Languages Geology History Humanities Math Music Philosophy Pol. As Alexis de Tocqueville observed in the early nineteenth century, we often feel that rules and standards that dictate dress or manners violate our sense of democracy. The difference is best understood as an instance of what linguists call register. The speaker of any language learns at a very young age that certain speech situations call for certain ways of putting words together. A child of six or seven will speak one way to fellow children, another way to parents, and perhaps even a third way to teachers.
Adults speak one way to children and another way to adult friends and colleagues.
In written as well as spoken English, we all command a variety of registers. Not only do you use different registers in writing a History paper and writing to a friend, you also use different registers in writing to a friend and writing to a prospective employer. This distrust has its healthy consequences, but it also makes it hard for us, at times, to acknowledge the inherently social nature of much human behavior, linguistic behavior included. The relation between writer and audience is a social relation, of which the relation between student writer and professorial audience is a particular instance. A few of these conventions are listed below.