124 andrew w. pitts
entered and differing or new semantic relations form.38 level 3 describes
diachronic group level change in speech, such as the change in dialect
or vocabulary due to grammaticalization or linguistic evolution. We may
summarize these three levels as follows:
We can locate, then, in Bell’s model, a temporal axis, which accounts for
sociological factors impacting linguistic change in the author/speaker and
changes in his/her social environments (level 2) as well as the broader
linguistic evolution that we find in any given culture (level 3). along
what i refer to as the contextual axis of Bell’s model, we may account for
linguistic change based on the shifting social contexts which an author-
speaker addresses.
M. A. K. Halliday on Style: From Audience Design to Register Design
m. a. K. halliday’s account of style emphasizes the role of semantics, by
which he means the “functional” components of style. for halliday, the
semiotic components of register and their co-textual realizations provide
38 We may think here of the change in Paul’s age from the writing of his early letters
to the composition of later ones.