Didactics of Translation: Text in Context

Register

Register is a key concept in the analysis of text in context. According to Halliday (1989: 38):
A register is a semantic concept. It can be defined as a configuration of meanings that are typically associated with a particular situational configuration of field, mode and tenor. But since it is a configuration of meanings, a register must include the expressions, the lexico-grammatical and phonological features that typically accompany or release these meanings.
Baker (1992), following Cruse (1986), makes the distinction between various types of lexical meaning: propositional, presupposed and evoked. Concerning evoked meaning, Baker states that it results from variation in dialect and register. Whereas a dialect, according to Baker, is “a variety of language which has currency within a specific community”, and which can be classified into geographical, temporal and social dimensions, “register is a variety of language that a language user considers appropriate to a specific situation” (Baker 1992: 15). Thus, unlike Halliday’s definition of register, Baker’s definition is much less technical; this is probably due to the nature of Baker’s book itself, being an introductory course for translation trainees.
In an attempt to situate the emergence of register analysis within the linguistic environment prevailing in the middle of the twentieth century, Hatim and Mason (1997: 13) state that register analysis could be considered as a reaction to the behaviourist and mentalist approaches to language at the time:
register analysis was initially a reaction against conceptions of language in which linguistic behaviour was seen as a mechanical response to external stimuli or a cognitive issue to do with the psycholinguistic ability to generate well-formed sentences…

They also add that

for its existence, register analysis has had to rely as much on classical disciplines such as rhetoric and the study of style as on much more recent trends within linguistics, sociolinguistics and linguistic stylistics.
Building on Halliday’s three contextual features of field, tenor and mode, Ruqaiya Hasan introduces the concept of Contextual Configuration (CC). For R. Hasan,
Each of the three [contextual features] may be thought of as a variable that is represented by some specific value(s). Each functions as a point of entry to any situation.
Accordingly, a CC is defined by Hasan as
a specific set of values that realizes field, tenor and mode (Halliday & Hasan 1989: 56).

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