Research Questions

What is the content of

register knowledge?

Research Questions

How can alternatives

be ascertained and described?

Research Questions

What situational parameters

play a role?

Research Questions

How can register knowledge

be suitably modeled?

Collaborative Research Centre 1412

"REGISTER"

The CRC Register: Language Users’ Knowledge of Situational-Functional Variation investigates aspects of the register knowledge of the speakers of a language. Competent speakers can adapt their linguistic behavior on every level in response to the current situation: They know, for example, that the German word sauer ‘ticked off’ is appropriate in different situations than the word verärgert ‘angry’, that one uses less complex sentences when speaking with children than in an academic function, and that sometimes it matters whether one says around 8 o’clock or 7:49 am, and sometimes it doesn’t. We are thus concerned with intraindividual variation.

Some register knowledge is acquired early – even relatively young children adapt their linguistic behavior to different situations – but at the same time, register knowledge changes and expands over the entire lifespan (especially, but not only, in the case of formal registers). In order to be able to behave register-appropriately themselves and to understand register-appropriate behavior in others, speakers must, on the one hand, know which alternatives (sauer/verärgert, around 8 o’clock/7:49 am) are available and, on the other, understand which situational parameters (properties of the surroundings, properties of the addressee, purpose of the interaction etc.) favor which alternative. Both aspects can change over time, such that register must also be recognized as an essential factor in language change. For an adequate model of linguistic behavior, therefore, register knowledge must be considered together with grammatical knowledge.

The research questions of the CRC are accordingly:

What is the content of register knowledge? How can alternatives be ascertained and described? What situational parameters play a role?
How can register knowledge be suitably modeled?

The CRC investigates these questions on the basis of a range of phenomena on all linguistic levels in diverse languages and language stages. In the process, several different methods (multifactorial corpus analysis, experimental procedures) are employed, extended and combined.

Duration: January 2020 – December 2023

Publications

Frontiers in Psychology, 2023

Situating language register across the ages, languages, modalities, and cultural aspects: Evidence from complementary methods

read more

Events

A05 & C03: tba

Colloquium

04/15/2024 |  2:15 pm - 3:45 pm  | hybrid

Colloquium talk by A05 & C03

Meeting of CPT “Formality”

Research Groups

04/15/2024 |  4:00 pm - 6:00 pm  | Mohrenstraße 40/41, R. 415 + Zoom

Meeting of CPT "Formality" subsequent to the colloquium talk

News


12/04/2023

Wie argumentieren wir? Wie argumentiert ? Shujun Wan verteidigt heute ihre Dissertation: "Rhetorische Strategien in deutschen argumentativen Texten: Ein Vergleich zwischen L1-und L2-Deutschsprechern/-innen sowie ChatGPT" 16 h @ Dorotheestr 24, 10117 Bln, R 3.246