kiana
(Kiana)
#1
146 andrew w. pitts
With the pseudonymity interpretation, a register design interpretation
recognizes significant linguistic variation in the Pauline corpus, it also
emphasizes that the greatest variation accords with the greatest changes
in the context of situation. if we analyze the contextual variation first, then
our expectation will be finely tuned to anticipate a very significant varia-
tion in Pauline style within the massively different register occupied by
the Pastorals. So instead of plotting only co-textual variation as significant
for the interpretation of style-shift—as on the pseudonymity view—a reg-
ister design interpretation also plots corresponding social variation and
calculates this significantly into the interpretation. as in the diagram
above: we plot a co-textual shift, but one occurring along the trajectory
and—as sociolinguists would interpret it—in response to social variation.
in other words, Paul likely redesigns his language for his new register. But
is the shift broadly consistent with the levels of variation that result from
shift in addressee type in other languages? there are two ways to calcu-
late this. the first is to note the percentage variation between register
profiles 2–4 and 5. the average for the co-textual shift in register profile 5
is 5.3. the average for the remaining profiles is 1.8. So we have an average
variation of 3.5 between the two sets of register profiles, measured against
harrison’s word-per-page criterion.
another way to do this is to total out the entire variation for the feature
within all four profiles to see what level of variation we find within this
feature alone. this is the data we will actually need to compare variation
levels in Pauline literature very roughly to the findings within sociolin-
guistics. if we take the average level of variation for this feature between
figure 6 co-textual variation in φιλο-initial words and α-privatives tracking with
contextual variation.
