In addition to word origins, another way to think about how clusters of words impact style is register.

Register is a term from linguistics and essentially refers to word clusters or patterns in syntax (i.e., sentence order/arrangement) that frequently re-occur around a specific topic or tone: formality, discipline of study, workplace, industry, etc.

Writing in your academic discipline or industry means learning the appropriate register or registers. For example:

• register for communication among co-workers may be a register slightly or even drastically different from register used in customer service
• register for a lab report may be different from register for a test answer in Biology

Finding the right register for your situation can be important; it can send a message that you are in solidarity with your audience (you are one of us) or that you have expertise on a subject (to know this language is to know this content). Using appropriate register is an important rhetorical skill.

Shifting and Mixing Registers

Shifting and mixing registers can also have rhetorical effect.

Rhetoric scholar Jeanne Fahnestock (2011, p. 87) notes that it could be as little as a word or it could be a phrase or sentence.

For instance, a long academic passage with clusters of words like hypothesis, generality, explanation could suddenly have a word like “bullshit” in there. Such a word draws attention to itself not only by its own force, but by its contrast between a register that word normally occurs in compared to the register it is contrasting with. This is a shift in register.

Register mixing involves a more extensive integration between registers. Fahnestock (p. 88) cites the following example from a money market fund’s seminannual report:

The first six months of 2003 were a good period for both stocks and bonds. Interest rates continued to fall and stock prices rose broadly. In addition, new tax cut legislation was enacted and corporate earnings showed signs of improvement.

American Balanced Fund posted a total return of 10.0% for the six-month period ended June 30. The fund outpaced the Lipper Balanced Fund Index, which had a total return of 8.9%. Stocks, as measured by Standard & Poor’s 500 Composite Index, gained 11.8%. Bonds, as measured by the Lehman Brothers Aggregate Bond Index, rose 3.9%. The market indexes are unmanaged. (cited in Fahnestock; American Balanced Fund 2003, 1).

This is a similar move to what you were asked to do on the last page in your sentence rewrite on the previous page, no?

Register Mixing and Translingualism

Thinking back to Learning Module 3 and the part on translingualism, you might also mix registers when mixing dialects or other languages. For instance, if you speak and write in a community that would respond well to versions of African American Vernacular English, New York Latino Spanish, or South Philly English, you could mix in words, phrases, or entire sentences inflected with a dialect or language.

Mixing registers through different kinds of languages that have a lot of associations with one’s identity can:

• make a point of emphasis (like the world “bullshit”)
• build solidarity with an audience that might also speak that language or dialect
• achieve various rhetorical aims that take advantage of the symbolizing effect of using a different language/dialect or just the rhetorical force from a given instance of that language/dialect as compared to the White Mainstream English version. For instance, you might purposefully want to make someone else uncomfortable or underscore something important about the rhetorical situation.

For example, to emphasize urgency to people in a group project from high school, I might do this using my South Jersey/Philly English:

I’m not sure we can do this. Is there any way to complete the report by the proposed deadline? We really gonna get dat jawn goin by den?

It might be even more subtle than this:

I’m not sure we can do this. Is der any way to complete da report by da proposed deadline? We really gonna get it done?

Registers are more commonly associated with really specialized language situations, but they effectively mean “a way of talking/writing” so there is much in common with translingualism and the act of using all of your linguistic resources to communicate in various ways in various settings.

A final point on this is that our bodies are often involved in communicating. Who is speaking and writing can often be tangled up with what is said or written. This can be very important to consider when mixing languages and registers with various audiences.

Task

Before clicking the “Click here to continue” button below, respond in a comment below to the following question about the 2 paragraphs from the seminannual report. Here is the question:

What is the difference in information provided in paragraph 1 compared to paragraph 2? What does that tell you about mixing of registers and why it might have occurred?