The modeling of the communicative situation in theorizing about linguistic variation

Abstract

The communicative situation in which a given verbal interaction takes place triggers the appearance or inhibition of certain phonic (or graphic), lexical, syntactic or discursive features. Considered from a certain distance, the parameters used by the theoretical currents that have proposed modelizations of the communicative situation seem to coincide to a high degree. However, a more detailed examination reveals critical differences, as well as important problems. This paper focuses on five of these problems, including those related to (i) the imprecision in the definition of the situational parameters that stand out, (ii) the lack of justification for the choice of certain parameters to the detriment of others, (iii) the lack of coincidence between the parameters proposed by different authors, (iv) the lack of distinction between the parameters that determine genre vs. register variation, and (v) the scarcity of descriptive contrastive variational studies to test the validity of the different models or of the different repertoires of situational parameters or extra-linguistic factors of the situation.