130 andrew w. pitts
Paul traveled during a specific time slice (global geography) and cc (local
geography), which stands for city of composition, so we can focus in on
precisely where Paul composed the letter.
Biber’s notion of plurality (Pl) for the addressee may also significantly
impact style. People tend to construct language aimed at large groups dif-
ferently than they do language aimed at personal, one-on-one interaction
with individuals. Shared knowledge works along two axes. first, levels of
shared knowledge (SK) have the effect of creating a scale of intimacy from
non-private, public communication to quite private, personal communi-
cation, with the possibility of a writing occupying one of several possible
positions closer to either end of this scale. Paul’s letters will occupy points
from the middle of the scale to the far private-personal end of it. Shared
knowledge also has an axis of specialization, which may result in techni-
cal vocabulary, if, for example, an author writes a friend with a level of
education or specialized training that they both share. this will not only
surface in issues of academic specialty but will also involve in-/out-group
language, such as inside jokes or family history that have caused language
between two individuals or groups to evolve around social situations in
a very contextually defined way. demographic (dm), including ethnicity,
has a significant impact on style-shifts.50 chronology (ch) will also play
an important role for the addressee, especially if writings occupy slightly
different dates in the same register profile.
Configuring the Pauline Letter-Writing Register
a discussion of the Pauline letter-writing register, its variation and the
impact of that variation on Paul’s language faces two challenges, both
related to the bodies of information that need to be considered: linguis-
tic and register data. as far as linguistic data goes, what we need at this
50 Several sociolinguists have demonstrated the significant linguistic impact of demo-
graphic alteration on the addressee parameter. See ralph fasold, Tense Marking in Black
English: A Linguistic and Social Analysis (urban language Series 8; arlington, Va: center
for applied linguistics, 1972); Jef van den Broeck, “class differences in Syntactic complex-
ity in the flemish town of maaseikl,” Language in Society 6 (1977): 149–81; derek Bickerton,
“What happens When We Switch?” York Papers in Linguistics 9 (1980): 41–56; Bell, “lan-
guage Style,” 145–202; Keith Walters, “Social change and linguistic Variation in Korba, a
Small tunsian town” (unpublished Ph.d. diss., university of austin, 1989), 236; Baugh,
“african american language,” 177–85; mendoza-denton, hay and Jannedy, “Probabilistic
Sociolinguistics,” 98–138; alim, Roc the Mic, 60–65.