interrelationship between sender and receiver.

Vulgar Register

  • Topic: Generic
  • Channel: Oral
  • Intentionality: Subjective
  • Formality: Low
  • Character:
    1. Oral and informal, always for private use.
    2. Expresses things clearly without euphemisms or rhetoric.
    3. Habitually uses swear words and vulgar expressions.
    4. Refuses to break taboos related to sexual, religious, or physiological functions.
    5. Associated with marginal social strata and young people of any social layer.
    6. Underdeveloped and often deviates from normative language with vulgarisms.
    7. Uses resources from the family register but carried to exaggeration.