Creating speech register in Thai conversation

Abstract

Upon engaging in a speech event, participants mutually try to create the most appropriate speech register for that occasion. Special formality-marking particles, pronominals, names, kin terms, titles, and pragmatic particles are some linguistic signs that are available for Thai speakers for this purpose. Through varied frequencies and combinations of different signs, various shades of speech register are created. The type and quality of speech register are largely predictable when the participants are familiar with the speech situation because of their past interactional history, or with the protocol required for a particular type of interaction. However, when the participants are thrown into an unfamiliar situation with strangers, they must find a middle ground in their register and adjust their speech behavior to achieve a balanced speech interaction. In this essay, we analyze four different conversations, both quantitatively and qualitatively, in order to observe how speech register is created in different types of interaction, thereby going beyond simple taxonomic description of sociolinguistic signs.