connotations of language register

From: renee hayes (emujobs@hotmail.com)
Date: Wed Jan 19 2000 - 01:45:39 PST


Hi Stanton.

This thing you wrote about language register in Javanese is interesting:

>& STYLE IN JAVANESE). Javanese has complex speech levels, where many
>linguistic forms come in sets that are denotationally synonymous but
>signal different sorts of social identities and relationships between
>speaker and addressee/referent. This is not a system for classifying
>individuals, exactly, but it is a system used to classify individuals in
>practice -- as higher or lower status than the speaker (eg), or as
>more/less refined.

I wonder if this system, definitely more elaborate sounding, is analogous to
Spanish and other languages that signal speaker-addressee relationship using
more than one form of "you" such as the Spanish tu/usted. Because I´ve been
paying a lot of attention to this, recently having landed in Spain and
really needing to understand the subtleties of communication. And I have
noticed that it seems really flexible and fluid, even this one register
change between using what the textbooks call (casual) you form (tu) and what
they call polite you form (usted). My point is the categories are kind of
porous and multivoiced in everyday practice...for example, I think a parent
might use "usted" form talking to a child, in the case where the child is
being disciplined...like somehow a double awareness is created when the real
relationship between speaker and addressee can be superimposed on a
particular situation to create a new, richer meaning.

You describe how the categories of linguistic register are changing over
time in Javanese:

>Errington shows how, over time, forms that are associated with the
>highest status speakers come to be appropriated by lower status
>speakers.

I think what I am saying is not to contradict this, by the way. Actually to
suggest that on the smaller times scale, there may be multi-voicedness of
meanings...like I realize that the Javanese categories seem to more closely
reflect social status, according to your description. But I am wondering if
individuals can move around a little...like for example for irony or
self-aggrandizement use a form not usual for them. And if so how this
relates to the trend you describe of gradual shift over time....

Ever fascinated by the minutae of language, and floundering through the
learning process,

Renee
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