5讲 英语文体学.pptVIP

Session 5 Varieties of Language 5.1 Two kinds of varieties Dialectal varieties, Diatypic varieties (语言变体或语域) We have pointed out that when language is used, it is always used in a context. What gets said and how it gets said is always dictated by a variety of situations. Some situations seem to depend generally and fairly consistent-ly on some regular sets of language features, so that dis-tinctive varieties of language occur. These sets of features are historically formed and are changing overtime; but they remain relatively stable at a certain period of history governing peoples language activity. As a study of the linguistic features that characterize the main varieties of a language, stylistics needs to define its variety categories. Since the 196os, hopefully, studies in this area have made considerable progress. Modern linguistics has worked out a system of variety categories to help isolate these consistent relationships between particular features of language, and the particular situations in which they might possibly occur (see Gregory and Carroll, 1978). The constant features of the situational circumstances of speech events that can be consistently related to variations in language use fall into two main groups: one group relates to the relatively permanent characteristics of the user in speech events, the other relates to the users use of language in such events; and they yield two main kinds of situational varieties: dialectal and diatypic. DIALECTAL VARIETIES, commonly called DIALECTs, are language varieties that are associated with different users of the language. As users in a society can be defined in terms of their individual, temporal, regional, and social affiliations, and their range of intelligibility, there are individual, temporal, regional, social and standard varieties respectively. These are relatively permanent features of the language user in a speech event. DIATYPIC VARIETIES, commonly called REGISTERs, are language variations