Dimensions of Register Variation

Douglas Biber''s new book extends and refines the research and methodology reported in his ground-breaking Variation Across Speech and Writing (1988) and adds for the first time a diachronic dimension. In it he gives a linguistic analysis of register in four widely differing languages: English Nukulaelae Tuvaluan Korean and Somali. Striking similarities as well as differences emerge allowing Biber to predict for the first time cross-linguistic universals of register variation.