TOWARDS A LINGUISTIC ANALYSIS OF A SHONA SPEECH REGISTER

Abstract

This paper in a way falls into two parts, namely a general account of what speech registers are and a linguistic characterisation of one Shona speech register. Briefly a register is a variety of language which correlates with context, including situation. Given a linguistic situation, it is observed that the choice of the language to be used is determined not so much by the topic of discussion as by the convention that a certain type of language is more appropriate to one situation than to another. The main factor which distinguishes one register from the other is the relationship that exists between the participants, chiefly from the point of view of the formality and informality of the language used.